NOVEL WEB Before We Continue
It feels weird, as an author, to be writing a discussion chapter where all I’m doing is talking to my audience. However, I want to clarify a few things ahead of time before we proceed with this story.
The first is the type of story that this is. Fairy Tail is a story of a family, of the hardships they go through together. This is not that type of story.
The Devil’s Luck is a story about a broken woman, this is her story about the rage she holds towards anyone who would seek to damage her family in any way and the lengths that she will go to protect them.
Lyssa will be cruel, merciless, and brutal towards her enemies.
Lyssa will be cruel, merciless, and brutal towards herself.
But she will try to be kind, compassionate, and warm to those she loves regardless of whether or not they love her in turn. While Erza may be the honourable and compassionate knight, Lyssa is a callous and vindictive devil.
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Second is my inspiration for Lyssa as a whole.
Someone commented about them wondering if Zeref was going to make her a demon or something when the two met, only to realise how I made her a demon later on. I’m sure plenty of you have wondered about my decision to make her a demon through this way and I feel like this is a good time to explain why.
The worldbuilding of Fairy Tail rarely goes past what the guild experiences. We have the names of every country within the continent of Ishgar, for instance, yet know nothing beyond what they’ve shown in the movies and easy-to-forget dialogue.
All we know about Bosco for instance is that was where the fake Salamander from Volume 1. was selling slaves, and that was only from one line of dialogue that was never brought up again.
There is a continent east of Ishgar with an oriental-style culture that earns a lot of money selling kimonos to foreign countries. What’s its name? Oh, it doesn’t have one.
Demons and Gods are just another example of how absent the world-building is. If it wasn’t for the demons on Galuna Island, the only demons we would have learned about are the Etherious. This would have also made us believe that Mira’s ancestor had to be an Etherious instead of a normal demon. We also don’t even know how Silver Fullbuster got his Ice Devil Slayer magic.
Is Devil Slayer magic treated the same way as Dragon Slayer magic where it has to be enchanted or given through lacrima? We know from 100 Years Quest that Laxus’ Dragon Slayer lacrima comes from the corpse of a Lightning Dragon King, so are all Slayer lacrima treated the same way? Are Sting and Rogue’s lacrima made from their parents? Or is Devil Slayer magic treated more like God Slayer magic where it's written in a book somewhere? Was there a tribe of Ice Demons that this magic would have been used on in the past, if so could there have been other demon tribes that used elemental magic? Was Mirajane’s ancestor one of these demons or was it actually an Etherious?
These might seem like random questions, but questions like these that don’t have answers help expand world-building opportunities. I leapt on these questions, coming up with the idea of a tribe of fire demons that had gone extinct. Then I tried to figure out Lyssa’s magic beyond that, deciding to make a Fire Devil version of Wendy (Slayer, healer, enchanter), but twist Wendy’s role as a support character on its head and make her a tank instead of a healer.
Then was Lyssa’s motivations. This was easy. Zeref. I took Gray’s motivation of destroying everything related to Zeref and cranked it up to 11. Gray’s family was destroyed by the Etherious, just like Lyssa, but Lyssa has the addition of the Zeref Cult that further stole her childhood from her.
So there you have it. I took inspiration from Mirajane, Gray, Wendy, and Erza to create the most broken and angry woman I could.
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Third is Lyssa’s strength and fighting style. At times it may seem like she is a Mary Sue, of me making my OC the strongest because I can. If that is how it comes off, so be it. But I’m putting her on the same level of genius as Jellal, with a focus on power and not skill.
Jellal is someone who was able to learn several different forms of magic and use them effectively, with his barrier magic being able to withstand Acnologia’s attacks head-on without wavering. Jellal is skilful with his magic, he knows how to exert control over it to a great extent.
Lyssa is the opposite.
If Jellal put a lot of points into dexterity and wisdom when creating his character, then Lyssa put all of her points into endurance and strength. She is power without control, with most of her attacks being just as dangerous to her allies as they are to her enemies, as a result, she will often use martial arts to defeat her opponents. She will place equal amounts of importance on her raw physical power as she does her magic power, but she will rarely consider control.
When she fights she doesn’t worry about her health, she’s a total berserker. If getting stabbed lets her punch her opponent, she’ll get stabbed. If her opponent is too far to reach, she’d gladly rip off her own arm to beat them with it if she can get that additional reach. Something is restricting her legs? She’ll tear them off and crawl after her enemies. She’s self-destructive, she knows it, and she doesn’t care.
Mind you, I will be scaling her to a version of Mirajane that didn’t stop working as a fighter. In just two months of training, Mira quickly caught up to the level of strength that she had when she was fifteen after years of inactivity. If Mira, who is also a demon all things considered, was as strong as she is in the series at the age of fifteen just imagine how strong she would be without those years of inactivity.
Anyway, thank you lot for reading this if you did. If you have any questions about stuff you feel like I didn’t cover clearly in this brief note go ahead and comment them all and I’ll put them at the end of the next couple chapters. Don’t ask about future events, because those are subject to change as I write.
Thank ya for ya time, SMKenward.