User blog:Sera EX/Why Paradise Apocrypha is Being Deleted

So, if you clicked on this blog you clearly want to know why I've decided to delete Paradise Apocrypha off the wiki, and if not you're probably wondering why given the title of this blog. Well, here the short answer:

It just isn't fun to make these kinds of profiles. It's just not.

Now let me tell you a little story,

Paradise Apocrypha was an idea I originally had way back during my undergrad (grad in Japanese) days of college. I was and still am a huge fan of Lucifer Morningstar and his comics, Michael Demiurgos, Elaine Belloc, the Presence before he became trash, etc. etc. I wanted to make a badass series about angels, that's how Lullabelle (named after my artist name) came into existence. My father died September 12th 2017, one year ago, and the story of a Paradise Apocrypha was basically the story about a girl (an angel) overcoming the grief caused by the death of her father (literal God) in order to save the world from collapsing, as while she felt that she had nothing else to live for, as she lived entirely for the sake of commanding the armies of heaven, she realized after she was cast down and became a human that life simply goes on. She found new meaning in her lover Mikhail/Michael and their daughter, Maka. If you caught on by now, this is nothing short of a parallel to my personal journey of accepting my father’s death and moving on, as I still have my husband, daughter, mother, sister, etc. Life goes on, as they say.

So where does FC/OC fit into this? Well I'll tell you. As you should be able to figure out, this story, albeit just for fun, meant a lot to me. So what went wrong? Well although only five pages were posted to the wiki as of the time of the verse's deletion, I had at least 20 more waiting to be posted. Now DMUA and I were talking the other day and I was ranting on about how FC/OC verses and characters are op for the sake of op and yadda yadda yadda, and he mentioned that it's kinda hypocritical considering how hax Lullabelle was or definitely Medusa. Now we all know they wasn't nearly as hax'd as the constant heap of OPness people dish out on a whim but this is not about that. If you wanna make a 7-B have High 1-B hax just to make the strongest 7-B and top so-and-so's character fine. Have fun. That goes completely against my principles though. I don't do ridiculous levels of hax, and not because I think it makes a character bad, it's just my principles that I never make a character stronger than they need to be, that's how I've always been after my op phase. I've been had my “hax/OP” phase when I was 14 years old making Sonic FCs. That was 10 years ago. Today I'm in college pursuing a masters to become a director in film animation. What am I doing getting caught up in “Wiki Strongest Thread/Muh Strongest Character” disputes? Seriously?.

What really jump started this? The complete and utter disrespect this caused the narrative as a whole. Paradise Apocrypha was a story reflecting the struggles I had since last September and the depression I suffered for months until recent times. But somewhere along the line it became part of the very thing I vehemently oppose. I was surprised at Lullabelle's absurdly high 4-B AP calc. Yet despite the fact that said AP will likely never be surpassed without being 4-A, because everyone in the OC Room would brag about how ridiculously hax their characters are and completely ignored said high AP, I went on and gave her all this hax she most certainly did not need, and same for the others. Ishtar for example would've proven this. She had uncalled for hax. The story and characters meant to help me get over my father's death quickly became a part of the wiki's ego stroking contest and arms race of making stupidly hax and overpowered characters. That's disgusting on my part. You may not believe so, but I certainly do.

As Matthew Schroeder told Dragon and me on Hangouts, “Sometimes I just wish people would be more honest about their verses.” And he's absolutely right, a lot of us, including myself keep making excuses for the garbage we make. I however, won't do so any longer. So yeah...Paradise Apocrypha is no more. Does this mean I'm leaving the wiki or am not going to make characters ever again? Of course not - but it does mean I'm more self aware of the content I create than I've ever been in my life.

So, thank you DMUA for pointing out that blatant hypocrisy on my end, thank you Matt for opening my eyes on being more honest, and thank you everyone who generally liked the pages in general. Creating them while depressed and in ill-health wasn't easy. Also thanks for reading this blog, you're all lovely people~ ლ(╹◡╹ლ)