The High Prestess
A Guide To Slugging It Out and Keeping It Friendly
Disclosures first: This guide draws heavily on an excellent thread written by an old, friendly acquaintance - PVP 101: How To Take A Measured Hit
So, I like fight scenes. I've been on Chaos on and off (mostly off) since 2016, and I've done quite a few of them. I'm presuming a lot of the people reading this like fight scenes too - they're a big part of star wars, after all. I'm sure we all have our aesthetic preferences; i know plenty of people who unironically love much of the fight choreography in the prequels, while I, personally, have a preference for the choreography in the Sequel Trilogy, and hold that Corridor's To The Death is the best depiction of lightsaber combat in any media I've ever seen.
But regardless of differences in taste and writing style, the fact is, we're all here, writing together, and that inevitably means we're going to have our precious little Star Wars OCs swing, thrust, and fire weapons at one another. Given that, I thought I'd chip in and add to the long list of guides on how, exactly, one does so.
My first general piece of advice is to Communicate Content Clearly. Unless the participants are going for a very particular style, it is important that everyone involved clearly communicates what actions they are having their characters attempt in a post. "Cal Kestis swings his saber at Trilla" is passable, but "Kestis went in for a leftward rising cut, aiming to carve Trilla from shin to shoulder" gives your writing partner more to work with and react to - it tells them what action your character is taking, and gives specifics without getting bogged down in minutiae.
Of equal or greater importance, I'd wager, is that you must Remember The Narrative. There are many aspects to this, but I figure for the sake of simplicity we can narrow it down to two. There's why the characters are fighting and why the writers are making them fight. Luke and Vader fought on Bespin because Vader wanted to recruit and corrupt Luke, and because Luke very much did not want that. But they also fought because the screenwriters and storyboarders thought their ought to be a fight about then. When doing cooperative-competitive writing, this gets more complex, but the basics remain the same. When writing a fight, remember why your character is fighting this other character, and guide their actions accordingly. But the writers should, ideally, work to guide the flow of the fight in an attempt to cooperatively achieve both of their goals, at least partly. If I'm writing some haughty Sith Lord, and I figure it'd be good for their arc to get their teeth kicked in, and I go fishing for a fight with a Jedi Grandmaster because of that, I know what I want. Similarly, if said Grandmaster's writer thinks it'd be beneficial to that character's story for them to fight a terrifying, dark presence that shakes them to the core, we have a general thrust for the direction of the fight; whoever wins, it's by the skin of their teeth, after a terrible battle with a worthy foe. Rejoice! Such are the glories of cooperative writing.
My next two lessons are most relevant to the oft toxic and sodium drenched realm of competitive threads, and the penultimate is as thus - (Most) People Want To Look Cool. No one wants to feel like they or their desires for the narrative are being ignored, and unless you've been given the go ahead, it's pretty obnoxious to write a fight wherein one PC just utterly, effortlessly trounces another. This doesn't mean that you have to write as if an opposition writer's Padawan is on par with your Sith Lord, but player characters are special, and generally, if two or more fight, everyone should leave with a new scar, no matter who wins. Laughing maniacally as you carve a gory path through faceless hordes is why we have Combat Unit submissions.
Finally, and this is my most important piece of advice, please remember that you should Try And Talk It Out. If you think another writer is being unreasonable - that they're walking all over your character when that's not fair, or they're no-selling too many of your character's attacks - it's better to bring that up with them than to just stew and get salty and assume bad faith. Sometimes people will, indeed, just be being assholes, but more often than not, most people involved in a thread are just trying to have fun, and if you're kind and understanding and willing to engage, they'll probably be willing to compromise so you have fun too.
And if they're not? Screw 'em. You've got better people to write with.
Disclosures first: This guide draws heavily on an excellent thread written by an old, friendly acquaintance - PVP 101: How To Take A Measured Hit
So, I like fight scenes. I've been on Chaos on and off (mostly off) since 2016, and I've done quite a few of them. I'm presuming a lot of the people reading this like fight scenes too - they're a big part of star wars, after all. I'm sure we all have our aesthetic preferences; i know plenty of people who unironically love much of the fight choreography in the prequels, while I, personally, have a preference for the choreography in the Sequel Trilogy, and hold that Corridor's To The Death is the best depiction of lightsaber combat in any media I've ever seen.
But regardless of differences in taste and writing style, the fact is, we're all here, writing together, and that inevitably means we're going to have our precious little Star Wars OCs swing, thrust, and fire weapons at one another. Given that, I thought I'd chip in and add to the long list of guides on how, exactly, one does so.
My first general piece of advice is to Communicate Content Clearly. Unless the participants are going for a very particular style, it is important that everyone involved clearly communicates what actions they are having their characters attempt in a post. "Cal Kestis swings his saber at Trilla" is passable, but "Kestis went in for a leftward rising cut, aiming to carve Trilla from shin to shoulder" gives your writing partner more to work with and react to - it tells them what action your character is taking, and gives specifics without getting bogged down in minutiae.
Of equal or greater importance, I'd wager, is that you must Remember The Narrative. There are many aspects to this, but I figure for the sake of simplicity we can narrow it down to two. There's why the characters are fighting and why the writers are making them fight. Luke and Vader fought on Bespin because Vader wanted to recruit and corrupt Luke, and because Luke very much did not want that. But they also fought because the screenwriters and storyboarders thought their ought to be a fight about then. When doing cooperative-competitive writing, this gets more complex, but the basics remain the same. When writing a fight, remember why your character is fighting this other character, and guide their actions accordingly. But the writers should, ideally, work to guide the flow of the fight in an attempt to cooperatively achieve both of their goals, at least partly. If I'm writing some haughty Sith Lord, and I figure it'd be good for their arc to get their teeth kicked in, and I go fishing for a fight with a Jedi Grandmaster because of that, I know what I want. Similarly, if said Grandmaster's writer thinks it'd be beneficial to that character's story for them to fight a terrifying, dark presence that shakes them to the core, we have a general thrust for the direction of the fight; whoever wins, it's by the skin of their teeth, after a terrible battle with a worthy foe. Rejoice! Such are the glories of cooperative writing.
My next two lessons are most relevant to the oft toxic and sodium drenched realm of competitive threads, and the penultimate is as thus - (Most) People Want To Look Cool. No one wants to feel like they or their desires for the narrative are being ignored, and unless you've been given the go ahead, it's pretty obnoxious to write a fight wherein one PC just utterly, effortlessly trounces another. This doesn't mean that you have to write as if an opposition writer's Padawan is on par with your Sith Lord, but player characters are special, and generally, if two or more fight, everyone should leave with a new scar, no matter who wins. Laughing maniacally as you carve a gory path through faceless hordes is why we have Combat Unit submissions.
Finally, and this is my most important piece of advice, please remember that you should Try And Talk It Out. If you think another writer is being unreasonable - that they're walking all over your character when that's not fair, or they're no-selling too many of your character's attacks - it's better to bring that up with them than to just stew and get salty and assume bad faith. Sometimes people will, indeed, just be being assholes, but more often than not, most people involved in a thread are just trying to have fun, and if you're kind and understanding and willing to engage, they'll probably be willing to compromise so you have fun too.
And if they're not? Screw 'em. You've got better people to write with.
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you get a pass.
