Sword Art Online: Shattered Sword: Feedback

[Snowy_One]

Before you get started... No. I'm not a fan of SAO. Not really. I saw the first season on Netflix and it was an okay-ish show with some great music, but sloppy story with weird consistency. However I found the IDEA of what it was trying to do interesting and, sadly, very unexplored. My intention with this is not to make a 'fanfic' as it were but, instead, to try and write out a story of some things that might really happen had SAO's story really taken place. I won't intentionally break the lore, just... explore what likely would have happened had this been an actual MMO as opposed to being hyper-focused on a very small amount of characters.

[Snowy_One]

I should make a few things clear.

1) I am following the show, not the manga.

2) I will be trying to approach it from multiple angles with each of the two (might expand to three) characters dealing with how aspects would actually be approached.

3) I have NOT decided yet as to if I will be following the show to the letter or not. There are some strong arguments for both but the main... issue... comes with the ending and if the MMO should hit the higher floors or not.

4) If you have something you'd like to suggest and/or contribute go right ahead! But remember that this isn't just a fanfic so much as an observation on SAO and what probably would have really happened.

Anyways, I find it interesting that the show automatically assumed a whole bunch of stuff. A very cursory exam should tell people that men and women are different and there is no way to guarantee that a person even made a character that looked like them. What's going to stop little Suzie from down the street who still hasn't outgrown Dora the Explorer from making 'Trogdor the Pulverizer' who is a 7' hulking giant of a man? How would her body respond to that? You could argue that the gear didn't need to last THAT long, only till the opening ceremony, but the thing had to pass beta-testing first. If doing so made the players too sick to play because they couldn't get used to suddenly having an entirely different body the game wouldn't have sold.

Secondly, how they know EVERYONE was going to use their mirror? I'd certainly be willing to contest that the blacksmith girl, Lisbeth, didn't. She has PINK hair! Either she dyed RL or something is wrong, but we didn't see anyone else with dyed hair. Not to mention that, as best I can tell, the people had to actually use the mirrors. So what happened if someones bagspace was full? Is said space infinite? Or does it just delete an item? Not to mention that they'd actually have to USE the mirror. How many people looked at it confused as to what it did or didn't trust Kayaba to use it? One of the anime's many flaws.

I honestly don't see why they had to insist on it either; especially since the idea of a person trapped in the body of the opposite sex COULD have been an actually interesting plot line. Do they stick true to their gender despite being male/female now? Do they use it for gain? Do they give up their former identity in favor of what might have seemed like a lasting sex change? All never even touched on in the show.

Edit: Just checked the wiki and it seems blatant now that Lisbeth did NOT use the mirror as her hair-color in real life is BROWN, not pink. So if the mirror changed their bodies to match their RL ones she must have not used it.

Edited June 6, 2015 by Snowy_One