Writers and Prompts

[Jaywalker]

In some fandoms there are writing communities where people will leave story requests, and if the premise inspires a writer enough one will swing by to compose something for everyone to read. Sometimes writers even request "reverse-prompts" in the sense that they offer to write more or less whatever prompt someone leaves for them, with whatever specified restrictions in-place.

Most of these communities also happen to have a "nothing is off-limits" policy on explicit content, but the stories and prompts don't necessarily have to be explicit at all. It would be fine to say "I'd like to see an edgy male Ishgardian Lalafell WoL" and have someone just create a story and character with that premise. It would also be fine to say "I want a short story on how the original Fray died" or "Sadu x Magnai shipping in Doma" or whatever.

A community like this does exist for FFXIV, but it's pretty dead atm. I'd link but idk if the explicit stuff would be an issue with lodestone policy.

I just want to see if anyone else would be interested in doing something like that. It can be a really fun exercise imo and I kind of miss it.

[Fhaerron]

Since you can get reported for even sneezing right now I wouldn't really advice to do it on official channels.

You're better off on reddit and other sites if there are (I only really use reddit tbh). The subreddit shitpost of XIV is also great, it's basically the place where I'm most active on, also full of memes and funny talks.

What might also be good for you is to try and find a good RP community? You could al share player created stories there.
I'm not really active in that field and I don't really know of any RP community but I'm sure you can find some.


I'm not really sure you could get it ever in the game itself though, the other 'problem' is that we're 'only' the west. You kind of need to go in the Japanese forum for that & where you can also directly communicate with SE staff itself.
Apart from our money we from the west don't really matter anyhow, it's also why we get cheap outsourced unhelpful support.

[Jaywalker]

———

Haha I RPed in an unrelated sphere over a decade ago. I do know the format and all, but the type of writing is very different! I do appreciate the advice a bunch (THANK YOU), it's just not the approach I’m after personally. Independent writing where anybody can read from the beginning and follow what’s going on is mainly what I’m going for. Easy entry points plus you are free to compose whatever you want whenever you want solo.

I can confirm there is a dreamwidth that exists already for FFXIV with this kind of activity! I didn’t make it and frankly am not sure how, but it has the whole explicit thing going along with anonymity for users. Tragically reddit is complicated for me because I can’t seem to sign in despite trying repeatedly. OTL

Wouldn’t imagine the kind of fan storytelling I described taking place in the game itself though, honestly there are sites like Ao3 and fanfiction.net that work better for storage. Being able to make requests and link to stories provided would be pretty cool though.

Frankly I’d be shocked if writing itself was a problem even on official sites as long as the content isn’t more explicit than anything shown in the game itself. Blood has precedence with Ilberd and his followers in the creation of Shinryu, rape and prostitution come up multiple times in the MSQ as does abuse, maneater qiqirn are cannibals... figure main issue would be not going too graphic on erotic stuff. Far as I know the RPers have SE’s tentative blessings based on comments by Yoshi P?

(If a wandering GM does happen to see this chat and is willing to let me know what's technically allowed on this front I’d appreciate it a lot!)

[Schan]

That is a really cool idea. I wasn't aware it existed. Thanks

[Jaywalker]

That is a really cool idea. I wasn't aware it existed. Thanks

No problem! Not all fandoms have this kind of setup going, but when they do get popular some incredible work tends to result.

Not pushing my own stuff so much as giving examples, in other fandoms I've made stories for prompts like "Customizable player character gets fanmail and hatemail from people across the fantasy world", "Character X paired with Character Y in Z country", "Character X gets institutionalized and hallucinates dead Character Y", "Customizable player character of such-and-such fantasy race dealing with faith/culture clashes", all sorts of stuff. Some of the prompts were paragraphs long, others were less than one sentence. In my experience the best balance comes from bringing enough specificity to spark ideas but enough wiggle room for writers to add their own spin.

Since nothing is official and all of it is free, whole thing just serves to get people more excited about source material and provide more content to enjoy. No one has to read stuff they don't like, but if there's something you want to see odds are it's out there in some form.