Final Remarks (Part 2)

Let me start with the first and most core problem of this theme: [Most fairy tale characters are extremely thin, lacking real personalities, and completely relying on a small, specific story to exist. Once separated from this story, the character no longer exists]

When I started thinking about writing "Zongzong Fairy Tales", I tried to refer to "Zongzong Martial Arts", "Zongzong Manga", "American Manga", and "Zonggong English and American".

When I actually started writing, I found that I couldn't refer to the above ideas at all.

Let me give you a simple example from a comic book.

Buggy the clown from "One Piece", King from "One Punch Man", and Satan from "Dragon Ball".

These three people have a common characteristic, that is, in their own worldview, they are mistakenly regarded by many people as big shots, but in fact they do not deserve the title.

If I were to write a manga, I could put the three people into the same chat group, let the system tell them their respective identities, and then assign tasks for the three of them to team up, travel through their respective three worlds, and experience various stories.

Each of the three people in the team would think that—

"It's so scary. Apart from me, the other two in this team are all big guys."

"They are the Four Emperors who have conquered the world's number one swordsman/the strongest man on earth who has surpassed the number one S-class hero/the strongest martial artist who has defeated Majin Buu. If they knew that I'm the only rookie, I'd be doomed!"

I can also imagine the various interesting things that the trio experienced during their journey through the three worlds: The S-class hero "Atomic Samurai" challenged King's friend "Senryodo" Buggy, but his sharp blade was unable to hurt the other party at all. He was surprised to find that "King's friends are so powerful!".

Satan, the former champion of the world's first martial arts tournament, brings two friends to participate in the current world's first martial arts tournament. Sun Wukong, a martial arts fanatic, learns of the arrival of King, a master from another world, and challenges him. How should King, who is so scared that his heart is beating, respond...

If you think about it, it's very dramatic and can lead to many interesting stories.

I spent 10 minutes to come up with this idea. There are many similar impressive characters. Their combination, collision, friction and interaction can always give birth to various interesting stories.

But if I let Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (the original version, not Aurora in this article) meet each other and let them team up, what interesting sparks can be created? What equally interesting stories can be born? No, do you three really have any clear personality settings? The examples I give here are already the protagonists of fairy tales.

If the trio is - the Prince Charming who wakes up Snow White, the prince who picks up the crystal shoes to find Cinderella, and the prince who wakes up Sleeping Beauty, their characters will be even thinner. They are just a tool to promote the plot and the prize won by the protagonist in the end.

At this point, the problem is obvious.

In works such as martial arts and anime, the characters and world views have very detailed and memorable settings.

For example, when mentioning Batman, the reader's mind will immediately emerge with Bruce Wayne in black, and a large number of words to describe it will immediately emerge in the mind.

These words include the character's traits and abilities, such as "rich" and "using high technology"; the character's personality and obsessions, such as "not killing" and "careful planning"; the character's background and hellish jokes, such as "both parents are dead."

Part of the character setting also includes the character's social relationships, such as Batman lives in a city called Gotham, and has an enemy called "Joker".

These characters with detailed personalities can temporarily break away from their own stories and collide with each other, which can still create new stories.

But most fairy tale characters do not have this advantage.

They only exist in such a specific and simple storyline——

Sleeping Beauty is just a baby who was cursed and then awakened by the prince; Cinderella is bound to the ball and the crystal slippers, just as Snow White is just a "princess who was harmed by the jealous queen with the magic mirror."

These characters lack rich social relationships, are not based on a clear worldview, have no distinct personalities, lack impressive specialties, and have no ideals to uphold. Everything about them outside of that story is completely empty.

[Once separated from the specific storyline that is familiar to the public, these characters will disappear into thin air and cease to exist.]

You can use your imagination to imagine what kind of if line Luffy would experience if he did not become a pirate, but followed his grandfather Garp to join the navy and vowed to become the navy marshal, and how he would deal with Admiral Akainu and the Four Emperors Kaido.

But I can't imagine interesting if-plot stories like "If the little match girl's family was wealthy, she wouldn't need to sell matches" and "Snow White's appearance was slightly worse than the queen's, so she wasn't envied."

Once the little match girl stops selling matches, Cinderella stops attending the party, and Sleeping Beauty is not cursed by the witch, what is the difference between them and Girl A and Princess B?

This character simply ceased to exist.

With folk tales and fairy tales, simple characters and storylines are more easily transmitted and passed down orally from generation to generation.

But for a modern work, a long online article, overly thin characters and interpersonal relationships that almost exist in a vacuum will lead to a lack of scalability.

This is also a big difficulty I encountered in the actual writing process.

What a normal fan work needs to do is: [Use other people's settings to tell your own story].

So what the author has to do is to influence the plot of the original work by actively intervening, creating a butterfly effect that affects the entire body, expanding on the existing characters and worldview of the original work, and telling a story that is unique to him.

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

But in this book, everything is reversed.

[What is often in front of me is only a specific story]

Every time the protagonist gets involved in the original storyline, I feel like he's being visibly restrained.

Because once this plot is changed too much, then this character and even the entire story will be equivalent to no longer existing.

If the protagonist does not intervene significantly, and simply follows the original work, then the protagonist has no meaning of existence. What's the point of writing the novel then?

Because of the subject matter, I can't really write it like an original fantasy. If I write an original fantasy, the world view will definitely not be the same as it is now at the beginning. I must use the online literary themes that readers are familiar with, such as pseudo-dnd, wizard style, quasi-secret sequence style, lord style, the fourth disaster, amber style game world, etc.

In fact, I felt this difficulty when I was organizing the outline in October, so I informed the editor of the difficulties I encountered.

From the current perspective, this is a systematic difficulty in material selection. Once the subject matter, tone and initial setting of the book are determined, it is difficult to get a fundamental solution.

All I can do is try to find a suitable entry point for the plot within a reasonable range. Once the protagonist's involvement has a big enough impact and the development has completely deviated from the original work, I will end the story.

Linking the previous and the next: [Most fairy tale characters are extremely thin, lacking real personalities, and completely relying on a small, specific story to exist. Once separated from this story, the character no longer exists] is certainly a problem, but it is not the biggest problem I encountered during the serialization process.

The more serious hidden dangers of this subject matter are far more than this. The second problem I am going to talk about next is more fatal and has a much greater impact on your grades.

It can be said that the second problem I will talk about next directly makes this book unsuitable for long-term serialization. At the beginning of the story, this problem will not be manifested at all, but as the length of the story slowly increases, it will gradually explode like a snowball.

What is the second question? I will discuss it in detail in "Comments after the Book is Completed (Part 3)".

(End of this chapter)