Fan/Crackfic: The Fairytale World (Chapter 6 up)

[GuardianDreamer]

The Fairytale World
By GuardianDreamer

... Hm? Oh, it's you. Don't worry, you're not disturbing me. Have a seat. The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?

You know, I've always wondered if there are alternate worlds out there. To be honest, I sometimes imagine what they're like in my dreams. A world of dreams... Doesn't that sound almost poetic?

I wonder what those alternate worlds would be like. I'm sure some would be more beautiful than others. I've wondered what a world where everyone's personality is completely different would be like. I've wondered what a world where everyone had different lifestyles would be like. I've even wondered what a world where everyone was the opposite gender would be like...

... Hm? What's with that look on your face? It's not that strange. Here, if you have the time, allow me to tell you a story... I've been writing it for a while. I hope you like it, but feel free to leave if you get bored.

Spoiler : Author's Note/Expected Questions :

Note: This is a story where everyone on AAO has been genderflipped. Each chapter will have a "focus character", which basically amounts to "This person is the one who receives the most attention in this chapter, no matter how unimportant they may be to the plot". It should be obvious who the Focus Character of each chapter will be, especially due to the Chapter Titles. I believe it is mostly self-explanatory, however, I will answer some questions that I expect to receive. I would call this an FAQ, except no one has ever asked questions since this thread hasn't been posted at the time of this writing.


Q: Who is responsible for this madness?
A: That would be me, GuardianDreamer. I supposed you can also blame Sleuth and Enigma for writing crackfics, which indirectly inspired this one. You may also blame Kwando for being my beta-reader and not stopping this madness when he could.

Q: How often will you update, and how many chapters will there be?
A: I intend to upload a chapter each day (At the time of this writing, I have the first five chapters finished, and am working on the sixth). On the first day I post this thread, the first two chapters will be put up at once, but after that the normal schedule will follow. I don't have a specific time that I'll be uploading these. There will be seven normal chapters in total, as well as an Epilogue, for a total of eight chapters. Depending on what I feel is more appropriate, I may wait a few days before putting up the Epilogue.

Q: Why am I not in this fic?
A: I intend to focus on a smaller amount of characters than Sleuth and Enigma did, though there will still be quite a few. Please don't be offended if you're not in this fic, since I honestly picked randomly at times. I can quite honestly say that there are some people I know very well who aren't in this fic, and some people I barely know who somehow did manage to make it in.

Q: You're weird.
A: That's not a question. That's a fact.

Q: What will be the "tone" of this fic? Light-hearted crackfic? Dark crackfic?
A: This will definitely be an extremely light-hearted crackfic. There are moments of semi-seriousness, but the fanfic is basically governed under the Rule of Funny at all times, and in comparison to Sleuth and Enigma's fics, it's clear that there's much less danger involved.

Q: Tell me about anything different about the AAOers in this fic, as well as AAO in general.
A: In this fic, AAO is a world. Basically every website has a planet dedicated to it, but I'm going to be sticking to AAO for the most part. The inhabitants of AAO all basically have superpowers, with the Officials (The Admins and Mods) being more powerful than the regular members. A few people who seem really weak may actually be really strong. These powers are basically decided by whatever I think is most appropriate for that user.

Q: Some parts seem to lack detail in description...
A: Intentional. I wrote this fic with only some details because I am horrible at describing anything think it's funnier for people to imagine the rest themselves.

Q: Why is your account name called "ChihiroDreamer"?
A: Figure it out yourself.

Chapter List

Chapter 1: The Melancholy Artist
Chapter 2: The Baroness
Chapter 3: The Kind Wraith
Chapter 4: The Tired Genius
Chapter 5: The Silly Moderator
Chapter 6: The Hunter

[Wolf Speaker]

Pardon me.

*SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

*ahem*

You have NO idea how long I've been looking forward to this. And I wasn't disappointed: I'm a bishie. I'm a bishieeeee. Ahhhhhhh. And now you can make invisible Canada jokes as well! Also I have a bow. Yes.

All right, now to the serious stuff. Well, not really serious. Your writing style is simple and easy to read, but it gets monotonous sometimes, especially when you're describing a character's appearance. Try to spruce those sections up a bit, or change the structure. And I know that this is the 'prologue', but the ominous 'something is amiss' thing has been done already in Sleuth's fic, and the plot was more... plotty in his, so it feels underwhelming here. Also, keep this in mind:

"I know," he said glumly.
"I know." His voice was glum.
"I know." He said glumly. <-- this is incorrect

Typo alert! You forgot a word here: "The false idealism of today will shattered before long."

One last thing: come here, go there. When you were talking about me in the Xatlands, you said 'when he goes here'.

All in all, I'm eagerly awaiting the next chapters. I'm also sorely tempted to draw fanart of myself. #narcissist

[Sleuth]

Spoiler : Short review :

But I'm not bloooooonde

Spoiler : Long review :

Shaping up great so far. Love the way you portray the AAOworld, and worked in the little in-jokes. The characters are very well done and fit the roles well, and I look forward to seeing what else you come up with. I like the mystery you set up with the Officials. I'm guessing there won't be much anarchy and death like in my fic, so it makes me wonder what the plan could be this time around.

Also, yes. Fanart will be coming.

[Mono]

Amazing 11037/10

[GuardianDreamer]

@Ulf: Thanks for that, but I'm going to have to warn you that, like I said, I already wrote several of the chapters already. So I can't really take that advice, since at the point I am now, all the characters have been introduced. Also, this fic isn't really supposed to be plotty. If the plot seems underwhelming, that means I succeeded, as little sense as that makes. If anything seems serious at all, even a little, it means that I'm probably going to lampshade or joke about it. Also, I have no clue what you're talking about with the 'he said glumly' example. This is how I've been writing for ages. I find the way you suggest to be extremely weird.

@Sleuf: Expected/10.

@Mono: It's the number of hope.

[kwando1313]

Told y'all it's amazing

[Gumpei]

Quite enjoying it so far. As I've always said, your writing just jives with me very well. Nothing more to say, really, other than I'm obviously looking forward to the rest.

[Tap]

If I show up, I better not be a pony, GD!
In terms of the fic, it's great so far! Keep up the good work!

[Alnar]

Ah yes, Procastination. It's everyone's friend here.
Great work! They say people learn something everyday and I learned that everyone here is insane and/or eccentric. End quote.

I can almost imagine the "Eccentric" theme playing 24/7 here now...

[NihilisticNinja]

Amazing 11037/10

Mono, please. That is only ever used as a negative number.

But I will follow Sleuth's example!

Spoiler : Short Review :

YAY IT'S UP!

Spoiler : Longer Review :

Quite good. The technical aspects have all been adequately covered by Wolf. I would only chime in that the descriptions feel a bit bare at times, and although this feels more like a writing style thing, it can hamper the areas where it feels like there need to be more details so that the reader can visualize events when they need to: that aquarium battle for instance. Sleuth is also right about word repetition, do try and watch out for that.

I won't comment on the plot yet- I want to see where it's going first. The similarities to Sleuth's fic don't bother me yet, at least. It's decently structured, and the buildup is solid. I really, really do like your characterization though. Quite entertaining and from what I've seen fits people quite well. The dialogue is quite well done, and always entertaining. Which makes the fic quite enjoyable. The humor is always good and quite entertaining- the jokes work quite well, even when in-jokes they don't feel out of place. That's definitely a good skill to have. I never felt bored and everything amused me, so that was quite, quite nice as well.

So yeah, liking this so far. Keep up the good work.
(Also I'm not sure why you didn't think I'd like female me. Female me is best me.)

[DWaM]

Spoiler : Short Review :

im commander Shepard and this is my favourite DWaM rendition on the Citadel i mean AAO

...
whaddya mean its basically the only on- *shot*

Anyway, quite good. Kinda weird that everyone assumes I'm a detective these days. I KEEP TELLING YOU THAT'S NNS JOB GAWD

But still. Has a few hiccups maybe with perhaps some references that could've been saved for later (the GD writing a fanfic one, maybe), but they never actually hurt anything so yeah, no biggie there.

Spoiler : Longer Review :

THAT WASN'T THE DEAL MAN

[GuardianDreamer]

@Kwando: Thank you my loyal haipe servant.

@Gumpei: Huzzah.

@Tap: Don't give me any ideas.

@Alnar: Huh... I thought about specific music playing in the fic too. That's a surprisingly good fit.

@NN: Again, the plot is supposed to be an Excuse Plot (It's honestly a tribute to many crossover games that had bad excuse plots but pretend not to, and focus on character interaction... It IS a crackfic, after all), which... I'm not sure if that justifies it or not. A part of me thinks that makes the criticisms about the plot invalid since it's a stylistic choice, while another part of me thinks that I'm making excuses and need to accept it. As bad as this will make me sound, writing this fic is also something that I'm doing just so I can have fun with it, and that mostly involves extremely random lighthearted nonsense. I've been reading far too many depressing/bittersweet pieces of fiction lately, so I wanted to balance it out with this as a form of self-therapy. I think it becomes extremely obvious later when everyone lampshades everything and the pesky fourth wall disappears around chapter 4. Also, I'm still confused by why people think it's similar to Sleuf's fic, but I have an extremely awful memory, so I'll just accept it. At least you can rest assured that the ending will be completely different.

@DWaM: That's basically the only place where I could put it without myself appearing, though. I need to keep my own gender a secret. Also I've never heard you say that being a detective is NN's job... I need to be online more often.

Anyway, Chapter 3 is now up. I'm using this chapter as a "test chapter" for "writing dialogue properly", to see if that actually makes it better, or if it takes away part of the charm. Unfortunately, I also believe that Chapter 3 is the low point of this crackfic, since the tone clashes with the rest of the fic (I remember that I was actually trying to have a serious plot, then decided against it after this chapter)... I didn't decide on the tone of the fic until about chapter 4 (which, incidentally, was my favorite chapter to write), because I am an extremely smart person who only has a vague idea of where the fic was going. I tried adding a few revisions to make it fit the tone of the rest of the fic later, but it still feels a bit off.

[NihilisticNinja]

@NN: Again, the plot is supposed to be an Excuse Plot (It's honestly a tribute to many crossover games that had bad excuse plots but pretend not to, and focus on character interaction... It IS a crackfic, after all), which... I'm not sure if that justifies it or not. A part of me thinks that makes the criticisms about the plot invalid since it's a stylistic choice, while another part of me thinks that I'm making excuses and need to accept it. As bad as this will make me sound, writing this fic is also something that I'm doing just so I can have fun with it, and that mostly involves extremely random lighthearted nonsense. I've been reading far too many depressing/bittersweet pieces of fiction lately, so I wanted to balance it out with this as a form of self-therapy. I think it becomes extremely obvious later when everyone lampshades everything and the pesky fourth wall disappears around chapter 4. Also, I'm still confused by why people think it's similar to Sleuf's fic, but I have an extremely awful memory, so I'll just accept it. At least you can rest assured that the ending will be completely different.

Now, this is where I also get torn. Because I honestly don't know in what approach to take to this fic, because it's clearly going to be a very stylized, humorous crack fic. Which is perfectly fine; don't get me wrong. It's just... I can't critique stylistic choices. That isn't fair and won't be particularly productive, because I can't ask somebody to adjust their entire writing style to please me. And thus, it's just kind of annoying because I always have this "critique is helpful!" attitude, but in this kind of fic it feels like most forms of critique are just kind of ineffective at best.

And I'm absolutely uncertain as to why you think "writing just so I can have fun with it" is a bad thing? Writing should be fun! If what your writing feel like a job, then you're not going to be writing optimally. Writing with a strong motivation is also good! It gives you more inspiration and really is going to make you put more passion into the story, which always makes a work of fiction better to read. Honestly, a random, lighthearted romp is probably a great fit for the AAO art section- I just do kind of want to provide constructive criticism... but with this kind of crackfic that's really hard. The Sleuth similarities, from my perspective, solely come from the whole "missing mods" aspect. I don't expect the plot to stay the same for particularly long.

And having read chapter 3, I'm pretty satisfied. The storyline is diverging quite satisfyingly. I see a bit of the conflict you're referring to, but not particularly bothered by it. On a whole the writing was quite solid, characterization still quite good. Dialogue was also quite solidly written. So yeah, very good chapter, and keep up the good work.

[Sleuth]

...Did I do "missing mods" in my fic? I think it was only Ami and Tap...

Either way great chapter. I'd try to give a critique, but I really am not sure what to say... I only hope to see more of the cast as time goes on.

[NihilisticNinja]

...Did I do "missing mods" in my fic? I think it was only Ami and Tap...

Well if I were to be hyper-pedantic that would indeed be missing mods, but no, it looks like you're right. For some reason I thought there were more. Oh well- plot is making it clear it isn't derivative regardless.