AKA Please let me put you in my story! Uwu! *insert air horn noises here* :O :O :O :O
Yes this is in regards to that one story I was writing...the really really long one!
I'll start with a disclaimer as a means to keep expectations in check. AKA "Let's be realistic here". The chances of me finishing this story, realistically, are extremely low. Sure, I could set aside time to plan it out and then do it, but its one thing to say that and another thing entirely to actually do it.
Since the story isn't tied to a contest anymore, I can't exactly justify lowering the scale of it at this point. (Ok, so technically, yes I could do that BUT the ripple effects/consequences of me doing that are way more personally problematic/widespread than I'm sure most of you would imagine. It would take a while to explain why that's the case so I'll only do so if someone asks me. TL;DR it would be easier for me to just scrap the story and write something new, preferably something shorter, which I might end up doing.)
Actually, it would be to my benefit I think if everyone keeps their expectations of me as low as possible. (I probably don't need to say that but I'm saying it anyways so...whatever I guess! :P)
With that being said, this entire thread exists on the assumption that I'm going to finish this story, so the rest of it will operate assuming that is true as a hypothetical.
Anyways...
This is about me asking for permission to use certain CYS members in my storygame. There's a very specific sub branch where this takes place, which was one of the last things I wrote for the game last time I worked on it super consistently, which means I wasn't aware of the "don't use CYS members in your writing without permission" rule until much later (It doesn't help that I've already written out about half of the section already...though I do plan to expand on it a bit so maybe one third of it is more accurate at this point. IIRC I think so far I wrote about at least 20K words on that set of sub branches, possibly more like 30K or something. So while it is somewhat sizable, it ultimately is very small when compared to how big the rest of the story is. I bring this up because I'm aware that the entire idea of writing CYS fan fiction is kind of cringe to some people here, so I hope that it just being a small part of a much bigger story would help justify that a bit more.).
To briefly explain the context of this subsection: its supposed to be a super secret route, the most secret route actually (if not the most it would definitely be up there for sure!). Basically the MC completes the true final route (which in of itself requires you to replay the game a few times (maybe just once or twice...I might scrap this actually) and have certain conditions met to access) and then if more certain conditions are met they can then make an additional choice which allows them to become self aware that they are in a story game which then leads to more meta stuff happening and then your MC gets thrown into Hell as punishment while still keeping their self aware status. While they are in Hell, they occasionally meet other CYS members there as well (which I guess to me helps bring the meta element to come full circle in a sense).
I want to also make it clear that I was extremely self conscious of how I would implement every person in this story, on top of making sure I had a very solid/strong impressionistic feel for what their default "character" that they choose to play on the site was/is. Obviously minor authorial adjustments were made, but this is basically a long winded way of saying that while I did exaggerate some personality traits of some of the characters (only where needed mainly), allowing myself to "have fun with it" so to speak, I also simultaneously made sure I didn't make any of the characters do anything that the person playing them would consider "overly cringy". TL;DR I tried my best to be careful about it without sacrificing my own authorial freedom too much, AKA I went places, but I didn't go too deep in any of the wrong places if that makes sense.
On top of all of that, not all, but a lot of the implementations does have thematic ties/developments to things that happened earlier in the story (including the MC's arc up to that point in that current route), so this all does in a weird roundabout way improve the story I'm trying to tell I think.
Some of the roles are minor (it used to be most, but I added a few things to some of the other characters), others not so much, while others are bordering on major (they could be major, its hard to tell considering most of the characters you kind of just meet, interact with, and then leave after your done with them.).
Anyways, there are 6 characters I want permission to use from the people who own them (technically there's 7 but I'll explain that further at the end of this post.). They are as follows:
Endmaster
@Mystic_Warrior
@WizzyCat
@Suranna
@Kezmark
@fresh_out_the_oven
I'm not tagging End since I know he doesn't give a crap what I do with this story one way or the other (granted, I'm sure most people feel the same way, but that's besides the point.).
Mystic isn't actually in the story proper, she just gets mentioned by one of the other characters.
At this point I don't expect Kez to respond (I was going to also say Wizzy since he hasn't posted much, but he did log in recently so I guess its a lot more likely for him to respond then.), given how inactive they have been. Considering the fact that I've already written out both of their sections fully (they might get some minor polishing here and there, but their sections are essentially done) I feel inclined to just say f**k it and to just use their characters anyways unless they say no. (Given the way I wrote it out I don't think they would mind...especially since it'll be quite a while before I ever release any of what I wrote pubically... so...uh...yeah...idk for sure though...I'll definitely have plenty of time to think this through I suppose...)
Like I said earlier, there's a bonus 7th character I want to include, but I'll wait till the others respond before mentioning who they are. (Yes, I have a good reason for this! Without getting too into it...yeah...just trust me on this one! lol :P)