The Trouble with Sequels

Hello again everyone. This next post is more of a way for me to gather my thoughts regarding this issue with a fan fiction story I may or may not do some time in the future. So those who don't wish to read about this can go ahead and skip this post. On the other hand, should anyone choose to read this and leave an opinion in the form of a comment, by all means go ahead and do so. Some feedback regarding this matter would be very helpful.

Basically what's going on is I've started debating with myself about whether or not to do a sequel to this Yu-Gi-Oh! GX fanfic I did I think a year or so ago called Ritual of Doom. It was a story that dealt more with the concept of card game's Ritual Monsters more than any of the shows in the franchise ever did. I should probably at this point note that Ritual of Doom is not exactly a PG-13 story due to certain scenes in it. Anyway, almost since Arc-V began, I've been kicking around the idea of doing a sequel to Ritual of Doom that would pretty much be a GX/Arc-V crossover. Of course there is one little problem with that idea. A friend of mine on FanFiction.Net have been talking about Arc-V recently, and she suggested the possibility that Arc-V might be it's own continuity separate from the one spanning from the original series to at least 5D's.

Such a thing is not uncommon in an anime franchise aimed at kids like Yu-Gi-Oh! Take the Digimon franchise, for example. The other possibility is to instead do this Ritual of Doom sequel as sort of an Arc-V remake with the same main villain I came up with for the original story. I've actually been kicking around that idea for the past couple of days now. One reason for going in that direction is that so far Arc-V has dealt very little with Ritual Monsters. They've done loads of stuff with the other kinds of monster cards, but have done practically nothing with Ritual Monsters. I suppose it's possible they might do something involving Ritual Monsters later in the series, but it's kind of doubtful they will.

All that aside though, the main issue with doing a sequel (or remake as the case may be) to a story like Ritual of Doom is that there's a huge danger of simply repeating the same story over again rather than tell something new. Take Ghostbusters 2, for example. That movie pretty much followed the same formula as the original movie with only a few small differences here and there, and while that sequel had its moments, it just wasn't as good as the original Ghostbusters. And the reason for that is that the story just wasn't all that original. That's more or less the same problem with this potential Ritual of Doom sequel or remake.

When it comes to writing stories, I try very hard not to repeat myself or do anything that I've already done before. For instance I did a trilogy of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's fanfics called 5D's Alternative. It was basically an AU of the 5D's anime with a bit more romance and a better attempt at a crossover than that Yu-Gi-Oh! movie, Bonds Beyond Time. That trilogy was a project that I worked on developing for a long time, and now that it's done I've more or less moved on from writing 5D's fanfics because I ultimately told the story I wanted to tell. I think that's pretty much the case with Ritual of Doom. The other argument for not doing this sequel or remake to Ritual of Doom is that I'm also trying to develop this Arc-V AU focusing on Yugo & Rin, and I kind of want that to be a standalone story. If I do this new Ritual of Doom story, some readers might think that the two stories are connected.

I think that's pretty much it. For those who read all the way through this little rambling about my writing, I thank you. If anyone wishes to give me some feedback, I encourage you to do so.

End