Post-War Battle Story, fanfiction, and (generic) you

"War is the only way Zoids is interesting!"

Here lies one of my huge pet peeves: mindless "bring back the war" plots in Zoids fics and custom backstories. Do people ever really poke the idea of a changing world, one that's working to finally patch up brutal rivalries and get along? No. Never mind all the inherent conflict, character development, and interest you could get from that...it's always global war. Again.

I suspect some of this comes from anime fans who see war in the battle story, and think "hey, this is more popular than the anime right now...add in Zenebas, change some names, and I can write endless doom and be even cooler!"

There are two main reasons this makes me unhappy.

1. The Battle Story is not the anime.
They share some bits, but they're fundamentally different. You can't just change some names and mix CC and BS. The anime's portrayal of Zoidians and Death Saurer alone completely break this in painful ways - let alone character origins, plot, et cetera. Tactics manages to smash them together in a bizarre video gamey way, mind, so if someone's actually crazy enough to want to write Tactics universe...please do.

2. The blind elitism factor.
This is when people just transplant their "cool" doom characters/customs/fanfic to battle story universe, then turn around and talk about how much better, how much more serious it is than the anime - or otherwise act like using the universe makes them better than all those anime fans. I've only seen a few cases where someone actually bothered to work with the universe, showing why it was cool and worth using over CC's take instead of bragging. Yes, this means a lot of work. It's the price one pays for writing an obscure universe with canon continuity issues.

The other problem I have with this convention runs deeper, in the misconception that Serious War For the Fate of the Planet is the only way to get plot out of giant mecha animals that isn't silly /Zero-style fluff.

How about showing how hard getting to a point of relative peace is? There is plenty of conflict and friction in things that aren't all-out global war. Have fighting on a smaller scale, based around the conflict as it applies to everyday people...the whole planet doesn't need to be involved directly with everything, the hero doesn't have to save the universe every time - a victory can be a small one but far more satisfying when you've come to truly care about a character.

I suppose that's not exciting enough...or would require more thought than "[faction] is evil for some reason and blows stuff up and then the war's back on like nothing happened".

Let's take the world right after the end of the battle story - Wolff's let go of hatred, yes. He has hope for the future, yes. Everybody in charge is willing to move on, work together. But the continent is a mess. Resources are stretched thin, cities torn up from guerilla warfare. Everyone's hungry and tired, most people are ferociously sick of fighting but still angry - peace isn't going to come easy just because Wolff decided he cared more about the people around him than killing his rival, but people aren't going to jump back into fighting like nothing's happened.

We know from the Three Tigers story there will be peace, and Zoids will mostly end up in sports battles and other less brutal forms of combat and competition. But how did things get there? There's so much potential for showing how this happened - with plenty of room for violence, character development, and anything else you might find in the old wars.

Sports battles likely started as an outlet for aggression and a source of income for the government (sell off stripped down military Zoids, tax them, and so on). In a world still being pieced together from a massive war, do you think things would be like the mostly-safe level of Fuzors, much less /Zero's sanitized fights? People would get hurt, even die, because battlers would fight hard, play dirty, and occasionally decide to take out their anger over old war grudges in nasty ways. You'd be lucky to get regulation beyond "don't turn your opponent into a bloody smear, because then we'll have to hunt you down", and bandits and other dubiously legal types would probably get mixed up in the industry. Black market, selling stuff that should have stayed military? Certainly. There's a lot of potential for things getting dark and brutal there, with the added bonus of being able to focus on groups of characters trying to make their way - something like Blitz Team meets doom, but in a way that makes more sense. (Come on, post-/Zero doom writers, you know you want this.)

There's also racing to consider for competition...not the lame, run-around-in-circles sort, but cross-country, in a form that'd allow weapons. Nasty tracks, where speed wouldn't be the only factor...and if you pissed somebody off and just so happened to "fall" off that cliff on that tight turn, there wouldn't be any real questions asked. The weather, the terrain, everything would be a factor, so having the fastest Zoid would never be a guaranteed win (and might just get more people trying to shoot you down). Think Iditarod with giant dogs, guns, and people who might have reason to be out for your blood, not NASCAR.

You want someone to go riding through, stirring up war in the middle of this process? Who is he, and what reason do people have to follow him? Early on I could see civilians and military grunts going all brutal vigilante justice on anyone pulling that: Fuck you, get out of our city or we'll shoot you and rip your Zoid apart. We're tired, we want to get on rebuilding our homes, and the last guy that promised glory like that blew himself up. Later on? Just look at what happened to Zi-Arms...the world doesn't want the empires of old (even the rather feral Brastle turns on Mega Death Saurer, perhaps following the will of the people over its creators), and those wanting to bring them back are more fringe groups than huge political movements.

So how about it, writers and customizers of the Zoids world? Let's start using some of this potential instead of wasting it on Generic War Doom. I'll be happy to bounce ideas with anyone who wants to try, and happy to help slog through Japanese sites and fanbooks in the name of research. Bring it on!