Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

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Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby Comartemis » Fri Dec 17, 2010 10:23 pm

So there's this one series called Zero no Tsukaima. Most of you have probably heard of it, but for the rest of you, think of a Takahashi Couple attending Hogwarts and you've got the basic idea. Look here for a more in-depth explanation.

So you've got Louise and Saito, lead heroine and hero, if you can really call them that. Calling them a Takahashi Couple is kinda disingenuous because they aren't really much of a couple, Louise spends more of her time beating the crap out of Saito than Akane does with Ranma, and Saito's a real piece of work too, especially in the original light novels. They really are a match made in hell. Then a few months ago, a guy by the name of Gabriel Blessing started writing a fanfic called The Hill of Swords, where Louise summoned Emiya Shirou from Fate/Stay Night instead of Saito to be her familiar.

The fic caught a lot of attention on the Creative Writing boards over on SpaceBattles and sparked a lot of discussion in the fanfic recommendation thread. Shortly before it ended, yours truly got a rather crazy idea into his head: if Shirou can make Louise into an awesomesauce mage and a decent person to boot, what could other people do to her? The result is Breaking In Louise, which is about to hit 150 pages of discussion and has spawned several other ZnT threads and multiple fanfics starring familiars from all across the multiverse. We've got Asakura Ryouko, we've got Link, we've got Nono -- yes, the one from Diebuster! -- we've got Shirai Kuroko, we've got Alex Motherfrakking Mercer, and many others besides, along with original characters from series as far apart as Exalted, Whateley Academy, and the Forgotten Realms. Ideas have been put forth for hundreds more characters, ranging from Evangeline A.K. McDowell to Wodan Ymir to Takamachi Nanoha to (most recently) Tomoe Hotaru. It's been so busy that frankly I haven't had any time for you guys. But now I'm back, and I thought I'd bring the party with me.

So to those of you who are just hearing about The Hill of Swords, I highly recommend you look it up, it's a real piece of work (though there is a major sticking point with Shirou being majorly out of character, but that gets explained and justified as you go along). To those of you who have and who know a few things about Zero no Tsukaima, same question: who do you think would make a good familiar for Louise, and how would they change the setting?
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby BF110C4 » Sat Dec 18, 2010 8:43 am

I would like to see the Ultimate version of Steve Rogers, the Captain America on this setting, if only to see how he acts under a place that is far more backwards that he is.
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby DCG » Sun Dec 19, 2010 7:49 pm

Have the nanoha and hotaru ideas gone any place?
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Sun Dec 19, 2010 9:15 pm

Fukufics Mod, Plot Hammer, And Muse poker.

Is muse poker like strip poker, only more creative?
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby DCG » Sun Dec 19, 2010 11:38 pm

It gets a bit wild some times. You gota watcher yourself around sunny's muses.

Can ask wolfie for details unless his repressed them, but don't ask about the dresses.
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby Comartemis » Tue Dec 21, 2010 11:05 pm

Have the nanoha and hotaru ideas gone any place?

Nope, Hotaru's gotten a fair bit of discussion, though. The two most popular ideas that I can remember which haven't gotten properly developed are Link from some 100 pages ago (he has snippets here and there and a really cute scene with Tabitha in one of them but no proper story thread dedicated to him yet) and Lagoon Company (all four of them, yes) as a crack fic, along with some discussion from the more twisted members like Robo Jesus regarding a Magic The Gathering crossover where Louise summons a phyrexian artifact or something and turns into a mad mage of some sort. I wasn't paying attention to that one.
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby ckosacranoid » Wed Dec 22, 2010 12:10 am

i have ti say after doing some reading and scimming a bit on that page about the anime and stuff and reading at least short fixs with that crossover with full metal panic and everyones hated wonderboy shinji, i have to say the the main chick in this anime has just gone to the top of my really hated chararater list along with the likes of shinji and min-may....
the way she is written she seems to have no really hope for having any respect at all. ever some of the ohter losers of anime at least get some respect from me. but she just seems to have nothing worth the effort at all. even the worst bad guys at least seem much cooler then her though..but thats just me toughts.

on different note....
whats up with sunny muses and the dress? much less muse poker? .......poke....poke...poke....poke.....

(gets ready to run after muttering something about sailor mommy in the return)
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby Comartemis » Wed Dec 22, 2010 1:03 am

Louise is a deconstruction of a tsundere in much the same way that Shinji is a deconstruction of the ordinary kid-type mecha pilot. She and Saito both have a bunch of issues to work out, and they play off of each other in all the worst ways, much like Shinji and Asuka do. Their relationship is a trainwreck right from the start, but replace Saito with someone else and the more positive aspects of her personality can be emphasized; in THoS, Louise and Shirou wind up having something like an older brother/younger sister relationship and Louise turns much more -dere and much less -tsun than she was in canon. This is why most of us on SpaceBattles are so interested in this series; most of us had never heard of ZnT before THoS showed up on the recommendation thread, that's mostly a sci-fi community. Then people started reading about the original series and the general consensus was "we can do better than this!"

Louise's biggest issue is that she has a massive inferiority complex born out of her constant failures as a mage. In Halkeginia, pretty much the only way you can ever be anybody worth noting is to be a mage, since they do all the really important work (Earth mages who aren't noble nobles like the Valliere family work farms and raise buildings in a fraction of the time and effort it would take a team of commoners to do the same job, for instance). Louise can't do any kind of magic at the start of the series and she's never been able to do anything besides make things explode since birth. Failure is quite literally all she's ever known, frankly I can't blame her for being severely screwed up in the head. And then consider this: all nobles are mages. What happens to a noble with no magical talent? Are they disowned from the family? Thrown out on the streets, where they will either starve to death, be killed/raped/enslaved by one unscrupulous individual or another, or wind up selling their bodies in a brothel somewhere because they have no marketable skills? Louise isn't just suffering from an inferiority complex, she's also dealing with a horrendous fear for her very life with every failed spell.

But look! She summoned Saito! And now she has to deal with a character who was, in the original novels, the very image of the Otaku stereotype. Louise isn't the only one with no readily-apparent redeeming features, Saito tried to molest Louise in her sleep in the second novel. This doesn't really carry over to the anime so Saito looks a lot more sympathetic than he was in the novels. (The manga takes things in the other direction, Louise is only mildly tsun, maybe even less-so than Akane). So here's the guy Louise summoned to be her familiar who doesn't appear to be a magical beast of any sort so she chalks it up as yet another failure. This person that she is now bound to has to sleep in the same room as her, and shortly after this starts happening, he demonstrates just what kind of scum he really is. It's no wonder Louise spent the rest of the night and most of the next morning beating him into submission, if I had to sleep in the same room as a sex offender, I'd beat him black and bloody too just on general principles, and god help him if it was me he was messing with!

It doesn't get much better later in the series either. When Saito seems to be dead in the novel concurrent with the end of season 2, Louise almost commits suicide because she realizes that she can't say she loves him even in a dream. Saito, meanwhile, continues to chase after everything with a pair of tits when he comes back while Louise continues to send him mixed signals. There's a line late in the series after Saito has a piece of the runes undone (there's apparently a low-level brainwashing aspect of the familiar summoning ritual that reduces whatever homesickness the familiar feels and influences them to care about the master; when it comes undone, Saito has a massive shift in his feelings for Louise) where he calls her out for this behavior, but that was pretty recent and the effects haven't really been felt in the story yet.

The bottom line is this: a relationship with a volatile tsundere like Louise or Akane is a textbook example of an abusive relationship. Some romantic comedies like Ranma brush this off with the Rule of Funny, and fanfic authors pick up on it and write darkfics where the abuse is taken seriously. Here, the abuse is taken seriously right there in the story, so instead of writing darkfics, authors like to make things better by matching up Louise with someone who addresses her faults. More than one fanfic I've seen on SpaceBattles solves Louise's self-confidence issues by teaching her a different style of magic, investigating Void magic, or even just showing her that the ability to conjure up explosions on command can be useful in some circumstances. Things begin to fall into place once Louise has a sense of self-worth, and then her more positive qualities begin to show through and she becomes a likable character to read.
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby ckosacranoid » Thu Dec 23, 2010 11:04 pm

thanks for explainging that. at least it now makes sence about the seires. i will have to say the series doses not sound like its up my ally but i will at least follow along on this tread about stuff.
the thoughts of summoning others or her to work with....
all 12 of the clones of naga the white serpent...the horror of all 12 laughing at once....
or summoning the bandit slayer herself, lina inverse..that would be so very wrong....you think she has issues now..wait till her famlior shows her up at the time in magic.....expact that time of the month....
its realy does sound like a very fragged up series to say the least from what you say of the novels or the anime or manga.
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby Sky » Tue Dec 28, 2010 12:59 am

This either really works or really doesn't, but what about Hei from Darker Than Black? I haven't seen the second season, but after the first, Hei has become into a character that has learned a few things about the world around him that would be good lessons for Louise.
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby mondu_the_fat » Tue Jan 11, 2011 9:05 pm

One of the things I noticed about the Breaking in Louise (and to a certain extent, Breaking of Louise) thread is that the approach is:

"Get a (over)powered character that won't take shit from Louise [or even fight back], then use that to fix Louise."

How about running the opposite direction?

Chiyo Mihama or Yotsuba.

Rather than a character than Louise can't bully around, a character than even Louise would think twice about hitting. Yotsuba would probably work better, but I don't know enough of Yotsuba as compared to Azumanga. The character has to be literally someone can't fight back rather than just who won't. Rather than changing Louise by forcing her to accept another's (inflexible, like Shiro's) ethics, changing Louise by, well, making her a parent (hey, it works in real life; I know having kids tends to settle people down and make them think of someone other than themselves). It'll probably run like a real-life underage single mom story -- Louise will see the kid as a burden, take out some of her frustation on the kid from time to time, and flat out blame her for some failure, but eventually the kid grows on her. Stir in some mama bear mode inspiring scenes. Battles where it would have been Saito/crossover character would have won, it would have been Louise on her own that would have won (or just escaped from). As for Chiyo/Yotsuba herself, rather than giving her awesome ass-kicking gandalfr powers (which would really look out of place with a 10/5 year old), make her _amplify_ magic -- any magic performed while she's holding the caster's hand adds a single point or something (tringle mages become square mages and so forth). This gives Louise some sort of incentive to keep her in the beginning, seeing the kid as her ticket out of fail-ville, provides an excuse why Louise would be winning the battles where her familair should have won, as well as is some sort of plot hook so that the fic doesn't look like a simple retelling of Familiar with another character.

In any case, I was toying around with an Azumanga cross over, with Louise summoning Sakaki or Osaka (and the entire cast, but the rest are spread throughout the world). I can't get around how Sakaki/Osaka would deal with Louise' violence, though.
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Re: Breaking In Louise: Fukufics Edition!

Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Wed Jan 12, 2011 2:22 pm

mondu_the_fat wrote:In any case, I was toying around with an Azumanga cross over, with Louise summoning Sakaki or Osaka (and the entire cast, but the rest are spread throughout the world). I can't get around how Sakaki/Osaka would deal with Louise' violence, though.

I suspect Sakaki, after a while, would simply not be there when Louise felt violent. (Unless Louise were some form of catgirl!)

Osaka, now, that would be a battle of the titans. Titans, in Louise's case, with poor aim. In Osaka's case, it might be confusing: she doesn't do aggression, but she's really good laying the WTF? on people.
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