BBB6, another Brawl down, and who knows how many left to go! Hopefully you all enjoyed the crazy clash and downright bash, and surprisingly, this year, it went off with less of a hitch than most! Even with the Bachelor Party of my bro taking away July 2nd and work stealing a few nights, the Brawl and all its was still finished the night before the big day! Miraculous! Hopefully this is a good sign for the future.
66 entrants came, and we had quite an amazing selection this year! It's no secret some years we get filler as people can't round out their casts, but this year we got all kinds of stuff flowing in from all directions! Old characters I've always wanted to enter, characters I thought I had missed my chance for last year, new characters from this year, characters making their first showing here before they joined RP, and my usual sister entries. The amazing thing about the Brawl is its a showcase of everything everyone has brought to RP past, present, and future, and it's just me smashing them together until they all die in one glorious celebration of everyone who entered.
We'll of course discuss each entrant individually later down the line, but let's move in first and discuss some of the Brawl structure and planning.
ENTRANTS, VOTING, ARENA, ROULETTES AND MORE!
The BBB6, more than most BBBs at least, had a lot of things about it planned last year and swimming around in my head as they tried to take hold. Jisadjok being host was planned since at least the end of last year (read my final srspost to see the hints at it!) but for a long time it was considered that Jisadjok and the Borax Kid would run double hosting duties! Borax Kid would be the more traditional guy since he ran last year's Brawl, responsible for admitting the losing lotto's entrant behind Jisadjok's back and bickering over other things to keep Jisadjok's ambition in check. It seemed an unnecessary complication though the more I thought on it; originally Jisadjok and Borax Kid would have been the one discussing the arena destruction near the end and revealing the reason the Alruthine didn't care his casino was getting wrecked. While JRM in the Brawl just laughed and praised the scamming of the insurance company, Borax Kid would've been angry about it, and we would have had a brief host vs. host battle! Obviously this was removed to prevent me from making the Brawl a stage for my own characters to dance on.
Jisadjok getting upgraded to host (I know host wasn't mentioned in the header, but these are almost always stream of consciousness so bear with me) is partly thanks to Ruby Chao asking if Jisadjok might be back next year for a plot that turned out to be the battle against Saul in the Vulture's Roost. It began to make me think on the Brawl for the next year, and bringing back Borax wasn't as interesting as getting in someone new. It also came pre-packed with a simple arena idea, although exactly how the Silver Dollar would hold the Brawl was prone to many changes.
It was almost a three-ring arena that spread out sort of like a stadium's stands, with a top roof layer, middle normal layer, and bottom dark cavernous kind of area, although the central fountain was always a given. Roof layer might've had those gardens people expected, but in the end I decided to go for a more simplistic arena simply because describing the more ambitious ideas seemed too difficult without a picture. Besides, I already knew after the great response to the battle in the boat of last year that going down into the Silver Dollar had to happen, and about 1/3 of the Brawl probably took place there in the end. I spared the audience quite a bit this year compared to most, even having only the arena cave-in rather than having the stands on their struts fall down with them. Trying to avert usual things of course but unlike some years the stands didn't scream to be killed this year, and instead I did small jokes like Sam appearing in them so they weren't completely ignored.
I didn't use the city around much except for the Gamera battle, probably just because inspiration didn't take me that direction. Whitey didn't really do much either except make sure Ceneric doesn't stay out of the arena. A lot of small things that aren't noticeable but I think of while working, but the last thing I want to do is force something in where it doesn't work.
Jukebox Jaw! You lovely little man/jukebox thing! I almost forgot you because of the pressure to post the opening entrant post! With Mac Tonight SUPPOSEDLY not coming back, I dusted off this old idea and began to put him to use. Jukebox Jaw has been in the wings for a while, almost appearing I think as far back as BBB4 where I considered Marvin the Martian as a Mystery Fiter. The Looney Tunes ties between them would be referenced obliquely in the pre-fite show as some sort of hint to the Mystery Fiter's identity, but Marvin the Martian, while being okay battle-wise, doesn't have the FEEL of a Mystery Fiter and was scrapped entirely as a candidate at some point. Plus we already had the Monstars, and I try to avoid drawing from the same well with the Mystery Fiters. Jukebox himself was simple: a new musical guy who could do Mac's theme without Mac being present, so after being champion and returning last year to die for the last time, Mac moved aside to let Jukebox in... before punching him out! I was a bit surprised people seemed to like JJ a bit and thought JRM was being cold... I mean, I was trying to JRM to be cold and harsh with him, but I thought he might mirror people's sentiments a bit more than proved to be true. But even though I began to hesitate as people seemed to like Jukebox a bit, I still went through with Mac reappearing, and since no one was horrified by it, I guess they trusted me not to kill Mac again. He was basically there to prove he's free and sign-off on his long history with us, hence why the final Brawl pic pre-epilogue is just him happily waving.
I did right Jukebox rather nice and unassuming compared to the intention of the Duck Twacy cartoon he came from where he was a feared criminal, but why not right? I could have made him an easy victim for someone to kill, but he really didn't seem too bad to me, and his nonsense concept made him perfect for Golden Freddy to do an excellent dick yiffing on. Jukebox was never meant to be much of a fiter either, hence barely putting up a fite against Freddy. Who knows how JJ is doing after that!
The entrant and voting styles were gonna be weird for sure this year. Last year we were on a boat, and we did the lotto, which aren't really very Vegas. I mean, lotto involves luck, and the boat was a gambling vessel, but I had ignored the city entirely. This year I made sure we were on a casino, Gooper's idea for the neon faces was a beautiful serendipitous connection, and most of all... I made a step that will probably be hard to come back from! In my excitement to do the roulette I gave people two lottos, and for the Gorillion slot three more votes, which will make it strange if I don't give at least the same amount next year, but I had to do evoke Vegas before we left it! Originally the idea was we'd have the red and black roulette for both voting and entrants, but I also forgot I gave so many votes last year, and I think I was going to give 7 this year initially until it was pointed out to me that last year already had that many. Around that time I realized roulette for the gorillion wasn't as cool and/or special, so I came up with the slots idea instead. Shame I couldn't work card games in really or else we'd have the Vegas trifecta! Needless to say I was happy to see the Betting Corner briefly back as it also tapped into that Vegas goodness!
I was slightly worried about opening the floodgates like I did, but since BK, Hoodoo, and other hopeful entrants never showed, it proved to be far less of an issue than expected. 66 entrants worked fine and I probably could've handled more, but I'm glad for the batch we got and it was just a fair bit larger than last year so I didn't freak out or anything. The reason only one losing lotto was admitted was to try and give me wiggle room in case we got tons of entries, but at the same time I just worried about the winning one in general! It seemed like the red lotto was full of more people's first choices if they were given a fourth entry, which kind of suggests it's getting a bit tight, but we still missed some big characters I may never get the chance to use again like Komachi or Josuke. I think one reason the Black Lotto felt weaker was because of Chunky Kong, but only one guy got rescued from it, and although Stan Ligature was certainly not who I expected, he also feels like someone who I might've not gotten entering in the future. Needless to say we'll see some Black Lotto names when I get to wishlist time! I hesitated a bit again on how many to pull in as we neared that magic number 64, but we were two over the edge and since I didn't know how well my schedule would be for Brawl work, I only brought in one Black Lotto.
I should say I was also worried about the roulette in general, fearing people might think it was dumb or not like it. I guess the idea of another entrant saved that from happening. I was also somewhat surprised how the work didn't seem as overwhelming considering my schedule. CKR dragged her feet some but I was able to do some Brawl art at work (and usually it looked better for it, perhaps because I took my time more as it wasn't crunch time yet) and I think we've got some of our best brawl art yet!
SECRETS, MYSTERIES, AND MOTHS!
I suppose my choice in subtitle means I should lead with Secret Fiter stuff, so let's discuss Rash. I'm going to see a doctor about it soon if it doesn't clear up.
Now lets discuss the BATTLETOAD Rash. After playing Rare Replay with Ven a while back, I have to say Rash was an excellent thing for the Secret Fiter Lotto to land on. I had been tempted to put a Battletoad into Fite Club for Ven sometime, and it might've even been Rash, since that was the toad I chose to play in Battletoads Arcade. Still, when the tractor picked this dude, I couldn't have been happier. I get my 'toad, and we get a fiter who is both a cool surprise and a capable battler while still being suitably wacky thanks to his cartoon physics and transforming nature. Plus I got to listen to the Battletoads theme a lot while working.
I guess I should mention that while writing I listen to a lot of game soundtracks, like Zelda Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, Kirby Return to Dreamland, and so many others. It keeps the air from being empty, and listening to podcasts is too distracting, although I did listen to those while working on the art. Cox n Crendor (the source of Woppy the Weatherbot), Wisenheimers, the Triforce podcast and more were my companions for art time.
Back to Rash though. I know I shouldn't scratch it but it's just so itchy.
And back to the Battletoad, I was surprised with how far he went, and although I was originally a bit worried about having him enter on Mothra (especially when the art of their entry was like 70% Mothra due to her size) since it might overshadow him. However, with Mothra able to be removed from the picture any time and the fact it gave Nostro some stuff to do apart from his massive ally he'd be overshadowed by otherwise, Rash was given the entry method in the knowledge he'd shine later in the game. Rash and Nostro was a fun dynamic even though both characters weren't really bound to do much after the Brawl, just a classic goofy/serious combo that I didn't wholly do on purpose until I realized how nicely it worked. I think initially Rash was going to straight up break Nostro for good when the original picture idea for the crash came up, but the body-hopping was his saving grace. Lead to an odd situation where Gooper technically fought himself with Nostro vs. Sumi, but whatevs.
At first, I considered not doing what I did last year and having the Secret Fiters that were rejected play any part. I remember my sisters saying they didn't read the pre-fite show because the stream of unknown faces put them off, and I had to wonder if that was true of anyone else. Somewhat inspired by Ray's RP dilemma of stealing a file, I cooked up the means to include them anyway as Ditto transformations, which are far less likely to put someone off, especially since they rarely lasted that long. It felt bad having to give them disproportionate spotlights (ones like Liquidator played huge roles while Animal Soccer World was just a game of keepaway), but it was still meant to tickle the person who entered the idea more than anything. Grutz was put into Bluddflagg's segment for a similar reason: Grutz doesn't qualify for the Secret Fiter role due to having appeared before but it was Del's last second idea said in chat, and since we were told the orc had imps and gremlins stuck in his armor, why not use Grutz for a simple moment?
Something similar happened with the Pudding with a Gun moment. It would seem strange to people without foreknowledge no doubt, but the Brawl is a place where I could emphasize something weird like that for little reason besides "JOKES!" As mentioned in the past, when Asmodeus and his buddies briefly joined chatzy, Cornwind was selling the Brawl to them in a way I didn't exactly approve of. I kept my silence to not discourage them (I half expected them to be long gone by Brawl time and I was pretty much right), but Cornwind said you could enter ANYTHING into the Brawl, a claim he probably regretted with Bartrand coming in! But also proved quickly wrong as I aged up Winston from babyhood. Next year I'll probably put down in the rules the few limitations, which basically are "no babies, and it has to be self-aware". You can't enter a table fork on its own or something. Pudding with a Gun was one of their ideas for an entrant based on this ANYTHING claim, and my thanks to ivelchild for entering with characters that seemed like he actually wanted to win and participate instead of this weird mindset that was encouraged in Asmodeus's group and other fairweather brawl entrants. The Brawl is important to some people, and just throwing a dish rag in there as your entrant means that you might possibly be making someone very upset when their entrant they put thought and care into loses to it. Don't take the Brawl TOO seriously, but it's not a trash can either!
But with Broque I had means to reference the chatzy joke and also sweep the table of it so it needn't be addressed again. A random item popping out of a block to actually kill an entrant might've been more than what it would've got if I somehow allowed it as an entrant!
I kinda skipped past Mothra, so lets go back to her. Rainbow Mothra was, in fact, a suggestion from Gooper's mother! One that has even been mentioned in the past as the one she would pick if she could enter. Gooper PMed me with the idea, perhaps billing it as an Unknown Fiter, but to avoid confusion about people thinking it was an official entrant I decided to put the moth in as a Character from Nowhere alluded to by the pre-fite show and delivered on with the Secret Fiter, perhaps sewing some intentional confusion about if she was part of the Secret Fiter or not. It's probably not an idea I'd do often or maybe ever again, but since Goopsmom has shown interest in the Brawl in the past and it seemed like a fun thing to do, I decided to allow it. She also sort of refused the potential of winning or placing really, but I still tried to make Mothra interesting. Most of her powers and even her gender came from the Goopsmom approved Gooper PM of her strengths, as independent research turned up conflicting and mixed stuff on Rainbow Mothra (like it specifically being male!) but I wanted to give Goopsmom her idea of the bug. One reason Mothra mostly stuck to fiting kaiju was to try and keep the appeal high for if Goopsmom ever saw it. She might not understand Mothra vs. a more esoteric entry (Sheep entries, perhaps?) but kaiju battles are Mothra's source and a known Goopsmom pleaser. It was also a sort of "price" of entry that Mothra ended up being killed by and damaging Biollante, the son and mother tied together. I make it sound serious but I was just like "I want to draw Biollante eating Mothra" more than anything. She fought the Conqueror Worm though so it wasn't all Biollante abuse!
Now the Mystery Fiter. What a year for them to get 8th place! Up until I think voting I was still waffling between two choices for the Mystery Fiter, to the point I was considering laying down hints for the one that didn't get used, but I ended up moving that idea to next year. For the most part, I try to draw Mystery Fiters from many different kinds of recognizable media. Mac Tonight the mascot, Monstars from a movie, B-Rex from Zoofights our parents, Flying Dutchman from a tv show. Green Giant tapped the mascot thing again but it was an idea I wanted to do and that always trumps just trying to have different sources. Besides, if its ALWAYS a different source, that eliminates some candidates, yeah? Makes it more predictable. Captain Underpants was set to have a movie come out next year, around June even! He would've been too current for my tastes then, and if it wasn't for reddit putting a teaser poster of the movie on its front page one night while I was working, who knows if I would've gone through with using Underpants at all! Still, his thing was being from a book series of course, one I haven't read in ages to be honest. Thank google for wikis! That's where the Benjamin Krupp joke came from. It might be getting blase to have a Mystery Fiter fakeout of sorts at the start, and if it hadn't been immediately spoiled in chatzy the truth behind Krupp, I wanted to see if anyone else would make the connection about Underpants before he showed up a few posts later. It was kind of hard to work in the "snap-activation" nature, but Owen provided an easy means (I almost had Elesh snap instead in a cocky "he's under my control now" moment for the Worm, but Owen seemed the better source since it could be an actual cue.) Being super-powered (if goofy) made it more reasonable he made it that far, and I felt a bit bad making him kill people (although at the same time a useless mystery fiter going that far is just as bad) but it seems Spy was okay with Sunshine's death and who knows about Remilia's reaction yet! Most of Underpants's stuff is based on that overly catchy song I found on Youtube about him, that I kept singing to myself despite the risk around Brawl time. Rash was a hard secret to keep too, and I almost considered asking for half done pictures from Goops that I would add Rash into later, if not for the obvious art style clash that could have happened and weird half spoilers.
You might also notice Captain Underpants was very easy to draw. I think most of the art I did at work (including all Underpants art for the most part) came out better than the home-drawn stuff, save maybe the butt bump which I did at home because that's not a picture I want to be caught drawing at work!
PRE-FITE SHOW!
Doing it in a bit of weird order this year. It should be natural to lead with the pre-fite show as it is the first part of the Brawl you really see, but hey, loosey-goosey my man! A couple of this year's pre-fite show ideas came to me pretty quickly, those being Owen's luncheon and the fishing hole. Suppose I should mention the Shrekoning before continuing. I was always a bit unsure about the nature of Shrekoning as an actual entry, being twelve Shreks chained together and all, but when Draco put down his normal entrants, I was happy to have been spared the worry and decided instead to involve them in my own way to avoid the hassle of figuring out if they're okay after all! A quick PM telling Draco "I'll put them in, no need to enter them" probably got us those Waddle Dees in the lotto, but it also let me do the fishing hole idea of Ricard and his special arrival to talk shop with Nylora about the Shrekoning. Not quite characters from nowhere as they were essentially elite zombies disguised as Shreks, the idea of an illusion made it easily doable but also not cheap considering how good Ricard had got at them. That also probably allowed them to stick around longer, and they were the perfect means to interrupt the Music Meister instead of having to sift through all the entrants who have something along the lines of "resists hypnosis" for a way to break it.Goop unfortunately had to have it spoiled because I don't think I could have done it justice art-wise, same for a fair few other jokes. Maybe if it had been one of three pieces of art I drew for the Brawl, but I carry probably half the load of the art demands, so with Gooper's fresher hand it came out beautifully.
The idea to use David Attenborough as the host was just a whim, to be honest. I was getting to the point where it was time to write the pre-fite show and was coming up with mental jokes about "brawlers in their natural habitat" and the name Brawl in the Wild, which is a bit of a stretched joke on Call of the Wild. I looked around for a host as the nature show idea came up for real in my head, considering Steve Irwin parody-types but not the man himself for his unfortunate death and the tasteless nature of bringing him back. Most Irwin parodies were half-baked or unrecognizable, and since I never cared for Jeff Corwin, I had to look elsewhere. My mind stumbled upon David, and it was sealed. I am pretty sure he must've been mentioned in Zoofights in the past due to its close ties to animals, so it didn't feel bad to have him narrating the lead-up to a bloodsport. Originally I almost tried to do most the narration in the detached nature documentary style, but I settled on the theme espousing at the start of each feed instead. Some were harder to come up with mostly because it would basically be the same as a different feeds, but I hope I did a good enough job differentiating his views on each feed. Still just Snappers/Bluez with a different coat of paint mostly though.
I feel like perhaps more than most years the Pre-Fite show didn't need to slot people in where they didn't belong. It's always hard fitting tens and tens of people into it, and I feel like there was less "dead air" where it's like "this guy's here too!" or red herrings. This year, although maybe it might've helped, I didn't really go back and look at other Brawls or read my old post-brawl blogposts. I just kinda winged it and did what felt right, and I think the Pre-Fite show might've benefited. To be fair I also read the previous Brawl the day before I opened entries for this one so maybe that helped more than I gave credit for, but I did the Pre-fite show well after most of the Brawl was completely solid so I have more obvious clues like Red creeping on 421 and Rash talking with the Mothra priestesses, something I almost didn't do because it required a Secret Fiter to make a sort of appearance in the pre-fite show, but the nature cameras made more sense for not catching him than a Snapper of Bluez.
Owen's Animal Bruncheon was to establish Owen's sampling, Pteron and Worm both having calls to rein them in, Wet Tiger's strange nature, and some basic stuff about how I'd write Toby and Booby as well as showing Ligature back in action. The Dangerous Alliance one showed that the Alliance is stable, but Amity wants to add to it (foreshadowing her switching to Underpants's side when there were not enough dissenting voices) as well as showing Reggae Shark as an example of an opponent she'd add since he was funny, much like the later Captain. Of course there is Ray's part with the file, the Music Meister creeping, and just some general dynamic stuff like Sunshine's cockiness and trying to show how far Dawn's come. I'm not going to mention everyone in the pre-fite shows for time's sake, but I'll try to give the major purposes of most.
Scarlet Devil Meetup was to show Meiling's exact nature of her "no alliance" rule, although I did probably write Sean too harsh in saying it. Brought up Remilia's never-mentioned-on-board sunscreen, Yamame's trap tactic, and Parsephine's relation to her. Ceneric's Cuties was another early idea for a pre-fite show, as Winston justifying himself and proving his intelligence was a must in the pre-fite show. From there it was contriving a reason for them to meet-up, and Bandanna Dee seemed a good fit to make it more than a two-entrant alliance and thus earn the rarely used alliance name. If Ceneric and Cuties started with the same sound, maybe I would've used it more! Meeting with Elesh Norn was mostly to point out her mysterious nature and explain it better, as well as hinting at Doomguy's eventual killing of her and to hint at Raw's personality as it needed some dusting off after all these years.
Broque trying to break up the street scuffle was to introduce us to him and his tactic of pulling people away. Red also got an important showing as Springtrap's beef with him came up. Gran's Brawl Story was a way of testing my chops with the story and giving us a simpler look at how four different entrants might see the Brawl.
421 psych-up sesh was to introduce our tough-yet-nice dudes as well as giving us a bit of 421 before she entered the battle with no character previously shown. Powerhouse Powwow (I know I use these names as if they mean anything but I'm going in pre-fite show order if that helps) was to set-up Caitir and Yotam's alliance and show Joe's and Armstrong's approach to the Brawl in general. The VEW stuff started with the Rainbow vs. Rainbow exchange I felt had to happen, and went into alluding to the future team-up between Mika and Josephine before lastly addressing the nature of the soon-to-be-fallen champion and Stacy's trepidation. Fishing was obviously for the sake of the Shrekoning and the small nameless alliance the four formed. The Silver Dollar trip was mainly to say that the interior of the casino would not be the overly complex one from last year's Alruthine plot, and the Arena Strength Test was meant to show the thing wouldn't fall apart the moment kaijus played a bit on it, as well as the usual Mystery/Secret Fiter hints, host introductions, and so on. I almost didn't mention the Alruthines because of their complex nature, but when Dawn explaining them naturally came up in the dialog, I felt a bit more comfortable placing the Guard and the Girls in support roles of little actual importance besides "yes, their is continuity with last year's plot! But not so much to be obtrusive!"
There's some heres and theres of course, but I'm not gonna spend all day going on and on about the tiniest minutiae. You probably noticed it already anyway! Red, of course, was a fun running joke with his nature, although slotting him in proved difficult occasionally, and sometimes I forgot about him til the last second! Springtrap pointed out the similarity between it and Green Kroc and Kutlass of a few years back, but they were very much comedy whereas Red was sometimes horror... but most often comedy sometimes himself!
GENERAL BRAWL STUFF
Before we move onto the massive segment where I talk about every character, here's a place for a few musings on events and otherwise. First, let's start with something I've never really done before: BRAWL SCRAPS! The more interesting uncompleted images from the Brawl work period, with brief explanations.
First up, we have a classic staple of Brawl art time: the frustration image. The birth of things like Sine Pickle and Happy Sine, its a quick image done to cool myself down. I managed to avoid much of a brawl freakout this year as it was scheduled nicely and work came along well, but while drawing I ended up drawing a picture that didn't work out so I turned it into a goofy image. It may look like a failed version of Nostronomitron, but it was actually meant to be Gamera's head, as you can see the brow-ridges, but it came out ugly so it become this: A cocky UFO saying "fart"... or is it a pudding?
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Also, despite doing an amazing job, CKR drew Pteron much bigger than I meant her too! I had her redraw Sammy on his talons because she was even smaller at first! I tried to convey that he was "bigger than he seemed" but not too big, so she went more 15 feet than what I meant to convey. It's funny too, because CKR knows Pteron! Even my brother who doesn't like Zoofights knows Pteron because he's that old a character for me! I believe I've mentioned it elsewhere, but this year's brawl had 101 images, one more than last year probably because it had less guys from nowhere to account for without the WCW invasion. That extra 1 is just from a mixup too, where I told Gooper and CKR to draw the same picture by accident of Babe being wrapped up by Yamame. Luckily, the two decided to go different routes with it, Gooper drawing the act and CKR doing the definitive death picture. Since assistants and otherwise don't get KOs, only main entrants, I usually try to put a definitive word in there to say they are dead, which was a bit awkward when Rainbow Dash turned in her image of Sara's death. Originally my idea was a bit more clear that she had stepped off and died, but the image just has her serene in a garden so I reworked the narration a bit. Maybe it stung as much as it did because I just liked Rainbow Dash's art of it so much I worked it in as much as I could.
I was surprised to hear I pushed Gooper out of his comfort zone with some characters I made him draw. Springtrap can be difficult yeah but easy to shortcut, and Rainbow Dash complained of Matt being difficult so maybe Goops thought that as well. None of it shows of course because I didn't know until he told me, but besides maybe the Wet Tiger it all seemed simple enough to me. Notice how I am the only artist who never drew the Tiger ;D I edited some images my sisters gave me, either to make more appropriate death expressions with some angled eyebrows or frowns, or to give Praline a nose. Yes, I gave someone besides a goop art character a nose. Rainbow Dash always follows reference pics more closely than most (to the point I made sure to give her a properly posed Bandanna Dee for when he killed Gyaos) so I had to smack that nose on there. The only art I even tried to do on the computer this year was Golden Amity and her explosion for how simple they were and because I wanted them to be in color. Winston and Bartrand's shared death picture was probably the first kill planned of the brawl and the image as well. It seemed more kosher than most options: an admitted heel kaiju stomping on them like the Stompasaurus in Banjo-Tooie. CKR's version of Eddie's death was a lot more pleasant and less violent than expected and than I would've drawn it, so its probably for the best I gave it to her. I think it was the last brawl image drawn, due to CKR trying to get out of them by going to sleep after promising she'd have them done before the end of the night. I would've believed it was an accident if the drawing stuff wasn't on the floor and she wasn't wrapped up in her bed! I also had to edit Nitori's death picture because Rainbow Dash drew her smiling and Phoenix not even making contact with the tank attack, but that I did on the computer with some sliding around. I also drew in Ray's Swing Wing since I forgot to mention it to CKR and it would've been a shame to never see him wear it, especially since CKR drew Ray surprisingly well!
I think this year more than most I did a decent job of keeping most characters around or showing, even if they didn't do much. I tried to avoid the long "here's what every character is doing" updates I've done before except near the top 20, but the many kaijus gave a good place to deposit characters where we didn't need to see them doing what they were doing. I also tried to have more situations where three or more characters are involved in the same battle, like Bluddflagg being ganged up on for example. The Ko/Clash alliance was formed before I ever had word that Clash/Josephine/Nitori was meant to be more than a simple "we avoid each other alliance", as up until the Brawl was completely written I was literally told it was just that, and then RP had them saying otherwise. I tried to take care of that in the pre-fite show and I did have them group together for a kaiju fite once, but otherwise an alliance being made July 2nd is hard to incorporate in a finished product. My thanks to Cornwind for exercising caution when Dawn dealt with Red too, and the fact she didn't acknowledge him in the pre-fite show after that was made fun of by Springtrap for that very reason.
I will also say I'm worried I'm getting too lenient weapon-wise, but that's happened every year! Same for assistant power balance. I doubt I'll ever be truly happy unless somehow someone didn't bend the rules a little, but I've basically opened it up so people can enter with a reasonable amount of weapons and such, although Ray stole Josephine's knife early on since I thought having that, the gun, and the goodies might've been pushing it too much. It still got in, but she never used it!
We'll probably touch on more specific things as I move into the Character Thoughts section, but before we go there...
FUTURE BIG BAR BRAWL WISHLIST!
Maybe it would've been smarter to put this at the end? But whatever. Here is, to the best of my memory's ability, a list of characters who have appeared in RP that I would like to see in future Brawls. This will not include characters who have been in them before even if I would like to see them again, nor will it include any of my own guys this time around. Also remember these are guys of particular interest and just because a guy isn't here doesn't mean I don't want them. It's more a shortlist for people wondering who I'd want in, save the short part. Some are left off out of pure acceptance I'll never get them, like those belonging to users like Dudemanguy or Designate_5. Anyway... Here we go!
-Celestia
-Sam and Max (per Del)
-Bubs
-Bluejay (expect some Black Lotto representation here!)
-Parsee (Parsephine was nice, but the real deal would be cool too!)
-Josuke
-Zargeesh
-Xavier
-Greninja
-Baltan/Kauket
-Komachi
-Joshy
-Raul
-Dolby (what? She's growing on me quickly!)
-Viola
-Sheryl
-Gamble Man
-Beheeyem
-Jake Marshall
-Bulgrave
-Succubus Sisters
-Samhain
-Kindred
-Vina
-Cloak/Goggles/Armor
-Stella
-Garnet
-Hansel
-Papyrus or Sans
-Paper Mario
-Father Squid
-Drip
-Eggerman
-Patchouli
-Sakuya
-Ganondorf
-Barbara
-Etch
-Walter
-Brilliant Kid
-Dian
-Morgana
-Kim
-Skeleton King
-Rain
-Skeiron
-Alex the Raptor
-Wiz and Boomstick
-Eshe
-Krieg
-Dewnine
-Rizzrack
I'm sure I could add many and more to this list if I removed some of my limiters, if it was easier to look through all the profiles and they were updated (I'm sure some of the newest guys I've forgotten), and if I had the time to sit down for a few hours and really think about it like it was important. At the same time, it would probably become The List of RP Characters Yet to Appear in a Brawl instead of a wishlist. I made sure to include some of my suggestions for Del in the future in case he doesn't want to enter Chunky Kong again if he's running out of ideas! Rizzrack, Krieg, Bubs, Skeleton King, Sam and Max... Lotta too! You left many good characters behind who never got their shot!
Now then, towards the heavy workload part of this blogpost. Hopefully Gooper or Chao might add some fun facts about this year's brawl like they did last year to the main topic, but I've got to pay with my own big batch of stuff as well. After last year's blogpost it's not like I can NOT do it this year! So...
CHARACTER THOUGHTS
Here we are, as in olden days, happy golden days of yore... The big section where I give individual thoughts on every entrant! For the most part. Rash and Captain Underpants will be left out for being described up there in their appropriate section. As for everyone else, I shall group them by user this year for easy finding!
I suppose before we move into there, a quick rundown of who I would've voted for, should I be allowed to vote... for the most part, I have no idea! I didn't really think about it much this year, except that I know I would've voted for Nylora because I've grown to like her a bunch, hence me throwing my dudes at her constantly. I feel I would've voted Amity as well because she's a fun character, although I wouldn't have liked her to win, in a way. Mainly because I think I also would've voted for Dawn. At some point, much like Rainbow Dash, she rolled over into me wanting to see her every year and wanting her to win to finally complete her arc. To have Dawn only win because of a technically with her alliance thing wouldn't have been the same. I liked the Dangerous Alliance partly because of its ragtag nature, allowing me to have characters who wouldn't interact or form an alliance most likely otherwise interact and bounce off each other. Might not be a great idea for the future, but it was cool now, but I'm still partly glad that is not the way Dawn got her win if it had happened. By now, she deserves it. Rainbow Dash would've likely received a vote too, for now its the point where instead of asking her to swap in a new entrant to keep things fresh, we've had her around since the first Brawl, and it would be weird not to have her until she's managed to finally win. I used to think of epilogues for multiple characters, which is an impossibility with a roster this large, but I was worried about Rainbow Dash winning as I couldn't think of one for her now that the old "joins the Wonderbolts" one was done on the show, but really, after so many years of losing? I don't think it would be hard after all. Might've hopped on the Big Joe Mufferaw train as well since he's fun on a bun and possibly give Armstrong a similar boost (there was a reason they were paired in the pre-fite show! BIG STRONG MEN!) I'm tempted to say I would've voted Zeldoten too, but this is after-the-fact vote deciding besides Nylora really, and I'm worried its just pre-victory fever making me say that, but I really enjoyed her up until then, so its possible she would've got it! Other than those few? Eddie maybe? Like I said, hard to scrape up ones when this is both after-the-fact and not as meaningful if I really had to make a decision.
Now then, those individual character thoughts I promised!
WORDSMITH
Last year we got the Tit and Selah from this guy. Selah was a pretty great entrant and fun too! Tit... you might remember my misgivings. You might also remember my utter fear of a Literal Ass entering as well. This year though, Wordsmith either considered my reaction or just decided to be utterly amazing with the introduction of SIR BOOBY, a character I felt balanced the joke nature of the entrant while not giving me barely anything to work with. A character with a story, personality, and a way of fiting too! You spoiled me this year, Tom! With Sir Booby I'm still able to make the silly name jokes (especially since Stan Ligature ended up killing him, "wrapping his mouth around the Booby" and all), and actually it seemed a bit easier to make those as well this time around! Far as I know Tom's running out of birds named after female anatomy though, so we'll see if he can keep it up next year! The sword and shield made him combat worthy as well, and being able to fly gave it a neat dimension. I can't rightly say why he was chosen for killing Ray, I think it was a mix of Ray's thieving ways, making it look like Sir Booby might go down early, and the joke about protecting Chocobilly's honor since Ray took some arrows from him. Had to cram in a bit since Chocobilly was destined for the chopping block. I wager you might think the reason I can't remember exactly is because its been two weeks since the Brawl, but remember that I have tons of stuff to deal with in my head and I can't always make a note to remember the reason I thought of something so I can write it down later!
Sir Booby did not offer Ray mercy because of how quickly their fite went from battle to death near the end. Booby was expecting to offer it when his foe was nearly vanquished, but he did not expect his shield to give out in Ray's hands. I know it was said the blade was the one that dulls when its owner isn't righteous, but I though between Ray being unworthy of the shield and Booby being worthy of his blade, they must cancel each other out somehow and allow that kill to work. He offered it to Stan mostly to show I didn't forget it though. I hope I did justice by the hard work Tom put into making this character just for the Brawl. I almost had him reference supposed other honorable birds but felt like I might not be slipping them into his knightly past well enough.
RAINBOW DASH
As these are my sisters and their entrants are pulled from who knows where, it's kind of hard to predict who they might end up using. For Rainbow Dash, due to her last second nature many times, I've tried to influence her some in entrants she might use, sending her links to interesting characters in stuff I find online. I have a pretty good idea of her tastes, but sometimes the character ends up forgotten, and I've definitely had more misses than hits. Ralph Wrinkles was definitely one of her ideas, Moosh and Barkle weren't intentional but came from Zelda Munchkin, and the Blind Scorpion Nun was an old inside joke between us. This year, however, we see a few fruits of my labors... for good or for ill. We'll begin with the unfortunate one: WINSTON, aka Baby Winston. Definitely not intentional, and even when it came out she'd be using him I tried to get her to upgrade to Overwatch's adult Winston. What happened was we were at Gamestop after we both got haircuts, and as I was buying a game I noticed behind the counter a small figure of Baby Winston. You had to buy the deluxe Overwatch set to get him and I decided against it after thinking on it hard, and later RD wanted to know who he was. I told her and later sent her the Overwatch video that had baby Winston in it. Aging him up to a child was necessary, and as mentioned earlier I used the pre-fite show to assuage worries about him being an actual baby. He was super-intelligent now if still incredibly young, as we can assume Winston was in Overwatch canon. Still he only had peanut butter, but I tried to make it useful (by the way, pretty disappointed in myself that the Bingo card was almost an all-clear. It was lenient in places of course and a few are always guaranteed, but Yamame I had hoped to avoid until I realized it said TRIED to eat someone instead of actually succeeding. That Bingo card when I saw it made me realize I was in deep, but it doesn't bother me too much since none of it the spaces were mean-spirited or whatever.) Also, him riding Bartrand was a pretty quick idea, partly to make them easier to kill in one go but also because its cute! And that sentence embodies the Brawl pretty well I think.
The TUSKARR JOUSTER was an example of a success at giving Rainbow Dash a character idea. I initially showed him to her because he ticked a few boxes of things she likes: he's a walrus, he's riding a turtle, and he's pretty oblivious about what he's getting into. She basically had a brief period where anything Tuskarr made her happy, and over time I cultivated that by sending her Tuskarr stuff I found to keep it in her head. It sounds a bit like I picked it for her, but you can bet if I suggested it directly he wouldn't have been entered. We woulda got Sockarang from Axe Cop or like, Magenta from Blue's Clues instead. Arthur and Gregor were painted as buddy-buddy in the pre-fite show, and Ingrid and the Jouster were made allies, but I knew I had to have a mounted battle and the Jouster had to be one part of it. Perhaps Arthur vs. Tuskarr would have been more joust-like, but Gregor got the low placement so Tuskarr vs. Gregor happened. He remained somewhat oblivious to being in an actual battle but I didn't play it up too much due to him being in an alliance and also being lower placed. Maybe he would've fished in the fountain if he made it further. Prime candidate for consumption and integration into the Conqueror Worm though!
Next we come across another case of suggestion going right. I discovered TOBY pretty close to Brawl time, as Battleborn didn't really catch my interest ever but I somehow stumbled across this guy during the RP season somehow. You might not know it, but Rainbow Dash is the one big into penguins even though CKR is the one who entered Gunter twice. RD and I also pretend that RD is secretly evil based on a long-running joke, so Toby was a good mix of penguin and taking enjoyment in murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, some of him was hard to convey so he didn't get much recognition until Big Joe Mufferaw basically laid out his skills and the Brawl itself. He got far enough up that he got to do a bit, taking out Matt and having a pretty cool battle with Nitori and T-Bone, not to mention his weapons living on for a bit with Nitori stealing the rail gun. I had to watch his Battleborn spotlight video a few times to get him down pat, and even then I forgot his mech's arm designs a few times. Might've been fun to give Toby more dialog since its basically all insane stuff mixed with the weird happy motivational thing like its some sort of game. If his kit wasn't so limited I'd say a second year with him would be nice to explore that better.
And lastly, of course, we have RAINBOW DASH herself. The pegasus is back this time, and with a party cannon! The weapon of course ended up the main focus as I've kind of run down most of her attacks from the show, although we did get to see her use the Rainblow Dry again after a long drought and actually using it for its intended purpose, even if it failed due to Wet Tiger's nature! The staircase battle wasn't exactly the most intense setting, but I liked playing with how cumbersome the cannon must be, and since she was weighed down by having to keep herself near her weapon, Rainbow Dash had to use different tactics this time around. Unfortunately, even after the guilt trip of last year about not bringing a weapon, the party cannon didn't get her very far. At first people were drumming up how it was an actual cannon, so in the pre-fite show I made sure to specify it was actually a think from the show that was rarely a problem, although it did harm some Changelings, so its not useless. Of course, it goes without saying that Rainbow Dash being back was expected and welcome, and at least for now it still feels a necessary component of the Brawl. She's almost barely connected to her source material these days, a ZFRP character developed in her own right, sometimes more than other characters who appear in the actual bar or SRS RP! Easy example: Yuran! As long as RD keeps RD fresh, she'll have a welcome spot on the tractor waiting for her.
Overall, a pretty solid line-up from Rainbow Dash this year! Not just saying that because of the two I had a hand in suggesting (three if we count mistakes!), but because they were fiters but also very weird and out-there as a JRM sister entry is expected to be. I almost tried to get a name for Tuskarr Jouster's turtle from RD or just come up with one on my own after Gregor's horse got named Grigori, but I decided against it. The Tuskarr himself is just called by a title, so Turtle Mount goes down that way too!
FORMER VENGEANCE
My good friend Ven! We've come so far from those old days where he just entered the Brawl and that's it! Strange how initially he felt he had to RP the people he entered into the Brawl to better show them off, but now he seems to like it as a killing ground! We got some back at least, but I do not wish to dwell on this too much, since this is a celebration of people's characters and all. We'll begin with GREGOR, who had just recently joined RP, most likely because he piqued Ven's interest as he played Awakening. He was a good fit for the lotto even if it meant missing out on guys like Zargeesh, and although I wanted him with an axe at first, the mounted horseman made him a good counterpoint for Ingrid. His accent was fun for what little I wrote of it, and if he had gone further perhaps he might've used an axe or other weapon, but the early eliminations you kind of have to blow through their basic skills quickly. Grigori got his name a bit after the Brawl was written, so I went back and changed some "Gregor's horse"s into "Grigori"s and it made it much nicer. It's good I played Awakening to have a good gist of him, even though I didn't use him overly much I don't think. He's in a weird spot because most Fire Emblem characters have a very small range of skills, so he was shooting arrows mostly. I hope the brief time we got with him was good for everyone else!
Now we move on to MAJOR ARMSTRONG, who it should be no surprise that I like after badgering Ven to bring him back after his brief cameo in RP. I haven't watched too much Fullmetal Alchemist and most of my use of Alchemy was based on what little I have and the animal theming, but I hope I did it justice and I made sure to follow the rules outlined in that primer Ven gave. He didn't do much talking and didn't mention the whole GENERATIONS thing he does outside of the pre-fite show, but I tried to make the jolly jovial guy with the one who never backs down from any fite, even against a few girls. Last brawl our muscly types banded together, so in this one they went up against each other, especially since Silence, Mika, and Stacy were all normal people for the most part. Armstrong came in with his alchemy to mix things up, and he was the one to alter Blade's bike and Silence's cape... which I felt bad about after when I saw how sad they were about it! Don't you two worry, there's a Borax Kid somewhere who is an expert in matter alteration! A lot of times its hard to make characters do certain things for potential ramifications, but I try not to let it ruin the fite save for the most extreme. It was a bit of fun trying to think of animal spins for things, and I had fun with the Seahorse statues that were a ring for Armstrong vs. Mika. Honestly, it probably gave us more interesting results than straight alchemy might've. Armstrong got the previous champion kill as a bit of a way of soothing the low placement of his guys for Ven as well as sort of flipping last year's finals. It was a Ven character vs. a Gooper one for Cauren vs. Silence, and now a Ven character comes and takes Silence down after all. I tried to have both sides of Armstrong, the muscle and alchemy, so hopefully there was a decent balance.
Next we'll move onto CENERIC AND BARTRAND, the first entry mentioned with a true assist. Didn't really count most the mounts save Chocobilly because of having a character and Babe for being sort of out there. Grigori and Turtle Mount were ignored mostly because neither had names before sign-ups and voting closed! Ceneric and Bartrand then. I've explained Ceneric's Cuties, and I was quite tickled giving the small entrants a giant protector. Sometimes there is an issue in taking down kaiju and other impressive opponents, but I wanted Ceneric's Cuties to be that goofy takedown of a giant by small guys we've always wanted ever since Dudemanguy unfortunately lost to Ogopogo all those years ago. Ceneric himself, I feel I underutilized the anti-magic despite my glee in getting to use it. It stunned Gamera and did this and that, but for the most part he ended up positioned against foes it wasn't that great against. Kaiju slaying came naturally to him though, at least in my mind, so he helped take down Gamera and Gyaos. I feel a bit bad sending Remilia after him as I really wanted Remilia to do the spooky vampire thing with the casino and it seemed he had the natural set-up. The only reason I feel bad is because I knew even though I specified she wouldn't be turning him into a vampire, Ven would somehow do something with that death method! I half hoped Ceneric might just be a vampire despite saying otherwise. For Bartrand, I tried to put in as many of his little skills as possible before the inevitable crunching, but personally I have no problem with his entry. He knew what he was getting into and if anything, he SEEKS battle. I've found the "don't hurt cats" thing always a bit cringey, especially when the narration goes out of its way and bends it back to do so. I'm not going to torture them or anything, same for dogs. I love both, but if they get involved in battle RP I'm going to treat them the way their owners expect instead of shying away from it. Hence: Pet Fite, and 2014: the year of the dog when it came to battle. Everything in the Brawl's gotta die, but I tried to do it as simply and tastefully as possible for the sake of others. Gyaos also could afford the heat, being a one-time assistant who was already billed as a villain in a way. Rash ended up killing Stacy for a similar reason save the villain part: Rash wouldn't likely be coming back, so taking out the top vote-getter and being the Secret Fiter, Rash didn't earn ire or make someone sad they killed Stacy. Overall, it was nice to get the brother after he developed so much last year in Cauren's wake. You might also remember Bartrand getting a Stand at Fite Club once upon a time. I elected to leave it out since it wasn't mentioned in his entry and might skirt into weird territory do the nature of Stands.
Lastly, we got OWEN AND THE CONQUEROR WORM. What a pair these two are! Owen was mostly just the body on the worm save when it was taken from him, but he was still fun! Originally I remember my nervousness about Ven RPing him due to his whole "Bring Back Zoofights" thing and the fact I've always taken Major Failure's "no Zoofights clones" way too seriously, but its been an interesting angle and Owen both carries on the spirit while still adding his own flavor and touch. I didn't know what to expect as his creation for the Brawl, but I didn't expect a giant worm that almost matched Biollante in size. There were so many ideas flowing through my head about it. One was it going Gold thanks to Bouncy Blue, and who knows how many I might've done with the idea of it integrating pieces of other fiters. I decided to follow Owen's mindset for the first few (animal competitors, as that is his line of interest) before Elesh harassed the worm to steal it from him. Owen gave Bouncy Blue some joke words to keep Pteron under control, and Owen almost had some as well to shout, probably something like Achey Breaky Heart before I thought better of it and had the dramatic moment of him yelling ZOOFIGHTS IS ALIVE! before being eaten. The Elesh route for the worm was mostly chosen because of how cool imagining a Machine Orthodoxy version seemed in my head, and I tried to draw it with pieces of the creatures it ate (shell from turtle, tuskarr tusks, and some fur from Grigori). The Worm couldn't last too long even if I wanted it to I knew. Biollante is big but bipedal, same for Gamera and Gyaos. The Worm demands too much real estate and you can only have so many kaijus. I didn't shoo him out by any means, we haven't had so many people team up on one thing since my joke about the Him godbeast in BBB4. It also lead to the true multi-kaiju battle of the Brawl. Conqueror Worm was a stroke of genius by Ven and worked perfectly as Owen's major gambit.
Ven's cast was lovely this year, a mix of some good original characters and borrowed ones, some new blood and some recognizable old faces. The animal theme probably made us miss out on some potential guys, but the ones we got weren't bad at all, and as mentioned, it made Armstrong more interesting I think than if I was left to make alchemical alterations unguided. Last year Ven followed my suggestions pretty closely, so it was interesting to see what he picked on his own with only nudging and names tossed around as per my usual approach to everyone! Getting Ven to join RP continues to prove itself as a good idea.
CORNWIND EVIL
I was somewhat surprised by Cornwind's entry choices this year, more because of the lack of Aggie and the fact that three of my suggestions if he had no idea made the cut for the lottos and third entrant slot, even though I never said them! Instead of pussyfooting around and not saying their names so I don't have to bold them, let's dive right in! ...after I saw how absolutely heartbreaking it was how clustered Cornwind's eliminations were. The tractor was not nice putting so many of them in such a short span, right down to some having to be the same post! But let's look at RAW to begin, who was just coming back after being big in 2012 and somewhat present in 2013. She hasn't done much this year yet either, but her return made me want to have her in the brawl now that it was an option again, and apparently Cornwind was on the same wavelength. Although I was initially prepared to just play with her claws, Cornwind gave her the full metal arrangement, so I was able to come up with a few interesting things with her fite with Sammy. Since we're mentioning Raw first, I gotta say one reason Sammy killed her and Hypotenuse was because of a focus on Sammy using magnetic powers this year over traditional electric stuff. Raw and Hypo were the best ways of doing it so they ended up both going against her. I feel a bit bad not giving Raw a kill somewhere, but sacrifices are made all the time, and it made her losing her fite with Sammy a better fakeout. The kill pic was supposed to have Raw being burnt and stabbed, something CKR forgot, but it wasn't too big a deal. Raw's arms were a bit of a playroom as I like having open-ended things to work with, but the common refrain is "not enough time". I do like that Raw has an edge to her (haw) because it allowed her to go for the harsh moves even on Sammy, as well as justifying that CHUD killing rampage in 2012 that rubbed me a little wrong but is clearly a part of her character! I sometimes wonder what the old Brawl would've been like if a different member than Scorched Earth entered. On one hand that's Scorched Earth's only real claim to fame, but some of the more important ones would've been nice to have, and Raw in a way is sort of one of them as ex-Society. Sadly, no hot dogs were held in this brawl, Kletchatyy probably wouldn't deign to make such processed filth!
Bluejay, the loser of the Black Lotto, didn't get in, but she was a suggestion too, along with a SWAT KAT potentially, which came to be with T-BONE! I never saw SWAT KATs, but after writing the Commentator Fite of old and the Minor Character Melee with Razor and having fun with the wiki list of the Glovatrix, I had to have them in the Brawl too! We got the burlier one this time which made it a cool change from potentially getting Razor again, and it made throwing his weight around easier when he wasn't pulling out the latest ammo type from the glove. There's the point where Josephine drinks the Giant's Tonic where I had to look up skeletons of different sizes on google to make sure someone of T-Bone's size could fit beneath the waist of Giant-sized Josephine, and he just barely fit, so that was good! Otherwise it was mostly having fun with the unique weapons the guy has, although I fear I mixed up the weapon the glove has and the ones only their flying machine has... a couple years ago! Canonically in RP they already have the ammo types, so save the most ridiculous ones clearly meant for the plane, T-Bone got the full set of SWAT KAT ammo. I was a bit tickled when Josephine mentioned T-Bone's glove somewhere in RP as she was going after it in my writing, and I enjoyed showing the techy side of him against Toby. I tried to mix cat, strong, and the glove as much as I could without it ever being just something like Glovatrix-Technically-Attached-To-T-Bone. I think my own interest in its versatility is why both Josephine and Zeldoten pegged it as a good thing to grab, even if it had a short life after its owner's death. I tried to make his thought process a bit evident as Cornwind pegged him as the one less used to ground battle, not always using the best ammo type for a situation or taking a while to think it out instead of it coming instinctually like it might've for Razor. The small details.
Coming up next: SPRINGTRAP! Writing him in the Halloween fite was fun, but getting him here really let me make fun of myself and my tropes. Admittedly, Springtrap grabbing his KO letters was a Cornwind suggested idea, one brought to life by Gooper, mainly because I'd probably never do a KO fake out myself otherwise. It was a good idea and that's why it got in, and Cornwind suggested it ages ago so its not like he was really giving input on the Brawl, but sometimes I see ideas I can't pass up and use them! I tried not to have him punch the Fourth Wall too hard, often making observations about Brawl trends in general someone snarky in RP could make as well, besides his repartee with the narration of course. Cornwind also had an idea about having him hide in chatzy and Cornwind kind of live commentating as him, but something contingent on someone else during the Brawl is a risky business, especially since real life has stolen Cornwind more often lately. Cornwind already said he will probably bring Springtrap back for next year and I'm glad for it. Most the time I prefer new blood as this is a once-a-year thing and I may have lost my chance with guys like Komachi and Josuke already due to that nature, but sometimes there are huge wells of potential to be tapped, and Springtrap breaking the fourth wall is one. Widow Maker kind of did it, and I tried to not make Springtrap the WACKY SELF-AWARE THIS IS ALL FAKE show some fourth wall breaking media veers into. Most his attacks save the failed KO letter gambit (half an attempt to be full fakeout in making it look like he had a comeback before taking it back and half to make myself feel better about the fakeout at all) were traditional Springtrap bombs/gun/wires. A silly weapon could benefit him next year in doing interesting stuff, perhaps something like a TV with a live-feed of the Brawl. As it was mentioned robots can ignore Red's abilities, Springtrap was elected for the role of his killer to exploit that, and I tried to make Springtrap sort of Cornwindy before he killed him before realizing what was happening to himself and just shooting Red dead. Redemption. Good game, I should play it sometime.
And lastly, we have DAWN nee Hypotenuse nee Aura nee I'm using nee wrong. As mentioned earlier the nature of the Dangerous Alliance was really intriguing even if I think its lightning that shouldn't strike twice as I want to see Dawn actually win it herself these days. The nanite body almost seemed OP at first glance until I saw the weaknesses and was like "damn, that might be the best weakness section I've ever seen!" In that it was a lovely balance to her powers and even possibly brought her out of the power level median and ended up slightly below it. All of it was reasonable and not "doesn't want to fite!" kind of stuff. I thought the Dangerous Alliance strategies were unnecessary in some places (not ganging up at certain times, something I proved poor for them nearly out the gate) but I tried to adhere to them throughout save when the leadership dissolved as it had to considering who got the furthest in it. Dawn's nanite body allowed for interesting play as I basically saw the linked video and thought of her more of using her cloud to manipulate other people's bodies than turn into like, a giant spike or something. Making Ginocini stab himself (itself a demonstration of what I felt was a small lasting flaw in Dawn despite the many forward movements, that being quick to leap at perceived threats and hard to back down from them after going in) and trying to chew up Sammy were instances of it happening. I was a bit surprised when Dawn entered with just her normal face picture, although that was probably half my fault and half a symptom of Cornwind's late entries. Usually she has some fancy body. Rainbow Dash has entered more yes, but for Dawn it's almost like she's been a different character every year! Never the same face on her. Dawn and Beck were positioned as the reasonable leaders of the group, Beck mostly by way of being Dawn's nephew and more willing to stick to the plan despite his occasional petulance. Dawn being all metal like Raw and being specifically weak to most of Sammy set her up to be taken down by her of course, and the low placement, although bad for Dawn, made the alliance pretty interesting as they struggle to stay together and coordinated with the obvious brains of the outfit.
I've always preferred the years Cornwind enters full-fledged characters over the off the street Minion and Lucemon types or the weird situation with Light Work in the past. I'm a bit surprised Minion hasn't shown up in Twisted Metal yet considering he showed up in 2012 briefly, but the Agent from Race Yer' Mates has been absent too. My point I was aiming for though was that this year and lately in general Cornwind's been giving us the guys we know and love for these things and its been lovely having them. I want him to be rewarded for giving us the good stuff (Ash got third last year so that kind of was a case) but this year the tractor just pushed his toys off the table for some fickle reason.
IVELCHILD
The most unexpected inclusion this year, I had ivelchild to vote and all, but when Harpy began talking about him to enter a character, I expected it to go about the same as usual. Instead, we got two entries from him! When I did the count up before Brawl time to ensure I could do something crazy like the lotto roulette, I counted people like BK and Hoodoo Doghouse as potential entries but not ivel, and he comes in with the surprise pair!
GINOCINI was an interesting case compared to many Brawl entrants of the past. We've had characters like Rainbow Dash get adopted when a user is gone, characters like Armstrong graduate from small cameos into actual characters, and then Samus who was just a Fite Club which is sort of cameo-ish in that most fite club guys come, battle, and leave with a few graduates appearing every now and again like Masamune and Sumireko. Gino, however, besides sharing a name with my nephew who is around the same age as me, was an adversary and was clearly RPed in the main thread by a user still around. Wasn't really an issue, since its been clear since the day of Gino's debut that he was ivel's character and that Harpy had no further designs on the character. It's not really backdooring at all or taking another user's character, especially since Harpy blessed it so enthusiastically!
Ginocini himself presented an interesting issue I've faced a lot in Brawl writing, amplified somewhat by this being ivel's first brawl and Gino being his "flagship character" of sorts. He had an outlined set of skills, and of course most people would want to see them all used! However... if I start throwing them all out, it becomes clear their end is nearing and I'm emptying the bag. I've always tried to avoid this, leaving some skills unused because of it but I rarely avoid an ability for the sake of it, just more not forcing it in so every weapon on the table is used. Gino going up against Dawn and OOO (no kills yet for anyone) was meant to counteract it a bit and maybe make it look like Paladin mode might give him an upper hand on one before he got taken down. Instead, he got wrapped up too hard in the Music Meister's song and suffered for it. I did quite a bit of research on Mabinogi and Milletians for Brawl time, but sometimes its about being careful not to push too hard in extra territory from soure material unless otherwise specified (for example: Pit and Dirk might have different magic despite Pit having it and using it all in Uprising). I know this all sounds like I was worried about everything, but it was a lot of idle thoughts quickly hammered into place without much concern. A lot of stuff flashes by the mind at Brawl time, and it was cool to give ivel's character a showing, even if he ended up falling down harder than the other entry.
I was surprised PHOENIX IKKI was the one of the two who got further. Harpy pushed Gino hard as she could but Ikki end up rising (like a phoenix?) higher in the ranks. Unlike Gino, since Phoenix was clearly from something and there were no real specifications on him NOT being like himself from the show, I looked up the Saint Seiya wiki and read all I could on him and his personality. Haven't seen the show really though so hopefully that wiki gave me an accurate view of his personality, which I also tried to glean from the little details ivel left in his profile. His wiki profile is the source of "toughest of the 100 orphans" because that's an absurd phrase. Phoenix also had a bit of the whole "use all powers before death" dilemma, but since he got more than one battle it wasn't as big an issue and I felt like I had an immediate use for the nightmare punch and the heat blast. Leo Gold Cloth was more to fill in the blanks during actual fite writing but those two had a destiny! The fountain was a fun place to fite but the dramatic drying of it felt like a good way to show his might and make him prove himself worthy of taking out the favorite Nitori. The Illusion Fist, however, was a reversal of "this guy's tough!" by taking him back to a humorous battle. I wondered if perhaps Meiling was too serious in the previous Brawl, so her being somewhat silly with Phoenix (and his nightmare) was to help alleviate that. It was also pretty much destiny that the girl who can turn into a phoenix-like bird had to fite the guy NAMED Phoenix. Some of the Saint Seiya research pegged him clearly as an anti-hero, and since I'm not sure where in the story ivel wished him to come from, I tried to focus more on the who of him rather than the what, so no Saint Seiya references were made because they might be wrong! I was worried he might be immune to his own nightmare punch even, but it wasn't specified anywhere! It was said he was strong mentally, but Meiling was cracking him some, and then you get into the whole "is a man stronger than himself?" situation. He wouldn't have been mind-broken by anyone else, but I mean... I could probably beat myself up. I don't see why he can't do the same!
As mentioned, ivelchild participating was a lovely surprise, and I hope I did the two characters he entered the proper justice even when I didn't have the complete foreknowledge of them. They both had a nice set of abilities that proved quite versatile. He's certainly welcome to come back next year if he wants to take a shot at getting much higher! Placing-wise, not drugs. Drugs are bad, mmkay?
THE DELETER
I was somewhat worried Del might not enter this year, but instead, he whips out a group of great entrants! Guys from the wishlist, a fun new character, and the unexpected added member of the Fazfuck crew (not Mangle, who was someone I did expect). We'll begin with KAPTIN BLUDDFLAGG, who required me to remember the misspelling AND multiple Ds and Gs in Bluddflagg! I wager I typed that name improperly less than some people because its one of those names you have to think about as you type. He was also one of the ones to lead to a somewhat more lenient weapon rule, mostly for having both Shoota and Choppa. The other gubbins were just the kind of color you might find on a guy like Bluddflagg, much like how Jack or some other cobbled together kind of person might have tricks up their sleeves, literally, without knowing it until they stick a hand in there to check. I already mentioned him having Grutz was a small bit of color for those who'd recognize it, but otherwise it was about finding a balance of how useful his extra bits and bobs would be. I read his wiki page, learned about the WAUUUUGH!, focused my mind... and then went full orc and said FUCK IT GO MAD! Bluddflagg got his kaiju fite with Conqueror Norn, he held off a bunch of fiters at once... Del gave me two ruthless guys, and I tried to bring it out with both! After so many years of wanting these orcs, I finally got 'em! Guys like him are perfect for a ruthless bloody battle!
And another guy great for it was DOOMGUY! Reading up on his power-ups, singing the Doom theme to myself whenever I thought of him, and a lot more lead to me buying Doom 2016 shortly after the Brawl on Prime Day even though it was 30 bucks and I usually wait for things to go down much further. I've only played a bit so far because busy busy. Doomguy himself though, as Del correctly guessed, was fun to use due to the power-ups. I looked over ones old and new to find the most interesting ones, and a few times I wondered about giving absurd power-ups like invincibility or berserk to the kaijus. Sometimes the situation there is it would be an "oh shit" moment that might not have much pay-off, so instead we got Matt using it to overcome regular muscle limits, a joke at Arthur's expense for armor, Doomguy taking down Elesh brutally, Biollante's big comeback with full health, and who knows how many I'm forgetting. Every now and again I'd think of a way a power-up could spruce up a battle right until the marine got taken down, and his opponents were very much picked to match Doom-type things, between Elesh Norn being basically perfect for it and Biollante almost boss/demon like. This Doomguy didn't have many guns to grab besides the pudding's though. His armor is supposed to be insanely tough both in Brawl and in-game, but honestly its probably tougher here despite getting broken up because dude can die pretty easily in Doom despite supposedly having insane armor levels. Doomguy may be one of those off-the-street entries, but just because I like having established characters doesn't mean I can't enjoy a guy with a flexible power or ability.
It's been hard to determine whether or not SEAN would enter things. Sometimes he seems disinterested in battle or averse due to the situation with Sakuya or Scarlet. I got him for the couples fite with him and Sakuya vs. Ash and Christine, he was in Drown Yer' Mates, but I feared he might be a pipe dream for the Brawl itself. AND THEN I WAS PROVEN WRONG. Perhaps I shouldn't doubt so much... or maybe I should doubt MORE because that's how I get the guys I'd like! Either way, while I did like writing his internal banter with Scarlet (then Dimitri) in the couple's fite, I instead got to focus a bit more on Sean here. The word "dork" is thrown around in RP a lot to the point it loses some meaning, but I tried to grab on Sean's dorky nature a bit more than most supposed dorks get the chance to show as he is sort of the Ur-Dork. Fiting Sam "because it's totally anime" for example. Trying to look cool during battle, and bemoaning going up against Rainbow Dash. Earlier I mentioned I probably wrote him a bit harsh in the pre-fite show but if there's one thing that had to slip through the cracks, I'd prefer it a character being more testy than usual than potentially going completely off the rails or using powers improperly. The Scarlet Devil Pseudo-Alliance seemed natural, as Sean probably wouldn't want to piss of Sakuya by going against Remila and the gang, and some pre-reading of RP before posting the pre-fite allowed me to work it in as avoiding Toinette to place him there naturally. Sean being where he was on the tractor made it hard for me to use his augments. On the one hand, putting him above Sam made me realize "I want that battle" but since he was pegged to die next, it meant he'd either go augmentless against Sam which wasn't cool, or he'd have to push himself and kind of set himself up for his fate. I figured the threat of being killed by a My Little Pony was enough to warrant him pushing even when he was getting exhausted. The Brawl is full of predators and vultures, and actions have consequences. You can't always take the needed break after an intense back-and-forth.
And lastly, the Fredster, GOLDEN FREDDY. A dude so OP that it took 421's cancellation powers to bring him down to our level. In the past I've been more nervous about things that were inappropriate, putting them in the Brawl anyway but being VERY careful when reading to my sisters. I still don't remember how exactly I read the part about Foxxy trying to masturbate in the ship cabin to them. One's an adult and the other nearly, but it still is not something I wish to talk about with them! Yiffing dicks, however, I didn't avoid with my usual trepidation, perhaps because last year the read with the sisters was more of a skim. As evidenced in the start of this segment, Golden Freddy being the ace-in-the-hole to-be-feared member of the Fazfucks made him an interesting threat to take down, but the "mystical" state of Git Gud made me realize I had the perfect girl for it. Of course, beforehand I wanted to show Golden Freddy do his thing, and Jukebox Jaw was the perfect target for dick yiffing with his absurd concept. He could have used it on other entrants and had them somehow overcome it by knowing they're worth more... but Jukebox Jaw is just a guy who is a jukebox for some reason, and he could be put in his place and stay there. The Pre-Fite show where Golden Freddy used his skills coupled with owning Jukebox Jaw was so we could see some of his stuff before 421 stepped in and cancelled it out. I tried to make him crude, rude, and violent to the end, but even the OP can be brought down in the Brawl, and sometimes its by a teenage girl! Also, I made sure to trim his smooshed face pic for the voting period so he's flicking you off. Can't have you thinking this is the Five Nights Golden Freddy! This is Golden Freddy Fazfuck, bitches!
As mentioned in the wishlist section, even when Del enters guys like Lanky or Chunky, it seems he's forgotten how many great characters of the past he could enter! However, this time around we not only got one of them (Bluddflagg), got a great current character (Sean), got an unexpected but good minor one (Golden Freddy), and still got a pretty good off-the-street character in Doomguy! I'd normally call those characters "ones who showed up just for the Brawl", but that's long and cumbersome, so off-the-street is the term this year! Technically they have to come off the street anyway, as the FYM sign-up area is in fact by a major road. I'm looking forward to Del's guys next year where I'm sure he'll surprise me once again.
CUSTARDKITTENSROCK
The second sister, who continues to outperform Rainbow Dash after her far run back in BBB3. She usually has one entrant who strikes a chord with the silly voters, and CKR usually picks guys who are good at fiting and are interesting and weird... with a little help from me of course! Much like how I don't pick Rainbow Dash's entrants but give her ideas she can choose to use, I help CKR in a different way. I often get to see a list of her potential entrants close to Brawl time or periodically through the year. She has them on a sticky note app on her phone, and I've shot down quite a few ideas that were too out there or not really good. She's admitted to putting some on their just to bug me or watch me react, although Periwinkle seems like it was genuine at the time. Babe Lincoln, the latest of that kind, is potentially one put there to bug me, as we were discussing it on our Arkansas trip and she was yucking it up! All her entrants this year were soft-approved by me (meaning I said they're good ideas or I'll take them if she does use them), but it was more me thinning a list than saying who to use. I did help her some with picture acquisition as that became an issue on her small slow laptop. Rainbow Dash uses a laptop with a giant crack shaped like a comet on the screen! What is with my sister's and poor laptops?
Anyway, we came to discuss entrants, didn't we? I guess we'll go in first with BROQUE MONSIEUR AND BROGGY. I think I can figure out why CKR had them on her list. I am a big fan of Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, and I constantly say I will always take a chance to recommend it. So... go get it. It's great! It's sequel Partners In Time is okay but not quite as magical, and unfortunately my brother picked up that one first so he trusts Superstar Saga less for it. Bowser's Inside Story was a return to form but still not quite up to the levels of the series starter, but one thing it had for it was that CKR bought it before I ever did. My interest in it was channeled through her, as I would ask how she was doing in it and if she liked it. She never beat it I know, but apparently she was impressed by Broque, and when she almost dismissed the idea I mentioned Broggy and his block powers means he's not just a funny talker. Hence: WE GOT BROQUE. Hard to remember that his name is Broque and not Bloque, which seems like it should be the pun, but Broque is apparently a sandwich of some sort?
Anyway, Broque was mostly a character driven by his personality and his voice in the end anyway, wheedling folks into his block traps and using the typical Mario block much further than even his source game really did. Invisible blocks are a curious but fun thing. As for the items inside the blocks, they somewhat turned out to be kind of irrelevant for the most part. I tried to use ones from Bowser's Inside Story (hence a lot of clothes and weird things) besides the kickers for the Pudding with a Gun scenario and a mushroom because we had to have one. He probably could have gone without Broggy thanks to how many doors the blocks opened, but Broggy was fun for the segment with Matt, although Broggy's block shape made me wonder how much he can ACTUALLY do. Like, a dog can bite you because its mouth is pressed forward on a muzzle, but a flat face means you have to move into the mouth, hence Sharpedo's fate! The blocks were some good fun while they lasted, controlling the situations they were in almost like an arena might. People fiting Broque had to overcome the blocks with their abilities or die like Bandanna Dee did.
Once upon a time, my sister Angel came to visit us, but she was trying to surprise us all as we came in. CKR was coming back from school and we needed some way to keep her busy until Angel could come in, so I invited her to my room to watch an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. We're both Batman fans and have watched it together before, so somehow she wasn't suspicious, even when Rainbow Dash locked the door as a pretend prank on us. We watched the episode until Angel was ready and then pulled off the surprise! The episode we watched together was a particularly good one too, one with a character called THE MUSIC MEISTER! Perhaps not the impetus of him entering so much as him being a cool character from something she likes a lot, that story stuck with me so I thought I'd share. Anyway, the Music Meister's hypnosis was a tricky business, fun for when it got to go off but needing a delay, hence the situation with Red trying to strangle him to keep him quiet until I could unleash the music. He had no reason NOT to lead with it after all, whereas some musical entrants like the Music Alliance needed time to prepare. We've had quite a lot of musical fiters in the Brawl, but this time it was mainly Music Meister here and Praline, hence his obsession with her. In Brave and the Bold he wants Black Canary for her musical voice powers so I thought a parallel here would be fun, although he was more... intimate? with Praline. In the show he parodies various genres with costume changes as well, so I had him go Phantom of the Opera on Praline, easily done since her name sounds like Christine too! I wanted to play around a bit more with his normal skills like shooting sheet music and riding music notes than I did, but I also tried to make his musical number effective and fun. All lyrics are written by me, if based somewhat on the rhythm of the song I linked and the whole saying his name aspect. I tried to have fun characters you wouldn't expect to sing pipe in, as well as serving as a sort of check-in with guys who haven't done much. Blade got his end during the song, and afterwards a lot of guys were placed together to push along the next segment. Nearly every brawl has some points where things shake up and switch stuff around, and this along with the arena breaking were two of this year's. Of course, a character like him has to sort of demand attention like that, and the Shrekoning ended up being the way to break up hypnosis that might've otherwise required a lot of careful combing of the character traits. Sure, it can be assumed they weren't affected and would have helped, but Music Meister had guys to defend him right before Ricard's more powerful illusions broke in.
Next up we'll take a look at REGGAE SHARK, who perhaps became bigger than intended when I revealed his poor vote count. Somehow he didn't get last and spared me the pain of a blackout bingo card, and he got to be around enough to do a thing! Not quite an elimination, but it was fun either way and sort of the early Brawl silliness that always happens. I of course watched all three Reggae Shark videos for research. In fact, going back, CKR often recommends Youtube videos to me that don't always hit the mark. I didn't trust Reggae Shark's videos going in, but they were catchy songs, if way absurd. After showing me them she said she's considering him for the Brawl now as I groaned. He's not as bad as Babe Lincoln and he did end up getting my approval because he was better than other options, but I was hesitant about the reefer shark for a while until I realized he's not that bad. He's kinda ridiculous, but how is that a problem? His legend may be getting so few votes he was the joke to potentially win, but I tried to make our short time with him both show the Reggae and the Shark, hence Matt feeling both sides of it. The Sharpedo made him the obvious target. One shark sharing a blunt with another? Too natural, man, and Goops made a lovely gif of it getting high. He drew Reggae Shark pretty well really! I'm sure Reggae Shark was drawn in MSPaint himself though, the video's production values were one thing that put me off it before the song drilled into my brain and stuck there. It's hard to say Reggae Shark aloud without doing it like his music. The shark aspect was of course for when he and addled Sharpedo ganged up on Matt and were biting into him until Matt stepped it up. To be honest, I might've got more than expected from Reggae Shark, right down to even including the allusion to his arts and crafts from the song that CKR made sure to mention in his entry. Sometimes you don't need to go far to make an impression.
And now, the shining star of CKR's cast this year, the one who got all the way to the top 20... WET TIGER. This strange concept originated from almost three years back I'm sure. We were at the Arkansas Zoo, near an elephant exhibit and a Tiger exhibit, and as we looked at the tigers, CKR pulls up the picture of the Wet Tiger and shows it to me without explanation. Being a joker I of course asked why she was showing me this pointless picture of a wet tiger, and we both had a laugh at it. She thinks the picture of Wet Tiger looks sassy, not really something that came across in the brawl as it seemed she wanted more of "just a perpetually wet tiger" angle rather than some sassy talking cat. Wet Tiger was put on her list and stayed there for a long time, although it was almost part of a "year of the cats" where every entrant from CKR was to be some sort of cat. The Custard Cats were slated to come back like they did last year for it, along with the Wet Tiger and Unikitty, CKR's failed lotto for this year. Lego Movie came out in 2014 so I wager it must've been that Brawl's intention before she mixed it up. Periwinkle was considered as well and thank google the cat idea was scrapped for that, but after years of waiting, the Wet Tiger finally appears, and its really just a Wet Tiger. I was afraid to explain the means of it, instead dismissing reasons with Owen and having Gran suck it away without really saying WHY. I almost felt bad having Gran do that to the Tiger, but it fit with the whole mystical-to-mundane idea that stuck in my head as I thought up the salamander comparison. CKR had actually lost the specific picture of the Wet Tiger when she got a new phone, so the night of her sign-ups was me and her desperately trying to find it again as she realized it hadn't been transferred. I thought it might be on Pinterest and she found it there after a long search.
Kletchatyy, I love you sweety, but your perfect for animals to tear up, so Wet Tiger ended up getting your takedown. I also like to give my sisters drawings of each other's characters dying, and since Wet Tiger was drawing in the votes and supplanting the mainstay Rainbow Dash, I decided to pit the popular characters together for the kill that would take down the pony. Of course, CKR drew it, and Rainbow Dash got to draw the Wet Tiger dying, unaware that it had managed to kill Rainbow Dash first! RD did get suspicious I didn't ask her to draw more Rainbow Dash pictures this year save the one of her killing Sean, but CKR didn't ask about the Wet Tiger picture dearth. I think I've mentioned already that I made sure I didn't have to draw it because I felt I couldn't draw it well, leading to all three pics going to a different artist besides myself. It's an easy concept for a photograph or in writing, but drawing a tiger and making it clear it is wet is a hard task. Also, rest assured people, unless CKR decides to do something different with it, whenever "Wet Tiger is alive" happened, it was back to its old wet self. It was interesting thinking of ways the wetness could affect thing, leading to stuff like Undyne topping of her moisture with it, and at some point I decided it liked fresh kills and meat instead of cooked human meat. Wet Tiger is a predator, yo, and that's why it somehow entered the Brawl. To KILL and FEAST and DRIP ON THINGS!
CKR's entrants were delightfully absurd and easy to use, both good things in my book! I've probably both overstated and understated my roles in helping both sisters settle on entries, but CKR seems to be finding a good balance between entrants that can do interesting stuff while still feeling very JRM Sister-esque. Rainbow Dash too! Still, even when they tell me ideas, I never truly know what to expect next year. Who knows what might leave the sticky note next time...
HARPY
Harpy! Poor unfortunate Harpy. Last year and this year, she drew in the most votes with one of her characters and still didn't get the win, but the tractor can't keep it from her forever. At the same time, I can say that about like, half the users? I do like seeing a new user win the Brawl just so that everyone gets a go, but I don't think I've ever really pegged a user myself as someone I'd like to see win specifically, just a general wish for someone new to get the title even when people who've won before have interesting entries. Almost every year I have a sort of "gut feeling" on which user will win... and they never do! But this year was Bree, and it's been Saberwulf and Sheep in the past. This is mostly just me going on about users in general, when this is supposed to be the platform for talking about Harpy's characters! Let get into this!
Let us begin with the ghostly girl YUYUKO last name not mentioned by me. With the growing number of touhou entrants I've been keeping more to the first name basis than in the past, although its not like I ever called Utsuho just "Reiuji", but I did occassionally slip the full name in. Partly because with so many touhous around its hard to keep track of the Japanese last names! Her last name is Saigyouji apparently, but everyone just calls her YUYUYUYUYUYU and so on. This year it might've been apparent I tried to do something new with the Touhous, or rather something different at least. In the past, ones like Tenshi or Utsuho often leaned harder on their fighting game attacks than anything else, while their danmaku was almost a sort of "character swings sword" or "character throws punches" but for Touhous instead. This time around I wanted to incorporate more of their source game danmaku patterns, and even then I didn't give the name of many because freaking... names on these things man! I ain't writing whole sentences for those names! They wouldn't fit well, so instead we got the descriptions of the danmaku sprays and I tried to have them be tactical with their choices and all. Yuyuko here had her spirits and butterflies to make hers more than just light bullets, giving Parsephine a hard time. I also wanted to have at least one Touhou-on-Touhou battle, hence the Yamame-Parsephine-Yuyuko battle.
Having had her in last year's Halloween fite also made me have a good idea how to write her. Sort of playful and all, hence her pre-fite show niceness to Remilia... who she also saw at the Halloween fite! CONSISTENCY! As for her weapon, sometimes you're handed a small thing on top of a pile of big things and its hard to work it in too much. She still used it a bit, but when you have Touhou powers you usally have to go out of your way to use something ineffective. With no Moosh around, there weren't many people who would go "oh! Mid-battle bonbons, don't mind if I do!" except friendly folks. I still tried to get a bit out of it, but the self-described chubby ghost was destined to be caught by Yamame for being the close to Sarah/Patchouli we had in the Brawl. For some reason I drew blood on the KO picture of Yuyuko's death which is kind of weird since I bet she can't bleed, but it just looked like Yamame was hugging her then. Despite RPing a ghost since I joined Zoofights, its still weird figuring out some "ghost rules".
Next we have Mr.Not-Gluttony himself, CIAN. Almost exclusively referred to as such since his names are a bit of a jumbled bag. He was Gluttony in the past, became Temperance and was rarely called it, and since Harpy's two lottos were both Xavier otherwise, I got into the habit of calling him Cian before the lotto was even rolled. It's also what he's called most these days, even though up until now I mostly mentally called him Gluttony. It's probably for the best I got the name change nailed into my head before Brawl time or else I might misremember him having some of his old powers. You've come far from having the Skeleton King burst out of your stomach, Cian. Sometimes it feels like I remember old fite results that no one else does... WONDER WHY.
Anyway, Cian had quite a bag of powers that made his skirmish with Sam pretty interesting. And before that, I got Gooper to draw maybe-not-the-most-important picture of The Last Temptation of Cian, but I felt it was a good image he could bring to life as part of setting up their specific battlefield and the moment he had to decide between his old self and new self. I almost felt bad having him pull away from the buffet in a demonstration of self-control after seeing the picture, but there was a battle to be fought... and too be fair he wasn't pulled away so much as forced away by having his head stuck to the wall! You can bet I have fun when I have a character who can move separate parts, hence why Cian's dullahan nature came up quite a bit and lead to his ultimate death method. If this had been a different year he might've been more ruthless instead of the more fun fiter we saw, but it's not like I could ever really predict what a Brawl would've been like with his older self since a single change can shake up the whole thing. It was still great to finally grab him, especially since it seemed suspect after his huge development last year. The food/fabric magic more than made up for his loss of his monstrous form at least!
Here on her second go, SAMMY came back... without her yoyos?! That was a big surprise, but getting the power upgrade lead to my main focus with her. We saw a lot of her electricity in... well, most Sammy things! I of course didn't completely ignore it and have her go full Magneto, but playing around the magnetism much like I imagine Sammy would with a new power seemed like a fun angle, and I tried to use the sword as well even though her powers almost meant she could go in bare-knuckle this year if she wanted. I kind of realize now I should have had her do something fancy, guiding the sword around with her magnetism powers, but instead she got put up against two Cornwind cast members who seemed fit to fall to her metal-bending ways. I'm kind of glad Harpy abandoned the whole "motivate Stacy through putting her down" angle, especially since Sammy doesn't seem the type and Stacy seems the type to just let herself get put down. There was a point where Stacy was laying down I almost had Sammy come over to try and motivate her, either by the old plan that was dismissed in the pre-fite show eventually or just in general, but the girls were both busy in areas with sort of clear character makeups and I didn't want either to sit by and let the other get attacked when their time came for the next battle. Probably not a big loss but just an unused idea.
Having not played as far into Final Fantasy Tactics as others, I was a bit worried about the Chirijiraden's fire power, but I figured it probably worked like most similar things in FFT and Sammy mostly used it in a move on Raw. The fire wasn't drawn, and neither was the drill in her hair at the time, but even though my notes said to put both I didn't want to bug CKR about it. The stab through the torso was certainly the more important part! I can't say I never expected Sammy to come back to the BBB, but she had alot new with her so that she could keep things fresh, and since Sammy is always trying to be FRESH and RADICAL, it seemed appropriate she did! Remember when I linked a bunch of rap music in her fite against Bulgrave and Beatbox because that seemed to be her character then? What a time.
And now, our number 1 vote getter who I mentioned in the previous character coverage but didn't bold: STACY! Not really surprised she didn't win because... she got the most votes. It's almost a curse to pull in the highest numbers, but I still expected a higher placing considering she did. Kevin got pretty high up last year on the same cushion. Stacy was a bit weird in that she kind of went for the same angle as Silence from last year except minus one biker dude. Two normal ladies winning back to back would've been something, but Silence had a lot of bulk and more going for her to be the champ. Stacy, if she had gone the distance, would've required some more creative shuffling than Silence did, but Bouncy Blue was always there to help her go Gold if she was down to fiting Biollante for the championship. In regular RP sometimes things are pretty chaotic, people popping in at the end of the battle for a kill move or doing something absurd and illogical, or possibly doing an attack that ends up transformed into something entirely different in the reply post. The Brawl is certainly insane and chaotic, but with the ability to control all the pieces I try to have it display the character as they are meant to be in a way. Their attacks will work, their skills are allowed to execute with a dice roll, but the downside certainly is things have to make a certain amount of sense. Stacy fiting Biollante or someone like Doomguy would take more than what she entered with for sure. "Doing a Silencer on Biollante" as requested in chat would just be... yeesh, the hoops I'd have to jump through! It may be cool to a few users who didn't car about the logic, but it might also seem unfair or favoritism or whatever.
Stacy ended up against opponents on her level until the very end so it was never about her not being up to snuff. She had doubts as she went against Rainbow Mika, was a bit ashamed of her performance against Stan Ligature, and ultimately lost the battle with Rash. As previously mentioned, Rash was given the role of killing Stacy because I thought it would burn him too much, and even though I suspected SK might RP him, there would be little animosity. As of writing this particular segment, Rash literally appeared in his control today! And of course he seemed to have Stacy's death off him like water on his back. During the fite between Rash and Stacy there is a point she rides him while he's a wrecking ball, and the narration acknowledges what was almost a larger idea: an image of Stacy on the wrecking ball like Miley Cyrus in her music video for Wrecking Ball. I knew Goops coudl draw it well... but it would be too hard to work it. Stacy wouldn't be happy (foreboding for Gooper to know), the wrecking ball would probably have to be recolored by me since I'd tell him its a normal one when its supposed to be green like Rash, and he might wonder about its source. The picture was a cute idea but it would only work with the right knowledge and Stacy happy. I tried to put Stacy up against opponents she could handle that were still impressive to beat, like killing Rainbow Mika or holding her own against Rash. Stan Ligature was more of the point that kind of suggested she might not go all the way because fiting a large frog is dangerous for a regular person! Since she was top of the votes I gave her two kills as well but didn't go insane because in a lot of ways she was sort of a showing of a regular person in the Brawl more than most cases. Her Muay Thai was written more plainly instead of referred to directly or at length like in the Meiling fite, and for a while I wasn't sure if she was using normal boxing gloves or those fingerless ones until a google search and some guidance from Gooper's effort art made me realize they probably are the full hand wraps.
It's kind of funny, looking at the Harp cast now. Cian, Yuyuko, Sammy all brought so many battle tools that the hard part was more trying to use them all and deciding what not to do. Stacy, meanwhile, brought just her body really, and I still put a ton of thought in how she'd use that angle. A regular girl in the Brawl with spunk and some gloves. In the ever-expanding world of Harpcast, we got some good contributions to this year's Big Bar Brawl. I wonder who we'll decide to hitch our carts to in her cast for next year's!
STEELKOMODO
SK brought an impressive set this year with an old and new mix not too dissimilar to Goops. And just like Goops he had five guys in the brawl! Rash has been discussed in his own section and kind of all over really so I don't think I need to give more thoughts on him. For the others, we'll jump right in!
Returning for his third year, I expected BECK/KAMEN RIDER OOO to actually enter with some of the stuff from Mighty No. 9 as the game was coming out around then and we finally saw some of his in-game forms. However, we can always have that next year, and having played through MN9 myself I'd have an informed view on those skills too if SK does bring him back for a fourth go. This year though SK chose an excellent angle considering its his Kamen Rider year. Plus, Beck brought with him a bunch of forms and Medals and all that he kept changing a lot! Almost like his XEL forms! I realized well into the Brawl I wasn't having his medals pop out when pieces broke and edited those back in, but I really went all out with trying to get the most of the many forms and their individual weapons. Didn't really mix and match though since SK gave specific combos to use and I didn't know if those were hardset or if Beck would try and mix it up at that point, in addition to being able to skip the transformation processes for time's sake. Mighta been neat to link the musics when he changed into them but considering how much he switched around in the Brawl it was neccessary to leave out the actual HENSHINing. I almost considered having him revert to Beck at some point as he was wore down, but I felt it cooler for him to go far with as much of OOO as we can see.
He was also the de facto second in command of the Dangerous Alliance, even if his youthful and cocksure nature meant he wasn't a good fit. Not a bad fit, but he couldn't command the same presence as his aunt and he had more general guidance than full on attack plans. He was also softer than Dawn as seen in the pre-fite show. Kind of tried to laid the groundwork for the interchangeable use of Beck and Kamen Rider OOO names there so it's not too weird in the Brawl. It's a cool situation: his skillset is entirely new but his personality is one we know well. He was definitely a "toybox" entrant where there were so many things to use that it was interesting to have the sticky note open and be like, "He'll kill Nylora with this scanning charge" or "he'll use Hawk Head this way". He probably commands the most sticky note real estate with all those forms and powers!
Moving on to RAINBOW MIKA! Another person I was hoping for the Brawl but wasn't sure if she would enter since she was a wrestler and I wasn't sure how far she'd go in hurting people. I mean, in Street Fighter everyone is a bit ruthless, and even in the Brawl her kill and fighting were very much along the Street Fighter lines. I didn't get to use her Muscle Spirit much because it would've seemed weird for her to talk on the microphone when Armstrong was basically going hog wild on her the moment they got into a scuffle, but it definitely would've come up if she had ever fought someone who wasn't on her level. Armstrong, Mika, Stacy, and Silence were all basically put together for a fite that was Brawl-like but still was on their level of power instead of trying to suplex Gamera to find out it won't work. Maybe with some Muscle Spirit... add that to the regrets! My notes on Mika was mainly the video SK linked that showed all her attacks, and although some like the Wingless Airplane didn't make it in, I made sure the most important one did. Josephine and Mika doing the butt slam was going to be a highlight, I knew that, and I drew the image very carefully. I may not be big on the butt jokes anymore, but sometimes man, when you got all the pieces, you have to go for it or you'll regret it forever. The people wanted it, the people got it! A bit weird that SK tried to say Mika survived the Brawl after, but its easy to write off as her being sweeped up in the big post-Brawl revival that has been said to happen pretty much immediately after. Her injuries weren't too bad, but if she didn't actually die, that would rob Stacy of her highlight moment of the thing and invalidate Zeldoten's win. Everything dies but the winner has been hard coded into the Brawl! I've actually mentioned how I'm careful to put words like "dead" or "kill" around situations that seemed ambiguous since this has been an issue before, like when Ricard died in BBB3. I don't want to have to dice every entrant up into small cubes to kill them, so usually I just say "it was the killing move" or something and let people just have a butt slam down on their face.
And of course, Mika being killed by a butt was another one of those moments I felt I had to do. I know Mika is more than her butt, and I tried to make her pre-fite show and most of her fiting style focus on that, but for those killing moves around her man, it would be a shame to leave them out. The Muscle Spirit kill was basically what she would've had next if she had gone further. I think one thing I liked is even though she's a wrestler, I didn't draw on the same sources as Silence or Stacy. Mika has a moveset already, Stacy uses Muay Thai, and Silence has more normal wrestling. Varied ladies even though they're all basically regular woman who are tough!
Let's see, next we got SAM, the asterokinetic! The Uberman! The "only JRM really calls him these names!" A funny thing there. In Sean vs. Sam, we came across a situation where two characters with a similar name both filled the same "title". Blonde-haired swordsman. Now, I read that you usually want to avoid titles like "the blonde" or "the lesbian" or "the man" as they are a bit too typical. You're not really talking about your character then, it doesn't give a detail or set them apart. Blonde-haired swordsman is a bit better, swordsman tells us about their skill and the "blonde-haired" part isn't bad when its modifying a proper title. It's a touch rather than a title in itself, but even if Sean vs. Sam had them with different colored hair, it probably would've been best to avoid "swordsman" even with the hair-color modifier. Just a writing thing really. The main point I was attempting to make is Sean and Sam were incredibly similar on the surface despite having different skills and styles, and hence Sean is called dork some in their fite and Sam sticks to things like Uberman and asterokinetic. You see my struggle with using titles elsewhere too, usually one arising after no use like Sunshine becoming a choujin only in late game description. This isn't a big deal really, but these are the small insights that clog this blog and apparently some people want to hear, so let's actually talk about Sam now!
I admit I was a bit disappointed when it sounded like SK wanted Dirk in over Sam, mainly because we had Dirk in BBB3 and Sam was a new guy! I don't know if he's coming back again, but he's been a major character for a while now and I always love having the major characters in for at least one go. Having him for the Ash fite was fun and I wanted to use him a lot more here, so I played around with his priorities as much as I could and tried to weave in the asterokinetic powers without potentially pushing off into overkill territory. His teleportation into the crowd was the only real crowd joke this year and I like what Gooper did with it, as I almost specified who the lovely ladies might be but didn't want to place characters there without permission. Wasn't the succubi, but that was a good idea! Grandius's code box's are an example of the kind of stuff that doesn't carry over to fites for readability's sake though. I like them in RP and they work well there, but I've given my thoughts on text colors in fites before, and even said if Thomas entered a fite he would've been subject to the same rules despite his strong gimmick. A lot of weird meta discussion here in the Sam section... but he's definitely a staple SK character by now and I'm glad I didn't have to wait longer to get him!
Speaking of staple SK character's I waited longer for... EDDIE! After all these years you return to us! Man, I still need to play through Brutal Legend, but the Brawl is a nice way to bring back a classic character with low commitment. Pech did that last year without strife and now we get Eddie back swinging axe and shredding guitar just like in the old days. I was quite conscious of those old days as I wrote Eddie, remembering his many Fite Yer Mates appearances. Partly why Call of the Wild saw no use is because Eddie is from back in those days where fites were so frequent and we had enough repeat appearances by characters that I could write a whole fite around one major ability. Two Axe Murderers, the fite between him and Garnet, was basically Eddie using Call of the Wild as his main trick, and I remember that fite quite well for that. Here I wanted to use his other stuff, instead settling on the Deuce as his showy ability and having things like the Anvil of Burden and Bring it On Home show up to help but not draw focus. I tried to focus on his core a lot too, the axe, guitar, and demon forms getting a lot of special play. Of course he had to get in a DECAPITATIOOOOOOOOON! no matter what. After all these years without one, its a necessary part of the comeback tour! He got a creative use for rocking out, and I was almost hesitant to call it rock since its actually metal, but rock is a broad term in music so it didn't feel like he was betraying his brand. He had his cameo at Praline's concert before the Brawl too so it wasn't like he came out of nowhere even. Dude was in town and was like "Sick, I should sign up for this finally!" I was very happy to finally be able to remove him from the wishtlist, and even though I didn't use Call of the Wild, it wasn't like I was holding him back by that. He had tons of other stuff to keep him entertaining until that head smash that I wrote as brutal but CKR made it look a bit more palatable with her interpretation.
SK's been reining in his cast sizes lately to avoid overload and adding characters like Stephen and the Squid Sister who might never see the light of a proper fite, but he still found a way to fill his entries without any being filler. Beck with his new tricks, Eddie coming back, Sam coming in after his big year and Mika starting off her year with entry. I love these little source mixes. Not to mention he also got the Secret Fiter, who looks like he may be on track to be the only one to ever do anything outside of the Brawl!
M SHEEP
After getting the Secret Fiter last year, M Sheep decides to cash in his luck again and grab our only entrant from the Black Lotto. You can always count on Sheep to bring interesting and unusual character to the Brawl that require me to think. Or a news-reporting frog. A lot of interesting guys and surprises here, and with another user with five characters in the scuffle to look over, let's get things going!
Let's lead with the frog! STAN LIGATURE, despite my joke, is very much a Sheep character in his own right and one I never seriously expected for the Brawl. If he didn't get in through the lotto this year I wonder if we would've ever seen him try again. His was a very easy angle when he got in, going for the full mid-Brawl report over everything else. I made his demeanor dull, but perhaps his fite with Sir Booby and Stacy was a bit more interesting than is expected of this newsfrog. I was also a bit hesitant to call him outright boring for some reason despite it being kind of part of his character, just for fear of sounding mean when I do like the character. We've had many news characters come and go, most with different gimmicks, and Stan fills that bland role quite well even if he's still interesting despite the narrative insistence on his dullness. His fiting style wasn't hard to come up with since it was basically "big frog" with a touch of the newscaster side. Writing his news jargon was fun, since even when I write Soar he's usually so eccentric that he doesn't follow the usual beats. I wanted to have his necktie matter too because for a while I never even noticed it and decided to make myself remember it by having Stacy nearly choke him with it. Sir Booby battle, meanwhile, was very much the animal vs. animal thing I like doing at times. I also appreciated the responses from Gooper's news characters in the stand to Stan getting the live reports from within the Brawl. Those small touches won't show in the brawl writing itself but are a little treat for me as I'm posting!
Sadly, I can't make a running joke of pretending I haven't noticed RED because this blog is convoluted in its own ways already, but I tried to do that in the Brawl pre-fite show! Not so much the actual Brawl because I felt he was a guy who had to be kept busy or he would intrude on the fites, hence him trying to keep Music Meister from hogging the spotlight in the early Brawl. I admit I had a bit of affection for the guy despite his horrifying premise because I drew him and helped design him in that way, although I didn't know his powers until the day Sheep posted his entry. Sort of a horrifying Hugh London type, the news reporter from the NPC Fite in year one. News reporter... coincidence? Yes, because Sheep thought out Red a lot more than I thought out turning Devil Ed's news guy into a joke. Red's powers were always an interesting balance act, me trying to figure out ways around them to keep battles with him interesting. Irritation and teasing both involved different bodily responses than the one Red suppresses, so they seemed the means to get a good match out of 421 and Music Meister, and Springtrap was straight up immune. A lot of Red's participation was based on the fact 421's entry said she was specifically not immune to him, and it made me want to put them in a battle together, hence the most obvious "I'll fite you in the Brawl" of the pre-fite show. I didn't catch all of Red's mannerisms and he didn't talk much, but that's any character in a Brawl versus RP if you think about it. Kinda funny how Red ended up killing the other character I help design... I'm glad his story didn't end with the Brawl or with Dawn killing him though. Him just appearing in things that are often not even mentioned in chat is pretty cool! Probably the biggest "villain" in the Brawl, even with Gyaos being quite clearly one!
Next we'll look at the sad story of RAY, the unexpected lowest placing guy in the whole Brawl. I suppose being part of the Dangerous Alliance made it seem like he could go far even after the vote tallies were low, but I like that it allowed me to do the whole "characters attacking threats early" thing with this Brawl. And its not like Ray didn't get to do anything. Even before things start he was stealing stuff and setting up important things, like taking Josephine's dagger or earning Sir Booby's ire. I did speed through all his card types due to his ultimate fate and not wishing to waste such a cool concept, and even though Sheep had sent me a longer list of stuff that could be in his jacket, I decided to stick with the stuff on the entry card since he was the first fite and thus couldn't be pulling out too many stops. It also involved somewhat isolating him from the others, but Ray certainly seemed the most likely to get pulled away and receive the least support, although Praline tried her damndest to support everyone. Had to include the Swing Wing of course even if it did little, but at the same time... it's the Swing Wing. What more could it do than hold the Booby at bay? Having the Secret Fiter file was his little lasting gift so he wasn't too irellevant to the alliance for dropping out early. It's like I've said in the past, even when a character drops out early, I try to have them do something interesting to make entering them worthwhile!
Next up in the Sheep Brigade we'll look at BIG JOE MUFFERAW! One thing I found funny about Big Joe's RP debut was how this bombastic guy and a league of superheroes appeared and no one in chat was like "what is this insane biz" because of how on edge we are about Sheep characters and how not entirely unusual this surprisingly friendly group's characters were in Sheep's cast. Big Joe was easy to like though: an idealistic, all-around friendly lumberjack. His powers are pretty insane though, almost like Superman with more logic behind it. I was actually somewhat worried about how I could kill this guy if he got too high with only certain people left, but I had Sunshine who could suffocate him. A guy at my work named Chris actually suggested two characters I should enter into the Brawl: one was DC's Nuclear Family, a typical 50s family except they're villains who all control different aspects of radiation. The other was an original character not unlike Mufferaw. I don't remember her name, but it was some pun, and she could stop and redirect kinetic energy. Not QUITE the same but it was an easy out to tell him why I didn't add that character since he didn't understand the Big Bar Brawl's rules or Mystery Fiter stuff. Joe's stuff is more complex and at times I worried, of course, if I was doing it right, but he seemed just on the line of a guy who could take down Biollante while being somewhat normal but not outside of believability. Plus I just liked the image of him happily hacking away at a toppled Biollante like a lumberjack cutting wood, maybe even singing as he did it. Joe was fun and easy to love, and its still hard not to say his name like you're announcing a boxer. I of course tried to capture his nice side with how he killed Seaport somewhat by mistake and didn't try to hurt anyone for any reason besides the same as Armstrong: they both thought it was a fite for fun with little consequence!
And lastly we come to GRAN, SYLLABUB, AND KLETCHATYY, not even the first frail old lady to enter the Brawl! And just like Diptera, she certainly wasn't defenseless. Syllabub got in on the familiar technicality that allowed in Nibbles as well, and Kletchatyy I was surprised to see back! I know she started hanging out with Gran after WALL!!'s use of her last year, but I was surprised she wanted to come back to the Brawl and even played it up in her ultimate fate as it somewhat mirrored her situation from last year. I tried to have her be more aggressive with her food creations and creative as well as she cared more for protecting Gran than she did WALL!!, but ultimately she ended up torn apart once again. Syllabub didn't get killed really do to his strange nature, but it also meant his effect was limited since he is just a bitty bat good at displacing stuff and squeaking. Gran's stories were of course her main focus, telling one pre-brawl, using her fabrics to kill Wet Tiger with one, and trying to get Pteron with one as well. All were pretty much made up off the top of my head of course, for better or worse. The one that killed the Wet Tiger was inspired by the parallel to the flaming salamander, but as I wanted other examples for Gran to whittle the Wet Tiger down with, I was running out of ideas and steam. The panther was a cool one since its far lesser known and its a big cat who can tear into Wet Tiger on its level, but the flies and their spontaneous generation coupled with the Barnacle Geese felt like I was leaning on things either too well known or not quite as mystical and more "dumb science" than the other examples. This trio was basically an assembly of characters who can only affect battle and damage in a specific way that can be hard to pull off, and Gran's slow magic didn't push her too far above that. They were a great way of occupying the Dangerous Alliance when the entrant number was dwindling though. I think its fairly obvious why Pteron killed Gran the way he did. You don't have to think about a fall death as much as one that might've involved his claws or crushing her some other way. She still looks like an old lady and treats a lot of people that way, so I had to kill her carefully and with someone who wouldn't be accused of being overly mean to an old lady.
Sheep's entrants this year may not have been giant diva grubs or an ant lady with a pet zombie dog, but despite four humanoids, they still brought the distinct Sheep flavor to the Brawl. Weird horrific visions like Ray and Red, unusual but fun characters like Joe carrying on WALL!!'s spirit, and then weird wild cards like Gran and Stan. Sheep has such a huge cast of characters with thought-out lives and powers its always cool to get them in the Brawl and get to see it all out in the open.
JUMPROPEMAN (ME!)
I bet Jumpropeman can't wait to read this section! Really though, we'll cover a bit of my thoughts on my own entry and all for the sake of it, skipping Captain Underpants as he's already been explained. There were a couple characters I considered entering and didn't in the end. Lauren was considered before I moved her to a post-Brawl character, as well as not being sure how to kill her and not wanting to have a repeat name after last year's treasure hunter character. Sonic Man was a cute idea, but all he can really do is run, and if I get the Lightning Bolt Society involved they might steal too much of the show by accident, which is never something I want. Melvin Underbelly was considered, as were the Boo Brothers or even Soar the Eagle, but side-characters can be entered in almost any Brawl, hence why Phantomon hasn't showed up all these years yet. I wanted to get in the guys who might not be back or might have a role to play in this fite.
I don't know if I would say I had any role planned for INGRID AND CHOCOBILLY besides the eventual alliances and having someone who can get killed or make kills I need done. Don't think that really happened too directly save her avenging Nylora as part of my love for their little friendship. Chocobilly, however, I almost didn't put in the Brawl at all until other people already pushed the rules around a little and it sounded like people expected it. Ingrid fites atop or with Chocobilly by her side usually, yes, but it was still her having a weapon and a mount... something Gregor also did so whatever! He also got the kill on Chocobilly, and while people were surprised the chocobo went down so early, it was partly out of the trepidation about him being in at all, partly so Gregor could influence things before his death, and lastly because the bird really doesn't do too much. I mean, he has some healing and he can peck and kick and fly, but Ingrid had a lot she could do anyway so it wasn't too big a loss. Just a bit happy he was there at all! Meanwhile, Ingrid's already a bit complicated as she is basically full of justifications for an appearance I made to be silly while she's a quite serious character personality-wise, plus her skills from the game... I tried to keep her limited and mostly simple. I almost felt like I had to call her skills by name after how I gave them in the fite entry though, and it was nice to show off her other limit break... not to mention to let Taren do something where I wasn't waiting on a 1 on the tractor to get him out and fiting. Limited him a bit to simple red magic and not really using many of his ninja skills since they have cumbersome names for simply strikes and swiftness. Gooper did a very nice pic for the Taren transformation that I realized is better for his mid-battle ones. It was almost like I planned that, but it would make me sound more clever than I am! Like most my entries she was easy to put in places I needed something done but otherwise I kept her busy with her alliance with Nylora. She was basically a big character in my cast and an adept fiter, so she was the shoo-in for the Brawl out of my cast.
PTERON AND BOUNCY BLUE were basically guaranteed as well, as they were the perfect tool to do hard stuff with. Pteron is an old, old character idea I've had since I was a kid, updated of course to be more interesting, but he had the ruthless, savage nature needed to kill characters that other users might not want their character killing or might've elicited sympathy and discouraged the kill. Sammy needed to be killed by someone and Pteron had no reason to treat her any different than any other entry, and Gran was an old lady, but even when calmed down by the malfunctioning limiter, he still had it in him to kill her. Bouncy Blue, meanwhile, would always be on hand to make someone go Gold, and the scene where someone tried to use him only to find out he can't pass through clothes was planned early before I could even think of who would try it. Going Gold was an easy equalizer and the way Blue could be eliminated, and although he was put there in case of normal people needing to kill kaiju or to even the playing field if a strong fiter and weak fiter were all that was left, he ended up getting put into the role of neutrally eliminating Amity so that it wasn't clear who would win out of Undyne and Zeldoten since no one got the third place kill technically. She was also one of the less gruesome characters who could be gradually blown apart before full blowing up from having the Gold power. Although they were perfect fits for the Brawl and had in-character reasons for it, really these guys were my most useful tools where I knew I could use them how I want to get results without bugging anyone. They didn't exactly have a lot of skills, and Pteron had to be swept aside early on so he wasn't interrupting earlier battles or hogging spotlight, but it's fun to have these old characters from before RP show up in my current big thing, and Pteron really embodies the idea of fites. Wanton murderous mayhem! Fun death! Maybe he didn't have the silly side down pat, but Bouncy Blue was there to inject it with his actions and words.
The last of my three normal entrants was YOTAM, who really entered sort of because it's his only chance this year. No matter how his plot goes I doubt he'll ever have a reason to return, and he is made to smash things with that hammer. Wasn't sure how many times I could get to push his pain levels high either and have him show off his mutant power, and it got me to mention that his left leg has no toes, which might be hard to reveal in RP otherwise! Much like Ingrid I attached him to Caitir so that even when he's in focus he's sort of sharing it with others rather than saying "look at JRM's character!" I tried to downplay his mopey nature, which has gotten kind of out of control in RP and I've tried to do small things to fix it... only for circumstance to push him back into bad situations. I also avoided his usual narration style since its overly long and anxious, and since he couldn't spend the whole Brawl feeling overwhelmed, Caitir was a good anchor to make him not being a nervous wreck more believable. He had a friend! He also had a small justification for entering the Brawl as it was where word of mutants like Junko got out from last year, drawing Yotam to Las Vegas! I kinda wanted to draw a better piece of art for him entering, and it kind of lead to his weird face in the pictures my sisters drew of him. Oh well!
I feel like I did a decent balance of getting use of these characters, giving them attention without them hogging it, and just all around doing with my entrants what I usually aim to do. Not meaningless filler entries, but still guys not meant to steal the show. I don't want to basically RP them in the middle of a fite, but I try to look at them as neutrally as I can. Some people might actually like these guys and want to see them do stuff besides turn out to be death fodder for others! I think my characters were more effective killcount wise than ever, but it came from their unexpectedly high placement mostly. Captain Underpants, being the highest placing Mystery Fiter yet, had to get some to justify it. Still, I always do feel that urge to enter the lotto or add more guys. It's nice to see my guys next to everyone else's great entries!
RUBY CHAO
Sometimes I wonder how Chao feels about coming out the gate with a designated champion. For other people it's still up in the air who their Brawl champion might be, but Cleft was given to him his first try and I wonder if maybe he would've preferred it to be someone like Utsuho or Tenshi, but he still seems to like the Brawl a lot even if he's not trying to get a repeat win always! He at least sends some interesting guys, so let's take a look at them!
First I guess we'll look at PRALINE, who definitely paid off for waiting a year to enter. Last year she would've been a bumbling musician not wanting to get involved in Kobber business and probably on her own unless I gave her allies. This year she enters a skilled fiter with laser beams and a support team to use her music on! She was definitely the kind of character who benefited greatly from the Dangerous Alliance as it allowed her to use her main skillset, that being her songs, to great effect! And because she managed to get surprisingly far on that, she not only just played support, but she had a role in the Music Meister's plot despite blowing it because of her screechy voice, she was the one trying to keep together the Dangerous Alliance until the end, and she was part of the first fite of the Brawl even! It was cool she was able to maintain this broad presence, use her microphone as a club, basically do everything she entered to do! Maybe she could have used her martial arts training a bit more, but as the support person of the group she ended up having a dynamic with guys like Amity and Sunshine for the late game where characters can talk more. I had the Performer page of the final fantasy wiki open a lot (it doubles as Bravely Default wiki due to the series having such close ties). Sometimes I tried to weave in the name of her support songs, but other times I just said she was giving a boost so it wasn't always trying to clunkily weave in a name to the narration. Tried to avoid the RPG terminology too, where things that allowed you to Brave in Bravely Default instead make delivering more attacks easier or something like that. Never really thought to ask Chao if those songs would have words for Praline or if maybe they're all Love in the Crossfire, but in her fite with Candy they at least had accompanying lyrics through youtube links.
We got quite a surprise out of ARTHUR AND BABE, who came back after having his life changed in a way not too dissimilar to Praline's. He went from the knight who couldn't handle his spear well to a gifted axeman before he said goodbye, and he certainly benefited from not entering as the knight! Strange how well he did though after being out of RP for a while, but it was cool to have him in the portion of the Brawl where they were indoors and he got to shine some. Babe got to help a bit in the Meiling fite so he wasn't discarded or ignored, but the Blue Ox who wasn't big was a fun idea from Chao that helped him use that ox that he got right before he left RP. It also balanced out Arthur as he was just a guy with an axe otherwise, at least in regards to his abilities. Somehow ax and ox was all he needed for 7th place though! Probably good Gregor didn't bring his axe so he wouldn't be too similar to Arthur, especially if he came in on horseback still. Writing his fite with Meiling was a bit odd since she did have an upperhand on him strength-wise and I didn't want to have him get destroyed since he was meant to kill her after all. When he was dangling from Meiling's leg is where I had to stop and ask myself where this could go next, but a good axe does a lot of damage so he wasn't out of his league completely. CKR did a great job with the image of Arthur killing her, something I was too afraid to draw myself since I thought I would make it look too weird. She drew Babe pretty well in general! Arthur's death by danmaku felt like something interesting. Without spellcard rules danmaku can be quite lethal, and since he is an unarmored man and he was getting all caught up in webbing, he certainly wouldn't be able to stand the light bullets for long. Unsurprisingly, his fite with Yamame was a sort of designated "someone has to lose a leg and it might as well be here" spot for the Brawl. That axe has got to chop of a limb or too or it's hardly an axe at all!
I guess I'm quite surprised by MATT AND SHARPEDO as well, perhaps because I bought into Chao saying "I don't mind too much if Matt does poorly". See, right after I get the results for the Brawl, I get out a sheet of paper, write out all the entrants names in order, and start drawing lines to indicate who will kill who. This takes quite a long time and it becomes a messy spiderweb. Some things get changed along the way too, meaning I have to gently erase lines so that one character gets killed by someone else, or I realize I didn't indicate anyone for the task of killing them! Somewhat related, but in my sticky note for post planning, the post where Rainbow Dash and Remilia died was almost left out! It somehow didn't end up in the sticky note until I checked to make sure I had everything I needed in it later. There's a lot of checking like that, and you'll often see the (DONE) tag on my sticky notes so I don't forget what I have or haven't done. The reason I bring up the sheet with lines on it is because I didn't realize how much work I gave Matt until later. He had to kill Reggae Shark for the fountain battle/Sharpedo getting the ganja. Broggy deserved a kill so he got Sharpedo, and Matt got retaliation for that. Matt also had his death placed at Toby's feet, so Matt and his Sharpedo basically became THE fountain characters, appearing whenever it was relevant. Naturally with a shark who I didn't want to say too much about fiting on land with he would stay near the water. Chao's used the shark Pokemon out of water in RP, but I imagine it's sort of floating in the air like in a Pokemon Stadium game. I decided to avoid having that have to be addressed as a fite demands a certain level of detail like that and it seemed a bit weird to have that. Phoenix wouldn't wreck the fountain until both Matt and his Pokemon were gone, and I tried to make Matt as relevant as his shark... and probably made him moreso since he had to fite Toby without it and Reggae Shark turned Sharpedo against him briefly. Wasn't too hard to decide when to Mega Evolve Sharpedo either. Matt was just such a nice fit into things that I'm still a bit surprised he worked so well.
I'm sure it didn't surprise you I saved NITORI for last. The kappa got a lot of love, and even though I limited her to just the water guns, she didn't feel too limited as I wrote her. I would've loved to have a go at that backpack, but I imagine its got way too much in there to be considered remotely legal and it would probably get wrecked someway, as is my way. Busting open that backpack would be like breaking a weapon pinata, so perhaps it was the best for everyone she didn't bring it. What she did have I tried to use to the utmost, although maybe the visor could've done more? At least during the Phoenix fite. Otherwise, I used her kappa form for quite a bit, her acumen with machines to help her fite Toby even if she didn't take him down, and her water manipulation to take on Springtrap and utilize the fountain in a different way than most competitors. 37th was a weird place for her, nearly the middle, but it gave time for her to do stuff and I didn't have to shut her away really. Chao's certainly got a main Touhou every year and it's good to always grab them! Of the touhous who entered though, perhaps Nitori leans less on her danmaku than most, at least if we consider Sumireko's urban magic her sort-of equivalent. I did have her use a bit, mainly the one I couldn't believe where she actually used cucumber shaped bullets because ZUN is that mad about including every small trait in the danmaku if he can. The image Gooper sent me of Nitori fiting Springtrap had a water gauge on her tank that he said I could adjust as needed, but with the fountain I never thought of running dry as an option until it was actually enforced by Phoenix's heat snap. She didn't need the fountain, but she kind of lived and died by it, which is partly why I had to break up the sort-of Josephine/Clash/Nitori alliance. Nitori stuck by the fountain most the brawl as it was potentially a massive source of water she could bend, and Clash and Josephine's fiting styles didn't mesh with the projectile based Nitori. Josephine had her gun yeah, but it was electric! Even if I had advanced warning of them making it more official, it would've still been a strange alliance to have them working together and close. As for the water tank again, I remember for some period I thought it was made of glass until Gooper's art made it pop into my head that yeah, that's probably not the case, that thing's gotta be metal and heavy. Which made Phoenix breaking it over her head all the more deadly! I just like to imagine a clear cylinder with all that water sloshing around
I almost wonder if I'm leaving stuff out of this section just since I talk to Chao on Steam so much and might feel some of it redundant! A bit funny when you cut up the origins of this group too: Matt, Praline, and Arthur are all from older years but have had time to grow, while Nitori just bust down the door big time like a potential Chao Main Touhou tends to do. Arthur and Praline sure got a lot out of them for getting so far in the rankings, and Matt surprised even me with how much he did with his short time on Earth. Nitori almost feels underutilized comparatively!
GOOPER BLOOPER
Here we are again with a five character user thanks to his returning champion! Although its more like an... 8 character thing? Bringing in those assists man! It was certainly nice to have him coming off the victory from last year so he can contribute a lot more without that weight on his shoulders of trying to win. As the only other regular RPer who does art though, its occasionally tough to balance what art I request of him, especially when its sort of obvious what would happen based on it even when its not a spoiler picture necessarily. Unlike my sisters who forget some of the art before they read the Brawl and don't have the ties to the characters to really commit it to mind as a potential event in the timeline, Gooper's a bit harder to give work. Mostly since his art is nice, clean, and colorful, I try to give him the joke pictures or the ones that look much nicer with the careful touch of a man who doesn't have to do his entire art load in a few days. But we're not here about the art I give him, but the characters, and as if I had to say it, he brought a great mix of old and new here... although technically no 2016 debuts! The new is more 2015 new. Not a problem at all, just things I notice! Let's go ahead and dive in.
Our previous champions, SILENCE AND BLADE... Ow. OWWWWWW. OWWWWWWWW what a fall from grace! The furthest a champions ever fallen, 60 places down. Even comparatively its pretty bad. A lot of Brawls the previous champion getting KO'd is a sort of gift to a character or user, and since BBB4 the champion has been targeted in increasingly overt manners. Sapphire wanted to take down Cleft to prove herself, Silence taking on Mac was a way of making a name even if she didn't win, and now Silence gets the unfortunate role as she enters the year where the start of the Brawl is everyone going after the threats early instead of letting them grow and conquer. It fits that narrative at least, and Silence had at least three characters gun for her at the start. Blade got somewhat demoted from his pivotal role of last year as a result, but he did manage to outlast her as sort of a bone thrown to him, even if he did end up on the chopping block as the only one killed during Music Meister's song. I tried to make them both do well against Armstrong before his alchemy pushed him over the edge into winning, but... I sort of didn't realize the implications of the alchemy as I wrote it. I mean yeah, I don't hold back too much for the sake of the Brawl as certain characters wouldn't either, but seeing it laid out after made it hurt. The cape especially. The bike has more sentimental value of course but I can see that getting fixed. It really is a miracle it survived the previous Brawl if we're being honest. The cape was like taking one of Silence's victories before robbing her of the BBB championship as well. Makes me hesitant about her VEW storyline. Not so much what will happen in it rather than her response to it. It's no secret my affection for every champion grows quite a bite just for them being one, and last year I was always worried the latest VEW event would dethrone her before she got to come back to the Brawl and lose her championship there. Sounds weird, but it's kind of like, if Sasha Banks beats her in VEW while she's still BBB champion, what's that mean? It's a shame it had to end this way Silence, but you and Blade came far and it had to end some day. Blade began getting crushed by a bunch of rocks and he rocketed up to the first assistant to survive a Brawl. Still always surprised me the best art we had of him for body reference was that black and white one. Meant Rainbow Dash always drew him with sick abs at least! I made sure not to end Silence with a failed attempt at her signature Silencer though. That would've been too mean. Cool for Armstrong to overcome, but he had his own cool thing, pounding her through the building and all. At least she didn't go down easy.
I guess next we'll look at the Neo Kobbers SEAPORT AND SARA. After last year and having the Neo Kobbers as villains for the Brawl, I didn't really think of the potential of them entering as good guys. Certainly Tron has made the biggest name as a Neo Kobber holdover, but Seaport is definitely number 2, and bringing along Sara to represent that group before we leave them and Las Vegas behind was not something I could turn down. I know my sisters don't like drawing buxom women so it was hard to find a decent reference pic of Seaport that didn't accentuate her bust. I get it internet, but there are ways to have a lady like that without flesh showing or it taking up 50% of the picture! Seaport's attack options are pretty simple but its her attitude filter that makes it more interesting, the big shy lady with claws that can tear you up. Bluddflagg wasn't hard for her to fite but the overly nice Joe Mufferaw put her in an awkward spot, and she was certainly the type to get really mad when her weaker ally got snuffed. I love me some geomancy in fites and played around with it quite a bit in Season 1 when that was Stella's current thing, but unlike arenas I put her in special for a one-on-one, the Brawl arena was a bit set in stone and Sara didn't have too much to work with. Based on Gooper saying she might quit if Seaport goes down I basically had to kill Sara first, and the idea of a garden on the roof was sort of part of scrapped arena ideas and lead to the eventual death method, which I've already mentioned changed quite a bit due to how Rainbow Dash drew it. There was a mental version where she stepped through and immediately broke the illusion, the one where she was convinced longer but knew before she hit the pavement, and then the final one. Probably better to describe this more in Ricard's segment, but it wasn't an overly malicious death so much as Ricard putting all his energy into the illusion and not pulling back just because it was actually working, and he had his head in many different places to keep up things like the Shrekoning. I did have a bit of fun with the geomancy before I died, and probably the main reason Seaport killed Bluddflagg as because I wanted Sara to use dead worm flesh as a means of casting her magic. Didn't use Seaport's horn too much because she is a large lady and doesn't really use it on purpose from what I've seen. Sara was mostly support as well, like an assistant, if you will! They both died in somewhat weird ways, but the Neo Kobbers were nice to have, and I do like this footprints of plots in the Brawl as long as they don't dominate things. The Brawl is always about everybody first.
Next we shall touch on a touhou, SUMIREKO to be exact! Man, I was waiting so long to get this girl in a fite... and then I sorta got stage fright! Her urban magic is a cool concept that I love and I really want to utilize it better, but I feel I didn't go as far as I could've for fear of pushing it in a direction Gooper might not be cool with. Like, is generating a car urban magic? What if it's an abandoned car on a cinderblocks? What if I did the junk car, and Sumireko can do a normal car, so why did she do the junker? I tried to keep it safe and interesting still, and I made sure to whip out her staple stop sign, but I left out the panda playground ride as I tried to be more creative as a whole rather than falling back on her mainstays. Sumireko's actions in the early Brawl were minor but I think I did a better job of occupying her than I did Tenshi, but Sumireko did quite a bit in the late game. The bathroom battle where alliances swirled around, her battle with Rash on the casino floor which I sort of did for Gooper since he's a fan of the Vegas setting so much, and her final battle with Clash. A lot of characters end up with three big battles if they go far, huh? I tried to pick esoteric targets for her when she could pick them, although what qualifies as esoteric in something so overwhelmingly esoteric as the Brawl was a hard question. Sheep characters certainly, but the Mystery and Secret Fiters were easy to snag onto as things Sumireko would want to fite due to the fact they were wildcards without full stories to them. She's "exposing" them, if you will, although with Captain Underpants that would be unfortunate if done more literally. And Rash is already exposed in that way! Another Rash thought: despite it being in the notes SK sent me, I didn't see a point to really reference his origin as a human teen. Anyway, while I did enjoy throwing Sumireko around, there was a lot of potential that I felt I only somewhat tapped. She had that special attack that she never used, mainly because of the state of the arena when she started to really fite hard. We're getting to the point I'm talking about higher ranking characters a lot more and you'll see things like "if they had placed a bit higher we'd have seen it", and that's the case with Sumireko's secret attack. I won't say what it was, but originally I thought it was something like Sumireko summoning an entire urban landscape. Not quite, but it still wasn't something she could safely use in the confined space of the Silver Dollar, but if she had place really high she would have broken it out when she could make sure it went off properly. I don't feel like I wasted the chance to use Sumireko, but I feel like she had a lot more she could have done that I just didn't have space for.
The grand kaiju is next, BIOLLANTE AND NOSTRONOMITRON! A lot of Nostro's stuff was tied to Rash so you can find it up there, but I was a bit surprised when I heard the Martian was no longer part of Biollante. I guess unleashing the beast was the smarter move, and he got to be back in his little UFO for two old characters back at once in a way. I believe I explained why Nostro was okay as an assistant for Biollante when I said it was like adding a fly to her, it hardly changes her chances or power. Nostro did get a considerable amount of use despite that because of the Rash idea growing from "hey I'll have him crash the UFO". Biollante herself though... biggest BBB entrant of all time. I almost want to see one of those height scales, and have like, Giant Green Gunter and Green Giant and the other huge guys like kaiju next to her. I still remember her fite with Doomrider quite vividly since it was the last one I wrote before I pseudo-left in season 2. That was a fun battle, and so was having Biollante here! She was a great distraction! So many people would either want a piece of her or be forced to fite her due to being so large and a lot less controlled than guys like Gamera. She could keep characters busy believably and without them fiting pointless battles or battles you want to see since she would take so long to whittle down. We got small updates now and again when characters would end up pulled away or other progress was made like Mothra's death. She of course had her weight to throw around which I tried to use in a few interesting ways, like trying to body slam Joe. Mostly it came down to the vines and sap and those big old fangs though, and when she wasn't in just distract mode I tried to get creative with them, like when she basically made a forest for Doomguy to go through. I've also sort of explained how her going down had to force the arena to break even after I used the strength test to show it would hold up. It's really strange how these two ended up having most of what I want to say about them sprinkled throughout the early portions of this blog! I will saw I like having entrants of all sizes and types, and a few kaiju is just as good as a bunch of people-sized characters. Most of all I prefer variety, and we certainly didn't have many samey characters this year.
For some reason I saved her for last, the fourth and final of the Sarahkin before we move into the larger family, JOSEPHINE! She got to cameo in BBB3 looking at Dirk's dead body, and now she's here to fite herself! I even made sure to address that small Brawl cameo in the pre-fite show just so Josephine, who isn't the type to hold a grudge like that, didn't have to avenge Dirk at all. Her killing Rainbow Dash wouldn't be bad, but I think I picked some more interesting targets for her because I didn't limit myself. The battle with T-Bone and Zeldoten sort of accentuated her more greedy side, wanting to have cool toys or just downright money, whereas the scene with Mika earlier was part butts and part showing Josephine fiting a bit more normally before we focused on other aspects. Josephine used more typical tricks in fiting Armstrong, but T-Bone made her use the Giant's Tonic, which has become so closely identified with her that I feel it had to earn a KO somewhere. It was almost hard to find a place for her to do her famous Throwsephine, and although I didn't really -sephine any words since I didn't swing the narration in that direction, I did manage to give her a few things to toss before she died. Funny thing is, even though I knew I wanted Zeldoten and Josephine to fite as one's a thief and one's greedy, I didn't think of the vault setting until pretty much right as I got to it. It was too perfect and it gave them quite a bit to do with an arena without it controlling the battle, and better yet: it gave Josephine stuff to throw! I think I actually trimmed down that scene a tad since it was dragging on at some point as the fact it was not planned too far ahead in my mind showed, but with some snipping we got down to a more palatable length where Josephine didn't just basically keep living just for the sake of not dying too quickly. Battle length is always a hard thing to gauge, and usually the Brawl comes out to at least a thousand words or so per entrant death and some stuff on top to make it longer. Without checking I wager it was 75,000 words? Which accounts for assist deaths and other business. The Brawl had like 83 guys total but between multiple deaths happening at once and less of a need to give some assistants long deaths, it evens out I feel. It's not like it's a hard rule I follow either way, but it just seems to work out that way. Long enough to show off, and its not like Josephine had been inactive before she fought Zeldoten. I almost feel like her White Magic was the most underutilized part even though I didn't forget it, but Josephine had so many other tricks that popping up a Protect every now and then didn't seem like the top of her priorities when she has an electric shuriken gun... one that I didn't really stop to think it was from something. I looked up the Electro Driver post-brawl. I thought it was some weird take on a Kid Icarus Uprising weapon as I forgot the exact origins of it! Still, description did enough to keep me from using it wrong.
Gooper and Chao both treat me good in fulfilling wishlist requests, probably because they're the ones who have the most interest in it! I got a lot of guys from other people from the wishlist of course, but Biollante and Arthur were both said to be filling it explicitly.
I don't think it surprises you to hear that Gooper's entrants were pretty great. It hurt to bring Silence so low and so early, but whereas some old champions like Mac and Cleft got the JRM sister vote to prop them up some their second year and ROB and Doomrider had the benefit of the freshness of the Brawl to earn them votes the next year, Silence may be sitting on the divide where the fact we don't want repeat champions is felt more strongly and we might see other falls like this. Still, we got quite a bit of time with all his other entrants, even Seaport who managed to defy the odds. Perhaps it was just tractor tomfoolery that crushed Silence, but who can really know the whims of random.org?
BRINEHAMMER
Of all the former winners, Brine seems the one most interested in winning the Brawl again. I don't blame him really. Sometimes I wish I had gotten a winner like Jumpropeman instead of Mac Tonight, and although Doomrider was definitely a fun champion, I bet he'd like to see Clash or Ko get that championship just as much. Brine brought a lot of cool girls for this year's Brawl, three of them with character sheets for me to have a ton of fun with, and one who I had a good ol' wiki crawl to get some cool information on! Brine's characters always have a certain air to them. They can be funny, but they're very good at serious stuff too, and I think its because they channel his writing style they seem that way. Like characters from a novel, almost.
I figure I shall lead with discussing ELESH NORN as she was the one that required a wiki crawl rather than some fun combing over character sheets. It didn't feel like I was venturing into spoiler territory for his plans for Elesh as I dug into the lore of the Machine Orthodoxy for Magic: The Gathering, so I was relieved to see that, although I might keep tight-lipped on some things I stumbled on. For the most part though... dang son, I had no idea Magic had so much lore! I figured there must be some, but I'm more used to Pokemon and YuGiOh! where there is some basic lore to each card and usually information comes on it from the non-card game tie-ins and sources, but Magic had to build so much up for these little cards. Maybe it's just because Elesh Norn is a really important character in an expansion that she got so much. I had a deck of Magic the Gathering cards that I no longer know where it is, I think it was themed on the forest with wood elf things. I like reading about the meta aspects of Magic since I'm interested in card games, but the lore blindsided me. Elesh Norn was said to be able to use White Mana, and while that's a whole world of Magic, I tried to keep it themed to her, only using characters and spells that matched her Machine Orthodoxy. I even found theme decks people made online and consulted those for her powers and minions. I've mentioned already how many crazy ideas I had for the Conqueror Worm, but the Elesh route was the most interesting in that it let me show off all her crazy minions and White Mana powers and then give her a great big minion to focus on and then come down to fiting with her own abilities next. Besides the Owen moment as well, the porcelain plating grew on me quickly. Not literally, as that may be a concern. I tried to balance her moral ambiguity as best I could too. At times the Machine Orthodoxy seems a hive mind and others a group so utterly obedient to her they do as she says and act like parts of her. She seems to have that sort of "good intentions but gross methods" thing going as all her guys are fleshy monster things, but in the Brawl that's hardly grounds for hating her. She didn't do anything overly malevolent save maybe the moment with Owen. They do have that out of Brawl friendship/working arrangement thing, but they are both the type to take advantage of the other without any real malice behind it. Owen was just as likely to take over Elesh's creations and push her out of control if he could! The Grand Cenobite also made a great person for Doomguy to RIP AND TEAR as she had many places to pull and she seemed suitably bloody enough with that red flesh. I think my greatest worry was having a pre-fite show down in her lair, hence why I tried to balance both sides of her so that pre-fite shows somehow come up in RP it's not like "I saw that lady on the pre-fite show and she's evil, lets clear the sewers!". Perhaps she got in before she was fully baked, and that's not a knock on Brine. It's more "I might have too much say in this character's future or direction through this portrayal." We will see with time I suppose.
Now we take a look at NYLORA. I suppose if I had to try and place a reason down on why I like her and throw my characters at her is probably a mixture of her early attempts to try and fit in despite not really knowing how to smile or anything and also her use of dark powers but as a protagonist character. I'm a bit of a sucker for when darkness is used by good guys. Nylora's zombies/skeletons were something I had to figure out as it wasn't specified exactly how she might use them in the Brawl. On the one hand I was worried that if Nylora used her powers to raise other fiters they might be unrevivable or something later, and even if she did revive someone they'd probably just be bones and lose their special powers. Instead I had the pre-fite show mention she's allowed to bring the materials to make them to skirt that issue and still give her the undead horde she had to have. Not a Brawl without some zombies! When the idea of the Shrekoning getting in came up, I quickly settled on the idea of it actually being Nylora's zombies, although it took me a bit to figure out if they were special zombies or what. Ricard would always put the illusion on them to make them look like Shrek, but the reveal could've gone a different way as I think they were almost just skeletons instead even! For Nylora herself I did take a look at her character sheet but ultimately used more of the skills that were explicitly mentioned in her brawl entry instead of leaning back on things only Brine and I would really know about her. If a skill is mentioned explicitly it's usually so that it can be used after all, and she wasn't without ways to fite for lack of variety. Shrekoning and her zombies/skeletons kept a few more brawlers busy when sicking them all on Biollante wasn't the best idea, characters like Sean cutting through the ranks until it was their time to take center stage. The small alliance between Nylora and the others made it a bit of fun to have the Dangerous Alliance end up being the ones to take her down. I half wondered if the sword in her picture was supposed to be brought along as it wasn't really mentioned in the entry at all, but she's been mentioned to have very weak limbs anyway and her method of standing in place and keeping things back with magic seemed her chosen method even if she had brought a weapon or not. Nylora's pretty clean death (well, she got her head smashed in, but it was quick) was part of somewhat preserving the secret of her Undead roots for whoever Brine wishes to keep that from in-universe. She got that nasty cut in her side that made her lean, but there wasn't anything overtly zombie-ish about the injuries she took save that she was able to stay standing despite them til the end. Plus, killing undead by breaking the head is classic!
And then there's CLASH! Brine's highest placing entrant this year. Guy has a knack for getting up in the rankings it seems. Clash's character sheet was probably more useful in the way of better explaining small things like her aura and exactly how it might effect someone inside. There's ways she can subtly alter it to make things a bit worse for her opponent, something shown against guys like Pteron. One of my worries with Clash was of course doing the aura right, and also since this was around the time we were getting more details on Clash herself in RP, I wondered if calling her a war elemental was something that would remain accurate down the line. I decided it was fine to use it and it seems she is identified by it still even as we learn more about her from people with more knowledge about her like Famine and Conquest. The sword was an interesting case because I wasn't completely sure it could actually hurt her, but the death method seemed like a fun one and I wanted us to finally see Clash freaking out about someone taking her sword. Undyne didn't really do it with any malice either as she didn't really know how important it was to Clash, but I was happy to see that apparently the death method was fine after all! The chain on the sword I had to play with. The blade is cool and all but I like using the weird parts of weapons as well and when you have a length of chain on your blade it opens up possibilities! I almost tried to work in some way for Clash to use those pointed teeth of hers, but there wasn't really a point where she was in close quarters and wouldn't rather use the sword or chain. Her killing Pteron was an easy thing to set-up as a sort of the wild killers going up against each other to sort of seal up their little scuffle at fite club in a place where it was perfectly okay for them to kill each other! I almost didn't use her little power where she can give someone a chain until I thought of transferring fatigue to Pteron as a way to weaken him. Clash's kill on Pteron looked much cooler in my imagination and I drew it because I hoped to capture it, but for some reason I find it hard to draw that guy sometimes so it might not've looked the best in the end. Clash going kind of wild near the end, I was hesitant on as well. She could get into the killing and all yeah, but this was before we saw stuff like her going mental in the Saul event that would validate her bloodlust in the Brawl. Placing fourth made it easy to work in quite a lot of what I wanted to do with her, and since most Brine characters sort of group together in RP unless they are completely opposed to each other, Clash being placed next to Ko felt a great way of making sure they both could see some action before getting separated and made to stand on their own legs.
And the girl I just mentioned: KO. Almost tried to work in the KO joke pictures Gooper made last year, and the smallest remnant of that can be seen in the Springtrap joke where he took down the KO letters and Nitori thought they might have something to do with Ko, but unless it's planned far ahead its often strange to try and squeeze in those ideas. ONE DAY, GOOPER! I'll find a use for them! Ko's come kind of far since her Brawl appearance last year, wearing mythril armor and slipping more into the embodiment of Nothingness. The durability of the mythril gave me pause when considering how to hurt her, especially since Raezin came down from Mars about the damage it took in her fite with Ganondorf. Still, we've got tons of powerful guys in the Brawl that can break a lot more than mythril, but then the next issue came up: how much is that armor her skin now? Losing her humanity is making her more and more of that armor and I wasn't sure how much to make her bleed or anything like that. A lot of cautious language and not quite saying how the damage is affecting her body was the answer. I've looked at the Ko character sheet many times, as she's entered enough fites to rival a year 1 character. A lot of her tricks and skills are well known by now and even though I was almost tempted to avoid some abilities, I fell back on them as I saw points for them, like her fire breath for the Undyne battle. I've probably said before it's not so much hard avoidance as trying to show different abilities when I'm at a point where it's like "this character should do something flashy". One thing I think I've always underplayed is the fact Ko uses her weapons for sundering and blunt powerful strikes. I often focus more on the magic wrapping around it or her sharpening its point for a stab. I tried to make it more about sundering this time, hence her fite with Caitir where it was basically ALL sundering! You probably saw this with Nitori's hand too, but I tried to disable limbs this time without complete removal, and Ko had one arm go bad that later came back to bite her when she fought Undyne. Sacrificing parts of you to win a battle has been a big Ko thing ever since we learned about that place on her hip where she catches blades, but it's usually used as a way to gain an advantage and in the Brawl, it's very much something that can come back and bite you. Ko didn't go as far as she did last year, but she still rose pretty high up.
I almost lead with the kinds of things I usually say at the end, but these powerful girls here were all cool additions to the Brawl. I really didn't expect the Elesh Norn entry since it was still unclear where her story was going and if she was going to be a full bad guy or not. Still not clear really, but it was a cool thing to get along with the guaranteed cast!
BREE
Bree! It was pretty great to get a full entry set from her this year after she avoided the lotto last year. Probably helped that it was sort of a guaranteed entry thing for one lotto and that she's had more time to build up characters. Still wish we had gotten Komachi, but I certainly ain't complaining about the group we did get! Especially since Remilia might have been harder to get in the future depending on the way the wind blows. Let us begin, then!
I just mentioned that REMILIA girl, so let's look at her! She didn't have her information filled in but she had more than enough in her Halloween fite entry to work with as well as having a wiki full of ideas I could pull from. When things deviate from the wiki in RP it can be hard to write the touhou girls, but I mostly drew from the abilities sections rather than anything on their personality, although coming across the small section that mentioned she's still somewhat childish reminded me of that aspect before I sank too far into believing her cool, sophisticated front. She didn't act too juvenile during the Brawl save when she went up against Captain Underpants, who kind of has to have a juvenile response. Her trying not to be amused by him and freaking out as she begins to kill him where the major parts where I showed that yes, she's still kind of a kid despite being an immortal vampire. Writing the Brawl made me realize that the blood she did drink in the Halloween fite was all from the Blood Whistle, meaning she never really sucked the blood of a living thing that might have to deal with the effects of a vampire bite. Thank goodness for that small scene with Ray early this year that made it clear she could drink blood without infecting, and even then I tried not to dwell on it too long after she killed Ceneric save to explain that yes Ven, this isn't a vampiric bite that will turn him into a vampire. Vampire Ceneric might've been cool in a way, but I don't know if we'd get a full Meat Boy style situation out of it.Vampires, man. Other than that, I tried to have her bit of ego show in her trying to have people fite for her while the sun was still giving her trouble, and even with the SPF Redonkulous sunscreen she was careful. Hence why I had a lot of fun with her being a spooky vampire inside the Silver Dollar when she fought Ceneric. The whole trying to make a stake thing and all, I was very much going in on the vampire stuff even if Remilia's not traditional. The touhou wiki and the Bree details differ on how well she handles sunlight, but I wanted a KO method that was definitive and didn't get the whole "UH UH, THAT CAN'T KILL VAMPIRES" thing because they are both the easiest and hardest thing to kill depending on which random European village you ask. Sun's a safe one! It was hard to find a definitive answer on what crossing running water does to a vampire, hence Remilia mostly freaking out since it seems a mental barrier more than anything. The SPF was also a way to skirt around how much the sun could affect her, and I followed Bree's instructions more than anything, as I imagine they were changed so she could interact in RP more than a regular vampire might. Captain Underpants almost submerged her in the water along with himself to wash it off, but that might return him to being Mr. Krupp so it was scrapped and done the way it was in the end. I figured enough damage was done to make Remilia clearly dead but not exactly saying things like how long they were in the sun and all. Still, despite me basically fumbling through the mess that is vampire rules, I was glad to have her as a Brawl entrant.
We can look at 421 next! Another character I drew and just like Red I probably got a bit attached to her for that. Making that flannel design work was a job and a half but not really too hard so much as a time sink. Interestingly, that buttefly on her t-shirt was just me seeing a cool shirt while looking up pose references for her with the bat on her shoulder. The butterfly was more detailed and swirly in that shirt but I decided a pink butterfly would be a good design for the t-shirt. Bree didn't even tell me what to put on it besides that it's a t-shirt! She certainly looks like a fun gal and I tried to capture that in art and in writing. Admittedly, while I want to see 421 in RP (Patient 421, but the numbers alone roll off the tongue more easily), I was kind of glad she didn't before the Brawl! Without a personality reference there was nothing to get wrong yet save the small intro post she got, and that was easy enough to pull stuff from. If she had been walking around, giving her real name, making friends and enemies, who knows how that could've affected the Brawl, and it might have happened after I wrote all her parts and would need to go change them! I've mentioned before I don't want people basically cryogenically freezing the guys for the Brawl, but it helped that there was nothing new to build off of so I didn't have to follow RP. Hopefully I got close enough to what she would've done if she showed up, but it let me do a pre-fite show where she meets folks and Kobbers for the first time. After that came the cool aura of hers, which of course, like Ceneric's anti-magic, I felt was underutilized. Maybe I've said it already, but it's sometimes strange to figure out what characters would have enough knowledge not to fite someone they know they can't work against. Part of why Clash never ate any magic either is because I felt magic users would likely know not to mess with the girl who could swallow their magic or to mess with the girl who could cancel it out in 421. Mages are typically smart after all, but we still have these moments where characters are like "hey, weren't you in the Brawl? The same one I fought in?" I guess they didn't do any preparation by looking at the public records of who they were fiting! At least it's not really happened where people forget who they killed or were killed by. I've explained how Red and 421 got paired up to fite in his section, and why 421 fought Golden Freddy in his section! We'll get a lot more of that now that we're nearing the end. CKR did some awesome art of her happily smashing away pieces of Golden Freddy. Red really was the perfect person to kill her though. His weird stuff broke through her barrier and even then he killed her in a very normal manner. Looking up karambit on google got me some nasty pictures of what the knife can do, and although I didn't nail in how bad the death could be, it was still the sort of thing 421 actually has to worry about: real world dangers. It would be cool to see her on some plots some time, just watching things fizzle out as she runs in with the bat and bonks them on the head.
Next we have our two returning Bree entrants, starting with MEILING. Having a bit more time with her since last year we got a much bigger picture of who she is. Strong and forceful, but fun and flirty at times too. Without Yuugi to hang around, Meiling was able to go her own way this year, swearing off of alliances but I tried to sort of push it that it wasn't her being a jerk about it, just her figuring out how to best not get wrapped up in affairs she doesn't want a part of. She's not rude and will help people, but she's not going to hold herself back for their sake. Plus, she wanted to prove her own strength, which isn't something you really show off in a group. Her fiting Phoenix was very much that, and whereas most other touhous relied a lot on projectiles or danmaku, Meiling is still that up close and personal girl. I didn't go too wild with her transformations this year, instead trying to use them more meaningfully rather than having her pop between them before they made an impression. She also probably wishes to show off her own might more than maybe what her tiger form could do. Her death was certainly more clear cut than it was last year. Last year Hogan killed her with a wrestling move. This year she got impaled on Babe's horn and then had her head lopped off. Almost surprised "impalement" isn't on the Bingo card, since if anything that's the thing I seem to love the most lately in the Brawl. I guess I felt not only was Meiling more refined as a character, but so was my use of her this year. Sometimes its hard to get a full feel for a character if they're coming in after only a bit of time in RP, and I don't think I did a bad job last year so much as having a lot more to work with and build off of this year. This touhous had time to grow on me, and much like how I like Sumireko for her many non-Touhou traits, Meiling liking to go in and fite with her fists is another thing I appreciate. Sure she has her ki for things, but all touhous have to follow some small rules! Also I'm glad we got the hat. Makes art easier mostly, and even thought Broderick was in last year's Brawl he wouldn't have taken it. It was a sort of one-hat limit I imposed on myself and Saxton had to be the one to give it. It was also fun to use the Fenghuang as its probably one of the least seen forms outside of like, the gibbon. Maybe if she enters another fite we might see her using her gibbon form a lot! Really though, I love new characters in the Brawl, but I also like using characters after they've had a lot of time to grow or change.
I also like it when a character has a cool gimmick to help them bring something new to the table, and with a character like AMITY, it's not hard at all to give her new stuff to work with. She can transform! The possibilities are endless! At one point she turns into a bulldozer that I almost tried to make a specific car from Twisted Metal before I couldn't make the time to sift through it all to try and find the proper vehicle for the sake of a small joke, so normal bulldozer it was. Other than that, I've mentioned I almost had no role for Secret Fiters who didn't get in until Ray and Amity came together into the idea. I suppose before we move on, I'll give a small table to say who each Secret Fiter belonged to.
-Fire Lord Ozai- Former Vengance. Got a smaller role during one of the big battles, but with so many forms some were bound to get these small parts rather than the bigger roles of other forms.
-El Trio de La Muerte- Ruby Chao. Used against Music Meister since the music thing made it appropriate. Guacamelee music was one of the things I played during writing the Brawl! Amity sped through their tricks so they weren't wasted.
-Skullmageddon- Draco. The skeleton from Double Dragon was a perfect fit for fiting off Nylora's skeletons, and he had a lot of power behind him to make him pretty effective.
-Markiplier- Cornwind Evil. Almost had trouble finding a place for him since he doesn't really fite at all, but the bathroom joke came up and it was a fun idea.
-Greed- Red Spy. Remember when Person Man had an avatar of a Minecraft build of Greed when the forum was young? Well now he's entered RP! His tear shots and money dropping powers was the main reason he was used for fiting Joe as other options weren't really strong enough to deal with Joe's unique nature.
-Animal Soccer World- Gooper Blooper. Brimming with opportunity but sadly limited in what Amity could do as them, she ended up playing Soccer with Bouncy Blue as it seemed the most obvious way to put them in. They could have been funny if allowed to enter or raid the Brawl, but it didn't make sense like the WCW invasion really.
-Ebisumaru- HarpyKuro. It's surprisingly hard to find a good reference of what this guy can do online without it being a list of things you just have to assume work how they sound. Goemon wikis, improve yourselves! Ebisumaru was a good fit for the change of heart on Captain Underpants, as goofy vs. goofy would appeal to the simple-minded Amity a lot more than Sumireko's more traditional fiting approach.
-Liquidator- M Sheep. Probably the Secret Fiter form that got most use since it was used as part of her battle with Captain Underpants. Water powers have a lot of flexibility, just look at Nitori! But Sheep's submission even mentioned that one of his weaknesses is underutilization by the showrunners on Darkwing Duck since he is hard to stop and can use a lot of power freely. Being a villain of some recognizability helped turn Underpants on Amity as well as give us the water dumping on the head to revert him to Krupp.
Amity's other forms I either restricted to other fiters or to her classic Teshni form. With readers like ivelchild and my sisters, sometimes pulling forms out from other unspecified characters in RP wouldn't read well to them, but with all the Secret Fiter forms and all, she certainly wasn't limited in her choices and being the biggest wildcard in the alliance that lead to its changes and shifting made Amity almost feel like an entirely new entrant. Making the Brawl quiz I realize I put Amity the Ditto for last year when Amity was still a name we were getting used to, but now it's quite clearly just Amity. I even tried to allude to Momoko's training of her with the bathroom scene and tried to show that she's not just wild blob Pokemon. She showed a bit of her personality and character as she took action based on that rather than just trying to kill and win. Got her all the way to third place though, and then she blew up! I felt a bit bad for making her go Gold and having her die so shortly after, but she was quite clearly keeping Zeldoten and Undyne at bay while like that, but Gold had its draw backs and even though she was the only person likely to innocently use Bouncy Blue for that purpose, she still had to blow up. Of course, Amity also had some generic forms like the robin she used to kill Yamame. With her around so long its probably good I came up with the Secret Fiter idea or I'd have to come up with a ton more forms on the spot for her!
Even though it had two returning Brawlers from last year, Bree's cast still felt quite fresh and it got in two characters new to the Brawl. One whose story has just begun, and the other who... well, I'm still not sure on Remilia's future, but I don't know if that Scarlet Devil Mansion is moving with us all the way to some island next year! Glad for who I got!
PERSON MAN/RED SPY
There is a way on the forum to change your username I know... might be complicated, but it would almost be just as weird for Red Spy to change his name to spy rather than just keep Person Man after all these years. Either way, Spy, under whichever name doth please him, continues his streak of having an entirely new group of characters enter this year's Big Bar Brawl. I was surprised Big the Cat didn't make it in, and if he's not in the wishlist then it's probably because I expect him next year as Spy has to fill in his spots with new guys once again! Despite needing all new characters for this year's Brawl, Spy actually tapped a lot of his old ones, with Undyne and Caitir being the most recent ones. I like traditions, and as long as Spy keeps it up, it's always going to tickle me to see him bringing in new blood every year!
Although I both wanted him and expected him, SUNSHINE surprised me by entering in top form. I was expecting to write the old man past his prime... but instead I got the old man restored briefly to his prime! Naturally as the Brawl is a one day affair these days he had no fear of losing that power Cinderella-style, but it was a prime opening for his cocky attitude, especially when the tractor placed him with the less commanding members of the Dangerous Alliance. He got to go... well, not full bad guy, but sort of half bad guy as he started letting his old self show as he felt he had the power to boss people around, but he also got the humiliation and I felt Spy was one of the people who would not only be cool with having a entrant die by being flushed down the toilet, but run with it. Sunshine might've not used as many wrestling moves as expected of him, but a shapeshifting sandman has so many opportunities to do cool stuff that it was hard to keep him away from just going all in on the sand skills! The Cursed Roller never really flattened anyone sadly, just one of those cases where things don't come up naturally in the course of things. Joe was his big kill and Joe would probably break the thing, and although I wanted to keep it around for possible use like against Underpants later, it never did get to flatten anyone. It was a threat alright, but the blade shown rather than the blade used and all that. I tried to make it clear that he was loyal to his allies even when being bossy, as Spy made a good point about him being a team player even back in his bad guy days, and I made sure to have the ridiculous Akuma Shogun foot transformation, even if I didn't use all his go-to sand ones. The sand box shape for killing Joe was the most interesting one to me as it pushed him to not only be a team player, but risk himself for it, showing that even as he was slipping into his old self, he could still keep up the Dangerous Alliance. He was a bit sour on it when they took so long to help him in the bathroom, but he never betrayed them or anything. He certainly showed that he was something back in his prime, though! He went much further than I expected, but the Dangerous Alliance's end results were shocking in general.
Let us look at RICARD next, who skirts the whole "being a repeat entry" thing since he was Leonardo's assistant back in the day. Ricard has definitely come along way from poofy pants Obama, and although I wanted to show how crazy powerful his illusions were, I wanted to show that this was still the guy who for a while had a giant butt as his go-to illusion. The Shrekoning idea of Draco's was very spy-like in a way, and as I decided to include it despite it not being entered, Ricard was just too obvious a choice to make it happen without actually having to explain why twelve Shreks stormed the Brawl. He was goofy for the Birth of Venus moment too, but when it was time for him to act, he went in hard. Him being invisible until it was time to spring his trap was a great way of not explaining his absence or making it obvious he was up to something save what you were supposed to glean from the pre-fite show. Now that we're here, we can look at Sara's death some more, as well as Ricard's betrayal of Nylora and Ingrid. The betrayal, first, was more of a misunderstanding turned sour. Ricard was having a blast in control of his illusions but needed some solid back-up, and the most obvious way was to become Nylora and order her undead around. Nylora and Ingrid both understand why it happened and don't really hold it against him, but him doing it jeopardized them in the Brawl, and Ricard lashed out for fear they would do something to him first. I almost forgot the sandwich entirely in early parts of the Brawl planning, thank goodness Rainbow Dash used that as her reason for voting for him! Going buff and crazy near the end was a good way for them to be pushed to the point of having to kill each other instead of just disagreeing, and Ricard had already done quite a bit with the Shrekoning and killing Sara. As mentioned earlier, Ricard didn't really do it all out of the idea of making Sara completely oblivious she's dying. It may be a sort of strange mercy of course, but it was more that he was spreading himself out, and when one of his traps was sprung he didn't see the point in dissolving it and breaking the other illusions along the way. It would be like announcing where all your bear traps are after the first one caught something, and then not only doing that, but going over and freeing the thing trapped in the bear trap so it can die pulling itself away instead of still in the trap. I suppose a thousand and one reasons why it worked in my head didn't come across in the brief narration that was focused more on Sara than Ricard at the time. Other than that, Ricard was really showing how far he had came while keeping his old personality, but the Brawl is a hectic and chaotic place and it doesn't often show on a character very much. Ricard ended up being the one to show that in the Brawl, sometimes its hard to figure out the results of your action. He was surprised when he saw angry Seaport, worried about the potential of Nylora and Ingrid turning on him, and tried to arm himself when he felt vulnerable. In a way, Ricard made himself see things that weren't there just like his illusions did for others~
CAITIR was the new arrival for the Spy cast, with Undyne cameoing somewhat last year and Joshy, despite not getting in, having his Twisted Metal cred. Caitir, however, this was the first battle we ever saw her in! Not that it's hard to figure out what she can do. Giant hammer, thunderclaps, lightning bolts? If only Spy had left me a giant primer on how those worked! Luckily we got enough of her in the Brawl for me to seize on her Blood Bowl past a bit more clearly than I might've with just the information handed to me. Caitir wasn't foolish with her body like someone too freshly put in the armor, but she felt its strangeness and it held her back in battles like the one with Ko where she wanted to be like her old lithe Wardancer self but was stuck in the heavy armor that her opponent seemed to understand better than her. Caitir being living armor also made her fun to break apart. Limb removal has fallen off a bit since it's harder to justify certain characters fiting on despite it. Caitir, however, was said to be easily able to fite on with parts coming off, so Yotam and Ko and Eddie got to mess her up pretty good! It's not even like I hold back with some characters on cutting pieces off, but when the canvas demands it, I go all in on it. I also tried to use shields more this year after Cauren's kind of fell off early last time. Caitir and Ceneric both got some good use out of them, although Caitir and Yotam both ended up in similar boats due to their hammer and cracking metal skin. Googling sigmarite for some information on it made me stumble across Caitir's reference picture in different situations, and it was funny to see how quickly a character can make an image their own. I don't know too much about Blood Bowl save what I've seen in a few videos to see if I was interested in it, but since we aren't actually playing Blood Bowl here, I felt I knew enough to make the small connections to it. I like touching on the small character traits I'm given, and while I couldn't find a place in the Brawl for Ray to use his amazing skill of speaking Vietnamese or Joe's swimming skills, Caitir's background helped influence her a lot, even in a competition that didn't ask her to be a Blood Bowl player or a Wardancer. I didn't want to make her sloppy or overly skilled: the right level of where she sounds like she is. I also tried to use both her thunder and lightning in interesting ways as it feels like she wouldn't just use those with wanton abandon. They were very conscious efforts rather than things she slipped into. Sort of like how Meiling's transformations were more thought out this year!
And lastly, our number 2 placement: UNDYNE! Although not exactly expected to get second place, she certainly was a good fit for it! The whole Brawl she was basically throwing herself at good characters to test her strength against... which mostly ended up being Brine characters! Ko and Clash both wear their strength on their sleeves and announce their love of fiting quite loudly, so Undyne was perfect for fiting them despite it meaning she's wipe out half of Brine's cast on her own. The real hard part was when I realized I put both her KOs pretty late game and trying to keep her busy without looking pushed aside, but the early break-in to the buffet and the moment Caitir meets Ko and Clash and Undyne joins Caitir briefly in a sort of user-vs-user moment were attempts to keep her relevant. Undyne used her Green Attack to help kill Ko as sort of my way of making sure I used it, because I feel like I knew I wouldn't want Zeldoten to have to be hit by it in the final battle, mostly because there was a already a lot to put in there without having the Green Attack root Zeldoten for a while. WAS NIBBLES HOLDING A SPEAR FORESHADOWING FOR THEIR FITE WITH UNDYNE?! Anyway, Undyne's drying out ended up being more relevant than I realized, and she had to get top-offs from the water fountain or Wet Tiger to keep her going in the dry Vegas heat. Ultimately, it was also to emphasize that it was her weakness, as was fire breath messing her up in her battle against Ko. Undyne's death came at the hands of alchemist fire, as I felt it pushed past her defenses and all and exploited her obvious weakness. Undyne's strength, as it comes from Undertale, is hard to gauge in a way. She can be attacked with like, a stick, enough so to die, but that armor and her strength are implied to be much greater than that. The need to put in NGAH and the suplexing a random object was felt, but I tried to put it in the proper place, and the object she suplexed was actually as part of a legitimate battle moment. My announced aversion to memes is kind of why Sumireko said the small thing about "esoteric" in the pre-fite show, but at the same time you don't excise a part of a character completely. She was still after esoteric things in the Brawl but didn't run around yelling it. Undyne still would make the same noise and do her tough things, but it would be part of a rhythm and story instead of "let's pull off to the shoulder here and watch a meme." Hopefully it seemed like a more even finale with Undyne and Zeldoten. Undyne becoming her Undying form was something I was worried about a little, but seeing her get second place made know it had to come out so that the finale could be the maximum of awesomeness, even though I didn't link her song despite temptations to do so. The Undying form was to make you think she might mount a comeback as was her nearly killing Nibbles so that it was clear he wasn't living so that he could share the victory with Zeldoten, but at the same time I didn't want to tip things too far where it seemed like Zeldoten was stealing... while, stealing IN A BAD WAY the victory after Undyne got trumped up so high near the end. Undyne gives it all she's got as she would and then finds out Zeldoten's got more to give. It was a fun finale, to the point where even though I set it in the basement so Zeldoten or Undyne could grab stuff around them to fite with, I found I only really needed their skills. One other thing: Undyne spears hurled at Clash almost got her to eat magic, but the methods I made Undyne use her spears on Clash with didn't really make it natural for her to do so. Never targeted the head really, so Clash would've basically had to break her neck or throw herself around to eat those blue spears.
Although I don't want to force Spy to keep up his new characters every year thing and I don't want him to force himself to come up with new characters for it... neither was a worry this year! He had a good set to send and one even got him the closest he's ever come to winning! It's nice that we have a new first place winner every year, but second is an interesting place as well, and it's cool to see a new user there as well, making the finale even more tense as both users are hinged on the point of becoming champion for the first time. I can't wait to see what new faces Spy sends for next year's Brawl, but I wouldn't be surprised if Joshy and Big are among them!
DRACO
Our winner! Draco went from almost not entering to taking the crown in an unexpected turn not even I could've predicted! I mean, I wanted him to do well enough to not have any more worries about entering, but feared if he got too far and fell that it might discourage him more... and then he just won so I was like "PERFECT!" It certainly helped that he had a strong lineup and gave us some of his major characters, earning him two spots in the top five! We also got the Shrekoning idea from him even if it technically wasn't his entry in much of a way after the changes I did to it, but his idea was still fun and very Brawl wacky. But we're here for the entrants, so lets take a look at the champion's cast!
Sometimes its hard to accept a joke entry from a user. Usually its because it means they are explicitly leaving out major characters who we might miss out on forever by sending in a character we've never seen before for a laugh. However, thanks to Draco giving us some big names, BANDANNA DEE didn't hurt as much as he could. Borodan or DJ PON-3 were other choices, and Parsee of course remains on the wishlist despite getting Parsephine, but since Draco went from basically no lotto at all to having the Waddle Dees, it probably felt better than some cases where we get wacky out of nowhere characters. Bandanna Dee wasn't a bad fit for the Brawl either, especially since we almost got conditioned to the idea when Harpy's old friend Waddler D was looking like a Brawl prospect with this very character. For a bit I called him Bandanna Waddle Dee for some inexplicable reason before shortening it to the nicer name that showed up in the Brawl itself, but Kirby: Return to Dreamland definitely gave this Waddle Dee with a spear enough powers that he wasn't just a mushy ball person with a spear. Ceneric's Cuties was also a good fit for him and made it a more proper alliance instead of just Winston hopping onto Bartrand. I suppose it's worth mentioning why Bandanna Dee killed Gyaos. I hadn't really thought of the Mosasaurus as Draco's last year, especially since it was being controlled by Raginold at the time sort of in a way like the Conqueror Worm got controlled by Elesh this time. As for Gyaos, I thought since he was already a villain and said to squabble with Gamera, he was almost set up for Gamera to take him out, kind of like Draco popping the Michelin Man! ...This happens often with Draco characters it seems... The Royal Guard at least popped out of a dead entrant instead of killing one! Anyway, Gyaos was more killed by Ceneric's Cuties as a whole, with Bandanna Dee playing his role and delivering the final blow of course, but it was sort of an inversion of the expected "maybe Gamera will end up killing Gyaos" moment. Plus, of all the Cuties, Bandanna Dee was certainly the cutest and best for the image. Other than that, the crumbling of the Cuties as they were built on a poor foundation made him being pulled aside by Broque perfect, and since Bandanna Dee was a funny entrant already, fiting Broque Monsieur in a funny battle that ends with the Pudding with a Gun was a good fit. Despite just having a spear, he ended up doing a bit before his early fall, and his spear even went on to one of Draco's others characters! Although it wasn't too useful there.
Returning to cement his perfect attendance for FYM, GAMERA AND GYAOS, well just Gamera if we follow the lead-in, were probably smart to put in the Brawl since with so many event fites this year it might've been hard to find a spot for him in a one-on-one battle. I am certainly a sucker for traditions, and the fact we've had Gamera and Rainbow Dash in FYM every year in some capacity is certainly a fun one. The two kaiju pair was an interesting idea, especially since they were actively said to antagonize each other, thus leading to the quick split of them so Gyaos can go full bad guy and squish a gorilla and a kitten. Gamera certainly would've stopped that or helped punish Gyaos, but he had to show up Gyaos just as much by out-stomping him too! Gyaos was a useful little sidekick who was actually giant, delivering hard kills and giving the early drop-outs something significant and memorable to do before they died. Gamera got to stick around longer and fite some kaijus as well as holding his own pretty well against multiple strong entrants before they finally got the edge on him. Fiting in the city streets was a fun idea that I didn't push too hard to avoid unnecessary post Brawl tragedy about some building destroyed in the process, so I specified exactly which one was destroyed and made a joke of it! Gamera is a cool kaiju because he balances the fun nature of Draco the user with the shear power and size of a giant monster. I tried to find a place for his narration but it never slipped in easily enough, but I tried to make his battle cool and different from previous ones, as well as keeping him from any extended periods of nothing by basically having a different group from Biollante's doing the same thing they were: keeping busy trying to take him down. Even now it's hard to figure out some things on Gamera, and although I didn't have him drowning, Ceneric's anti-magic on him was a sort of desperate pass. I wasn't sure exactly what it effect it should have, especially since Draco specified Gamera would practice discretion with his ultimately unused mana beam, but the word Mana is right there, so it's got to put some magic in the giant turtle. Having Gamera and Gyaos definitely made the amount of kaijus feel rounded, so nothing was unfairly tipped in anyone's favor despite Draco sending his two-in-one. It also allowed the split attention so we didn't have to all go for Biollante or Conqueror Worm or something. Gamera's certainly a FYM staple, and even after some other battles and Brawls under his belt, I still find new ways for him to fite. Last time he was attacked mostly by Saxton Hale and Samus, this time he had a whole crowd on him, and back in BBB2 it was... a lot happened with him in BBB2 to easily say it in one sentence, but he's never really fallen back on the same thing. Besides being a big turtle, but the stuff AROUND the big turtle keeps changing. See you next year big guy, even if its not in the Big Bar Brawl! Maybe that movie will give some new ideas for you next fite!
Coming in at number 5 we have YAMAME AND PARSEPHINE, the spider girl and he clone girl! Naturally everyone was expecting her to eat someone, so much so that even trying was on the bingo card, but this definitely colored her approach to the Brawl. Yamame is a predator, but spider webs made for an interesting approach to the Brawl I don't think I've touched on since Mynmikda: traps. Yamame's fiting style isn't completely direct, trying to lure in people like the creature she's based on. Snagging people in her webs and quickly moving to close the kill. Yuyuko was very much her more traditional approach, after the yummy chubby ghost as it looked appetizing, but even then Yuyuko forced her to come out and use her danmaku instead. Parsephine was a bit of a weird situation. She was basically boiled down to just her touhou stuff: bullets and flight. She acts like Parsee too, but Parsee has other tricks like Kamen Rider and the Envy stuff. Parsephine ended up being used a lot more for her personality, talking with Cian and trying to take care of Yamame like a big sister. However, as she was just a duplicate, she couldn't keep up with the real deal that was Yuyuko, but she still used a lot of Parsee's more interesting bullet patterns before poofing. Yamame, meanwhile, got a heavy focus on her webbing, to the point I was getting bothered by how few words I could think of to use synonymously with it. Spider silk... just silk.... web vs. webbing... Maybe I just had a brain fart but I didn't come up with many, but I had cool ideas on how to use it! From her wrapping up Yuyuko like a traditional spider and using those spider legs (the exact means of how never addressed in narration or shown in picture as I was careful as we haven't really seen how Yamame sort of half-spiders it up in the way it's implied in Draco's brief posts) to Yamame's use of it more strategically and like a tool against Nostro, right down to her domain near the end where everything was covered in web like a spider cave in a video game. It's like I was given a spider to work with who had a cute girl so that people would vote for her and let her do a lot more! Yamame trapped the votes and managed to go far with them!
But there was someone who STOLE the votes and achieved victory with them! She managed to prove that the gorillion can actually lead to a victory and isn't just a sign they'll do better. I'm of course talking about this year's Big Bar Brawl Champion, the Master Thief ZELDOTEN AND NIBBLES! Although I wasn't sure what plans Draco might have for Zeldoten down the road, when I saw her at the top of the list for victory rolls, I felt she was a good fit for it. Sure she wasn't doing the whole I GOTTA WIN THIS thing some characters do, but she wasn't someone random off the street or without a character. I was able to come up with her epilogue pretty quickly. I knew Draco might add to it more stuff that was appropriate for her, but her situation was nailed in pretty hard and the idea that she wouldn't know what to do if it instantly changed seemed like a fun and funny angle for the ending. I was a bit surprised by how unchanged she's been after Brawl, but for the most part it's a good way. I thought "well surely 4 million dollars would change her living situation" and then Steven Universe did some episodes in the past week or so where Greg gets 10 million dollars and still lives in his van despite being rich because its what he's comfortable with. It's a late answer to the question, but the parallel are cute! Anyway, Zeldoten was a great pick for the champion. She's fun, she's deserving, and she belongs to a new user! And after writing the previous fite before this of Attwater vs. Zeldoten, I found her a lot of fun to write as well. I have a character sheet for her that basically tells me she's a tiefling, and even though she has a tail I still don't use it much since she has some nice claws to do the grabby work instead. One odd thing I got worried about is that apparently Zeldoten has some sort of bad history with fire... and then she ends up using it to kill Undyne before I ever read about it in RP! (because it happened after Brawl writing but before posting). It doesn't seem a complete aversion to it, more of an uncomfortable one or perhaps an aversion to specific kinds of fire, but it wasn't like the Brawl was her first scrape with fire in RP... I'm just glad I scrapped the idea of her being covered in fire as well near the end but surviving because Tiefling. She also has that potion she gulps that lets her spray out fire once, but she makes explosives as well by Draco's admission and use so she must have a certain level of understanding with it!
Anyway, besides the character sheet, mostly Zeldoten's stuff came from a pathfinder ingredient list... before near the end of the Brawl I realized that I could probably search Cat's Grace and Bull's Strength to find a list of proper concoctions. I almost had her quaff a traditional healing potion before I realized she'd need it altered to have no holy ingredients, but after that I used the list of proper concoctions more instead of just ingredients and slight mixes. Most concoctions were stat boosters too and I didn't want to put her at too high a level of alchemy so I followed the lower leveled lists mostly. The two potions pre-brawl she took weren't a bad idea, but I didn't really have any early work for her to take advantage of them with. It can be assumed the Cat's Grace and Bull's Strength kept her out of early trouble and let her handle whoever first went after her, but being the champion means you have a whole Brawl to be busy during, and a five minute boost at the start could mean we don't see much of the lower guys if I focus on showing that. Nibbles was a fun addition, and if you look at who Zeldoten kills in the Brawl, her opponents are picked so that she and her crab could try and take something from them. Broque because of his ability to make things, Josephine because of her greed making her just as likely to get stuff that the tiefling could steal, and Undyne? Well she stole the victory from her! Although I made it clear she earned it, with both girls pushed to the end but Zeldoten having the cunning and skill to take it in the end. Nibbles technically never died, but he was put in a position where he was contingent on Zeldoten to survive. Its nice to have a winner and assistant both make it all the way if I can make it happen, and Nibbles being a tumor familiar made it not impossible to make it look like Zeldoten might lose but not eliminate the joint victory with her crab. Again, the even Brawl narration made some "perfectly normal" jokes not happen, but I tried to slip them in there. And I also made sure Nibbles got a kill to prove his worth. Now that the door is properly blown open on her alchemy though, it will be fun to use her in her championship defense year when I can have the proper list of concoctions open the whole time!
FINAL THOUGHTS
So I hope you enjoyed my overly long thoughts on this Big Bar Brawl! I apologize for how long I took to make it... longer than the Brawl! And I also apologize for points where I repeat myself, make typos, or perhaps skimp on details. You can ask me anything you like in the comments and I'll answer it, and even after all this I'm sure I'm probably forgetting some cool details about the Brawl.
This was an amazing year, and even with the schedule worries of work and my brother's wedding, it was somehow pulled off more easily than other years. I could be finding my stride and learning how to balance it better, but I don't want to jinx anything! It's probably too late to get those cool stats I wanted from Gooper or Chao, but that's my fault for taking so long. Before I go, I'm going to go through my sticky notes and delete them after reading them to see if there's anything I forgot. I guess I would've liked to make the Giant Friend Crab stuff more clear as it's kind of slipped in quickly and the appropriate jokes are told, but it still never felt like going into Battle Mode was done perfectly. It was done at the right time but I feel the narration might've been lacking? Small nitpicks I bet no one else noticed. The armored cape on Silence seemed like something that could've been ignored or forgotten easily, hence its heavy use and sad fate. Biollante's regen was kept vague as it should be, but Nostro's cannons were used somewhat sparingly on things they might effect too much so that they aren't useless but aren't too effective either. Sara probably should have used a bit more white magic just because she could. I was told Doomguy needs to reload the Super Shotgun but playing Doom and realizing there is no reloading must mean its just part of the basic idea of it loading the next round rather than the ammo stuff of Doom.
A funny note from the Sticky notes:
-Pteron and Bouncy Blue
Strong, remember your stuff dude. Golden junk.
My notes on my guys are sparse since I know it all in my head, save Ingrid where it was links to FF14 wikis for the abilities. Gran being able to summon stuff was used carefully since I don't know her full history and didn't want to insert much and maybe screw things up. Didn't have her glasses do much due to high placement and their strangeness. Who would know to retrieve them? Ceneric never shrank because he had no need. Meiling's tai chi ended up a lot like Stacy's Muay Thai: not acknowledged but drawn upon. Remilia's powers avoided referencing touhou bullet spray more than others since it was pulled more from her Halloween fite entry than the wiki, even though the wiki was consulted and an example of the ridiculous names I couldn't use. Notes literally call her sunscreen SPF REDONKULOUS since I couldn't remember the exact million it was meant to be. Ko's notes also tell me that I should know her by now instead of laying out all the skills. Undying wouldn't have been used if Undyne placed more poorly, but getting to second necessitated it, as would probably anywhere in the top 5 as she wouldn't roll over and give up when so close to victory. Wet Tiger's notes are literally just his name.
Some years I remove pictures when it seems like we have too many to do. That didn't happen this year. All pictures I wanted done were done. I let Gooper decide which metal animal to turn Blade's bike into, snail was suggested as an idea and was the one he used. Amity turning into a robin specifically was just because I was giving her more natural forms for that fite and wanted Yamame to be eaten in an inversion of how she tried but never succeeded in eating anyone truly. Robin was just the bird I imagined doing it so it was chosen and it's not hard to draw either. It's hard sometimes to find out how long an epilogue should be as it's wrapping up after the climax so I didn't stress that the details were sort of sparse on Zeldoten leaving to the immediate alarms. I wish I could have linked the song for Shrekoning better. The site it's on only lets you play nine and even when you click play-all you have to unmute things and it ruins the snappy effect. I'm surprised no one on Youtube has down the unsynchronized slamming together of All-Star considering its popularity. Apparently Josephine almost fought Red but that was scrapped? Maybe I meant she was going to try and heal 421, a sign of things to come where that is involved since we can't revive her yet. Remilia is said to get the traits of whoever's blood she sucks, and for a bit I almost thought that might make her giant after sucking Ceneric's blood, but if anything it probably gave her the antimagic that she wouldn't use as being giant is as natural as Ray's being a mutant, and Remilia didn't turn into Ray after drinking his blood. Plus I doubt "giant" is a power flowing through his blood.
...Alright! I think that's all I can think of! Thank you all for reading this if you did, and I apologize for the time it took, the length of it, and the state of it! This Brawl is always a blast to do, and I hope it's a blast for you all too!
Til next time~
