Author Chat
Been through all the fics listed here already? Want to know what goes on the minds of the authors? Want to learn some of the secrets as well what makes them tick?
Well, you've come to the right place!
This page works alongside with Tutorial Guidelines as a starting point of the aspiring Vandread fanfic writer. Only here, the fanfic authors speak about the stuff they've written, as well as any ideals, points of interest and other bits and pieces worth mentioning.We hope that this proves to be an interesting source of ideas and insights.
All of the stuff on this page are transcripts from The Vandread Fanfiction Mailing List
When asked for some help on writing for Jura, Ender said:
Well there's not a lot explicitly stated about the past of our favourite Blonde... She's 20 years old (makes her the oldest of the 3 girls - Meia's 19). From here we might be able to infer that she's been a pirate for longer even than Meia - although how much longer is open to your interpretation.Here's what I'd infer about her past from what we know of her - note that I take a lot of creative liberty here ^_^ :
First, she seems to have come from a privileged background - the way she carries herself would lead me to believe she was spoiled silly by some rich family.
Second, I don't know why she'd join the pirates, but my guess would be that her family was one of those displaced when that entire 'block' lost power - remember Gascogne mentions this to Hibiki when she speaks to him about the 'vanity' on Mejer - and that experience, coupled probably with a 'romantic' view of pirate life (Trust Jura to think of glory right?) is what makes her join up with Magno and the pirates. Note that this probably occurs when she's fairly young... I'd say about eight to twelve years old.
Third, if you're going to delve into her training, it would probably be cool to go into her first meeting with Barnette (bet they hated each others guts at first). Note that Jura was probably the best of the younger generation - until Meia came. If you reach that far (Meia seems to have been a late recruit) then the tension that comes from Meia displacing her from the #1 slot would make for a good story... I doubt Jura would have easily adjusted to that...
Well, that's all I can think of right now... Oh, you might want to go into why she uses a sword in an age of high tech weaponry... Might have some aristocratic significance?
Shadow-Dragon95:
I doubt Meia ever replaced Jura as leader in the pirates. Note that in Ep. 6, Magno commented about Meia's obstinacy and never having trained Jura as sub-leader of the Dread team, if I recall correctly. And if Jura ever needed training as sub-leader, it somewhat kills off the idea that she was first before Meia tagged into the scene.
Ender
Prior to her arrival, and prior to choosing the one who they'd train to be a Dread squadron leader, Jura was the unofficial leader of their batch. Then Meia arrives, shows them all up, and by the time they choose a leader, Meia wins out. That way, Meia's the only one who gets the actual training, and Meia being, well, Meia, she just doesn't feel any need to share her training with her sub-commander...
Of course, keep in mind this is all speculation... There's really not enough facts to come up with a more certain hypothesis ;p
Well, since a lot of my ideas will be used in my upcoming fics, I don't have that extensive a list to offer... But before I even do that I just want to say that it would be best if you started out with a fic that interested YOU - what aspect of Vandread interests you the most? For me its been the characters - especially Meia and Hibiki, which is why my stories feature them prominently. If it were the mecha's that really hit me, my fics would've gone another way... But its important to write where your interests lie, at least at first. That way you'll enjoy writing - and the amount of fun you have when typing your story will come across to your readers, have no doubt about that...
That being said, here are a few fics I'd like to see, but don't have the time to do...
- Barnette x Hibiki stories - not necessarily the romantic kind, but just having them interact more... A shortfic for that extended - but unshown - conversation they have in the Register room during the Second Stage (if youve watched it you know what I mean...)
- Barnette x Jura stories. Since Rift's fic seems to be going down a different path... A fic about how these two met and hooked up would be neato...
- An alternate timeline fic where wahtshername - that Girl Hibiki grew fond of from Meranas... - survived the destruction of the fleet and became a crew member of the Nirvana. She's really the ONLY girl Hibiki's shown an instant attraction to (DIta sorta grew on him ;p) and her presence would make for inruiging divergences... Only if you're in the mood for a hefty challenge - no small fic this one ;p
That's just some of the ones I'd like to see - note again these are centred around MY field of interest. Trying to find your own would still be the best solution...
Why aren't there any fanfics on Misty? Ender offers an explanation:
Well, there are few fanfics about Misty because.. well, because Misty has few fans ;p
Actually, there's really not much to work on with Misty. We know she likes Hibiki - but actually it seems that just stems from her being very, very lonely. This also results in her idol worship of Meia. We don't know anything about her background aside from the fact that she was sent from one of the Earth Colonies to warn people of the harvest - hell, we don't even know why they had to send people - why not just send that little message capsule? Misty didn't even seem to know what the message contained, so she was a fairly worthless
messenger.
Sometimes a character with a mysterious past just asks for fanfics to fill up the blanks... But with Misty, they just developed her character too little to be of interest to most people.
It would be nice of course if someone could pull it of - though, for the reasons mentioned above, I'd be hard
pressed to know if she was in character or not ;p
Of course I will try to give her some sort of depth in my later fics - but
that's because I'm a sadist who loves a challenge :) Why else would i be taking up law? @_@
Violent_S makes the following observation:
I had been thinking about Vandread for the past few hours and noticed many flaws in the series even though my last viewed episode went back to months ago. Why did I not realize the plot holes when I watched it back then you say? Well, my brain requested some classic asskicking mecha show without the over bearing self introspection or heavy religious overtones so I just enjoyed the show overall. Yea, you know the what I am talking bout. After watching the show-which-should-not-be-mentioned too-often, my point of view is totally twisted whenever I watched another anime series.
Of course, this only applies to mecha show that tries to deal with moral injustice and all sort of grey issues that plague the real world we live in when we're not behind this cancer inducing device that flashes random pattern of light in your face.
Before you whip out that mega-destruction2k3-big-f#@kin-gun-of-asskickin, I will state it clearly that this is not a Vandread flaming post. Perhaps it looks tasty enough for you to indulge in your favourite Internet pastimes, but it is not my intention to start a forest fire here nor am I the guy passing the napalm mixture around.
Most of us here are well versed with all types of anime, ranging from mecha slugfests to diabetes causing shows like Cardcaptor Sakura. We know the logical and physical boundary of each anime. Pikachu does not go Super saiyan and make trenches with bodies of unfortunate opponents. Nor Hibiki get booted into a blackhole by Meia for accidentally resting on her mammary glands during a heated battle. Nope, no way at all, that only happens to Keitaro the Immortal, aka the Pain Addict, aka the Human Sandbag.
So, you're asking impatiently "What are you getting at, Violent_S?". Every anime has its own amount of credibility, the degree of surrealism it could show to the viewers before they lose interest or end up in disbelief. Vandread, to me, is a solid sci-fi show held in its own universe, governed by logic applicable in reality. Vandread is not Excel Saga nor Puni Puni Poemi.
Ahh, enough forewords.............
1. How did the colony ships separated to later form Taraku and Mejeru?
From the flashback scenes, the ships are staffed by both sexes. During the final battles, the elders mentioned of conflicts which lead to the segregation of males and females. Now, if you ask me, this is a pivotal point in the story and needs to be addressed to. I couldn't take the idea that the opposing sexes consist of homosexuals and they had a row. Nonsense. A good probability is that only the
committee members (elders) knew of the involuntary organ extraction project that was going on. The colonist that went with them knew nothing about it. They thought they were just taking a trip to the nearest habitable planets and reproduce like rabbits. This left only the elders, the source of the arguments which lead to the separation.
2. Why did Taraku spread the propaganda that females are sadistic xenomorphs hellbent on dining on their liver?
While this question would be easily answered if the event
occurred in Ender's universe (the book, not our ring leader). The elders agreed unanimously that their fellow citizen should be used as spare parts when necessary. I thought about it, it could be a strong deterrent not to copulate with the females as it could bring disastrous effect to their much screwed society. Now, is it necessary to send a warship to wage war with the females? Do they not fear in the event that the disguise forcibly put on the females will be ripped off when the armies make contact? Hell, they were planning to have as many spare parts available to Earth when they come for picnic. Why would they want to decimate each other? Petty differences again? Highly illogical act.
3. Humans are intelligent beings with strong survival instinct and with that comes along the desire to reproduce.
Taraku looks like a post holocaust society with no freedom and knowledge censored to the bones. It is kind of acceptable that no one questions their origin, nor do they have much access to information that could stir their inquisitive minds. Now, lets look at Mejeru society from Meia's flashback. Looks very much like the good ol' Earth. Pop idols, lynch mobs, industrial cover ups, yeah, just like a healthy society should be. Let's go back to my original point, that is, only the elders knew of the harvest. Now, don't you think that any good, doting parents (Mejeru) should tell of the beautiful planet from which they came from?
Even if there were censorship, I doubt it could take places within one or two generations. Furthermore, we're talking total purging of any data/recollection related to Earth.
Now, lets go to the sexual discussion as I can see the crowds had just finished their popcorns and on their last ounce of coke. While I don't claim to be an expert at Charles Darwin theory of evolution, I found it highly absurd to believe the fact that humans would devolve to a state where they lost the instinct to reproduce naturally. You see all kind of meat products in Nirvana cafeteria, you heard Dita talking about her pet canary or whatever bird it was. While bird mating isn't a good example of an action packed canine doing his female counterpart in a style popularised by their species, you get the idea here. Mejeru and perhaps Taraku, has animals to study on fields related to natural reproduction. Taraku is easily out of the story as they consumed drugs, err.. I mean supplement for energy. Of course, there is still the possibility that Mejeru cloned every single creature (female only) from scratch, minus the females themselves.
But I doubted it. They have doctors on both side, don't they question the fact that we have organ of reproductions but do require a sender or receiver to conceive?
By now, you guys should be staring at me with bewildered looks. It's not that I take anime seriously, its just that I think too much inane questions sometimes.
Some ppl believe that Eva is the thinking man's anime.
Me? If I am a thinking man, I will be directing porn instead.
ktx_85:
Maybe they had all the males go in one end and the females in another? Buggered if i know... but what should be noted however that a good
proportion of the original crew were what you might call... put on ice, cryogenic ice that is. I can't remember where exactly, but it says somewhere that the elders are the first generation. What does this mean exactly? The first generation are the people who were on the colony ships. Now, should all the original people have been "thawed out" there would have been a much bigger council chamber. Only eight/ nine if u include Hibiki were still aware.
Now this does lead to another question though...
what's the point of a colony ship if you end up freezing all it's inhabitants? Maybe as a gene pool.. but even then
that's not really conclusive... something to think about hmm =)
I'm not sure whether they were going to wage war on the females. I think their main focus was on the pirates (who of course were females.. but i digress) They never mentioned anything about directly attacking the Majerr...more on defending themselves from the female "pirates"
Neither do I think the Mejerr had war with the Tarak's in mind... "more of a this is the wall of jericho, cross it and die Third Child!" hehe but enough of the Eva allusions. The Mejerr didn't have army fleets... they had "border patrols". Ok this might be really stupid to point out, but why call your fleet a border patrol if you intend to smack em good?
Still while saying all that, I am reminded by what Meia said during one of the first episodes.. "be thankful we are not the Mejerr elite. Or you would already be dead." Maybe the
Mejerr enforce their cross this line and die rule very literally? another point for you to think about =D
Hmmmmm kinky bird sex... lol~~ ok now who says that they weren't sexually active? I mean, if in
Rome do as the Romans do... if you're in a lesbian society.. well need I finish? this topic right here
could lead on to a whole discussion onto enviroment VS genetics... can an homosexual
environment change whole generations to forsake the way that babies should be made? *grinz* I'll be happy to explain the details should anyone not know the particulars *double gin*
Before I go too deep into discussing how they first discovered the joys of the same sex... and before ender kicks me in the butt for going into things minors shouldn't know.. (but everyone knows they do!) I'll end with one final
question...
How did they make the second generation? and how on earth did the first generation survive to see the third generation? and still be sane enough to rule both worlds???
Ahh the mystery of it all =)
Anyways enough rambling from me... anyone else wanna try their luck at "logic"
I always carry my own brand around... Ken Logic... where it is because I said so !