Disclaimer: Don't expect too much from me. I think I've proven that I can't be trusted to follow through on all my plans.
Hello everyone. You know how a bunch of authors on this site make Author's Notes in both their main stories, and in some cases in stand-alone stories of their own? Well Diablo Ex Machina is throwing his hat into the ring and making his own version of this cop-out.
Diablo Ex Machina Presents: Marvel Guidelines
I said in my first installment of this story that Marvel is a horrible pile of dog shit, or at least that's what it's become. Therefore, I feel it's only fair to start off the fan fiction guidelines with this massive Cash-Cow Franchise. Keep in mind that these are just my personal guidelines, and that you are free to use or not use them at your leisure. I make these lists in the hopes of inspiring future writers, not restricting them. I'm starting off with this massive shared universe because it's just so damn big. Even if you don't want to be limited, in cases like this it's VERY important to keep SOME sort of cap on things. Even if you don't fully agree with the limits I would put on any future Marvel stories I make, I hope you all at least consider making your own borders.
Marvel Guideline 1: Don't Get Angry - With all the aggravating excuses for storylines that Marvel has been churning out like vomit on a conveyor belt, it's imperative not to get too upset about it. Whenever you get angry at Marvel comics, or any franchise for that matter, just remind yourself that you're reading and/or writing fan fictions to avoid what they're doing. You can try to make your own personal fix fic for some of their stuff, or you can do what most people do, and just refuse to acknowledge the existence of all the Hero on Hero violence, or Mutant Genocide, or whatever else irks you about this nonsense. Remember, the media giants only have as much power over you as you let them have. Does this mean that you can't torture characters you don't like in your stories? Absolutely not, but don't let anger and stress be your main driving force. Trust me, I know from experience that anger burns brightly and intensely, but also quickly and with a serious emotional backlash. As the Nostalgia Critic said: "Nobody knows what the future holds, but there's two things that are guaranteed. There's gonna be a lot of anger, and there's gonna be a lot of love. Use them wisely."
Marvel Guideline 2: Mutant Rights & Power Balance - I don't think these needs to be said, but it just makes me feel better to get this all off my chest. Everyone LOVES the X-Men, and the idea of Mutants in general. The treatment the comics have given them since the turn of the century - all just to try (and inevitably fail) to make a quick buck - is APPALLING! I won't get into the exact details of all the bad things Marvel has done to Mutants, because that would need a chapter all of it's own, and I'm not gonna get into that. I'm just here to establish the brass tacks of the guidelines. At their apex in the comics, Mutants were said to account for about 1% of the global population (or about 74,000,000 Mutants at the time of writing this chapter) but very few of them had Mutations that could be considered actual powers. About 90% of all Mutants (about 66,600,000 Mutants at the time of writing this chapter) should just have simple Mutations like oddly colored pigmentation, excess body hair/fur or blubber for cold areas, exothermic bodies or more efficient circulation for hot areas, extra/redundant organs and appendages, scaly or slippery skin, etc. Just little adaptations to better survive in certain environments, or just odd quirks just because. Basically, nothing that poses a direct or immediate threat to ANYONE. Only the remaining 10% (about 7,400,000 Mutants) have Mutations that can actually be considered powers, be they great or small, in the traditional sense. That 10% of Mutants are the only ones that the majority of anti-Mutant groups want to force registration and/or tracking on, whereas only the most EXTREME Human Supremacists will target the harmless 90%. This would actually add a legitimately interesting new dimension of dynamics to the Pro-Mutant Rights vs Anti-Mutant Rights conflict, and I would really like to see where someone could take this idea.
Marvel Guideline 3: Only Norse Mythology - Over the many decades Marvel has become a smelting pot of cultures and religious icons, and while I respect the beliefs of others, having so many different pantheons of gods and goddesses with so many overlapping jobs becomes VERY confusing VERY quickly. Marvel's highest profile pantheon of gods and goddesses has always been the Norse, and if we're going to make it so there's only ONE group of real gods and goddesses in Marvel (at least on Earth), then using the Norse just makes the most sense. How you go about this could be one of two ways; either the Norse have always been the only pantheon on the block, or they were the winners/only survivors of a massive war with the other pantheons. The former removes most of the hassle, while the latter opens up the possibility for the remnants of the losing sides to join together for revenge. And besides, most mythologies have characters, beasts, and magical items and weapons that parallel each other in some way. Warrior women that take only the strongest men as mates: Am I talking about Valkyrie or Amazons? A fiery pit that houses any number of terrifying monsters, beasts, and demons: Am I talking about Hell or Muspelheim? You really only need one mythology to cover all your bases of the divine and the damned, and for Marvel, that's gotta be the Norse.
Marvel Guideline 4: Monsters and Demons - In direct relation to Marvel Guideline 3, several monsters, and ESPECIALLY demons are unique, or at least very closely tied to certain religions/mythologies. If you decide to have a world where the Norse were the only pantheon to ever really exist, then you need to use your own discretion to determine which monsters and demons you can include, and which should just be written off as actual myths, rather than a hidden truth. If you make a Marvel world where the Norse were the winners of the great war, then you can use whatever monsters and demons you want to. Each possibility has their own pros and cons, and it's important for each writer to come to their own conclusions. That said, as mentioned before many religions and mythologies have easily substituted parallels. Demon-like Norse beings such as Hela or Surtur could be easily used to fill in for whatever demons the various Ghost Riders made deals with for their powers, one of the various Nine Realms could be used as a substitute for Limbo or whatever other realms you need for the sake of the story, and so on and so forth.
Marvel Guideline 5: No Cosmic Beings - I wrote this before in the first chapter, but it bares repeating as a general guideline in this chapter as well. Tying into Marvel Guideline 3 again, there needs to be an upper limit to The Powers That Be, both the good and the bad. A decent suggested guideline for a power limit would be Odin Borson on the Good Guy side, and Thanos on the Bad Guy side, but you can all use your own gauge for these matters. Relating to this, the Infinity Gems are a big no-no, or at the very least not in their current form. Maybe make them incredibly rare and powerful cosmic minerals that, while not Infinite in power, do provide unique benefits to people who can harness them. Also, if their power over the forces of reality is being drastically lessened, there should be more than just one of each Infinity Gem of the six types. Make them a rare and versatile fictional material like Vibranium or something.
Marvel Guideline 6: Limit Legacy Characters - Certain characters will ALWAYS be associated with certain roles. Tony Stark will always be the real Iron Man, Steve Rogers will always be the real Captain America, Carol Danvers will always be the real Ms. Marvel (NOT Captain Marvel, that identity goes to her head and makes her a colossal jackass), and so on and so forth. There are SOME exceptions, like Miles Morales making a good Spider-Man, and... I can't think of any other good examples, but that just shows how rare it is to have a good legacy character, especially in Marvel. Again, use your own discretion when deciding who is or isn't a good Legacy Character, but make sure that you ALWAYS go with what YOU think is the best version(s) of a character, even if they aren't the first version, or from the same reality. Tying into this, Suspiciously Similar (Poor) Substitutes like Madelyn Pryor and Hope Summers for Jean Grey, or Carlie Cooper for EVERY Spider-Man love interest EVER, or Joseph and Xorn for Magneto need to be avoided as well, but clones with interesting characteristics like The Stepford Cuckoos for Emma Frost, or Laura Kinney for Wolverine are okay. Also, make sure you don't throw in characters that are just alternate versions of characters from other realities or timelines. Parallel Realities are something that comic book writers have been abusing for over half a century now, and it needs to stop with us. Use the best, and drop the rest. (Unless it's Deadpool and the Deadpool Corps, because they're way too meta) DAMN IT DEADPOOL! GET OFF MY COMPUTER! AND CLEAR ALL THIS TENTACLE PORN FROM MY BROWSER HISTORY AND DOWNLOADS WHILE YOU'RE AT IT!
Marvel Guideline 7: Inhumans Are Evil - No, this is not a knee-jerk reaction to Inhumans trying to kill all Mutants (not entirely anyway) but a well thought out and articulated argument that proves that Inhumans are evil on a genetic level. I'll sum it up as simply as I can for those of you who don't want to see me rant on about this for too long. Inhumans were genetically engineered by the Kree to be weapons of war. Kree are space-uber-racists known for backwards thinking, irrational leaps of logic, self-centered attitudes, egos the size of planets, genetic stagnation, xenophobia, a massive sense of entitlement, hatred of anything that isn't a Blue-Skinned Kree, the aggressors in a million year long war with the once peaceful and prosperous Skrulls, and the reason most modern Skrulls are such assholes, the list just goes on forever. It only makes sense that any living weapons the Kree create would be genetically engineered to share their deranged ideology from birth in order to prevent any possible defection, and to try and jumpstart their own stagnating evolution while maintaining their twisted ideology. Don't believe me due to insufficient evidence? Well let's just take a look at the actions of the Inhumans themselves over the ages, shall we? Hoarding technological advances, generations of mandatory eugenics, intense xenophobia, a sense of entitlement and holier-than-thou attitude that blinds them to ANY of their own faults, while hypocritcally pointing out every flaw they share with humanity as if the Inhumans aren't ten times worse, they conquer other races of Inhumans and force their female leaders (some of whom are already married) to become the personal harem of their king Black Bolt, and let's not even TRY to split hairs on the Alpha Primitives. They genetically engineered a race of slaves that live for 42 years on average to the 150 years Inhumans live, lack any means of sexual reproduction, forever have the minds of five year old children, and treat them all like mindless servants for 4,000 years, only stopping when a literal manifestation of their collective guilt for enslaving the Alpha Primitives has their entire species at gunpoint. And if you think this is unique to the modern interpretation of Inhumans, think again! Aside from stealing/enslaving queens for his harem, Black Bolt and the Inhumans have been doing this kind of shit since they were first introduced! From all of this, coupled with the disregard even those Inhumans who were raised as normal humans have for the damage the Terrigen Plague is causing to Mutantkind, the only logical explanation is that ALL Inhumans are racist, selfish, entitled, xenophobic bastards who oppose everything that doesn't directly benefit them, and this isn't just a political ideology, the entire Inhuman race has had evil intent spliced into them on the genetic level. NO Inhuman can EVER be an objectively good person, because they are LITERALLY INCAPABLE of caring for ANYTHING OR ANYONE that isn't another Inhuman or a Kree. They were originally called Inhumans because they were literally DESIGNED - both in-universe, and on a meta level - to be irredeemably bad people.
Marvel Guideline 8: No Hero-on-Hero Violence - Self-Explanatory stuff is self-explanatory. Unless one of the so-called heroes in the equation has a big skull logo on their shirt, or one of the heroes KNOWS that the other hero is actually a villain in disguise plotting some evil bullshit, hero-on-hero violence is to be avoided like the plague. I won't get into specific examples because that's a minefield of righteous fury that NO ONE wants to get into, but just make sure that all the REAL heroes staunchly oppose things like superhuman registration or predictive justice, and support Pro-Mutant-Rights with pride and dignity. (Way to not get into specific examples Diablo) I'm beginning to understand why so many characters in-universe hate you Deadpool.
Marvel Guideline 9: No One-Shot Characters - Over Marvel's EXTENSIVE history they've made or used TENS OF THOUSANDS of characters, to the point where no one could POSSIBLY be expected to remember them all. To that end, it should be noted that about one out of every six Marvel characters only appeared ONCE and then never again in any comic ever. Now you might want to avoid characters that only appeared two times or fewer, or maybe three times or fewer, or even four times or fewer, and guess what? That's all perfectly acceptable. Do your own thing, make your own rules, make exceptions to those rules if a character is interesting enough to warrant more exploration, have fun wherever, but at the very least STAY AWAY from characters and concepts that only appeared in ONE comic, and then never again. Trust me, you'll save yourself a LOT of headaches in the long run.
Marvel Guideline 10: Marvel Only - I mentioned back in Marvel Guideline 6 that Parallel Universes need to be dropped from the equation entirely, and this will expand on that. Over the decades Marvel has managed to absorb several other companies, as well as created other universes that, while originally owned by Marvel, have no characters of concepts that are counterparts of the main 616 universe. Universes like Earth-S (where the Squadron Supreme originally hail from) or the New Universe (where Earth was normal up until modern times when a magical White Flash in the sky gave rise to superheroes and supervillains) were MADE by Marvel, but they had no connection to their main universe. Furthermore, universes like the Ultraverse were formerly owned by other companies, and weren't originally Marvel properties to begin with, not to mention that there are third-party characters and concepts that only outsource their comic publishing to Marvel, but still remain their own thing, like Star Wars or Star Trek. Some universes derived from the Main Marvel-verse have characters and concepts that might work if integrated into a story that's relatively based on any main Marvel Universe, such as Marvel Adventures, MC2, or Universe-1610. While you obviously can't use ALL the characters and concepts from these universes, some things might fit into the frame of a true Marvel Universe. Bottom line, unless you SPECIFICALLY label your Marvel story as a crossover with whatever universe you want it to crossover with, then keep Non-True Marvel characters and concepts out of a Marvel story.
Anyway, that's all the Guidelines I could think of for Marvel stories specifically. If you take my advice and follow all - or at least most - of these guidelines, I can assure you that you'll have a MUCH easier time picking and choosing which characters and concepts to use in any Marvel fan fictions, because you'll have far fewer options to choose from. Seriously, Marvel has like 19,000 or so characters they've used in their comics at one point or another, and these guidelines can easily cut that number down by at least half. And now, because I know you're all going to ask for it, I'm going to tack on a SECOND list of Guidelines for another company we all know and love. That's right people, you're not just getting Marvel Guidelines today, you're also getting...
Diablo Ex Machina Present: Capcom Guidelines
Yes people, you read that caption right! In addition to making rules/guidelines for Marvel stories, I've also got rules/guidelines for Capcom stories too! Granted, Capcom is a much smaller multi-verse with far fewer characters and concepts than Marvel, so there won't be as many guidelines for Capcom as there were in the Marvel section, but they need to be brought up regardless. After all, even subtracting licensed games, compilations, and updated re-releases, Capcom still has about 300 different games to their name, which is a lot of material to sort through. Even taking into account that several of those games are just snowboarding, racing, or other sports-based games that don't really have any plot to develop, there's still a lot of junk to sift through.
Capcom Guideline 1: Shared Universes - Unlike Marvel, Capcom doesn't like to put all of its eggs in one very risky basket. They prefer to make a different world for each franchise, with very few franchises sharing the same universe, and some franchises in the same shared universe having quite the timeskip between them. For instance, the Mega Man Classic, Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero, Mega Man ZX, and MegaMan Legends series all take place in the same world, and while these series might be in chronological order, the timeskips separating one franchise from the next are usually between several decades to a century or two apart. The same thing applies to Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force, with the former happening two hundred years prior to the latter. Hell, it's implied by dialogue and a few other things that BOTH Mega Man Timelines are just the result of a Branching History; one of which had robots take off as the cutting edge technology, while the other had cyberspace and internet become the hope of the future, with Dr. Light's primary field of research in either Diverging Timeline deciding which path was ultimately taken. Someone should do something where the residents of one timeline try to infiltrate the other timeline for whatever reason, because that would be awesome. On a similar note, the Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, Final Fight, Rival Schools, and Slam Masters series all take place in the same universe at around the same time, and while Captain Commando and Asura's Wrath also technically exist in the same universe, Captain Commando takes place several decades ahead of the main part of the timeline, while the events of Asura's Wrath take place BILLIONS OF YEARS before any of the rest of these franchises. I'm not saying that you HAVE to only use characters and concepts in the same shared universe, but it is something to take into account. Also, if you take cameos as evidence, then the Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Clock Tower/Haunting Ground, and Ace Attorney franchises ALSO have a very surprising shared universe, but keep in mind that Capcom does cameos in almost all of their games. They're like the Pixar of video games. (I think you just made a new meme with that line) Maybe I did Deadpool, we'll just have to wait and see how the internet responds.
Capcom Guideline 2: Implanting Universes - In direct relation to Capcom Guideline 1, this guideline is about cutting and pasting things from one Capcom Universe into another. Now then, even though some Capcom franchises aren't CONFIRMED to take place in the same shared universe, there are some franchises that wouldn't contradict anything important in other series if they were to suddenly be revealed to take place in the same universe. For instance, Sengoku BASARA and Onimusha are both Historical Fantasy franchises that are at least loosely based on historical facts, so there's a good chance that any Capcom franchise that takes place in a more modern and semi-realistic setting could believably take place on the same Earth, just hundreds of years later. Also, the Ace Attorney franchise and other similarly small-scale franchises can overlap with just about anything set in semi-modern times, due to their stories usually being fairly self-contained in a smaller setting. It's all subjective though, and if you feel comfortable overlapping the events of multiple different franchises then just do your own thing, and have fun doing it!
Capcom Guideline 3: Don't Forget The Little Guy - Capcom may mainly be known for their big name franchises like Mega Man, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, Dead Rising, Ace Attorney, Sengoku BASARA, Onimusha, Viewtiful Joe, Strider, and whatever other franchises you can think of. However, for all the big shots you remember, there are many underrated Capcom franchises and stand-alone games that don't get too much time in the spotlight. Games like Zack & Wiki, Metal Walker, Remember Me, God Hand, or Darkwatch may have gotten some decent attention in their time, but without more installments after the initial ones the interest in them has faded in proportion to the major franchises like I mentioned before, or even cult classics like Sweet Home. Anybody remember that old Horror RPG? If you don't then you should, because the first Resident Evil was originally going to be designed as a remake of it before the creative team had other ideas. Am I grateful for the change in creative direction? Absolutely, because we got one of the biggest franchises in all of video game history out of it (ignoring part of 5 and all of 6). Still, even when making the really big name, high profile stuff, it's important to remember the little guy who did their best, and left their mark in gaming, however small or large it may have been.
Overall, there are a lot of things to keep in mind when working with some of the bigger names in the media. Writing fan fictions is not all fun and games. Making a creative piece of your own design is all well and good, but when research needs to be done for your work, it needs to be done well. Don't get me wrong, it can be pretty damn awesome to put your thoughts and ideas to the keyboard, and gratifying to see a positive fan response, or even some constructive criticism to help you learn and grow as a writer. This holds true for writing and publishing your own original works as well, as more positive response means more money in your bank accounts. At the end of the day though, what matters most is coming up with things to write that you enjoy writing. If you aren't having fun, then why write at all?
