Fixing Fates story issues (spoilers)

[SonPancham]

Leaders of other kingdoms (so more rulers other than Garon and Mikoto) are obviously Izana, Asyura (his father may be a character who is having a political battle to gain favour with Hoshido. His death and the fall of the Kouga is orchestrated by Fuuma who joins Nohr (parallels to Chevalier). Crimson (will be daughter of the Mayor of Chevalier (located in Nohr Lands) and inherits the Principality)

Fuuga will be leader of the wind tribe.

Clear will be leader of the ice tribe

Rinka will inherit leadership of the fire tribe when her father is killed in battle.

The three tribes will team up later on.

Draj, Nacht and Vashala are a travelling group of famous mercenaries. They will be of the beowolf archetype.

William and Hormone will rule the desert.

[Alazen]

But what about Hoshido and Nohr? I'm talking daimyo, lords, generals, what have you.

[SonPancham]

Nohr is a monarchy so Garon would be supreme power and rules almost like a dictator. The lack of opposition can cause uprising. Maybe an autocratic rule. Hoshido will be a constitutional monarchy. For hoshido, other than the tribes there will be 5 main areas. Hoshido will be in the centre, being the main power. The western daimyo will be of strong military force, with his own children as well who you may fight/ally with. The eastern daimyo will be of high magical talents and in the war uses magic ballistas and magic to fight. The southern daimyo will be extremely wealthy, focusing on economics. Like TNCs in the real world they will use their money to influence and exploit others. The northern daimyo will be science based, and focuses on creating weapons.

[Alazen]

How do the daimyo act towards the Hoshido royals and Nohr?

[SonPancham]

The daimyo of the west (military) is only kept in check due to the other daimyo's supporting Hoshido. The eastern daimyo and southern daimyo will eventually fall to Nohr and the western daimyo will see his opportunity to expand since Hoshido policy was very conservative(keeping to Hoshido lands) and was mainly fighting on the borders. A coup will happen where Hinoka is captured by the west and Nohr. The western daimyo will be very courteous towards the Nohr siblings, as he will try to gain favour with Garon since they share similar Ideals. The eastern and southern will be smaller with less explanations only their for plot to cause a loss in defense and a recession in economy. The northern daimyo is very indecisive as they seem to follow only the strongest and lend weapons there. The northern daimyo provides personal weapons to the elder sisters.

[Alazen]

So the western and southern daimyo work with Nohr then. You said the western daimyo has kids who can be on Kamui's side or against it?

[SonPancham]

Yeah. The western daimyo will have two kids. You can only pick one. The other will leave bitterly and join their father.

[Alazen]

Even on the Nohr Path?

Edited October 25, 2015 by Alazen

[SonPancham]

Yes on the Nohr line as well. The daimyo will have two daughters. The daimyo's forces will ally with Garon after the once loved ruler loses favour with his people. The Nohr army will follow the siblings while a loyalist group and the western daimyo's forces ally with Garon. The daughters are not kamuisexauls as well.

[Alazen]

Moving on. Is there a Golden Ending?

[SonPancham]

No golden ending on Nohr and Hoshido paths. Both face repercussions of war. Invisible kingdom is where is at though for the Golden ending.

Moving on here is chapter 5

Chapter 5

Story:While hunting some game with Takumi he comes across a lake by the border. There he meets Aqua and Sakura for the first time. Then (gonna get judged) Takumi and Kamui meet up with Camilla and Elise when they are all swimming.. Sparks fly between Takumi and Camilla (otp). Kamui introduces Camilla and Elise as his friends and Takumi is too lovestruck to be the angsty guy he was. Sakura and Elise take to each other instantly and only Kamui knows they are family. Then, the faceless attack.

Units: Kamui, Takumi,(ally) Aqua, Camilla (ally), Elise, Sakura.

Boss :Faceless

Goal : Protect Elise and Sakura for x amount of turns

Important notes :this encounter shows a possible unity between nations. Sakura and Elise become friends. Aqua joins. Takumi warms up to Kamui. Kamui remembers his family in Nohr.

Chapter 6

This is the part where Mikoto dies. Taken to town with the family they bond (enter Hinoka). Hinoka is tomboyish, but not the extent of Sully. She is trained like a geisha but thrives with a spear. However, the gangalari sword blows up as it was a trap and the mother sacrifices herself to save her child Kamui. Many hoshidans die and monster soldiers spawn.

units : Kamui, Aqua, Felicia, Joker, Kaze, Rinka, Cyrus, Gunther. The hoshidan siblings are allies and are protecting civilian units and Ryouma has a battle with the boss.

Important notes : Kamui gets the Yagato sword in this chapter. Felicia and Joker were on a rescue mission to bring back Kamui and witness the whole spectacle. Joker and Cyrus have a little argument.

Boss: Hooded figure demon

Chapter 7

The time of decision. This is for the third path where he allies with no nations. Ryouma and Marx both plead for Kamui to join but he says no and fights of both.

Units: Kamui, Aqua, Cyrus, Gunther, Felicia, Joker

Boss : Gazzak (Nohr side) {Ina(Puppeteer) and Ginchiyo (Shura)} teh western daimyo's daughters who appear for the first time.

Notes; These bosses are reoccurring and Gunther leaves to go back to Nohr to plead with Garon at the end of the chapter.

[Time the Crestfallen]

I have a dilemma; as I've explained, Anankos believes that absorbing Kamui's life-force will both restore his power and prevent him from dying. In order to do this, they plan to make Kamui as miserable as possible in order to break them emotionally and make him more susceptible to manipulation. But the problem is that I'm worried with how to go about portraying his abuse at the hands of Slime!Garon (Real!Garon is still alive however, he's just...elsewhere). On one hand, it would make sense for him to have gone through some very horrible things that actually would have a chance of breaking someone. But on the other hand I can't even begin to list the number of fictional characters who have angsty backstories and are absolutely unbearable because of their attitude towards it, so I ask:

-When a character's tragic backstory is considered poorly-handled, is it because of how tragic the backstory is or the way the character acts because of it.

[Metal Flash]

I have a dilemma; as I've explained, Anankos believes that absorbing Kamui's life-force will both restore his power and prevent him from dying. In order to do this, they plan to make Kamui as miserable as possible in order to break them emotionally and make him more susceptible to manipulation. But the problem is that I'm worried with how to go about portraying his abuse at the hands of Slime!Garon (Real!Garon is still alive however, he's just...elsewhere). On one hand, it would make sense for him to have gone through some very horrible things that actually would have a chance of breaking someone. But on the other hand I can't even begin to list the number of fictional characters who have angsty backstories and are absolutely unbearable because of their attitude towards it, so I ask:

-When a character's tragic backstory is considered poorly-handled, is it because of how tragic the backstory is or the way the character acts because of it.

I think it`s a little bit of both. If the tragedies that happen are for no reason or ridiculous it can be considered poorly handled. It could also be considered poorly handled by the way the character acts because of it.

[NekoKnight]

I have a dilemma; as I've explained, Anankos believes that absorbing Kamui's life-force will both restore his power and prevent him from dying. In order to do this, they plan to make Kamui as miserable as possible in order to break them emotionally and make him more susceptible to manipulation. But the problem is that I'm worried with how to go about portraying his abuse at the hands of Slime!Garon (Real!Garon is still alive however, he's just...elsewhere). On one hand, it would make sense for him to have gone through some very horrible things that actually would have a chance of breaking someone. But on the other hand I can't even begin to list the number of fictional characters who have angsty backstories and are absolutely unbearable because of their attitude towards it, so I ask:

-When a character's tragic backstory is considered poorly-handled, is it because of how tragic the backstory is or the way the character acts because of it.

What is the direct connection between Anankos breaking Kamui's spirit and him being able to absorb his life-force? The way you describe it doesn't make it sound like a necessary part of his plan.

The appropriate level of tragedy will depend on how it's written, as MetalFlash noted. As long as the tragedy and reaction of the character are in proportion, I think it should be fine. The Kamui in my story suffers many tragedies, but she works towards a world where she needn't be sad.

Let's give an example of a sad character done right. Spoilers for Dot Hack Sign.

In Dot Hack sign, the main character, Tsukasa retreats to a online virtual reality game to escape an abusive home life. An AI running the game traps him in the game and erases a lot of his memories, leaving only his depression and desire to not want to leave the game. The AI proceeds to use subtle psychological tricks to fill Tsukasa with negative emotions. But it has a purpose! The AI is trying to corrupt another AI with Tsukasa's negative emotions and its plans will fail if Tsukasa can resolve his personal issues.

So how does Tsukasa react? Well, he mopes a lot and is very anti-social. This doesn't make him an annoying character, however, because his drama is not overblown and his suffering is very much a part of the big bad's plan.

Edited October 27, 2015 by NekoKnight

[Time the Crestfallen]

What is the direct connection between Anankos breaking Kamui's spirit and him being able to absorb his life-force? The way you describe it doesn't make it sound like a necessary part of his plan.

The appropriate level of tragedy will depend on how it's written, as MetalFlash noted. As long as the tragedy and reaction of the character are in proportion, I think it should be fine. The Kamui in my story suffers many tragedies, but she works towards a world where she needn't be sad.

Let's give an example of a sad character done right. Spoilers for Dot Hack Sign.

In Dot Hack sign, the main character, Tsukasa retreats to a online virtual reality game to escape an abusive home life. An AI running the game traps him in the game and erases a lot of his memories, leaving only his depression and desire to not want to leave the game. The AI proceeds to use subtle psychological tricks to fill Tsukasa with negative emotions. But it has a purpose! The AI is trying to corrupt another AI with Tsukasa's negative emotions and its plans will fail if Tsukasa can resolve his personal issues.

So how does Tsukasa react? Well, he mopes a lot and is very anti-social. This doesn't make him an annoying character, however, because his drama is not overblown and his suffering is very much a part of the big bad's plan.

I'm just gonna post my Anankos fix here for the link. If you can't be arsed to read the whole thing, it's explained in the last few paragraphs.

[spoiler=Anankos]

Miscellaneous Details:

-It's never going to be outright said on whether he is of Divine/Demonic/Supernatural origin, but it's heavily-implied that he is, although the specifics are left ambiguous (he's a God/Devil figure in Hoshido and Nohr respectively while Toumans see him as more of a Jesus/Moses/Muhammad-esque and he shows of his shapeshifting powers at one point by morphing into different Angel figures (such as Valkyries and other such things).

-Although I've referred to Anankos as a 'he' in the past, Anankos is actually genderless, as shapeshifting has rendered the concept of gender meaningless to them.

The Plot

-There are two explanations for why Anankos didn't remove his soul from his body, one for if he is divine and one for if he isn't; if he isn't divine, than his body is a physical manifestation of his soul rather than a vessel for it and he can't leave as a result, while the one for if he's just a really old and really powerful dragon (the Four Symbol Dragons came into existence around 500-900 million years ago and Anankos was already fully grown by that point and hasn't visibly aged since) is that he's been alive for so long that dying is incomprehensible for him and he's terrified of it.

-As a result, he tried various methods of preserving his insanity, but all of them failed for one reason or another:

*He tried bonding himself to a Dragonstone, but that simply delayed the inevitable.

*He then infused a second Dragonstone with a portion of his power and used it to form Shenmei and Azura's pendant, but this didn't work as, because it was infused with Anankos power, it contained equal parts Light and Dark Magic. Because Dark Magic is toxic to anything that can't use it naturally (i.e. Anankos and the Dark Dragons), the use of it would damage their soul and promptly be fixed by the Light Magic. However, the damage takes a very long time to heal, the effects become even worse with frequent use (Azura starts to look sickly after using it several times without time to heal in succession) and every use takes a longer period of time to heal. Eventually, the damage done would be to great to heal and they would die. Additionally, only people descendant from Dragons can use it (a normal human would be killed instantly) and the secrets on how to use it are passed on verbally instead of written down, so the number of people who can use it has declined over time.

*Finally, in case the worst came to pass, he started gradually weakening himself over time. He did this by granting a small fraction of his power (splitting of too much at once would risk killing him, which he doesn't want) to people on their deathbeds and when they died, that fraction of his power would be lost forever. Sadly, this did nothing to prevent his insanity, only acted as a way of making sure that he wouldn't do as much damage if he did go insane.

-Anyway, when his urges to destroy became unbearable, he flew off and laid waste to an entire forest in the hopes that no-one would be injured. Sadly though, several hunters and lumberjacks perished during his rampage and their families were slaughtered when they demanded answers from him. Ignoring his rational judgement in favour of his friendship (Anankos was rather close with the Royal Family), the King of Touma chose not to gather the Holy Weapons of Nohr and Hoshido to complete the Yato and tried to reason with Anankos, with predictable results. His now-dominant destructive urges were confused by the feelings of guilt and sadness that followed and splits soul into two pieces, one that was good, and one that was insane.

The good half immediately used up most of its power to bind the insane half in place. As Insane!Anankos is, well, insane, they lacked finer control over magic and were unable to break the complex bindings. Good!Anankos promptly legged it back to the Touman Capital (whatever it's called) and explained what had happened to Shenmei, Mikoto and a visiting Garon, Ekatarina and Sumeragi (Sumeragi's wife having died giving birth to Hinoka) and told them that the only one who could defeat his insane half would be a child birthed in the same way as the Yato's original wielder, as only they would be able to wield the Yato without being hurt by the Dragon-Harming aura as well as withstand the massive amounts of Dark Magic his other half could throw out.

-With Shenmei's husband recently deceased and Garon and Ekatarina's relationship falling apart (not that it was very stable to begin with, but more on that latter), it was decided that Sumeragi and Mikoto would be the child's birth parents. They were taken to an uninhabited Astral Realm for the conception, with the others being brought in for various reasons; Garon and Ekatarina were taken because, in order to gather the Holy Weapons of their countries without raising suspicion, they would have to settle the feud between Nohr and Hoshido diplomatically and the time in the Astral Realm would allow them to build a positive relationship with Sumeragi while Shenmei and Azura were brought in to give them time to grieve for their husband/father and because it would be good for Kamui to have someone his age to spend time with.

-They were evacuated one Insane!Anankos finally broke free of its bonds and was heading for the Touman Capital. By this point, two years had passed in the Astral Realm (making Kamui two and Azura four). The Touman Military was gathered to try and put up a fight against him, but since all their weapons/magic/defenses were derived from things Anankos had taught them (all the archers had slightly inferior versions of the Fuujin Bow for instance)...well, one use of Dragon's Vein latter and the City was defenseless. Although many people were evacuated, just as many (if not more) were slain by Insane!Anankos. As soon as they made sure that they were safe, Good!Anankos (who didn't fight his insane half because he used up the majority of his power) left to search for another way of taking care of their insane half.

-Insane!Anankos' main goal was to restore the power that they lost during the times when they were whole and throwing it away. To do this, they started visiting all the Astral Realms colonised by Touma and absorbed the souls of their inhabitants which, while they did give it a power-boost, didn't increase it by much and would cause complications latter on. He also went to the Great Blight in Nohr and bathed in the polluted lake, which supercharged his already powerful Dark Magic powers, albeit temporarily.

-Good!Anankos meanwhile, stumbled across another world which contained a sword capable of and designed for killing dragons as well as several brave heroes who had slain a very powerful dragon. However, when it sent a message to said heroes, only the trio who show up could be spared as everyone else was needed (they come from the Future Past world instead of the main Awakening world). Upon realising why, Anankos apologised after they were attacked by Invisible Demons and offered to send them back. The trio refused and offered to assist in any way they could, and Anankos thanked them by restoring the barren land of their world with Dragon's Vein. Good!Anankos then smuggled them into Touma so that they could help him retrieve several books from the Great Library that would help teach Kamui what he needed to slay their insane half. One thing led to another and good!Anankos was absorbed by insane!Anankos.

-This had several effects; firstly, Insane!Anankos absorbed his good half's more human nature, but their draconian urges for destruction were still the dominant personality trait, which led to the creation of Sociopath!Anankos. Secondly, the regaining of his Light Magic abilities led to a massive backlash from his supercharged Dark Magic which did extensive damage to his body and caused him to lose all the extra power he took from the Great Blight. Secondly, all the unwilling souls he absorbed struggling within him prevented him from merging with his good half properly, ensuring that his good half could also struggle from within him and prevent him from using his full power with the combined damage to his soul and body slowly killing him

-Infuriated beyond belief, Sociopath!Anankos vented his rage by tracking down all the Toumans who forgot about the curse placed on their country (which functions like the Taboo curse in Harry Potter). However, some of the people they tracked down were congregations of people who offered their lives to them willingly (as they believed his attacks meant that it was God's will that they die). Through this, they discovered that willingly absorbed souls were not only more nourishing and gave larger boosts to their power, but that they actually healed the damage done to him by the unwillingly devoured souls. This led them to the conclusion that if they could absorb Kamui's soul, that they would be fully healed and restored to full power due to their shared blood.

-Their plan for Kamui hinged on the idea that 'willing' didn't account for the victims mental state. Sociopath!Anankos possessed one of his Invisible Minions and sneaked into Castle Krakenburg and promised Garon that he would resurrect both Shenmei and the children slain in the Waifu Wars if he both killed Sumeragi and kidnapped Kamui and, with lots of manipulation and emotional blackmail, Garon agreed to the plan. One thing led to another and Kamui was soon imprisoned in the Northern Fortress.

-Sociopath!Anankos then told Garon to have Kamui abused in the hopes that one of two things would happen; that his will would be so completely and utterly broken by the experience that he would do anything that anyone told him to do for fear of being punished, or that he would become such an angry and vengeful person that they could offer Kamui a way of getting back at his abusers and he would gladly go along with it, no matter what it entailed. Either way, Kamui agrees to give up his life and Anankos is healed.

-Garon quickly became a lose end after Azura was kidnapped, so Sociopath!Anankos replaced (not killed, replaced) him with a slime copy and told them to prioritise maintaining his cover over making Kamui miserable before entering hibernation in the hopes that it would slow down his bodies decline in health, trusting the resurrected and semi-autonomous Shenmei and Sumeragi demons to carry out his will in his absence. However, the prioritisation of maintaining cover over making Kamui miserable allowed his Nohrian siblings as well as Gunther and his retainers to form a bond with Kamui and (mostly) prevent them from being broken by the experience. Anankos wakes up some time into the game's events and is...less than pleased with how things have gone.

I'm working on my posts for all the Royals, so I'll give a tl;dr version of how Kamui acts; he bottles it up inside and pretends that he's fine for long periods of time, eventually has an emotional outburst once he goes through something especially stressful or traumatic and then goes back to pretending that he's fine.

[Alazen]

I really don't see the grounds to keep in Hydra and Co. trying to make Kamui cry. It's transparently an attempt to twist the narrative around Kamui to a ridiculous level.

Even if you're going with the angle that Hydra needs Kamui for some plan, then what would warrant making him cry over raising him as a loyal?

Edited October 28, 2015 by Alazen

[Alazen]

double post

Edited October 27, 2015 by Alazen

[JupiterKnight]

Hydra could potentially use the feelings from doing such things as part of some dark spell that requires a lot of power. Kamui having their blood in their veins likely means they give it off more since just freaking out caused them to turn into a dragon in the game. This is of course based on the idea that the spell requires strong emotions, which Hydra can't feel himself.

Instead of just Gooroon thinking of it as fattening up Kamui before they are sacrificed.

Edited October 28, 2015 by JupiterKnight

[Time the Crestfallen]

I really don't see the grounds to keep in Hydra and Co. trying to make Kamui cry. It's transparently an attempt to twist the narrative around Kamui to a ridiculous level.

Even if you're going with the angle that Hydra needs Kamui for some plan, then what would warrant making him cry over raising him as a loyal?

Everyone here has a different idea on how a rewrite should go. I personally would like to keep in as much of the original story elements as possible (generally only taking out the things that are particularly bad egregious, like Azura's crystal ball) while altering them to make them less poorly-utilised. It's like NekoKnight said about Dot Hack Sign; the evil AI is trying to 'make the protagonist cry' as it where, but there's a purpose to it instead of just because they get off on it. Also, for what it's worth, having Garon and Gooron do the kidnapping/abuse also fits into his plans for Nohr and Hoshido, Kamui only takes priority because Anankos will literally die if they don't do what they have to do in that regard.

As for why Anankos didn't make Kamui loyal, Insane!Anankos couldn't have cared less about him and Good!Anankos believed that it would be best if Kamui had as little to do with them as possible. By the time they merged, Kamui was seven years old (kids don't react well to being kidnapped as far as I know). The main problem being that Sociopath!Anankos, like real-life sociopaths, has abysmal long-term planning skills which does not go well with their God-Complex . Anankos' problem is that they ignore simple solutions to their plans in favour of more needlessly complicated and elaborate plans to justify their ego to themself which never work out because either their sadistic tenancies or need for amusement prevents them from carrying them out successfully. They could just kidnap Kamui and torture him into compliance, but forcing Garon to do it for them feeds their ego. They could fulfill their plans for Nohr and Hoshido very easily and with minimal effort with a month if they wanted to, but forcing them into a destructive war with each other and manipulating them from behind the scenes makes them feel cleverer than everyone else ETC (Anankos is their own worst enemy is what I'm saying).

Edited October 28, 2015 by Phillius

[JupiterKnight]

Yeah even in the original game Anankos really was his own worse enemy. He went for the over complicated plan of having Kamui bring the sword that causes Mikotos death just so Kamui can watch her die protecting them and then have Sumeragi and the other IK troops attempt to kill them with their dragonslaying weapons, while getting Takumi to blame Kamui for their mothers death and leading to his own fall into IK. He could have murdered her at any time before this but chose this method because it's the most cruel and had a high chance of failure.

Even the final battle where some of his power was restored by eating Gooron had him decide to eat the rest of them instead of just letting them fall into the wormhole/blackhole he just made that's sucking up everything nearby in the background.

[NekoKnight]

Everyone here has a different idea on how a rewrite should go. I personally would like to keep in as much of the original story elements as possible (generally only taking out the things that are particularly bad egregious, like Azura's crystal ball) while altering them to make them less poorly-utilised. It's like NekoKnight said about Dot Hack Sign; the evil AI is trying to 'make the protagonist cry' as it where, but there's a purpose to it instead of just because they get off on it. Also, for what it's worth, having Garon and Gooron do the kidnapping/abuse also fits into his plans for Nohr and Hoshido, Kamui only takes priority because Anankos will literally die if they don't do what they have to do in that regard.

As for why Anankos didn't make Kamui loyal, Insane!Anankos couldn't have cared less about him and Good!Anankos believed that it would be best if Kamui had as little to do with them as possible. By the time they merged, Kamui was seven years old (kids don't react well to being kidnapped as far as I know). The main problem being that Sociopath!Anankos, like real-life sociopaths, has abysmal long-term planning skills which does not go well with their God-Complex . Anankos' problem is that they ignore simple solutions to their plans in favour of more needlessly complicated and elaborate plans to justify their ego to themself which never work out because either their sadistic tenancies or need for amusement prevents them from carrying them out successfully. They could just kidnap Kamui and torture him into compliance, but forcing Garon to do it for them feeds their ego. They could fulfill their plans for Nohr and Hoshido very easily and with minimal effort with a month if they wanted to, but forcing them into a destructive war with each other and manipulating them from behind the scenes makes them feel cleverer than everyone else ETC (Anankos is their own worst enemy is what I'm saying).

I don't know. The reason to make Kamui cry still seems flimsy.

Even you acknowledge that there are much easier, more reliable ways of accomplishing his plans but he doesn't do it because of...reasons.

"They're insane." "They like being evil" "They have a complexity addiction" all sound like excuses for why a character picked up the "villain ball" and never let go. It's bad enough when villains have isolated incidents of tremendous failures of judgement, but when they were always that dumb, you have a problem. You haven't really fixed Fate's issues with Anankos, just shifted the motivation a bit.

A convoluted but necessary plan makes you clever. A convoluted but unnecessary plan makes you dumb. Dumb villains aren't very cōmpelling to me.

[Alazen]

Hydra is a World of Warcraft raid boss transplanted into Fire Emblem. His character and links to him are scarred by being excuses.

Need an excuse to let Kamui marry from both sets of siblings? Make Hydra Kamui's father.

Need an excuse for two warring kingdoms to friend-up? Make Hydra behind the war and out to destroy humanity.

Edited October 28, 2015 by Alazen

[Time the Crestfallen]

I don't know. The reason to make Kamui cry still seems flimsy.

Even you acknowledge that there are much easier, more reliable ways of accomplishing his plans but he doesn't do it because of...reasons.

"They're insane." "They like being evil" "They have a complexity addiction" all sound like excuses for why a character picked up the "villain ball" and never let go. It's bad enough when villains have isolated incidents of tremendous failures of judgement, but when they were always that dumb, you have a problem. You haven't really fixed Fate's issues with Anankos, just shifted the motivation a bit.

A convoluted but necessary plan makes you clever. A convoluted but unnecessary plan makes you dumb. Dumb villains aren't very cōmpelling to me.

Could you explain why the reason is flimsy? I'm not being defensive, I just want a more detailed response so I know how I can improve it.

[spoiler=A Better Explanation]

And I admit, my description of why he doesn't immediately get everything he wants is poorly-explained. His problem's are partially to do with poor planning skills, but also because of his God-Complex. I've already mentioned that having Garon kidnap/abuse Kamui also fits in with his plans for Nohr and Hoshido, but Anankos is more of an 'Orcus on his Throne' than a straight villain-ball character. Most of the 'easy' solutions would involve him getting up and doing things himself, but he believes himself to be a God and Gods don't do things themselves, they make other people do those things for them (at least in his opinion). On top of this, the decline in his health is so bad that he literally went into hibernation for eleven years for a chance that it would delay his inevitable death, so he's in no hurry to be an active villain anyway.

An example of this is one arc in which he gets frustrated when Gooron announces that Nohrian victory is inevitable, even without using anything more than the Standard Invasion Force. Since his plan requires Nohr and Hoshido to be locked in a war that ends with massive casualties on both sides, he decides to set up a scenario that would improve Hoshido's ability to fight. The situation eventually ends up with the most Nohr-hating members of the Hoshido Religious Council (I forget what I called it) having their personal armies outfitted with Touman Weapons/Armour/Magic/ETC, the resurrected and semi-autonomous (i.e. retaining her skills but not her memories) Shenmei acting as their tactician and Invisible Demons acting as spies. While they were incredibly successful in battle, the armies were incredibly ruthless and prone to War Crimes such as refusing to accept surrenders, killing non-combat personnel, using torture as a means of acquiring information ETC. They eventually grow sick of the demands for them to stop being such pricks and break away to form their own faction.

Anankos actually winds up personally contributing in some cases with a very 'fine, I'll do it myself' attitude since recent events have led him to believe his minions are incompetent (despite the fact that most of their 'failures' came about because Anankos instructions are either poorly worded or outright don't convey what he wants them to do), such as by participating in the Martial Tournaments that I've detailed in the past (and winds up making Ryoma look like a joke), breaks into the Hoshidan Palace and loots the vault (killing several guards in the process) and even fights all the Hoshidan playable characters by himself at one point and winds up being driven back because using his powers so frequently in such a short period of time makes him ill. Despite no longer being able to personally contribute, he explains that the High Priests can use the granted resources however they wish, but one of them gets a little cocky and insults him (Anankos never explained to them who and what he was). Still frustrated by his failure in the fight and now having his authority challenged directly, Anankos becomes so enraged that he takes away all the resources he gave them and leaves them to their fates, with the end result being that Hoshido is weakened by the casualties from the civil war/betrayal and losing quite a bit of resources instead of being made stronger and making a Nohrian victory easier to achieve.

Hydra is a World of Warcraft raid boss transplanted into Fire Emblem. His character and links to him are scarred by being excuses.

Need an excuse to let Kamui marry from both sets of siblings? Make Hydra Kamui's father.

Need an excuse for two warring kingdoms to friend-up? Make Hydra behind the war and out to destroy humanity.

Good thing that I'm 'fixing' both of those as well. Sumeragi and Mikoto are Kamui's birth parents with his Dragon Blood being given artificially and my fanfic (yes, I am such trash T.T) has two stories occurring simultaneously; one that deals with the events of the game and one that deals with the aftermath (in which relations between the Kingdoms are tense, to put it mildly).

Edited October 28, 2015 by Phillius

[NekoKnight]

Could you explain why the reason is flimsy? I'm not being defensive, I just want a more detailed response so I know how I can improve it.

For starters, the concept behind "willing souls" as a better source of power is a bit dodgy. Why is Kamui's soul that big of a deal? They're blood related but that's not quite the same thing as having the same soul like the case with Robin and Grima. If Kamui is needs to be mentally broken before his soul can be absorbed, is he really "willing" at that point? If he follows orders without question, he's not really strong willed.

The second issue is the reason why he makes needlessly convoluted plans. "Ego" is just another word for stupid. There have been villains in the past who's ego's ruined them at key points, but the well written ones aren't ruined by it from the start. Imagine if Light Yagami always knew the names of L and N but he just chose to play around with them...until they figure out how to beat him and he loses. Light wouldn't be described as having a fatal flaw, he'd be called an idiot. In the canon story, he does eventually slip up but it's more him being out-planned rather than his obviously stupid plan failing.

That's the problem here. You can dress up Anankos's stupidity in "ego" or you can call it "insanity" as Fates already does but at the end of the day, it's still stupidity. It's not fixing the story to change the motive of the stupid behavior. It feels more like you are trying to bend the story to accommodate "Anakos wants to make Kamui cry" rather than judge whether or not it's a positive element in the story. It requires a lot of extra explanation and mental gymnastics that muddle the story. I'm already confused why Anankos wants to pretty much destroy everyone everywhere BEFORE he gets the cure for his mortality.

Simple is best, man. Fate's mistake was trying to explain a nonsensical villain with even more nonsensical exposition (invisible history).

[Time the Crestfallen]

For starters, the concept behind "willing souls" as a better source of power is a bit dodgy. Why is Kamui's soul that big of a deal? They're blood related but that's not quite the same thing as having the same soul like the case with Robin and Grima. If Kamui is needs to be mentally broken before his soul can be absorbed, is he really "willing" at that point? If he follows orders without question, he's not really strong willed.

Willing souls are better because they don't struggle after they've been 'assimilated' as it were. It's the struggling of all the unwilling souls within that prevented Anankos' good and insane halves from properly merging and contributes heavily to their declining health. As for why Kamui is a big deal...well, they're actually not. The shared blood between them is the sole reason Anankos thinks that it'll make them better and it's an example of how desperate they are to avoid their encroaching death that they'll try anything with the flimsiest of justifications if it has even the smallest chance of helping him. After all, even when Anankos was whole, they endangered millions of lives and even when the preventative measures started failing still refused to let themselves die because they legitimately are that scared of dying.

The second issue is the reason why he makes needlessly convoluted plans. "Ego" is just another word for stupid. There have been villains in the past who's ego's ruined them at key points, but the well written ones aren't ruined by it from the start. Imagine if Light Yagami always knew the names of L and N but he just chose to play around with them...until they figure out how to beat him and he loses. Light wouldn't be described as having a fatal flaw, he'd be called an idiot. In the canon story, he does eventually slip up but it's more him being out-planned rather than his obviously stupid plan failing.

That's the problem here. You can dress up Anankos's stupidity in "ego" or you can call it "insanity" as Fates already does but at the end of the day, it's still stupidity. It's not fixing the story to change the motive of the stupid behavior. It feels more like you are trying to bend the story to accommodate "Anakos wants to make Kamui cry" rather than judge whether or not it's a positive element in the story. It requires a lot of extra explanation and mental gymnastics that muddle the story. I'm already confused why Anankos wants to pretty much destroy everyone everywhere BEFORE he gets the cure for his mortality.

Simple is best, man. Fate's mistake was trying to explain a nonsensical villain with even more nonsensical exposition (invisible history).

Okay, I'm sorry if this comes across as aggressive or 'ranty', it's just that characters like Light are a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

[spoiler=Sociopathy, Intelligence and Egocentrism]

It really annoys me when characters like Light or Hannibal Lector i.e. extremely charismatic and charming, expert manipulators and hyper-intelligent with nearly flawless planning skills, are labelled as sociopaths. Characters like that are closer to Antisocial Personality Disorder than anything else, and even that can be a little iffy in some cases. I can acknowledge that there are exceptions to that, but generally speaking most kinds of media treat sociopaths/psychopaths the way Hollywood treats hacking (and relationships...and guns...and physics...and basically everything really). While it isn't impossible for a sociopath to be intelligent or cultured or expert manipulators amongst other things they almost/literally never overlap.

My favourite examples of sociopathy in media (although you might take issue with my choice) are Hazama and Relius Clover from Blazblue. While both of them are definitely intelligent (Hazama is an expert at manipulating people's emotions and Relius is a Mad Scientist archetype) and cultured (Hazama dresses very stylishly while Relius is into Opera), most of their ability to out-plan their enemies comes from the time loops in which they retain their memories throughout the loops but almost no-one else does (with the two people who oppose and retain their memories being forbidden from directly affecting the loops). Because of this, they spend at least 72500 years ircc memorising who will do what and when, allowing them to take a trial-and-error approach to their schemes (Hazama kills himself in Jin's story path to force a reset when things don't go his way). By the end of the time loop, they are literally unbeatable and pull of all their goals without a hitch (including breaking the time loops) because they can account for everything that their enemies will do. However, when the time loops are broken, their conceited nature leads them to completely underestimate their enemies which, combined with their inability to account for all the possible actions of the protagonists, sees them quickly out-planned and promptly killed off (in Hazama's case, although that may change by the next game) or captured (in Relius case, and captured by the hands of the people he tried to manipulate no less).

I'm aiming to make Anankos as close to a real-life sociopath as I can, so while they're far from stupid (in terms of knowledge, they're probably the smartest character in the story), but they have quite a few problems when it comes to common sense and their sadistic urges/overconfidence leads them to make quite a few mistakes that would be avoidable by a more level-headed villain. If this strikes you as a villain that would doesn't make good decisions, then good, cause that's the entire goddamn point! Sociopaths can make plans, but they're dreadful at following through with them, sociopaths are impulsive, pathologically egocentric and aggressive, sociopaths are inconsistent, irresponsible and unreliable in their behaviour and, most importantly, sociopaths have poor judgement/decision-making skills and don't learn from their mistakes.

Anankos doesn't grow or develop over the course of a story like a human character would, because they're already perfect in their own opinion. They don't become stronger or wiser by making mistakes because they shift fault for their failure to others in order to preserve their opinion of themself. While Anankos can start of well with their plans, their arrogance and God-Complex leads them to vastly underestimate their enemies and prevents them from effectively working with others. Take the plot-arc I gave above for example; Anankos plan was working very well and even if they were driven away by the protagonists (in a case when their powers weren't working properly and their body was giving out on them), they were extremely close to success. But then they overreact to an insult and let the entire plan fall apart out of spite, then blame Ghost!Shenmei for their mistakes.

By the way, what I meant when I say 'ego' is that they're egocentric i.e. the inability to differentiate between self and other, unable to assume any perspective other than their own. Anankos cannot understand any viewpoint other than their own. For example, they cannot take insults because they have a very high opinion of themself. Anankos believes themself to be a God, so they are God and anyone who challenges this view is insulting them and must be killed.

Again, I'm sorry if that came across as aggressive or defensive, the issue of 'Hollywood Sociopaths' is just an irrational hatred of mine, not sure why. Anyway, how are you all utilising Touma? Are they an ancient and long-dead society? Do they not exist at all? Something completely different?

Edited October 29, 2015 by Phillius