Guess I'm here?

Hey guys, so it's been over a year since I've said... really anything on this website. I ain't here though to bust out with "I'm back, and ready to burn through some writing!" or anything. Further from it, I'm afraid. This very likely will be the last thing I put on this website unless I find something that really gets my writing motivation going. I already feel pretty bad about just abandoning the stories that people seemed to be really enjoying and it still astounds me that I come back to this website to peak in and people are still adding these stories to their libraries. There's several factors in why I've essentially abandoned all stories and I'll go ahead and explain them here.

First and foremost, I'm something of a gamer. This seems really off topic but follow me for a moment. I play a lot of games, keep up with the latest news, and probably absorb more information about gaming in general than most other media. I personally have a thing against Early Access and Pre-order kind of things. If you like that stuff, by all means do, it's just doesn't make sense to me to pay money for promises. Now, none of you were paying me but I can't help but attribute the reasons I don't like early access to fan fiction, at least the way a lot of people do it and how I was doing it. Instead of posting the entire story at once for people to consume, they post a chapter or two and then continue to post small pieces over however long. Without really saying it, these authors are promising that a completed story will be done, and I have no actual statistics on this, but I can bet a large number of people don't finish their stories. This irks me being the one promising this and knowing that I likely won't deliver so to try and not make hollow promises, the stories that I have at the moment are being cancelled and if I ever do continue them, they will be done behind doors and the remainder of the story will go up practically all at once.

Second is something within the website itself: Displaced. Most of you probably found me through my displaced stories, of which I have three and at a time had planned many others. Thing is, as I went on, I began to realize that some of the benefits of displaced writing also came with some negatives. Get ready, cause I'm about to dump a whole bunch of info about Displaced here.

The positives are pretty clear: a new writer gets opportunities to write with others and learn from them, make friends, and generally just build a community that other writing groups might not do. Crossovers with characters from other worlds brings in an exciting idea of the limitless possibilities that could occur when certain characters meet. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if some people find in Displaced what they might find in role play, as I did somewhat. However, now we come to the negatives.

First big negative was that although there was a simple enough explanation of why these characters could just jump around between universes, it meant that said element often felt rather shoehorned in. I had tried to make it feel a bit more organic, but it's not really a realistic feat to take a story about a person and their issues in their world and suddenly tack on an element that brings in the multiverse.

Another issue I had was balance: obviously some characters have abilities that would fix the issues your character has instantly. This meant you had to be careful with who you picked to crossover with cause you couldn't risk bringing someone in who would just wipe the problems of the world away and basically making the story null. Now this might not seem like a huge issue, but if you recall that thing I mentioned about how some use Displaced like role play and... well, you can imagine how far people will stretch their imaginations now. Hell, the amount of displaced that were at the level of god or higher I personally found rather absurd, and don't even get me started on some of the arguments people got into in forums about who's character was more powerful. It was like children arguing about which video game character would win in a fight but worse cause these were their characters and insulting them in anyway was tantamount to insulting the author and everything they stand for.

Another issue I had was what I dubbed "crossover bait", and this is a term that other Displaced writers have even used somewhat. This was a story in that there was no real story to it on its own. The story basically required crossovers to be interesting, and if it didn't have that then nothing would happen. It just sat there stagnant, waiting to ride the wave of the next somewhat interesting Displaced character to pop up. I personally felt these stories also fed another problem I had in that crossovers always felt rather... flat. Like they were just a passing memory and had little to no effect on the story. These are literally people from other universes coming to you for whatever reason and you can't think of much else but a friendly hello and maybe a co-op beat down of the local villain before they never see each other again? Now, some people did this well enough, actually using the multiverse as a plot element rather than just a convenient way to crossover, while others actually had crossovers that mattered. They had characters return after the first crossover for good or ill and it turned what was a bunch of separate stories into proper communities of characters. But unfortunately that brings its own problems.

In Displaced, when I was an admin at least, there was always this argument about the Lore. This was basically the thing that tied the whole multiverse crossover thing together. Long story short, in my opinion it was a giant mess. A whole bunch of chaotic nonsense made "because it can" and it frustrated me to no end. Midnight Chaos and Jsyrin tried some, yet again in my opinion, absurd things to tie everything all together and the emphasis that I felt was being put on their characters was not something I really ever could stand with. Hell, Jsyrin somewhat agreed at some point about how messy things were as he left before even I did, and an entire group of writers split off to create a "Rebel Displaced" partially due to that. So when you have stories that try to tie in the multiverse properly being based off lore that was shaky at best, you've already got one hell of a balancing act.

And finally, the issue I personally tried to tackle in Displaced during my time as admin: the quality of stories. I'm not going to sit here and say that you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy or something like that (the admins of this site do that enough). All groups that get popular enough will get those people that really need an editor or someone to tell them what they're doing needs some work. What I will say though, and this might just be because I was literally admin of quality control and read probably some of the worst stories I've ever seen because of it, but Displaced has some of the worst and it goes back into the positive I said before about it being a place new writers can come in. Because it's so inviting, you will get people who will just come in and start dumping really terrible stories onto the group. And these aren't even just one off things with a few chapters before they realize what they are doing and get an editor or some advice. The worst rated story in displaced when I was admin (don't know if it's still there but so help us all if something worse came around) was a minecraft displaced story that was barely understandable, incredibly confusing, an element that let the writer decide what minecraft mod the main character would use in the next chapter (in case things didn't feel random enough), and had tens of thousands of words written. That's a lot of words with no real clear show of improving through any of it and no intention shown to actually get someone to sit down and tell him "this is what you should work on".

All of this. All of this long winded writing that most of you probably skipped cause you're sick of reading my garbage. All of this splattering of my personal opinion that I'm sure will piss someone off no matter how many times I say it is my own opinion. This is why I disappeared. Displaced inspired me to write stories I never would have, and I'm not even joking when I say that. DJSkywalker, one of the still remaining admins though I have no clue what he still does, wrote Gravity of the Situation, the story that inspired me to write Evil Always Finds a Way. As a result of a big crossover displaced war that ended up eating the dirt pretty hard, I got to meet him and several people who to this day I still talk to and they are some of my best friends.

But in the end, Displaced was just a place to start for me, not a place I could continue going. If I do continue to write, I won't write a Displaced story. If I do continue one of my previous stories, it will be rewritten to stand on its own without Displaced. Perhaps the story can have crossovers, but they will be in-world crossovers that won't rely on a rickety piece of wood with the word "Lore" written on it to stay afloat. Those that crossover will be people from the same exact world and are perhaps part of the same events that my story will have. I have nothing against a writer seeing my work and being inspired to write something alongside it, just as I was before. Hell, if you still think I'm making a big fuss about how Displaced was for me, I purposely didn't mention all the times Midnight Chaos made me facepalm with some of the things they did simply because I have no intention of calling them out and sending hate their way.

TL:DR I'm not writing Displaced and likely not writing anything. If I do go back to my old stories, they will be rewritten to remove Displaced from them. All stories I may write will not be posted until they are completed so that I don't feel like I am promising you all something that I might not keep to in the end.

Anyways, whether you skipped to the end to read the TL:DR or got through my little essay, glad you got here either way. It's been fun.

Comments

[Krazyfan1]

i'm gonna miss the sword fic...
still, hope you have a good time outside this site.
who knows? you could write non displaced things on other sites while keeping the theme...
like, Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity both have lots of SI and non SI stories there, no crossover required...

[PickleRickInAPickle]

I'm sorry to hear that you're canceling your stories - Gong Yi Tem Ponies really stuck around in my head (because I didn't care about the displaced trope/It was a fun story above everything else). But I am glad to hear your thoughts (especially since you were a major part of displaced early on). And I am hopeful that you continue to go far and wide while enjoying what you do.

[DisplacedWriter]

The Displaced is a fun genre but like you said, cross-overs or the characters made in general or worse; the plot or the start of it, the genre often gets punched in the face. Cross-overs should only be done within reasoning, No, not to get a new power/item or cover up weaknesses and flaws with the character. Cross-overs should only be done to help advance the plot, developemt the character, etc, none of this meet, greet, and generally screw around and even derail the plot. What most Displaced writers don't get is that when you enter another world, your character is only a passenger and thus should NOT have a major impact on things nor should they control the plot or be the answer to solve all the problem, they are only here to help out the main character. The plot must come first. If it doesn't help out with the story, then it should be seperated into its own catagory so its not required to read to understand the story.

Another thing most Displaced don't do, is balance their character, it is a key to making a descent Displaced character, pros with cons. There should be one thing that will always be with the character no matter what; They are still human, they can get sad like humans, they can be miserable or depressable like human knowing they can never return home to friends and family.

If none of those elements are present along with a good plot, then chances are it will fall apart or end up getting alot of dislikes.