#it's not like they would have any sort of magic of their own or powerups to help them against a giant fire breathing turtl-

[snowyfrostshadows]

Third Act Breakup

[nyaskitten]

Tell me about your au plz :3

(IMPORTANT NOTE: I REFER TO CHARACTERS BY THEIR ACTUAL NAMES IF I DON'T HAVE A NAME FOR THEM YET, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT I'M NAMING ANYONE NYA OR WYLDFYRE OR ANY OF THAT!!!)

OK !!! So the details are very messy cuz I just came up with this idea last night while drawing my guy the Nightmare King from Dreamzzz... Basically it's this super self-indulgent story where I just mix shit from Dreamzzz/Ninjago/LMK/Chima for the fucken sake of it!!!

In this story, the main characters are a Kai ripoff, Nya ripoff, and a Wyldfyre ripoff!!! Wyldfyre ripoff is Kai's youngest sister (Kai 22, Nya 20, Wyldfyre 8-10, probably 10), and she also has a pet dragon who she found years ago (knockoff Heatwave!!!)

For elemental powers, those are like these magical crystals called Elemental Cores, which you are blessed with (idk how yet) by ancient dragon lords (they all go by kings but they're not all men.) Kai has his Core somehow, and same for Nya! Unfortunately, Wyldfyre doesn't yet, either due to being too young or not proven herself yet! She doesn't let it bum her out too much because her epic dragon can grant her sort of temporary Core powers (kinda like Chi from Chima). Unbeknownst to them there's a special reason Wyldfyre and the others can accept powerups like this without detrimental side effects (I won't tell.)

The story goes something like this, a few years ago (probably between 3-5) Kai's parents and uncles (in this story Wu and Garmadon are his uncles) mysteriously go missing, and in present day he hears rumors of an ancient dragon king (Overlord) whose darkness has slowly been festering and increasing greatly. Initially, Kai doesn't care, "Surely if this nonsense were to be true, the great Dragon Knights (he doesn't know it, but they're his dad and uncles) will find out about and stop it!" Idk WHY he decides to go yet, but he takes Nya and the dragon, and leaves Wyldfyre with the others... but she does her own thing and follows. It's too late to turn back now, so reluctantly, Kai has to keep his baby sister out of trouble!

For characters, I'm not too sure how many I'm taking from which series' yet...

I know I have Kai, Nya, Wyldfyre, a Lloyd/Arin combo possibly, Jay, Ray, Maya, Wu, Garmadon, the Overlord, and Misako. I'm ALSO taking Lord Ras for self-indulgence reasons, and renaming naming him Korros (for fun and maybe Wu/Korros exes yaoi!) I also know I wanna get some Monkie Kid inspiration, so I'm thinking of the Lady Bone Demon, but crossed with fanon interpretations of the Preeminent as well! Also, again self-indulgence, Nightmare King from Dreamzzz, and also totally Cinder come the fuck on I need Cinder.

I dunno if I'll add Zane or Cole tho... part of me wants to do a Kalmaar knockoff just for one hyperspecific joke of like, Korros is taking forever to find some hidden mechanism in a wall, and Kalmaar goes "you know, i wouldnt have killed my father if i knew what followed would be so boring."

I have many other thoughts brewing in my brain but WHEW thats the gist of it.

PLEASE ASK ME MORE!!!

[mahou-furbies]

Closing thoughts on Otona Precure

(spoilers)

I've tried to remain optimistic but man I can't find a positive spin on this. I don't think could stand on its own as a magical girl show aimed at adults because the story was kind of childish and a lot of the character stuff requires you to already be familiar with them, but it didn't deliver properly on the "I'm a Precure fan so I'll take anything" side either. Most importantly the show committed the cardinal sin of not only lacking any adult magical girl forms, but then it also didn't bother to include a new powerup look for the aged-down ones. What is this nonsense, everyone knows that your new magical girl season has to include at least one new look! 1/10 rating for that alone! (jokes aside I gave it a 4/10 on mal)

The inclusion of Nagisa and Honoka (and Hikari) was absolutely terrible; I don't mind their characters but their contributions were entirely pointless. Like if you don't know who they are it's just brand new nobodies with no connection to any of the plot and themes of the story who just randomly show up in the grand finale where everything is supposed to wrap up neatly, and if you do know who they are and are willing to accept them being shoehorned in just for the sake of seeing them grown up… we don't get that either. Oh how convenient how Nagisa and Honoka just happen to be missing from our bar meetup today! And they really didn't want to do anything at all with my girl Hikari, it was actually kind of funny how superfluous her appearance was. I guess the Futago Kamikita art is our only saviour here, at least they're included in that. Long hair Nagisa?

(also a nitpick but I really don't like that all the first five seasons apparently got retconned into happening in the same town? Makes the world so much smaller)

The time flower ticking clock also ended up completely wasted, I'm sure nobody expected Nozomi to die, but at least come up with some sort of excuse why everything turned out in the end and don't just say that actually there was never any danger in the first place. I hate to say this but even the light sticks from the movies would have been an improvement, have all the townspeople send encouraging vibes to the Precure which fix the flower issue if you must!

Then there's the visuals which were noticeably bad, ranging from poor cgi, lack of animation and just unappealing colour palette, and also kind of boring civilian clothes for the Cures. So the show doesn't have the excuse that at least it's pretty to look at or fun to draw either.

Then a final complaint that Coco and Nutts' mascot forms kept their shrill nails-on-a-chalkboard voices. Would anyone have complained if their voices had been changed?

Still the parts focusing on the Cures' grown up civilian lives were for the most part alright so I don't think the show was without any value. I liked especially the parts that were about how their problems are now more difficult than when they were younger, but that they'll continue moving forward regardless. But I would probably have liked the show better if it either had a stronger main plot to back it up, or alternatively scrapped the magical side of the story and was just a slice of life story.

Better luck with the MahouTsukai sequel, hopefully having less characters to juggle results in a better story.

[elitadream]

Do Peach, Mario, and Luigi have their own personal favorite powerups to use? 👀

That's a very good question! :3

I feel like out of all the existing Power-Ups, Mario would be drawn to the Fire Flower the most; feeling an innate connection with the element and the warmth it emanates. 🔥

Luigi would probably love both the Cat and Tanuki suit once he got to try those! Being naturally agile and light on his feet, he would instantly know how to move around in them and would very much enjoy the ability to climb surfaces or fly without any trouble. 🍂

As for Peach, I'm inclined to think that she would be fairly impartial to the magical elements existing in her own world (seeing equal advantages and benefits in each), but would feel a strong affinity towards the Power Star in particular, regarding it with a special sort of wonder. ⭐️

[liquidstar]

alright I've finally figured out how to put little guy magic system concept, but to clarify when I say it was based on a game I mean "me and a friend looked at its Canon, decided thats neat. and went apeshit making our own stuff"

now then, there are 3 distinct power ups within the world I've got, Ego, Superego, and Id. Ego is the simplest to explain, take trauma hard enough, recover, get magic suit based on how trauma worked. it's the middle of the line one in terms of scarcity, considering how it's far simpler to get than an superego, but Ids come naturally. one of the little guys even gets an ego named "Prism", more would have but two were affected by void, which is it's own mutually exclusive thing (void could be considered an artificial ego). basically magical girl transformation for whoever has it.

then there's the superego, not just a stronger ego, these power ups arrive to help "modify" an existing one, allowing it to adapt and permanently shift. I think my friend described it as "minor reality warping centred on the self". current uses so far are making ones tulpas real, and swapping the effects projected through an normal ego. though given a sample size of 3 characters (two of which are in the ground) with it so far, it's the hardest to understand.

Ids however are pretty simple to understand, and incredibly common all things considered. when someone gains complete mastery over a move, almost always their signature, there's a chance magic can get imbued and make that move into their Id. the magic inherent takes no thought to use, unlike the other forms, as like the skill it's attached to functions entirely on instinct. admittedly, this makes it harder to understand when one HAS an Id, but doesn't mean it's any rarer.

OH I SEE THATS REALLY COOL i love the sort of psychological theme youre going with, esp w how it also relates to trauma.. its interesting! and shows the titles arent just aesthetic as they relate to psychoanalytic theory but actually sort of thematically relevant. obviously how deep you wanna go into actual freudian stuff is your own choice though. but its a cool naming scheme with a cool set of powers to back it up. i especially love superego and the possibilities it has for powerups, its all just really interesting and fun!

[princess-of-the-corner]

winx au: what causes each character to gain charmix/enchantix/gloomix/disenchantix? does Stella get her two at the same time or only progress in one? is her witch form always the basic one? does she ever ise it? do the witches and fairies gain the power ups the same way? does riven ever get one? T (sry bout all the questions)

Okay! So!

Yes the powerups are earned the same way for Faeries and Witches. They are parallels of one another.

Stella does use her Witch Form a few times in the first few seasons. In Season 1, it's mostly a "this form is stronger at Night" deal, but she stays in Faerie most often. She uses it a little in Season 2 because her Faerie Magic doesn't do well underground, being literally Light Based. Her Witch Form isn't the best option, but doesn't drain as fast in darkness. By Season 3, her Witch Form is at an actual disadvantage compared to her Faerie Form so she only really uses it once to make a point. She will have to earn each form seperately when she trains her Witch powers.

Riven wasn't intending to get more Forms, but kinda... Gets them accidentally? Like. In the next chapter of that fic, he's starting on actually working at being able to use his Magic. He'll be caught off guard by Charmix in Season 3. And because Enchantix is earned by confronting some personal stuff, as soon as he does some major character momet he gets that. By Season 5 when everyone else is getting Harmonix/Discordix, him and the rest of the guys are helping them with getting all that so he's just like "well since I'm in on this anyway...".

Charmix/Gloomix is earned mostly by making major progress in actually training your Magic. One could use their Base Forms many times, but actually training and honing their skills would lead to earning Charmix/Gloomix. It's not exactly an entirely new form, just a sign that they're ready to earn Enchantix/Disenchantix.

So the "confronting something personal" plot is moved to Enchantix/Disenchantix instead. Because that makes more sense than "sacrifice your life to save someone from your homeworld" for many, many reasons!

As for how everyone gets their forms!

As said, Charmix/Gloomix happens on it's own and is earned by training your Magic. While Echantix/Disenchantix is "character developmemt". The Winx all get theirs in Season 3, and others get them at various times. I'll start with the Winx though!

Bloom:

Bloom's had a hell of a time finding where exactly she belongs. On Earth, she always subconciously knew she didn't "belong" there. Then she learns about a whole ass world of Magic she does belong to. Only to find that her birth family and homeworld were destroyed. So she feels this disconnect.

She tries to connect to the handful of survivors from Domino. But that makes her feel even more like an outsider because theres a whole planet/culture she doesn't remember. And it doesn't help that Valtor is specifically using this feeling to manipulate her.

Eventually, she comes to realize that she doesn't have to "belong" to some place because she already belongs with her friends and family.

Stella:

Stella has a lot of pressure on herself and tends to ignore her problems by pretending she's not bothered because she should be able to handle all this!

She eventually opens up about all that. Just. Admitting that she is stressed and being reminded that she can rely on the people who care about her.

Musa:

So. I bumped up Musa's mother's death to just before she left for Alfea in Season 1.

Musa has been pretty much running away from facing that for the past two years. Not even going home during breaks from school because it hurts too much to be in her home without her mom.

In Season 3 she gets to meet Galatea and the two just talk about their homeworld. Musa misses it. A lot. But going home means facing all that.

Eventually she does. Having a bit of a breakdown but properly processing the grief.

Tecna:

One of Tecna's issues is that she's... Not good at communicating or interpretating emotions. It's partly on her and partly just that Zenith culture is very blunt with emotions. So she won't understand what someone is feeling unless they say it point blank, but also won't always show what she's feeling outside of saying it out loud(which... Doesn't register to others)

She never realized how much of an issue it is until her and Timmy have tension because of it. Nothing bad! Just that their love languages are very different and both begin to feel unappreciated because of the lack of communication on the emotional front.

It's the decision to actually begin learning that has her earning her Enchantix.

Aisha:

Due to her very isolated childhood, Aisha is still new to having such a large friend group. But she quickly fits in with them. However. Right when she got the group, they seem to e drifting apart.

Not in a bad way, of course! But everyone has their own adventures and subplots this season, which leads to the whole group not always being together. And as they plan for the future and what may come, it's likely that they'll have to go their seperate ways.

Aisha is scared that she'll be alone again. And It's only after voicing these fears and being reassured that even if their lives have them seperate, they'll always be ready to come back together and be friends. They're not going away forever.

Flora:

Flora's insecurity comes from feeling like the weakest of the Winx.

She's not, of course! But... Bloom and Aisha are their main powerhouses. Stella is also quite powerful, and uses both Faerie and Witch Forms. Tecna and Musa have much flashier powers. And Flora is over here with her plants.

Plus. One of their main opponents is Icy. Whose powers are naturally very effective against Flora's abilities.

She begins to feel very useless. Like she shouldn't even bother fighting because what difference would it make?

Eventually, she does kind of snap. And realize 1.) She's not weak and 2.) Even if she was, it doesn't mean she shouldn't do what she can to help.

Darcy:

She actually gets her Disenchantix at the end of Season 1(all the Trix start Season 1 on Gloomix because they're in their third year at Cloud Tower).

It's solidifying that she won't break her morals to obtain her goals, even to the point of fighting against people she loves and fixing her mistakes.

Stormy:

Hers happens off screen because she disappears in Season 2 and shows up again in Season 3. But sometime during this she realizes that her current methods of trying to get anything she wants isn't... Really working. She manages to sort that out but I'm still thinking about all that.

Icy:

Oh boy. My girl has a lot of issues. Especially relating to her mom.

99% of people she meets that know who her mom is either judge her, or want her to pick up where her mom failed. And Icy has internalized a lot of that shit. About having to complete her mom's goals because what else is there for her? If she does, she'll have the wonderful life she was promised way back then. She'll be... Worth something.

Sometime in Season 3 she meets some characters who, despite who her mother was and what Icy has done since then, are willing to care about her. And She's also reminded that Darcy and Stormy did care about her, but she pushed them away for her own goals. And that even the Winx gang are willing to help her get away from... All that.

It's a lot of progress and she probably won't really get Disenchantix until Season 4 when she actually feels genuinely loved for who she is and despite everything.

Riven:

Oh boy.

So. I.... I will go into this more after I post the next chapter of that thing. However!

I will say that his Enchantix is either late Season 3 or sometime in Season 4. And It's a very cathartic, facing childhood truama, "god do you have any idea how much that fucked me up?!" Moment.

[commonratmiraculous]

Heroes-in-Training AU

Basically where Marinette and Adrien have had some training from Fu and their Kwami before Stoneheart.

I’m not just thinking physical training. I’m thinking that there needs to be a bit more work being put into their weapons and powers maybe?

Like the yoyo and bostaff aren’t necessarily part of their transformations, but rather magical weapons they would have with them even if they were de transformed - only the yoyo can’t summon Lucky Charm or purify a butterfly if not transformed, and the staff turns into a staff sure but it does not have the extension (and once Adrien is more practiced as Chat he’s also able to channel new powers through the staff too - I was thinking shadows maybe? A lot of fancy moves can be done with shadows and a staff)

But they are both weapons, and they’ve got a civilian mode of sorts. Maybe the staff is a small cylindrical necklace that Adrien wears, and the yoyo is a compact mirror? They can still be used to call each other, though there’s no tracking ability without Tikki and Plagg’s connection. And neither break.

They have Civilian-Sona’s and by that I mean an incongneto mode to their superhero costumes - this means they still have all the benefits of their LB and CN costumes, like being able to track eachother, their powers, the armour/magic shielding etc. But they’re also able to do more sneaking around which is good for meeting up in secret, undercover work, metting up with Fu both together and alone.

None of this, LB and CN only get one use of their powers because their children thing. It’s implied Hawkmoth had his for a while before Stoneheart, and the Butterfly isn’t as powerful as the Ladybug anf Black Cat Miraculouses - but LB and CN can work up to that, or they can work towards different powers instead (for versatility, lets say, considering the enemy).

This isn’t Guardian Training - beecause it’s not going into the other Miraculouses or the history or any of the making of different powerups and so on. But maybe the explaination for why Marinette gets to do the Guardian training before Adrien is because he’s struggling more with being secure in his powerset. Which isn’t his fault of course, it’s better to be cautious with destruction than heavyhanded, and it certainly doesn’t help that Plagg doesn’t have much control on his own where Tikki does.

However, Marinette can’t do everything at once and when the Guardian Training comes along her creativity - which allowed her to take the lead - starts to suffer. Ultimately, giving the time for Adrien to catch up (Marinette training to Guardian could coincide with Adrien learning about necessary destruction through his growing feud with Lila).

Just... the two of them spending some time working on their dynamic together (lets face it this is why everyone headcanoned them patrolling at night when they don’t do ordinary crime) allowing for the constant balancing act between them to occur. As it should be if sticking the the yin and yang lore they were introduced as.

[itsclydebitches]

Whats your favorite power system in all of fiction? The simplicity of dbz's? Something more complex like nen? Something not from anime at all?

I generally steer towards hard magic/power systems: something with defined rules that allow for both limitations and VERY awesome victories if you can figure out how to twist the rules in your favor. That’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. That (parody-esque, highly analytical world of HP) takes those rules to their logical endpoints. If transfiguration has the hard, established rule of “No transfiguration will last forever” then you get to see how different characters grapple with that rule. Some will see it as a limitation - “Dammit. That means we can’t use transfiguration to solve world hunger” - and others an opportunity - “What if I turned something deadly into an apple, had an enemy eat it, and then waited until the transfiguration wore off?” You also open up the possibility that a Super Special Protagonist will someday break that rule in a moment of pure awesomeness. One of my favorite moments in that series is when Harry rattles off all the ways he can turn a normal classroom deadly and though it’s horrifying (it’s supposed to be), he’s also right. Characters who exist in worlds with established rules and who bother to learn those rules are poised to exploit them in wonderfully satisfying ways. 

This is partly why RWBY’s system doesn’t appeal to me. It’s largely dependent on what the writers want at any given moment, making the world feel continually shaky rather than a real, immersive thing that the audience can delve into. Weiss no longer uses her time ability... even though, as far as we know, she could. Ruby can suddenly slam through steel walls... even though we don’t understand how. Marrow doesn’t even attempt to use ‘Stay’ at the start of the fight... even though he, again, could. It’s those “How?” and “But they could have?” that interrupts the immersion. I think RWBY’s system is best described by Geico’s latest commercial: 

“Why don’t we just get into the running car??” and then they don’t because it’s much harder for the plot if they do, not because there’s a compelling, in-world reason for them to avoid it. Only RWBY’s system has the added complications of no one fully understanding how cars work (aura), or whether a character still has access to a car (abilities), if they possess enough gas to drive it (dust), and so on and so forth until you get an audience arguing over the supposed benefits/downsides of taking the car at all, if it exists, if it runs, if, if, ifs that no one is able to answer, rather than acknowledging that we should understand precisely how a car works and the show should have explained why the characters wouldn’t use it when it’s seemingly 100% available to them. 

It’s also why Witcher’s system works much better for me. There’s definitely wishy-washy elements to it, but on the whole it’s far more rule-grounded than RWBY’s is. Things like “Witchers can cast signs, but signs pale in comparison to the power a sorceress has” explain potential question such as, “Why do these characters call on dangerous magic users they don’t trust when they themselves can already do magic?” We’ve been told what the difference between these types of magic is and we understand one’s limitations. Witcher also takes the time to think through an OP character’s place in a rule-driven world: basically, give them rules as well. O’dimm is defeated not because Geralt randomly develops the ability to slay god-like creatures, or because O’dimm is made stupid and very conveniently just doesn’t use his own ability, he’s defeated because he too has rules attached to him. He will follow the rules that he creates. That allows him to remain staggeringly dangerous - he’ll always try to tip those rules in his favor - but rules, by default, are always capable of being bent in favor of the hero as well. So when O’dimm says, “If you can solve my riddle AND make it through my world AND find the object that serves as the answer... then yeah, I’ll leave.” So Geralt does. He follows the rules established, using his brain as well as his physical skills, and successfully tells O’dimm to get lost. Salem, in contrast, has no established rules and thus we get the endless conversations of, “WHY doesn’t she just destroy Atlas herself? WHY did she wait until the story started to actively seek out the relics? What’s stopping her?” If the story says “Nothing” yet Salem isn’t winning, that’s a problem. Rules not only keep the audience grounded but also present opportunities for great characterization: O’dimm is more compelling because he treats everything like a game that he’s capable of losing. A Salem with vulnerabilities or psychological limitations would, in turn, be more compelling too. 

So, to go back to your anime examples, anon, I don’t have one single story to point to, though I do prefer the more complicated systems. Just because they present far more opportunity for creativity while likewise allowing the audience to feel confident in their understanding of the world and the possibilities for how things might turn out (making a believable twist on the author’s part unbelievably EPIC). Even DBZ follows broad rules like “Saiyans get stronger when they lose” and “Intense emotion is capable of providing a powerup.” Indeed, we even see some villains making use of this rule: I want a stronger opponent, you need motivation, so I’ll kill someone you love to give you that boost. It’s simple, but it (mostly) hangs together. 

In contrast, power/magic systems that refuse to establish rules so that the authors are never forced to come up with creative solutions, or that keep/chuck rules based on what’s convenient, just end up being frustrating. To my mind that sort of ambiguity works best in horror: How the fuck does Night Vale work? Good question. Don’t right know. It’s that sense of “This world makes no sense” that adds to our discomfort, discomfort the genre actively wants to create. However, making your fantasy/action series nonsensical when you want viewers invested in the fights is a mistake. Your audience can’t get behind either the potential outcome or what the author eventually decides to write if there isn’t a common foundation to work from. You’re less likely to enjoy, say, a card game if you’re playing blind, or your opponent changes rules whenever they please. I need to understand what’s possible and be able to trust that we’re both using the same rulebook in order to get invested.  

[dragon-ball-meta]

Just discovered your blog today and am enjoying it immensely. I do have some questions about which is more "valid" between the DBS anime and manga though. The manga at least on a surface level has a tighter adherence to the manga's continuity, such as the lack of Gregory, no showing the Trunks' first SS transformation from the anime version of his past, and the SS Caulifla and Kale fusion churning out a SS fusion, which would seem to be what Old Kai meant when warning Goku and Vegeta 1/2

“2/2 But those are ultimately minor I suppose and perhaps they have explanations like "Trunks wasn't transforming for the first time in the Super flashback". I'm not a Toyo stan by any stretch and can't stand how he butchered my boi GOATku among other things but it seems like the manga would be just as valid/canonical as the anime. Toriyama works closely with Toyo as with the anime team and calls the manga a continuation. Sorry if this has been asked before, and keep up the good work“

Well first and foremost, welcome. Glad you’re enjoying this blog. As for the question, I’ve touched on it before, but I’ll dip into it again.  There’s definitely a bit more of a hierarchy than people want to admit, at least in terms of which would be “more canon” when it comes to the mediums of Super. To that end, I like to look at continuity, characterization, and lead platform.  See, the thing about Super, as it stands, is that it was never meant to have an ongoing manga. At all. It was written, conceived, and meant to be an anime series with Toriyama’s involvement. The “manga”, as it were, was originally meant solely to be a preview/promotional series for said anime, something to hint at things to come. That’s why the Beerus arc is so short and rushed.  When it came to the Resurrection F arc, however, that was when Toyotaro pitched the idea of letting him turn the series into an actual, full-fledged series, something Toriyama was ok with more or less because it meant that at least he wouldn’t have to draw it, and because he was interested in seeing how the anime and manga writers respectively would adapt his storyline ideas.  In that sense, the anime was the original, intended medium and means by which the series was meant to be carried forward, hence why I would consider that the lead platform. Beyond that, let’s look at continuity. Truth be told, neither manga nor anime are 100% flawless in it, making references to things that were filler in the name of comedy, or simply forgetting or ignoring a detail or two from the past. But even in cases of references to filler, I’d argue that they don’t INHERENTLY represent continuity errors per se, as they don’t directly contradict events depicted, and on occasion don’t even necessarily indicate that the exact filler events actually happened; in some cases, they’re just in-jokes or references for longtime fans and viewers.   Trunks’ “first time” transformation also doesn’t necessarily pin it as his first time in continuity, so much as simply reuse the animation and have the boy transform in a moment of grief. Don’t recall any direct reference to that being his first transformation at all. Similarly, I wouldn’t say Gregory inherently means Filler Gregory is meant to be who this one is, as Gregory in Super really doesn’t speak or have anything close to the same personality.  Similarly, Android 18 being as mad as she was about the mispronunciation of Marron as Maron can be seen as a nod to Krillin’s filler ex-girlfriend without actually acknowledging her. (As well as clearing up the whole “she’s named after her” thing since even the pronunciation is different in Japanese.) They’re not necessarily baking these things into continuity, just referencing them. One big problem the Super MANGA has, however, in an internal continuity issue. Toyotaro often feels a need to EXPLAIN things that don’t necessarily need to be explained, in an effort to feel like he’s fleshing things out more. The problem is... he often writes himself into a corner that way, as he doesn’t seem to run his ideas by Toriyama or check them against the man’s notes as much as he should, and thus finds himself in trouble later. Case-in-point: His decision that Super Saiyan Blue’s use had a mandatory cooldown period between uses, or else the multiplier the user receives from the form drops exponentially each time. Seemed a good way to potentially limit the form at the time, keep it from being “overused”, except... they very quickly found themselves in situations where it would HAVE to be used, to say nothing of the narrative issue of having Vegeta be in a reduced state of Blue by the time he faced Hit, thus making Hit’s win less shocking, and Hit himself a bit less formidable, to say nothing of downplaying Goku’s skill and reaction to it; he should have had a far easier time naturally, after all. This also causes some issues with Vegeta’s tactic vs Zamasu of popping into SSG for a speed advantage and then quickly in and out of SSB to strike, as that should have lowered the effectiveness each time, and THAT was done to deal with ANOTHER restriction Toyotaro had baked into the form of it draining ki almost as quickly as SSJ3 had back in the Buu arc, and that Godly Aura was actually just wasted ki. All of this then had to be negated via Toyotaro’s own version of SSB Kaioken, which was just... “Perfected” Blue. Which is just Blue without an aura. Which then leads into Goku knowing how to use Hakai despite not actually being a God of Destruction, not having ever even practiced it to know if he could do it, and only allegedly having seen Beerus use it once offscreen, which has to be inferred by the reader.   These are actually just a FEW of said issues in the manga version of things, but in my opinion, the biggest signifier and offender comes in the final category: Characterization.   It’s no real secret that Super does retread some characterization ground, but there’s a reason for that. New viewers, same characters, etc. Vegeta was sort-of given a full arc already, but due to popularity and ‘demand’, he has to be given a central role and can’t sort of fade back like Piccolo, Krillin, Tien, etc. were able to do once their respective arcs were done. (This also allows their own mini-arcs in the anime to feel more fulfilling as they’re not constantly shoved in your face, and they can touch on things happening or building up in the background of episodes, BUT, let’s move on.) As a result, one of the purposes of Battle of Gods, and how it was handled as an arc and the eps that followed it, was to establish a new sort of rivalry between Goku and Vegeta so as to renew that arc/dynamic for this particular series.  

And that’s where the manga... sort of falls flat. Vegeta is kept in prominence despite a lack of any sort of established/renewed rivalry with Goku; BoG was done in shorthand, after all, and the events following that, as well as the entire Resurrection F arc, were skipped wholesale. In fact, Vegeta himself seems to have gone through a VERY radical personality shift in that... he’s... nice. And I don’t mean nice-ER, he’s outright nice. He shows open affection for his family, he literally runs over to embrace his baby in happiness and rejoices that it’s a girl, he engages in pleasantries with the rest of the cast before the Tournament of Power and asks about their wellbeing, he’s got almost none of his original character traits other than a flair for the dramatic... and bear in mind, Vegeta still has that hardass-ness to himself in the End of Z, which these events are supposed to lead into. And this isn’t even touching on how the narrative seems to shift frequently toward him being THE hero of the series, often actually placing Goku in near-helpless situations and having Vegeta inexplicably bail him out, or just have Goku be in awe or starstruck at how awesome Vegeta is now. The Future Trunks arc, for example, has Vegeta healed only to the point of being able to stand, yet when Goku is shrinking back in fear at the sight of TWO Fused Zamasus coming at him, Vegeta... transforms, swoops in, rescues Goku, AND nukes both Fused Zamasus with a single blow. (It doesn’t “win the day”, no, but it’s a mite riduculous). The current arc is also trying to wholesale shift focus away from Goku onto Vegeta in a leading role, which is a distinctly non-Toriyama move.   And now, let’s talk Goku himself. HOO boy, where to begin...   For all the talk of flanderization of Goku in the Super anime (which I could write entire rants on but I’ll refrain for now), the manga does him ten times worse. Almost every negative fandom meme or interpretation of Goku is reinforced in this arc, sometimes even to the point of literal, direct lampshading of it. For example: Goku in the anime makes a comment on how he doesn’t see why Bulma would “kill” Vegeta if he’s not right there when Bulma starts labor, as he was dead when Goten was born and Chi-Chi doesn’t hold ill will over it. The manga? It quite literally has Goku state he wasn’t around for the birth of Goten OR GOHAN. He couldn’t even be bothered to be there for the birth of his son he was alive to see. When Whis pops baby Bra out via magic so Vegeta can attend the ToP, Goku is... apparently still so dumb that he legitimately wonders aloud if that’s how ALL babies are born. Goku, in this same tournament, has ZERO strategic or technical skill, and relies solely on brute force and powerups (which is actually how VEGETA typically fights but I digress) and even has both Roshi admonish him for it and even has Goku agree with it and declare himself a “bad student” and say that he’s “done letting everyone around him down”. This manga also has Goku and Gohan’s relationship visibly strained, with Goku seemingly trying to cut himself out of Gohan’s life completely as the kid has no interest in fighting. To top this off, rather than attending the tournament in a gi fashioned after his father, whom Gohan canonically does admire, the manga has him deliberately ask to have another carbon copy of Piccolo’s. Hell, Gohan is so far from Manga!Goku’s mind here, that it doesn’t even occur to Goku to ASK Gohan if he wants to fight in the ToP after Buu falls asleep. In fact, Piccolo suggests it... and Goku PROTESTS the idea, saying the kid’s got no stomach for fighting and they should look elsewhere. The only time Goku seems to show an interest in Gohan is when he shows off his power in a fight vs Kefla. This is distinctly, demonstrably, simply NOT Toriyama’s Goku, in any way, shape, or form.   Now, to speak on the other characters and their characterization... when it does exist, it’s one-dimensional and also often based around fan conceptions and memes. Krillin? Comedic coward who can’t fight. Goku even says that he thinks Krillin’s sole usefulness in the ToP might come in the form of him “being really good at running away”. He’s literally only in because Toriyama said so, and is literally immediately ringed out before he can so much as move. Tee hee so funny. Tien, who has no personality of note, is then also immediately out. Piccolo is just Gohan’s coach, really. Android 18 shows no emotion at all, even for her brother’s apparent death; this is later played off as her knowing he didn’t have his bomb anymore (something even Krillin somehow forgot???) so knowing he couldn’t have self-destructed... even though there are other ways to do that besides a bomb but w/e. 17 literally shows more care and affection for 18′s husband than she herself does as well, and their bond is pretty much non-existent. Chi-Chi and Goten pretty much do not exist. Trunks’ reunion with Gohan, meeting his family? Never happens. And Bulma... OH BULMA. What he did to that woman is criminal. She mostly plays the role of the worried Soldier’s Wife, fretting as she awaits her dashing husband’s return from war! The Bulma that wouldn’t take no for an answer? The Bulma that always insisted on going to the front lines to try to see things for herself? The Bulma who would be eager to see this future and see if she could find the notes of her other self and what else she may have discovered? That Bulma does not exist in this manga. HELL, the Bulma who was the smartest woman in the world barely does; what was Pilaf noticing one small math error in an equation in the Super anime becomes Pilaf “WELL ACKSHUALLY”-ing both Bulma and Future Bulma here and PERFECTING Time Travel so they can go to any point they desire, with Bulma being visibly upset about being upstage-aaaaaand she’s pregnant. It’s just... not good at all in this arena.   Now one last thing to mention: Toriyama himself actually did explicitly state that his canon Broly movie, which he did write himself, was set to follow the events of the Super anime specifically, with him saying the manga would probably continue telling its own story. And indeed, there are things about the Broly movie that do tie into what people thought to be just “filler” in the anime, such as the number of wishes Shenron had left tying into the episode where they summoned him and then fought over wishes. The fact that he DOES specify that he wrote it to follow the anime, however, seems like a firm establishment of heirarchy to me personally. I’m sure some will disagree but... that’s life. lol Anyways, hope that helped clarify my stance on it, at least.

[duckandrollblog]

Creating a Jutsu

So I’ve had some people ask me about how I determine the chakra cost and technique cost of a jutsu. And I wanted to sort of provide some insight that might explain my design process and help anyone else who wants to make their own jutsu. So I figured I’d collect some of my design guidelines and principals here for you.

Summoning and clones: Any jutsu that summons or creates an ally shouldn’t be able to give you access to something stronger than you. This means that any summoning jutsu is limited to something weaker, usually a max of 2 levels lower, than the summoner. Likewise any clone jutsu creates clones that are in some way worse or weaker than the original, weather due to having worse stats, less access to jutsu or the the like, and usually they have no hit points. The reasons for this are pretty simple. If you can summon something stronger than you then you’ve very clearly broken the basics of how challenge rating work.

Higher technique cost isn’t “better”: So this is an important thing to cover. There should not be a technique that does the same thing as a lower cost technique but better. There’s no “Greater mud wall” or “Improved Body flicker”. If you want to create a way to get more use or power from a cheaper cost move then it’s best to add a Technique that improves that jutsu, instead of inventing a new jutsu thats the same thing but improved. Even at the highest level a ninja is likely to be using their low level abilities amped with more chakra to keep them relevant. Higher level jutsu should be more interesting and have more unusual or powerful effects, not just bigger damage and better area.

Area of effect vs single target: This is an interesting one. I place the same value on area of effect abilities as single target ones, and balance them as being the same, as long as the area of effect and the strength of the effect both scale up together. This is very important because it uses an area of effect as a restriction rather than a bonus. For example, there are plenty of times you may want to hit a group of enemies with a 16d4 fireball jutsu. However there may be complications with creating a 90 ft ball of flames. It certainly makes fighting in the city harder, and even on a typical stealth mission it’s not advisable. If however a jutsu allows the user to get multiple uses out of it while controlling it’s area of effect separate from it’s power, or by not having an area but still allowing multiple uses, then in general it’s going to take more chakra or technique points or both to reach the same amount of power.

Damage: This brings me neatly to how much damage a jutsu could do. The Gold standard is that for every 1d4 damage a jutsu does it should cost 4 chakra. Barring very unusual circumstances this limit should go up but never down. A jutsu dealing 1d4 for every 6 chakra is fine, but for every 3 is very dangerous. This is because as levels get higher so does chakra, exponentially so, and even a little change in the formula can make a big difference. This 1d4 for 4 formula should also only apply to jutsu that are either single target or have area of effects scaling with damage and even then only if the jutsu’s primary purpose is damage and nothing else. If the jutsu is able to strike multiple times without any drawbacks of complications then it should usually cost between 50% and 100% more chakra.

Chakra cost: As a general rule of thumb, higher technique cost jutsu need more chakra. A rough formula is that a jutsu’s base chakra cost should typically be equal to the technique cost of learning the jutsu, but it can sometimes be several times as much for very powerful or draining jutsu. A good estimate is that at the level a taijutsu master can learn a move it should use up all their melded chakra. This may seem steep but it means that even a newly learned move can be used by anyone, and that the classes with more chakra can potentially get a few uses out of it, and with a few level ups even the taijutsu master will be able to freely use the move. Low level jutsu should have very little chakra cost and high level ones should ideally be substantially more expensive. The exception to this is most taijutsu moves which don’t require chakra to be spent.

Technique cost: As another general rule, every technique point that the jutsu AND it’s prerequisites requires should provide roughly the benefit of 1 point of chakra for free. So what does this mean? Let’s say you have a jutsu that costs 1 technique point and requires basic fire style. In order to know this technique you would have spent 6 total technique points, so if it deals 1d4 damage per 4chakra then it should do 1d4 damage as a base for just 1 chakra, since it’s not a good idea to make elemental jutsu free. The remaining few technique points arn’t enough to bump the damage up, generally it’s best to err on the side of making something weaker. If the same jutsu cost 16 technique points and required 12 points worth of prerequisites then it’s base damage should be 7d4, or you should have some mechanic that makes it noticeably better than a similar style jutsu with less prerequisite costs. Of course that doesn’t mean the 7d4 jutsu should have a base cost of 1 chakra, a move like that would obviously be better than a similar lower level jutsu.

Tiers of effects: As a rough guideline the sorts of effects you can perform with a jutsu should scale to the technique cost. Jutsu with technique costs from1 to 5 should generally be things that are possible with skill checks or equipment. You can deal damage without a weapon, climb with your hands or a grappling hook, and you can swim or use a boat to cross water. Thus things like dealing damage, walking up walls or across water are all things that fall into this category. Techniques in the 6-10 range should be things that can be accomplished with minor magical items or minor magic in regular pathfinder, and it also covers significant powers and departures from what one is normally capable of. Anything from 11 to 15 should cover powerful abilities that can have a significant effect on the flow of a battle, and they also can be effects that emulate advanced magical abilities and spells found in normal pathfinder. This also includes many effects that an entire builds or reputations can be built around. 16 to 20 technique points get into the really crazy things. Abilities that can change someone’s life, reshape kingdoms, or create dynasties or influence the way the world works.

There are a few other considerations when it comes to technique points. In general learning a new technique should not equate to more raw power. They should be new options, new abilities, new moves, but only rarely should they actually increase one’s power. Most of the exceptions to this are combat skills that fall under Taijutsu. And this is mainly because Taijutsu moves and techniques reward those who have taken the taijutsu master class, which has less chakra to utilize than other classes and they rely much more on having a high level of base capability with minimal chakra use. A few other exceptions are instances of direct power that require some situations and clever play style to use, like sneak attack or poison use. These encourage new ways to play rather than just boosting stats.

Designing buffs: As a general rule, most buff’s and powerups should be a swift or free action so tat they can be used in the same turn as an attack. In fast dynamic combat ideally a fight should only be a few rounds and it’s unpleasant to waste a turn buffing only to find the fight is nearly over. The exception is for truly powerful and game changing buffs, such as the 8 gates, where their power is so strong that giving immediate access could be overwhelmingly good.

Increasing attack and CMB: In general any power or ability that boosts your attack or CMB should cost about 4 chakra for each +1 bonus, this is particularly common in taijutsu moves that let you bolster them with chakra, but there are some jutsu that become more accurate with increased chakra.

Judgement and comparison: Of course, at the end of the day all of these things are somewhat subjective, and the truth is if a technique is 1 or 2 points cheaper or more expensive, or a few chakra extra it probably won’t ruin everything, and if it does, you can always change it and make adjustments. These guidelines should help you get a sense for how to calculate the power and value of a jutsu.

[dirtyrainbowstories]

Powser

You’ve heard of Bowsette, but are you ready for Powser? Jealous of all the attention Bowser’s getting for stealing her looks, Peach decides to take revenge by doing the same to him. She ends up becoming a huge, hulking monster girl, and the princess soon discovers that she likes herself this way. 

Contains muscle growth, breast growth, ass growth, monster girl tf, and, uh, pussy growth, along with some NSFW content and extreme squirting. 

"Hmph, you've got to be kidding me," Peach said, her gloved arms crossed over her ample bosom, which was beginning to feel inadequate as she gazed at her doppelganger through the castle window.

  Bowser had turned into a duplicate of the Mushroom Kingdom's princess through the use of a strange new powerup. The monstrous reptile was now a mirror of the princess herself, only arguably more attractive. She was taller, bustier, and more generously endowed in the rear than the princess herself. Even Peach had to admit that the black dress was absolutely killer on her too.

  Burning jealousy ran through her bloodstream as she watched her Toads crowd around the transformed tyrant, no doubt heaping praise upon her, vying for her attention. Had they all forgotten that the Koopa King had tried to kill them all mere weeks ago? Was a pretty face all it took to make them forget a rivalry that spanned decades?

  The worst part was that Bowser was better at being her than she was! It just wasn't fair!

  The Princess couldn't just huff around in her castle forever. She needed to do something! She paced back and forth, her pink heels clicking angrily against the castle tiles.

  Ah, she finally had it! If Bowser was going to steal her thing, she would simply steal his! She'd be the best hulking, princess-capturing turtle monster the Mushroom Kingdom had ever seen! After they got a glimpse of her terrifying monstrous form, Bowser would be forgotten forever, supplanted by his superior clone.

  The only problem was finding a way to perform the transformation itself. If Bowser could turn himself into a princess with a power-up, she would obviously need some kind of special item herself. Bowser was preoccupied with soaking up the adoration of the Toads, so there was nothing stopping Peach from walking right into his castle and calling a meeting with his personal wizard.

  "I need you to construct a spell for me," Peach said, calmly. Kamek sat across from her. There was a vast, round table of stone between them, with some presumably magical glowing rock in the center. "I am willing to give you anything in return. Name your price."

  Kamek cackled. His face was partially concealed by the shadow of his hooded robe, making him appear more sinister than usual.  "All I request in return for my services is...money."

  "Oh, well, that seems easy enough." The Princess pulled out her handbag, unzipped it, and turned it upside-down. A cascade of golden coins fell from it, clattering onto the stone table until it was completely covered in currency.

  "Is that enough?" she asked. She could see the wizened Koopa's beak bopping up and down in agreement from beneath his hood.

  "So, what do you need?"

  "I'd like you to construct a power-up for me. Something that will transform me into the image of your king, just as he has been turned into mine."

  Kamek nodded, stood up, and waddled over to an ascendant room. Peach could hear small explosions, ethereal whispers, and the hissing of smoke from behind that room's stone door. Kamek emerged from it, carefully carrying the newly conjured item in his hands. It was a shell, almost identical to Bowser's, but smaller, about the size of the average Power Mushroom. Like most of the power-ups that existed within the kingdom, it had a pair of cartoonish black eyes.

  "Thank you," Peach said, taking it from his hands, and carrying it back to her kingdom, taking great care not to activate it prematurely.

  When she returned to her private chambers, she lowered it into her chest. She could already feel the transformation beginning to take place...

  The princess's body needed to expand first, to accommodate all the other changes that would come. The princess became significantly taller and broader. Her shoulders widened. Her arms and thighs became thicker, and dense with coiled muscle. She looked upwards, and saw that the familiar ceiling of her bedroom was getting closer and closer. The process wasn't painful in the slightest. In fact, it was lightly pleasant. A tickling sensation ran throughout her body, like a feather was dancing over her bare skin.

  She had a mirror across from her bed, which she would use to monitor her transformation. She didn't bother looking at it yet, as she already had a pretty good idea of what her appearance would be. She was simply a taller, bulkier version of her usual self. She wasn't similar enough to the Koopa King to steal his thunder, at least, not yet.

  The princess's body changed in size, but her clothing didn't, which was strange. Usually power-ups would cause the user's clothing to grow with them. Perhaps it was Kamek's way of subtly punishing the princess. If that was his intention, it backfired. The princess didn't have any kind of attachment to this particular dress, she had dozens like it sitting in her closet nearby. Plus, it would be much easier to monitor her body's progress without that puffy thing in the way!

  Peach gazed into the mirror, examining her body with a strange sort of admiration. As previously mentioned, it was mostly unchanged, but Peach found that the increase in size and musculature suited her quite nicely. Maybe it was just nice to depart from her dainty regal figure for once.

  Then, other changes began to take place. Her naked breasts swelled, but retained their perkiness. Her nipples grew too, the pale pink tubes standing fully erect and protruding a good six or so inches from the princess's tits. Her hands immediately reached out to grope them. As she brought her hands towards herself to caress her swollen chest, she saw that another transformation had happened without her even realizing it.

  Her hands had grown larger, her fingers thicker, to match her more muscular arms. At the end of each finger, in place of her fingernails was a curved claw. She looked down, and saw that her feet had gone through a similar morph. She kept her gaze towards the floor, as she felt something stirring in her stomach, indicating that would be where her next change would occur.

  She was right. Her stomach began to inflate like a water balloon. It become rounder, and swelled outwards like she was watching a pregnancy progress in fast-forward. She was far larger than any pregnant woman, though, even in proportion to her incredibly large body. Her gut wasn't a smooth sphere either. A six pack of abs were visible, stretched out over her burgeoning tummy, along with a tight, muscular navel. She couldn't help but give her new musclegut a firm pat, while letting out a booming, distinctly Bowser-like laugh.

  Horns sprouted from her head, but that was hardly special, the princessified Bowser had those too. Nor was the change of her hair from blonde to red, although her eyebrows were doing something unexpected. They became thicker and bushier, like the Koopa kings, although they weren't identical. They were thicker, certainly, but not enough that they sacrificed the feminity of Peach's face entirely. The fangs that sprouted from her mouth, and her jaw that pushed outwards into a toothy, slobbering maw also didn't completely abandon the girlishness of Peach's visage, although she was distinctly more monstrous than she was before.

  She leaned over into the mirror, to admire her face in more detail. Perhaps the power-up had given her some of Bowser's arrogance, or perhaps she just adored her new features that much! She still had her wide, radiant blue eyes, and her soft pink cheeks were mostly unchanged, but her forehead was a bit more dense and masculine, and there was that aforementioned monstrous maw, under which a pool of drool began to accumulate. Peach wasn't sure if she'd call herself prettier than she was before, but there was definitely something attractive about her newfound mix of beastliness and femininity. It was certainly a more nuanced kind of beauty than Bowser's, who had simply stolen her face for his own.

  The Princess's smooth, hairless armpits gained twin patches of orange hair. She raised her arms to get a better look, and ended up getting a powerful, but not unpleasant whiff of her own musk.

  She turned around, head over her shoulder to look into the mirror, as she hadn't gotten a good look at her backside yet. Predictably she had impressive back muscles. Her ass had been enhanced. It was tighter than it was before, but larger two. The cheeks were like two pale bowling balls, pushed tightly up together. She couldn't imagine how good they would look in a pair of panties, if they made underwear large enough to fit a monster girl's behind.

  The tingling that pervaded her body throughout her transformation had mostly dissipated. It seemed like she was finally done transforming, and she had to say, she was rather liking the results!

  Or maybe not! The tingling hadn't gone away. Instead, it was gathering together around her crotch. Fuck, it felt good, it was like having a vibrator pressed up against her pussy, but she didn't even have to move a muscle for the stimulation! She knew this meant that something was going to happen to her precious pussy, but whatever she was, she was more than ready to embrace it, especially if the process felt this good!

  Firstly, a dense layer of fiery orange pubes erupted over her neatly groomed cunt. She was afraid that it would obscure the coming transformation, but fortunately, she could see it just fine, and even if she couldn't, the sensation alone would be enough to inform her of what was going on downstairs.

  Her demure labia was no more, growing into a pair of fat, meaty pussy lips that were almost constantly dripping with her own juices. Her clit stood swollen and erect, twitching, practically begging for stimulation. The pent-up princess was happy to provide.

  She reached her hands down, burying her finger in those wet, drooping folds. She was too horny to worry about her claws, but even if she was, her fears would've been unfounded. Her talons were just for show, too dull to cause any real pain. In fact, they increased her pleasure if anything. It felt wonderful to scrape them gently against her turgid clit.

  Normally, when the princess indulged her onanistic desires, she would do it in the most dignified way possible, stopping just short of lighting candles for herself. She would gently stroke her wet pussy, before using a vibrator to gently push herself over the edge into a blissful climax.

   Not so now. The princess was clawing feverishly at her own fat cunt, panting and drooling, aching to cum as soon as she could. Her fat fingers twitched as she clumsily prodded at herself. The fact that she was so wet wasn't helping. Her body's natural lubricant made her fingers slide around, as if the fact that they were too large to maneuver didn't complicate things enough.

   "I just want to cuuuuuuuuuum..." she whined.

   This wasn't working. The princess's monstrous hands were too inelegant to get her off...or perhaps not brutish enough. Peach looked wildly to her left and right, ready and willing to fuck the first thing in her line of sight that looked like it had a remote chance of getting her off.

   That thing happened to be the post of her own bed. With an animal-like ferocity and determination, she mounded her bedpost and began thrusting her wide, muscular hips back and forth against it. A warm jet of steam drifted lazily out of her maw as she let out a sigh of relief. She was confident that this would bring her to the orgasm that she so desperately desired.

   And it did. After a few minutes of thrusting, the princess was gifted with the most massive, obscene orgasm she'd ever experienced. The princess was a squirter, occasionally, but "squirt" was too inadequate a verb for the absolute torrent of femcum that erupted from her pussy like a dam busting open.

   The jet of musky cum splattered against the tile. It soaked her bedpost, and absolutely drenched her sheets. The mattress was probably stained beyond repair, but she couldn't bring herself to care, not even a little. It was nothing compared to the absolute euphoria that was surging through her. She was unable to form words. Her entire body was left twitching and spasming with the aftershocks of her explosive orgasm.

   It took a few minutes to regain her composure. After that, the first thing she did was towel herself off.

   The titanic princess exited her castle, exposing her nude body to the cool, gentle breeze of the Mushroom Kingdom. It was interesting, seeing her familiar kingdom from this perspective. It looked so small from this height. Maybe that's why Bowser found it so easy to destroy without a care.

   The ground shook with her every step, as she marched over to Bowsette. The Toads all took one look at their monstrous monarch and scattered in every direction. Some lingered behind, taking curious glances at their leader's new body from the safety of bushes.

   "So, you think you can just march in here and pretend to be the princess without any consequences?" Peach said in her new, husky voice.

   Bowsette wasn't sure how to reply. She also wasn't sure what to make of the nude, beastly princess who was tall enough to block out the sun.

   "Well, how do you like it?" Peach thrust her body forwards towards Bowsette, who she towered over. She made sure to emphasize the most Bowser-like parts of her new physique. "It's not fun to have your appearance stolen. And you know what else isn't fun? Being kidnapped!"

   Peach scooped up Bowsette in one of her claws, and began to sprint towards her castle.

   "Wow, I can't believe how easy this is!" she said, bounding through her home. Her new form wasn't suited to navigating the castle, and she ended up knocking portraits off walls and toppling furniture on her way to her bedroom.

   She tossed Bowsette onto her bed, turning it into a makeshift cage, with the bars made from shower rods from the adjacent bathroom. Peach gazed upon her captive, letting out a hearty chuckle.

   "You know, this whole kidnapping thing is pretty fun." Peach said.

   "I wasn't trying to offend you by turning myself into this. I just wanted to know what it was like to be adored by the people like you are."

   "Hmmm..." Peach tapped her claw against her chin. "Well, you and me have been doing the same routine for more than thirty years. Maybe we should switch things up for a little bit."

   "That sounds good. But...are you going to put on some clothes?"

   "No."

   "Fine."

[aotopmha]

Dragon Ball Super Chapter 39 Thoughts

So, Dragon Ball is the kind of story that started screwing with my suspension of disbelief fairly early on.

It all started with the King Piccolo stuff, when said villain spit out an egg from a hole in his stomach and it came to another turning point when Shenlong was able to revive Goku to fight the Saiyans.

The former is obvious - Toriyama clearly didn't have any obvious plans how to continue the story and the egg spitting was a last minute choice, if it wasn't, he would've had set this plot point up in advance by showing King Piccolo had another egg stored away somewhere, but that wasn't the case. It's the first really obvious indicator that this story was not planned at all. There were some iffy moments prior to that, but this was the place I kinda got the idea "oh yeah, he's definitely making it up as he goes along."

The latter is a problem because it was basically established that Vegeta and Nappa are so much more powerful than Kami that the dragon has no power to affect them. The problem here is that Goku equally passed Kami in terms of power, especially after his training with King Kai, yet unlike Vegeta and Nappa, he could be effected by the dragon (be revived). It basically said Toriyama could make Shenlong do whatever he wants regardless of previously established rules.

So that shifted my perspective to "whatever happens is fine as long as it does something interesting with the characters and makes a exciting story out of it that keeps me guessing".

Naturally I cared for none of this when I was a kid, but in hindsight I think these aren't very good storytelling choices because of what they signified in terms of how the storytelling would evolve. But they don't bother me so much as to completely not feel the story anymore because I found the results to be interesting enough and especially the second detail can pretty easily slip under the radar considering how there are many different details that are important to consider with the Dragon Balls. Y'know, maybe the dragon only considers some sort of magical potential, maybe the power difference has to be really overwhelming or maybe revival is in a different bracket from actually affecting the target. You can wiggle out of it somewhat.

In light of all the convinient rises of power and powerups in later story arcs (looking at you, Buu), this seems relatively minor and in the most tl;dr way to put it, they didn’t really bother me enough to ruin the enjoyment of the story. Choose a story and if you think hard enough you can find plot holes in it, plotting is just one part of a story and I’d argue even one of the least important parts in some ways.

Anyway, what I want to say with this long preface is that the manga version of Dragon Ball Super finally broke my suspension of disbelief for the story.

Yes, the anime stretches it, too and the whole original series stretches it a whole lot, but the appropriate explanations and assumed narrative reasons still helped to keep the whole thing at bay for me.

So, the big thing in this chapter is obviously Roshi pulling a Ultra Instinct look-a-like technique out of nowhere and even dodging and affecting Jiren in some way. The story doesn't give any explanations of how he learned to do this - nothing like him mentioning that he had been secretly training more now, which you could even potentially tie into Roshi feeling helpless at the end of the Saiyan saga, it just happens.

The idea it wants to convey does tie into some of Roshi teachings of technique trumping power and learning to move insinctively, something I actually really like, but because Ultra Instinct was established to be a technique of the gods, the difference between the levels of training ruins the whole thing. I think it's a stretch that this time around is too big.

But okay, you could still kinda wiggle around it if you really wanted to; I really do think the idea of technique trumping power is great and I give no crap about power levels.

What truly annoys me is how Goku's character is handled here. Roshi chides Goku for forgetting the very basics of his training. This would be alright drama if it had sufficent tension and setup to it. I think the intention is clearly for Roshi to be a reminder to him in a tough situation, to call him back to his senses so to say, but it just doesn't make sense because of Goku's characterization so far.

He learned that technique/smarts is better than power a long time ago and he has been using it constantly since he did - the cool Kamehameha he did with his feet against Piccolo Jr, the strategy against Raditz, his fight with Freeza, all the technique usage against Cell and Buu.

(This makes no sense to fall back to at this point, especially since the Freeza and Vegeta fights did not just ultimately involve power ONLY, either. The fights had plenty of technique usage.)

You could argue that the intention is again, to be a reminder to him, with the implication that he’s been focusing too much on just training his strength up and not much else, but even in the context of Super, his fight with Botamo and Hit were about figuring their abilities out, he easily picked up the Hakai technique and mastered SSJB by appropriate Ki control. Putting him through this lesson again here feels really forced, just some way to get Goku into Ultra Instinct.

Speaking of which, I think Ultra Instinct sucks, too. It feels just like a random powerup with no impact whatsoever. Goku sort of just gets it after thinking for a second. He isn't pushed in any way shape or form and the buildup is minimal.

The point here is supposed to be that he just briefly tapped into it and that it’s above all a technique, not a powerup, but even a new technique should have at least some impact or special framing when it's first used. The hints should be exciting and make people curious, but I feel like this achieved none of that.

Next, backtracking a little, I feel like Gohan vs Kefla isn’t all that good of a fight.

Firstly, Gohan's power jump, even with his established potential seems really nonsensical. A Potara fusion is established to be incredibly powerful, something far above unfused characters and Kale, only one part of the fusion, faced a Super Saiyan Blue in the previous chapters. The only hint we have of training for Gohan is him training by himself and training a little bit with Piccolo. The former is such a footnote it appears in a extra mini chapter.

Again, I can look past the wierd power stuff (power levels have been nonsense for a long time if you think about them even a little bit), but Gohan has had very minimal characterization, his training has had no buildup whatsoever and this fight itself is barely a few pages long on it's own. There is no impact to any of this whatsoever, and I think it’s a pretty good example of the problem with telling more, rather than actually showing.

In addition to that, while I like Gohan relying on his "human strength" with the Ultimate ability, he still does it with the same arrogant shtick as in the Buu arc, something I don't really care about unless it's done to build a character arc, something the manga hasn't really done.

The erasure of U6 is also weightless despite having the side characters we most care about. Like most stuff in this chapter, it just happens.

I initially also didn't really like how Kefla and Beerus were handled and I still don't for different reasons now, but they are at least consistent in terms of their portrayal.

Caulifla was willing to give up pretty easily in the manga when facing Cabba, which is where Kefla giving up came from.

Beerus doesn't have as much of his serious side at display in the manga - he doesn’t have all that many moments of intimidation or thoughfulness. So, they are consistent, but not all that interesting characters to me.

This is one of my least favorite manga chapters in recent memory among all the stuff I follow, which is why I had to make a longer post picking it apart.

I think it has a few interesting ideas going for it, but it doesn't execute anything it sets out to do right to me.

Nothing stews or builds, characterization isn't interesting and my suspension of disbelief is gone. Maybe some explanations can and will be given in hindsight in the next chapter, but I feel like how everything is executed, it wouldn't help much.

On the other hand, I did pick up the manga again. Not for good reasons, but I did and I am genuinely curious to where this goes as the increasingly nonsensical mess it is at this point.

[mahou-furbies]

Who is your least favorite Cure?

Ohh now this is a topic I love, but make a conscious effort to edit out of my posts since I figure long time followers get tired of me bitching about the same character for the nth time. But when prompted I'm always ready to tell about my dislike towards Aida Mana (Cure Heart) from Doki Doki Precure.

(The following contains spoilers for Doki Doki Precure)

I avoid using the term Mary Sure since nowadays it can mean just "this (female) character I don't like once got some focus in the story" but this is one of the cases where I find it very applicable. I can see that the writers maybe thought that since the magical girl heroine is usually the bumbling dumbass, this time they'd do something different and make her super competent instead, but they go so overboard in making her the centre of the universe that it's ridiculous.

Actually I'll just copypaste the Mana paragraphs from my DokiDoki review from 2017 since my opinions remain unchanged:

Mana would be very irritating on her own alone: she has practically no character development, doesn’t need to learn anything and hardly ever has any moments of weakness, because she’s amazing and always ultimately correct from the very start. They were trying to push a sort of Memetic Badass character on her, with her smug arrogant face regularly filling the screen when she boasts how her indomitable spirit remains strong despite all adversity, but that fell completely flat on me since I didn’t find her to have any charisma to back it up.

But what’s worse is how she relates to the other charaters. Two of her friends also become Precure, and their personal flashbacks are about their relationship with her. Episodes that are about some other characters’ development usually end with Mana finishing the bad guy anyway, and often the development is about what they’ve learned from Mana. Multiple episodes have a plot about how other characters try to manage without her help for once [i.e. when she isn’t around the plot is about everyone being like “how do we cope without Mana’s greatness!?”]. Regina flat out says that she only wants to befriend Mana [out of all the Cures] because the other girls are uninteresting. The other Precure’s powerup is them giving their power to Mana, or stalling the enemy so that Mana can finish it. At their darkest hour characters shout specifically Mana for help and in the final battle we get lines about Mana being the only hope even when the other girls aren’t out of commission yet. Specifically Mana is compared to the legendary Precure from the past. And then there’s the bad guy’s final attempt to corrupt Mana’s heart to selfishness, with which she needs no help from anyone else because unlike every other character shown she’s so awesome and selfless that’s she’s simply immune to the corruption.

In the end even the selfishness theme falls apart when Mana is supposedly presented as the eternally selfless antithesis, but it’s hard to buy when as far as I’m concerned she had been one of the most selfish and inconsiderate characters in the show, but the story just brushed that under the rug and had her face little to no repercussions about it. And on a meta level the writing constantly made her the centre of attention, leaving everyone else in the background.

Mind you while Mana is one of my least favourite anime characters of all time, I still get enjoyment out of her. Like there are characters that just thinking about them puts me in a bad mood, while in Mana’s case it’s more like finding it entertaining how ridiculously awful she is. And I do try to keep in mind that I probably shouldn’t have been watching Doki Doki Precure in the first place since I knew from the start that it was going to have a protagonist I would dislike.

[insanescriptist]

If you did a crossover between KHR and Fairy Tail, what characters would you involve in the crossover and which way would it go (Fairy Tail in KHR-Verse or KHR in Fairy Tail-verse)? What possibly pairing would emerge and most importants what magic would you impart upon the KHR characters?

Hmmm…. well the trend is more about putting the KHR people in FT, which essentially tends to make the Vongola another guild or have the KHR people as part of FT.

Which is kinda stale. Especially since most of them don’t diverge from FT-plotline, even if they involve an extra character. Partly because FT fails to elaborate on most of their characters characters; Juvia got reduced to Grey’s psycho stalker and not a woman in charge of her own happiness. Basically everything past the seven year time skip is not as good as it could have been.

Especially towards the end! You can see how they story line went a lot more wronky towards the end. Oda’s twenty-month pregnancy with Ace stretched belief but Erza’s dragon mom carried Erza for centuries! Never mind how bullshit all those hyped Spriggan 12 were and how things like coherency stopped mattering!

Zeref’s death was good writing; Curse of Contradictions and all that. Was poetic and had a sense of closure. We didn’t need the ‘look, the reincarnations that look and behave pretty much the same have met and its tru wuv!’ shit at the end.

Acnologia’s defeat/death was nothing but asspull and dues ex machina in a plot device tossed in last minute. Plus his character was stupidly, stupidly flat. Like during the Tenrou Arc when he showed up -due to Zeref supposedly- after Gildarts had managed to get away alive I was hoping for backstory and complex motivations. Guess what got shafted in favor of megalomania and destroy everything?

Basically while the seven year time skip helped to resolve Lucy’s feelings to her father in her narration… whatever happened to the side-characters like Lyon? Grey comes back and is able to match the guy who’s had seven-years to train and practice magic in? Basically what happened in those seven years is that outside the FT-guild, no one grew in skill or prowess unless needed for plot. Jura, the O-something Seis… about the only except is maybe Romeo but he got older and is hinted at being Wendy’s eventual romance in the shonen ‘first love is true love’ way and I’ll consider that plot.

Yeah, FT started going off the rails then with bullshit after the ordeal at Tenrou Island. Never mind the lack of world-building, inconsistent details and lack of government; sure you have royalty, nobility and the magic council that gets destroyed like three times. Which the Rune Knights obey and presumably police the mage population. Like we know there are laws but it seems like they’re more suggestions? See the Duke guy in the early chapters, all but kidnapping the author for years?

I’m also still kinda pissed that the few times they’ve ventured out of Fiore, they never were able to explore other lands -Sun Village, those islands near Alveraz that got miniturized- unless it was part of a movie in which Magnolia gets destroyed for the Nth time for some reason. So you really can’t base a character anyway but Fiore. Because we Know Nothing.

Basically if you’re going to do something original in FT you’re going to have to do Massive Amounts of WorldBuilding because you can’t just superimpose our history and all our world details on it. Or take the easy way out, focus on characters and make it a romance or something.

Now then, put an FT character in KHR and you’re going to have uh, problems. Because most of the FT characters run wild and are used to a weak government and getting light penalties for their crimes. Unless you belong to a Dark Guild, in which case they leave you to rot in jail until you break out.

So you’d want to put in someone smart and can blend. As great as Grey is undercover -see Avatar Arc- the stripping would get him arrested. Because other characters like Natsu and Erza… they’d make a splash, cause a wreck and then get quietly assassinated by poison. Natsu might survive the poison due to shonen powerups and actually being a demon but that’s not a sure bet.

Honestly, for characters of FT that wouldn’t get targeted/killed inside a week by being stupidly headstrong or attracting the wrong sort of attention: Rouge, Gajeel, Cobra, Levy, Cana, Freed, Evergreen, Lyon, Minerva…

People that have a brain and no habit of being a public nuisance. Sure how they fight would gain notice but these characters are smart enough to know that fighting isn’t going to solve everything and to know when things are over their heads and need to go to ground and how.

Because a terrible author bends the rules of reality so their characters can do the impossible. A great author makes their character bend/change the rules to achieve the impossible.

Plus I’m probably PMS-ing and so want to make characters hurt and suffer so I’d drop them into the Estraneo labs. Because that’s a solid first impression of be cautious and consequence that means you need to keep your wits because Look At What Has Happened Here. With the creeping realization of ‘of fuck, magic is a myth here’ and ‘any people that can use a form of it belong to Dark Guilds.’ Alongside the ever popular, ‘We’re not longer in Magnolia, how do we get home?’

But ASSUMING Izzy would right typical ‘reincarnates or oops KHR character into FT and learns magic’ most of them would get fire magic as a primary/basic sort of thing. But they’d all be Caster-type instead of Holder-type.

Tsuna would probably pursue Fire and some sort of Flight magic, because he’d like that. Gokudera would learn explosion magic because that’s Gokudera. Yamamoto would diversify by learning some water magic, sword magic and probably a bit of Requip and illusion. Ryohei would learn some sort of strength magic, possibly even Titan because for all that Ryohei’s Sun Flames can heal you have to know what you’re doing to heal properly. Lambo of course gets to get electricity which he learns to shape and use for defense. Mukuro’s going to specialize in illusion and also go grab-bag. Kyoya would go for self-enhancement magic and pick up telepathy if only to relay orders to his minions because it’s not Kyoya if he doesn’t pick up minions.

The Varia and others would pretty much follow the same them in that it suits their character and inclinations and if smart/practical enough, covers for their own weaknesses. Like I could see the Varia learning various types of runes for practical reasons like singling their target and telepathy so they can communicate and coordinate.

Because as Jellal and others prove, it’s possible to use and learn other types of magic in battle.

But Izzy really wants to see Enma, reincarnated as the son of Gildarts and one of his one-night stands and has Crash and Gravity Magic. Oh and he tells Gildarts that as soon as he sees him. Which makes him Cana’s younger half-brother, by at least six or so years so Enma’s pretty much of age with the main-cast ie Lucy, if a little younger. But based on experience fighting from a past life and training in this one… yeah, he’s probably S-class and made it younger than Erza did. Which is also a point of conflict with his half-sister, he didn’t know he had. Although I suspect she told him after her third or fourth failed attempt at becoming S-class. By this point however, Gildarts has been long gone since FT has three young S-class mages and Enma makes number four; Mystogan, whenever he joins would make number five.

Pairing? Enma probably settling down after dating a few others casually with hmm… not Lucy for all that there might be a crush, Erza is practically sister-territory after remember Adel, Mira is cute but I don’t think they’d have much chemistry, Wendy is twelve/thirteen-ish at the end of FT… and for all  hate how ham-fisted the Gajeel/Levy pairing is in the manga, I’ve seen enough fan comics to adore it for.

Oh and I’d like to have him avoid getting stuck on Tenrou for seven years, so can someone say Fourth Master Enma? Because I can. And it would be original.

[speedsies]

so to celebrate the new art blog, here’s a set of OCs from a Power Rangers team based around Fruits and RPG Classes called Power Rangers: Ripe Knights. Character bios are under the cut (in a W order from left to right) if you wanna know more about them, otherwise enjoy !!

Full Name: Alexandra "Lexa" Palmer Age: 20 Occupation: University Student Personality: Kind, Open, Assertive Class/Trainer: Mage/Ser Péche Lexa was born and raised in [TOWN NAME], spending all her life there, aside from family vacations and such. She is the youngest of four, as well as the only girl in her family, with two fathers and three older brothers. As a child, Lexa was given all the encouragement she could want or need, though more than she'd grow to want. She loves her Dads, but they can be a bit extra sometimes. Lexa was the first to grab a Basket Buckle from the injured Knights and stand up to the invading forces of Roh'ten, using Ser Péche's powers of the Peach to become the Pink Ranger. Though her spells didn't always work out initially, she eventually grows into a capable and powerful Mage. Through her dedication to training and the team, she is the first to unlock her Knight Mode, and become a powerhouse of magical abilities. Lexa knows of Brianna's feelings for her (she is painfully aware of how people are when they like someone, having grown up in a household full of boys who were Very Bad at hiding crushes (this includes her Dads)). She reciprocates them, but wants to let Brianna make the first move. The waiting is painful, and she is nearing her breaking point. __________________________________ Full Name: Milo Cruz Age: 20 Occupation: Smoothie Bar Employee Personality: Relaxed, Confident, Thoughtful Class/Trainer: Rogue/Ser Lim Milo was raised from birth by their single mother, Gert Cruz, and grew up in the loft above her Smoothie Bar, eventually working there as they got older. They immediately hit it off with their cousin, Brianna, and did whatever they could to help her settle in as best she could. She was the first person they came out as non-binary to, their mother being the second (taking a lot of encouragement from Brianna). 

As Milo grew up and became more aware of things, they began to become sort of advice-giver, filling the Bartender archetype nicely (though obviously with smoothies instead of cocktails). Though, with this came an attitude of "I can handle other people's situations pretty easily, therefore I can handle mine on my own even easier". This lead to them very much bottling a lot of stuff up. They obtain Knight Mode by finally reaching out to others for help, stepping up to be their cousin's second-in-command.

Milo has a lot of trouble with attraction-based stuff and decided a while ago to take an "it is what it is" approach. Hoshi’s approaches though... __________________________________  Full Name: Brianna Landry (born Princess Hera of Ry'hiip) Age: 20 Occupation: Smoothie Bar Employee/Heir to the Kingdom of Ry’hiip Personality: Brave, Protective, Headstrong Class/Trainer: Warrior/None (later Queen Cheri’s spirit) Seperated from her birth parents as an infant, Brianna was raised in a foster home until she was 14, when she moved to [TOWN NAME] for High School. While there, she lived with her Aunt Gert and cousin, Milo. Gert owned the local Smoothie Bar, which Brianna and Milo were allowed to work at on weekends, eventually working there full-time upon Graduation from High School. On top of Smoothie Serving, Brianna also does Mechanics in her spare time, having been building her own motorcycle since for a year prior to the events of PR:RK. Shortly after her 20th birthday, she and her friends are met by three strangers who claim to be Knights from another dimension, and that she is the heir and destined protector of the formerly ruling kingdom there. Though wary and unsure initially, she is able to step up and become the Red Ranger when her friends are put in danger (mostly to bale them out because they were the ones that took the magic belts and became Power Rangers to begin with). It took Brianna a bit longer than the others to attain Knight Mode, though she eventually does unlock it when she realises that the Strength she needs to lead is not physical. She has had feelings for Lexa for several years now, but has never spoken up about it for many reasons, the latest of which being that they're Power Rangers and need to focus on saving the world before dating. Though, she plans to confess once the Earth and Ry'hiip are safe. __________________________________ Full Name: Prince Hoshi Hikari of Su’tarr Age: 20 Occupation: Smoothie Bar Employee/Heir to the Kingdom of Su’tarr Personality: Flirtatious, Naive, Absent-Minded Class/Trainer: Cleric/Ser Conste (formerly) Hoshi was very much sheltered from the Roh’ten ruled lands, given that the Queens of Su’tarr had erected a magical shield around their Kingdom to protect from the malevolent forces. He grew up as an idealist, dreaming of new ways to ensure that the Kingdom continued to prosper. Though, he didn’t find out just how fruitless his plans would be until just after his 18th birthday, when Roh’ten managed to pierce the Star Shield and take his mothers captive. He escaped with the help of his trainer, Ser Conste, who gifted him his birthright of the Orion Star Belt, his personal morpher. With this, Hoshi wandered the land for two years, before utilizing Roh’ten’s own gateway to Earth to escape.

When he first arrived in town (and this dimension), he introduced himself as Brianna's betrothed, claiming their parents had arranged their marriage since birth to unite the two Kingdoms; a fact confirmed by Ser Péche. Once he officially joined the team, Brianna took him aside and explained "Dude, I'm gay" to which he immediately replied "Thank the gods, me too". Eventually, Hoshi gains access to a powerup of his own, though this form involves fusing his powers with one of his teammates, allowing them a temporary boost into Royal Mode. He works in the smoothie bar alongside Milo and Brianna, and is an insatiable flirt with any customers he finds even slightly attractive. __________________________________ Full Name: Austin Jules McKay Age: 21 Occupation: Unemployed Personality: One Track Minded, Humourous, Determined Class/Trainer: Ranger/Ser Lem Austin had a less than ideal childhood, his family moved around a lot, and he was always branded as a troublemaker anywhere he went due to his older brother's reputation as an incarcerated criminal. Eventually, he started acting like everyone expected him to, acting out without thinking and no regard for consequences. This has gotten him into trouble before, and may well again. He dropped out of High School because of these troubles, and didn’t meet up with his future teammates until less than a month before the team received their powers. Though since becoming a Power Ranger, he has tried to put right what he made wrong in whatever way he can. Reconciling with his Mother is part of what lead him to unlock Knight Mode, the other part being helping a group of kids not make the same mistakes he did, and gain more confidence in himself to do what's right. He does, however, still get into some strife, but nothing as serious as he used to. Eventually, he starts casually flirting with a barista downtown, whether it goes anywhere is anyone's guess.

[tumblunni]

OKAY SO THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG

Man it REALLY sucks that the only place you can’t take screenshots is in the cutscenes. SO MUCH GODDAMN PLOT HAPPENED!! I’m gonna try and sum it up! basically ORESHIKA GOT REAL

* Okay so to recap what’s happened before: we’re a magic cursed clan of zombie doods who need to defeat Abe No Senmei to break the curse. We can each only live for two years, so the game is built on hundreds of generations of this family marching into death over and over again until eventually some great great grandkid might get a normal life back. But oddly enough it isn’t actually as super dark as expected, cos you dont really have any personality or bonding scenes with the family members. I kinda stopped getting very upset after the first three generations, now theyve just become a bunch of numbers that i have to selectively breed to make a better next generation. Seriously its been OVER 150 CHARACTERS SO FAR and I’’m only around 2/3rds through the game! And like the plot also seemed super simple and it didn’t feel like anything was gonna happen to anyone outside of the backstory?? I DIDNT EXPECT IT TO GET SO REAL

* Abe No Seimei is a cool smarmy ass jerk villain with a neat design and a weird ancient japanese hand puppet. like this really funky cool wooden mask thing with a giant wig that I legit thought was an actual demon attatched to his arm until it started having clickitty clack face animations. I got REALLY UNUSUALLY SAD ABOUT THAT! Cos seriously abe no seimei is just.. weirdly.. nice...? He keeps telling you how to defeat him, he waits to do all his evil plots when you’re there to watch him, he literally sends you letters to come to his grand feasts celebrating each evil plan. And its so fuckin mysterious and getting to know him is really the only thing driving the plot forwards, cos none of your characters have actual voices. And like.. he’s this immortal guy who seems like he wants to die, and he’s deliberately playing the villain so you guys will be motivated enough to find out a way to do it. And like HE HAS ONLY ONE FRIEND and its HIMSELF DOING A STUPID PUPPET PAL VOICE. i’m really abnormally upset that onigashira isn’t really alive! His cute comedy sidekick doesnt exist! MR SERIOUS VILLAINMAN IS DOING THAT VOICE ALL ALONE IN HIS STUPID SAD HOUSE why do i want to hug this horrible jerkface

* Okay but then the other mystery we have is the character Nueko, who’s a weird demigod of some sort who can reincarnate in human form. She’s the one who gave us our magic zombie powers in the first place, she’s got the power to DIE HORRIBLY REPEATEDLY AND FEED PEOPLE HER BLOOD in order to cure them of deadly diseases and bring them back to life and stuff. And this actually becomes a gameplay thing! You can repeatedly bring her back as a new human reincarnation, and then her special skills let her shield allies from damage at the cost of basically going poof back to the heavens again. Its a really useful relief from the punishing permadeath! While not being overpowered cos she can only save one person per dungeoncrawl, and you cant reincarnate her again for a while afterwards. Anyway she keeps popping up every now and again like ‘hey guys i slept off that last death’ and being a super helpful badass team mom and such. But then THE PLOT STARTS HAPPENING EVERYWHERE Cos it turns out she’s got ~magical anime amnesia~ and doesnt understand her demigodness any better than we do. But wtf why does this evil sorcerer man keep implying he knows some secret about her...?

* THE PLOT TWIST SHE’S HIS MOM HIS MOM and seriously I LOVE ONIGASHIRA SO MUCH its like Nueko: What did you say?! Onigashira: *literally looks out the fourth wall* Did you hear it, kids? He totally said “waaaah, mummy, I missed you so much”, right! Literal actual player prompt: Yes/No Bunni, of course: SLAM THAT YES And oh god its just so extra funny cos Seimei actually doesnt even deny it?? He cracks a semi genuine smile and just looks embarassed, its so weird cos its like the only time he hasnt been all smug grumpy asshole. And I mean if it is indeed true that Onigashira is just a puppet, then the whole thing was his genuine feelings from the start.. ... though also DOES THAT MEAN SEIMEI CAN SEE THROUGH THE FOURTH WALL its weird how thats MORE SCARY than the literal demon doing it! like i feel like the game wants me to be scared of onigashira but he’s just SO CUTE AND FUNNY and I really dont want him to be imaginary okay. can we adopt him after we defeat seimei :(

* BUT ANYWAY UMM Yeah, Nueko is actually his mum despite looking younger than him! He kinda inherited her reincarnation power in a broken way, cos he’s half human. Instead of experiencing multiple lives whenever he chooses it, and getting to nap in the clouds in between, instead he just CANNOT DIE NO MATTER HOW MUCH PUNISHMENT HE TAKES. Seriously he introduced himself by setting himself on fire, burning to a crisp and then growing back his skin right in front of us, just to prove it! I can honestly relate to this guy going mad if he’s had to put up with this super crappy immortality that he never even asked for. And also its gotta sting to see that his own mum gets to stay more youthful looking, lol. i mean he’s pretty bishie too right now, but I’m assuming he’d actually continue to age and thats gotta suck!

* Oh and there’s this really cool element that all the bosses that Seimei summons to figth you become new powerups for Nueko! Its an early clue about their connection- at first she’s like WTF WHY IS THIS HAPPENING, but then it turns out these bosses actually originally were her familiars and she left them to look after her son. So they’re still loyal to her original command until she defeats them in battle. Also the WAY these familiars get used is EXTRA SUPER COOL! They’re sealed in magic tattoos all over her body, so she gets more sweet ink every time you reach a storyline milestone. And then she doesn’t just summon them or just boost her stats, she friggin GROWS MASSIVE MONSTER ARMS ALL OVER THE SHOP! Like I was so worried when her design looked all fanservicey at first, but then she’s never degraded in any way and she gets this super disservice power lol. I can’t imagine any smut fanfiction with her! “Yes hunny i will take off my bra and then BRING OUT THE CRAB ARMS” She grows fuckin CRAB ARMS! And snake heads for legs! She can shoot different demons out of all of her limbs and grow giant horns and wing hair and breathe fire and holy fuckin shit yo. And she’s really fuckin terrifyingly stoic badass even before she unlocks her powers! She could probably crush your head in her palm and not even need the crab. basically I Love Strong Mom

* Oh and apparantly Nueko’s husband was another god who got erased from history? Literally nobody is able to say his name, it comes out as garbled scribbled out text. And at the moment its ambiguous what happened, but it might be possible that he was actually sniped out by his fellow gods for being TOO GOOD. Like, he wanted to make peace with demons and give a bigger share fo divine power to humans, and everyone else was all ‘BUT THE STATUS QUO’ and stabbed him in the back. possibly? Maybe? ITS ALL SO MYSTERY!!

* so ANYWAY ANYWAY a required other thing for explaining the EMOTIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE MOMENT is that there’s this duo of minor helpful npcs i never mentioned before, cos i honestly didnt think they were gonna be important there’s this justice-powered cute princess who’s determined to do political stuffs to clear your clan’s name and let you back into your former land, though all you really see of it is that she makes a few sentences of progress every time you get back from a story dungeon. And then there’s her grumpy ass bodyguard who’s kinda your rival? he’s always hating on you while she always supports you, and its like he’s jealous cos he has a crush on her and doesnt want commoners talking to his precious princes. And blablabla ‘i am the only one strong enough to protect her GRARR i need to get stronger how did you defeat me’ yadda yadda. Except you dont even get to fight him, again its just like one sentence every story dungeon where he says he was totally gonna rescue the magical artifact you beat him to. Even tho he doesnt do it no matter how many years pass, lol So yeah we like.. didnt really even know them very well, but also they felt like this comforting constant that would never leave? GuesS WHAT THE EMOTIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE BIT WAS

* Okay so HEY SEIMEI KIDNPPED PRINCESS LADY HAHA JUST AN ORDINARY DAMSEL IN DISTRESS PLOT we’re TOTALLY gonna successfully get her back, this is probably just filler... HA... HA... HA...

* The rollercoaster of emotions begins! Hey onigashira might actually really be alive! Apparantly this puppet mask is haunted, or something? like onigashira is the name of a whole set of masks that give you super power if you wear them, but turn you beserker loopy demon man. Though they dont seem to be sentient or anything and also like nobody else seems to be able to wear them without losing their humanity?? So like did seimei escape the curse by wearing it as a hand puppet instead? or is the puppet not connected to the masks at all? Or is it gonna be something lame like seimei was never in control of his actions and the puppet is sentient and is the real baddie? COS I LIKE HIM BEING THE CUTE COMIC RELIEF YO Oh, wait, like.. maybe its something like seimei is possessed by the mask but the mask isnt really alive and like.. doing ventriloquism is just his random symptom of this ambiguously defined madness? Like instead of going beserker it made him ‘give in to his instincts’ in a different way, so he stays mostly in control but involuntarily expresses his true hidden feelings through the puppet. Hence why it is the best and cutest goofball who encourages him to be honest and hug his mom. OR JUST I DUNNO I JUST KNOW I HAVE MY FAITH SLIGHTLY RESTORED THAT CUTE SIDEKICK MIGHT BE REAL AND I CAN ADOPT HIM

* but hey guess what happened right after that happy moment of wow cool yay in the middle of me being like ‘yay seimei is so cool yay onigashira is actually gonna play a bigger plot role than just a sidekick and may actually be his own separate character’ SUDDENLY THEY KILL THE SAMURAI And like OHHH NO they dont even JUST kill the samurai I was still thinking the moment was cool!! Seimei throws a second mask on him and curses him to fight the party and i was just like WOW YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD and WHAT A COOL BOSS FIGHT CONCEPT And like I was proud of myself for sweeping the fight super quickly?? I just thought he’d be fine once we got the mask off??? BUT NO HE’S FUCKIN DEAD WE COULDNT UNDO THE CURSE WE JUST HAD TO KILL HIM AND THEY SHOW HIS VERY GRAPHICALLY BLOODIED CORPSE and like his whole plotline got cut off with no resolution?? he only existed to die here?? THE WRITERS NEVER HAD ANY INTENTION OF LETTING HIM CONFESS HIS PRINCESS LOVE. AND HE ALSO NEVER MADE UP WITH US AND LEARNED FROM HIS RIVAL PLOTS he just died really sadly and then like FOR THE SECOND TIME ONLY IN THE ENTIRE GAME we had an actual dialogue choice to decide the personality of our hero first time: lol onigashira mommy jokes second time: pick one of three ways to try and soften the blow as you tell the rescued princess that her childhood friend and crush just died horribly :(

* :(

* the one I picked was telling her he died saving her, not that he was the one being mind controlled to threaten her. :(

* I DIDNT EVEN LIKE YOU GRUMPY DUDE BUT YOU DESERVED BETTER THAN THAAAAAT

* look can i just headcanon that he became a guardian spirit like my characters can do if they get that rare random event. or like.. geez.. why couldnt nueko use her ressurection powers on him if she could do it for us?? they should have at least had a line of dialogue saying something like ‘it cant be done cos his soul was corrupted by the demon power’ or something...

* MAY YOU RESOLVE YOUR DAMN PLOTLINE IN THE AFTERLIFE, GRUMP FRIEND

* also seimei I am fuckin pissed. you have been promoted from trash boss who i kinda wanna give a hug to the same thing but without the hug now. you dont even deserve your sweet sidekick! IM TAKING YOUR DAMN PUPPET PAL, SHITTY POOP MAN i fuckin SWEAR if this game doesnt end with me ripping that puppet out of his hands i am gonna throttle a bitch

* ALSO I FUCKIN SWEAR IF THEY PULL A ‘PUPPET PAL WAS THE REAL VILLAIN AND SEIMEI WAS BRAINWASHED’ I AM GONNA DOUBLE CHOKE YA inm gonna fuckin build my own puppet with animatronic stranglin’ hands