Behind the Fites (and Other Such Business): 2021

Big Bar Brawl 11 is over, a winner has been crowned, a lot of words and pictures were made, and now we need to put that cap on everything by coming in and throwing around some of the behind the scenes content like we always do! And to kick things off with a bit of an odd opener, that image you see right there is actually a rejected CHARACTER for the Brawl! Not an entrant, not a Mystery Fiter, but a concept that wasn't embraced in the end but still had its impact on how the Brawl was made!

So, since we were heading to a jungle setting for season 11, the idea for a Brawl arena was always going to be a jungle, but while this might seem natural to others, I was trepidatious. I like the Brawl arenas to be open and flexible so that people can easily move around, and perhaps more importantly, I don't want anyone to say that they were killed by the arena rather than a character. A jungle would imply characters cramped together between trees and struggling to move between foliage, but part of Ryndur's role in the Pre-Fite Show ended up being to say that this area is open enough for action but still has the benefits that trees and canopies could add to combat. It's one of those situations where the trees are mentioned when relevant but otherwise since this is a written medium, if a character swings a sword and it works you assume they have the room to do so. There were definitely times when writing where I kind of realized that no mention of the jungle setting had been made in a fite before suddenly BAM! Tree interference! Reminder that they're not out in the open! I think it basically allowed the freedom to weave in the setting when it was interesting and I just kind of put it aside when there was something cool going on that it might hinder.

But, a jungle wasn't the only part of the arena! The cliff and waterfall were quick adds, I think mainly because jungles and waterfalls are so often associated with each other, particularly South American ones. In particular the big waterfall from Up comes to mind but there's stuff like Anaconda too. The river ended up being important for a few little fites so I think it put in work, but I definitely expected to have something more like a traditional "boat over the falls" moment and probably would have had You do so if she had entered! However, we still got things like Tyzien falling down the waterfall in what my imagination has a pretty cool moment and jokes like Cirnoil being tricked, so I think this too was a good call even if I kind of teased the upper cliff area for being abandoned as the Brawl wore on.

The clear cut segment was basically me hedging my bets and giving me room to say people were fiting in the open if I really needed to fall back on it, but it mostly just served as a place to put characters so not everyone is running around in the trees and characters like Saturn could actually reasonably do their thing. The sawmill was probably underutilized though, the whole thing in the pre-fite show about them talking about how Knud can't build traps there was an early thought I had when it at first seemed like a good place for him. There almost was a waterfall cave so that Knud could make a little trap dungeon, but the jungle setting was too good to pass up for his stuff! Anyway, the sawmill's actual unique logging equipment and stuff ended up more about giving Edward Lockhand stuff to grab so I don't regret its inclusion and it helped cordon off a few quarters reasonably early. I know cordoning off characters wasn't a big thing this brawl as a lot of fites emphasized players who didn't die or get the kill to make them more textured and keep characters active and involved, but you still can't put everyone together until the numbers are low enough!

But, the sawmill itself was an extension of my immediate concern about a jungle arena perhaps bugging people with the environmental destruction that was inevitable in a Brawl. I almost think some people wouldn't even care and even the post announcing the Brawl makes light of how hard I worked to make the jungle destruction guilt-free, but it could possibly lead to some eco-friendly character not entering or some other form of commentary. It first began with the idea that the area itself was formerly owned by a logging company and it would be replanted later, but then as I struggled for quite a while to pick a host, I remembered Sheep saying he considered bringing in Mother Nature for his little Meiser Brothers plot event. This Brawl was definitely the one where I was least afraid to make direct references to normal RP and its events, but I still liked that Mother Nature would specifically have ties to the Brothers as former Secret Fiters. She would even give us a means to explain that the damage to any plants would be undone, and while I still kept major wildlife out partly to prevent people saying they lost to a jaguar or poison dart frog or whatever, I did add in the bugs after it was mentioned people could use them and, reasonably enough, bugs feel like something you can't keep out of a jungle so it's not like the staff getting lazy and letting a dolphin end up in the river or something.

But Jumpropeman, you still haven't told us ANYTHING about that image at the top? Well, that dude is a logger, the first boss in a game called Sparklite that is alright but nothing too special. However, the logger's machine is Magitech, and since this was the first Brawl off the anniversary year, I thought it could be cute to do a little Character From Nowhere action and have the logging company that was forced off this land try to come back with a vengeance. This fella would have represented the angry loggers by storming the Brawl in his crazy mech suit, and a few ideas on how that could go were conceived. I considered having some weaker character steal the logging mech, I thought of doing this thing where Dreamcast shows how much she cares for Saturn by stopping the logger from picking on her (before RP itself gave her a much more logical path to showing that instead), and I definitely realized that maybe this character was basically a new Timbersaw which isn't the best. Up until sign-ups opened I kept him in my backpocket, but as the fact I have no name for this dude shows, I was losing interest in the idea.

I did consider this logger guy might get a kill or might start going crazy and Mother Nature would step down and join the fight to put him down before heading back up to her chair to stand by and just watch the rest of the Brawl. Other than that, I had no clear idea for what Mother Nature might do in her role, and even as I started writing the Brawl that was still true! Felldrake's hypnosis tricks getting out of control like they did wasn't conceived initially. Instead, I did have the plan for him to take over Thunderella since no one would mind that, but when I realized the end of the Brawl could use a bit more pepper, I conceived of the idea of him taking over the host herself, giving him a huge late game power boost worthy of his placement, and we actually got to see someone go nuts with power near the end and nab a kill with it! Mother Nature's powers were kind of difficult to figure out in that battle though. I didn't want her absurdly strong but also, she's mother nature, so I basically had her kind of have more Earth magic rather than things like creating animals or getting too crazy with how much literal control she has over nature. She can make wind blast towards you, but she can't pull wind out of your lungs for example. I kind of feel a little bad for making a character like her canon because she's pretty OP, but luckily most people seem happy to just sort of write her into that box of one of those "protector" type characters who work with broader forces and don't need to show up for some villain. Her job is to keep watch over nature, not go punch a dude with a tree.

Logger man was pretty easy to toss out as better ideas started to flow into my brain, and most of those involved Secret Fiter stuff! So lets get to an actual segment with a header...

MYSTERY FITER AND SECRET FITER...S!

So first, let's talk about Mr. Predator. The Predator. The Jungle Hunter. I wish canon gave him a name like they have other Predators! But, I really did want a character appropriate for the jungle and much like the host, I struggled with this for a while. I didn't want something boring just to fit the theme of the arena, and I honestly think there was a point where LEGO Indiana Jones was in the running rather than the joke manifesting as a joke character for regular RP. However, eventually I remembered The Predator's movie was all about fiting in a jungle! He quickly become front of the pack, and I even thought it would be cool for him to use traps like he does in the movie!

...He doesn't use traps in the movie.

Traps ARE used in the movie by human characters, future Predators do use traps, but Jungle Hunter himself was a hunter through and through, but I was already committed to the idea of him laying traps and I really liked the idea of Knud using his trap sense to find them once he was confirmed to enter. It's not a power you get to see be relevant often! However, as one line suggests, he recognized the utility of traps "from a previous hunt" which is an allusion to the traps used against him, and moreover, the broader lore doesn't forbid his species from using them to hunt. I did make sure the ones mentioned and used were non-lethal as the traps I do remember from Predator media were pits and the like, so they seem mostly about containing prey or keeping them antsy.

One BIG reason the Predator was locked in for it, and this actually came before I realized Predator was a good fit for the jungle, was an idea rattling around in my head about an invisible Mystery Fiter. I know I've done the "Mystery Fiter Not Yet Revealed" gag a few times. Perhaps TOO many times? But this was different in that our fiter was still fiting actively until he got revealed. I didn't want an invisibility power that would break the moment they did something, and some characters with that power like Sting Chameleon feel a little too low key for a Mystery Fiter role, so when I realized the Predator was both jungle-associated and able to pull off the gag, he was committed to the role. I was scared others might submit him as a Secret Fiter and I would have carried on the gag ideas there if he did make it in. I don't think I had a really good back up Mystery Fiter if such a thing happened. If Dunston hadn't returned last year as a zombie who did things though I did consider the idea of him returning as an ACTUAL Mystery Fiter instead of his own gag.

I pretty much knew the exact image that would reveal him once I committed to him too, and the idea of a reveal picture with nothing in it as well. Almaric was our unlucky victim, but someone was going to get a claw stabbed up through their back and it worked out that Knud's ally was the best pick so that we could get trap alien versus trap troll. I did actually play a Predator related game pre-Brawl, Alien vs. Predator Requiem for PSP, and considered maybe having some of the weapons from it show up in the fite, but I went with his canon equipment from the first film plus that touch of trap making. Besides, his tools in the game weren't that cool anyway! Oh, and Jenny was picked as the person to kill him because of her heat-sensing vision just like his. The Predator's role in the Brawl was pretty much entirely tied to the characters with perfect powers to fit in a fite with him, and I did definitely enjoy writing a fite with a very different approach and structure where you couldn't see or even know who was attacking you. Maybe I'll see if I can do more battles that break the mold a bit in the future...

Before we dive in and discuss the Secret Fiter stuff though, I will preface all discussion on it by saying I'll pretty much never do something like this again, so don't think this will be like the old lottos where I kept chucking everyone in because I couldn't help myself! No, this idea to still utilize even the rejected Secret Fiters took root when the initial submission were rather slow. There's a big difference between including three rejected secret fiters over seven or eight, but by the time the ideas were brewing, I really couldn't turn them away. CatchMamemon seemed like the perfect way to potentially rope them in, the character able to turn people into plushes and thus he could potentially hurl them into action and they'd expand as a little Summon Fighter kind of idea. However, CatchMamemon wasn't picked, and maybe that helped those rejects out since the Vondu idea came along and elevated their roles. Rather than summons they'd be little interrupting fiters, the jars feeling the perfect way to bring these people into the Brawl after the Digimon idea fell through. I did briefly consider having Vondu just jar them while they were awake, but I'm not sure that would really work! Jarring them as plushes meant they weren't able to fight back and could more logically fit without revealing something about our Secret Fiter, even if few seemed like they even recognized him!

I had to actually watch the Gooseworx videos when Gooper sent the idea to me to know who Vondu is, and when I had the idea of actually featuring him active in the Pre-Fite Show but blurred out, it became a battle of including details of him to make it clearly him without giving up the identity if others did know of him. Mainly, he starts on a roof like he does in the video, does his memory stealing thing on CatchMamemon but, since he's a Digimon, people might be like "oh he maybe took his data", and the jars aren't such a dead giveaway that someone would immediately think of this guy from some internet videos! I was very worried I'd do something small like give up Vondu's gender or hint at his head shape or something small like that, but other than that it was mostly writing very carefully to have him present but not give him up. Him being seemingly mute helped so him not talking to Jackson Howard made sense, and I rethought how that scene would unfold many times. Jackson almost hired Vondu to help CatchMamemon only for Vondu to betray the Digimon at the end, but I couldn't work out too many other ideas where Jackson was also oblivious to what's going on, Vondu gets in the Brawl, and so do the other Secret Fiter candidates. Sacrificing CatchMamemon was actually something I couldn't work my mind out of either. He wouldn't plushify himself, and Vondu's guns don't have a "not kill" mode really, so while I feel bad he was the method the others got in through, I did try to make him work! I almost had the very morbid idea of him being kept in a jar despite being dead and just plopping out in the Brawl! Part of why Tyramigo's body did that instead was basically a reference to that.

However, including the rejects without devaluing the Secret Fiter pick felt important to me. That's one big reason everyone else died the way they did. Vondu got to get a bunch of kills and fight a bunch of fites, but the others were there mostly to influence others, leave a lasting mark, or give some kills to people who wouldn't have them otherwise. At least, that was the plan, because in retrospect I feel REALLY bad about how Madeleine and Badeleine panned out. I don't know how it happened in planning, I think I forgot an idea with them teaming up with Amaretti and Vert first before they turn against each other, but they didn't really have a lasting impact, Amaretti and Vert were slated for enough work on their own getting KOs elsewhere... I think that was definitely the one I outright squandered and big apologies for it! The other characters all had important little roles: Loremaster punched through the gimmick of Calculator so he didn't seem omniscient, and that leg injury lasted the whole brawl. Tyramigo gave Cirnoil a kill she wouldn't have otherwise and his body was used as part of the Raiko/Eggette/Momopie fite. Suika helped put some huge damage on Kepler and Julia to bring them down to a weakened state for their confrontation. MJF was Zauderberder's only kill and set up the stuff with the Dwarfelles joining Mayumi's army, where they would go on to be the most important guests.

Mostly, the Dwarfelles getting such an elevated role was to help Mayumi have more than a very tiny army until the big moment and add some people for her to bounce off of with her planning and attack strategies. I kept Sunburn around for a long time because her attitude made her the most fun personality, and since Happily Ever After made Thunderella such a sympathetic character AND the most capable Dwarfelle with her lightning powers she was good to have on hand too especially as Felldrake stuff entered the fray. Critterina was always fated to be a crab and, in my original plans, all of the Dwarfelles that Vondu didn't kill would have been crabbed at that point too. Marina kinda stuck around in case that fite went into the water but the ideas for their deeper importance saved her from that. I mostly had Blossom and Muddy killed early since they also had distinct personalities that might lead to TOO much focus on them, and Moonbeam was doomed because by the time she appeared on the battlefield it would be night so her sleepwalking gimmick would be gone and I didn't want to write her awake version!

Are other rejects include DJ Hallyboo who Chao even reminded me when submitting him that I said Dreamcast is a game pirate so she'd get to have a fun little non-standard fite with him trying to shame her. Mostly that fite separated her from her allies and lead to things like Soleil vs. Feldrake and Registeel/Saturn teaming up by moving people around, but I also liked the joke of him not bothering people who don't pirate games. As was pointed out in chat, I kind of grappled with my own feelings on game piracy with how Dreamcast and Hallyboo interacted, and I didn't make any argument I felt was outright flawed like the Hallyboo source material does. Their video tries to make the point that pirating Mario Party DS isn't wrong since Nintendo isn't selling it anymore... despite still selling it on the Wii U virtual console. I do have complicated feelings in general on it, recognize its importance to game preservation, and don't really hold it against people for doing, but I don't like the moralizing about it either when its mostly a convenience thing just like music piracy. Dreamcast wasn't even saying anything too much about the morality of it! Just that she ended up liking Sega because of it and how more access to those games helped her help the company.

Anyway, those were our rejects, but I still tried to give Vondu room to shine and his good placement allowed it! His weapons were a bit limited, a coat full of guns having a pretty clear application, but I did like the joke of him just easily mowing down four fiters with its use. Fiting someone like Chris who could match him in her incredible amount of weaponry felt like the right death, and I did definitely enjoy trying to play into Vondu's weird personality. Like, he makes the deal with Zauderberder and all for rugs he thought he'd get more use out of then he did. He uses the camo one very well to avoid trouble, but the stretch rug was very much him being like "well, I can't fly, so I might as well try something even if it probably won't work." I did wonder if I could fit in his war flashbacks from the submission, but mostly I just did a general sort of paranoia and odd, unreadable approach to his behavior so his opponents failed to understand his mindset. With so many mysteries still about what he even is I definitely decided on a death where it's kind of like you don't even need to know what's under the coat, but I did do my one out link image for the Brawl because I was pretty unhappy mentioning the coat full of guns without actually having the visual there to reinforce it. Also, if not for the rejects entering the Brawl idea, not sure I would have got much use out of those jars! I say that but it might have been because the brainstorming was never required for it, maybe he would have scooped up something important along the way. I actually felt kind of bad there wasn't much weapon stealing, Lucina and Ninjette having their swords picked up later, but those two were at least pretty impactful! Ryndur got his bow used by Mayumi too... maybe I'm sometimes to deep in to see things until I'm reflecting on them!

PRE FITE SHOW: BEN

So now we move to talking about the Pre-Fite Show! The Soar the Eagle SNN structure came from an idea of just having parody shows as the format for this year's Pre-Fite, and I considered concepts like The Great Agaman Bake-Off where Amaretti hosted a cooking show for example. However, while some things would fit that format, you get a whole lot of characters hosting a show and then perhaps struggling to make their individual important interactions work out. Like, Amaretti could invite Vert on even though that feels like an odd pluck for a cooking show, but if more and more characters were hosting things then we'd hit the point where making it seem realistic would harm the flow and general snappy nature the Pre-Fite Show aims for. You have to cover 75 characters interact, you can't linger TOO long!

But, having a general host for things seemed like it could give us the parody shows and absolve me of some of the issues with trying to work people into them. Moreover, then you wouldn't be left asking "why are these people hosting a show instead of getting ready for the Brawl?" Chick and Stew got their position still since this is their line of work, although originally Soar was going to stick around and banter with them before I realized that was losing the plot, so to speak. A few quips wouldn't hurt but it could be easy to get lost into the chance to have characters who wouldn't otherwise interact chat it up and it's important to stay focused or else you write something else huge the day before everyone reads another huge thing! Soar the Eagle has fallen off in prominence as I saw less and less reason to whip him out and sometimes you need to known when to retire a joke character, but him coming back was a good chance to refresh his premise. The whole "struggling network" thing also gave him a reason to pull this off, and while I emphasized his plight throughout, I made sure he was okay at the end so there was no lingering worry about him after. Woppy and Alex Kidd didn't get much play, Woppy there for a few quips but again I didn't want to get sidetracked writing that. Alex Kidd almost had a section where he wasn't in the traffic copter, instead sipping a drink on the beach and thinking he was cool because of his recently released game remake, but that also reminds me that when the SNN hosting idea was put in, it was almost all just one big news broadcast! Woppy's weather would somehow connect to a scene, Traffic would have its scene instead of just a single mention of the traffic copter, but as I kept thinking on that, I kept going to ideas like having an economy portion that would become the Mad Money parody or a politics portion that evolved into BBB-SPAN. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure the news version came first and then I just realized it was boiling down into parodies, I considered splitting it from Soar, but then just rolled it all together! I also wanted to emphasize Soar's sort of sensationalist/conspiracy side here more since he had a consistent focus and I remember in the past people said he wasn't as sensationalist as expected.

I am glad I didn't do the Pre-Fite until after the Brawl this year, mainly because some ideas like having Syia do the arm wrestling contest gave form to the then sort of unstructured WWE BRAWL segment where I wanted the characters together but didn't know what they should do. In general, some of the parodies didn't come together until after the Brawl was written so I'm glad I waited! A lot of the big ideas (the secret fiter rejects, alliances, etc.) were already decided on before the Brawl of course, it was mostly just about structure and smaller moments or interactions, and there were definitely some character redistributions made when I realized certain characters would see each other more in the Brawl than first planned.

So now, let's take a look at the general pre-fite show segments! I remember putting The Brawler's Guild together felt a little rough conceptually since I wanted to do things like have a scene specifically of Jenny getting her anti-grav skates approved to up her abilities in the Brawl but that doesn't flow well into the alliance part. Calculator predicting Kracko's sudden appearance was originally its own segment away from the guild's founding so Kracko's "random" appearance would be even sillier and feel more like it was set up in advance. Kouta and Calculator were thrown together specifically because SK said he has a manipulative side but might overestimate his abilities there and manipulating a supervillain of course keeps us from any guilt in doing so. Pretty much the only thing about the meeting of criminals at the restaurant that changed around were things like how much certain characters speak and whether people like Calculator would be there, although the restaurant itself was in flux as I tried to conceive of a way to make Clawleone seem silly in doing his Godfather-esque call for everyone to meet him. Playing Rocket Slime again post-Brawl and I'm reminded he doesn't show up much in the game and his Plob are actually pretty dangerous since... well, they have castle-sized tanks, but I think that detail might be too much for RP!

Bubba was actually hard to place in pre-brawl writing plans, but I eventually hit on the idea of him explaining his weakness! Everyone was meant to be doing something important and it feels like a lot of them were obvious, I almost wonder if they were too obvious in that people might see characters chat and go "oh yeah, they're fiting later". Ancient Agamans was one of the harder segments to write I feel, mostly because a lot of the character put in there (beyond Mayumi, Edward, and Zauderberder who were like the first little alliance I thought up) didn't need to establish too much pre-Brawl. Picking their preferred battle areas and tactic as well as establishing a small mole/Marlow friendship kept it from feeling superfluous though. Inside the Brawler's Studio could definitely have just kept going but I didn't want to spill too many people into it since the interview format, while fun, doesn't provide as much important info. I wanted to do the Puddlenaut gag with the card and actually getting to hear about CKR characters' histories was important so Dragon in a Wagon immediately was decided to have an interview before I even knew the rest of the structure for that segment. Chimata trading powers was definitely just to help ensure it happened somewhere but I found many applications during the Brawl, although the Julia arm swap and Dragon part were in the earliest plans so I guess it was more about true power trading. I'm honestly pretty glad Kepler placed where she did in the Brawl since Brine and Cornwind were doing Kepler/Julia stuff during the Brawl work period and if she had done worse then I might have wrote something that didn't work with that at all! I was fretting for so long they'd progress that further or resolve things or something and the mid-brawl talk would be out of place!

WWE BRAWL was originally named WWB as in WWE and had a joke about not being tied to Warner Bros. Academy of Agama's Wild Kingdom was based on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom even though I never really watched it. Something about the name put me off from it even though it seemed like a fine nature show and I love those. It was actually one of the first I concocted as a parody because the whole cameras catching Kobbers planning for the Brawl already feels a bit like catching animals doing interesting things in real life, to the point I leaned into that one year with a whole nature show pre-fite! Maya cutting in with the Breaking News helped me still do Damien and Raiko's small segment without feeling like I had to stuff it with other characters since it too was struggling to find an umbrella to share with more people. Funny thing, Bree in chat saying she wanted to see some teammates betray each other was directly expressed by having Yukari pop in to talk with Ran during the Pre-Fite Show. I did think it would be fun for Yukari to give an order but Ran wasn't going to go too far, but having Yukari be Bree's mouthpiece for that interest worked! Similarly, I tried to think of ideas with Santos potentially helping Bluejay and used the Pre-Fite Show to basically say "none of them worked out". Ran was going to potentially make Bluejay THINK Santos was helping and get her cocky to kill her, but the results didn't work out that way.

Tyramigo's little bit about NOT being a robot dinosaur was actually me admonishing myself! The Secret Fiter entry SK sent me mentioned he's an armored dinosaur but as I wrote the Brawl I kept calling him a robot until finally I remembered and had to go back and edit. So, come Pre-Fite time, I wanted to emphasize he isn't a robot like his source material and got a little jokey at my own expense even though no one else would get it!

OTHER GENERAL BRAWL THINGS

Here's a little catchall section for me to talk about broader subjects before we go down the list of characters for individual ideas and thoughts! This might be where I would have put a Brawl wishlist but people brought up what I thought was a better idea, making the wishlist after the season so I can encapsulate the whole year instead of a weird mix of some of 2020's end and 2021's start. It will be its own blogpost and much simpler to make since it's just a little list of names but I may need a reminder come season's end so poke me if it seems I've forgotten!

Other things I want to talk about though include things like Jukebox Jaw! I did consider having Marvin swap for a jungle ref despite liking the little alien but there were no candidates, but Jukebox Jaw I did legitimately wonder if he should play the old familiar Brawl theme or something entirely new. The shift away from Mac Tonight does mean it's not tied to a piece of the Brawl still around, but it feels hard to tie in some new song without it feeling worse and, more importantly, it would have to be something short and snappy and I don't know any candidates that feel like they could be twisted into a Brawl theme! Other jingles maybe? Mac Tonight's song is already a riff on Mac the Knife which I think makes it feel less like I'm taking some commercial song and making it the theme. In the end, it does make sense that Jukebox would just play the song we had as his first big time on stage where he isn't thrown into the action to die.

For the epilogue I already had the idea of Marisa and friends walking away all cool, but the specifics changed. Their posing felt important, I originally almost had Dreamcast flipping the bird and biting her lip because she's that kind of character but it kind of ruins the good vibes of the scene. Also, I considered not having Dreamcast there, just Miracle and Marisa since they had the big friendly moments leading to the end, but I felt like Harpy would kill me if she learned later Dreamcast was left out after being considered and what's an epilogue but a chance to make the champion happy? The mini-mini-Hakkero idea seems to have been forgotten but was mostly just me trying to emphasize that using the big Final Master Spark was a huge pull that Marisa would need time to recover from but I'm not bothered.

This Brawl definitely went back to the huge focus on intersecting fites and characters moving around battles a lot like BBB9 pulled off so well. I think one reason BBB10 had me worried to do that again was the prevalence of big alliances and the lack of a giant train (besides Purnima's, but we all know that's literally a different beast!). It's easy to forget how much I used that train to move people! But, in BBB11 there was a lot more of me thinking "we haven't seen that character for a bit" or "that character doesn't have anything important until much later so we should keep them active so they're not just showing up for their scheduled time." I think having a pretty clear idea of where the Brawl could go and a smaller entrant count than last year kept me confident in the ability to pull that off. Perhaps having less clearly delineated areas in the arena helped too so I wouldn't go "well they need to stay over there for their big moment later". I think I actually ran into issues where I did pull a character away from some place or person important to them only to throw them together later, but the fact I don't remember specifics bodes well for how it went!

I was very happy that I got to read the Brawl alongside everyone this year! It was for typo correction and correcting certain areas I remembered needing cleaning or punching up but hadn't got around to tidying up, but it also meant when people were posting reactions in chat I knew what they were talking about! You kind of forget a lot of smaller things and as I've said before, there's a bit of a cloud hanging over Brawl work where you write something funny or awesome and forget it's either because it's been in your head so long, but seeing people react how you want them to is nice! The leadup to me posting the final two fiting was incredibly tense even for me knowing the results and I almost feel bad for how long that post was because of it! I keened to the idea of Miracle turning into a bunch of characters for the final fite early but at first it would just be people important to them like Dreamcast or characters Marisa or Miracle fought earlier in the Brawl like NiseDrimogemon, but then I thought "in for a penny, in for a pound" and decided to do EVERYONE for the thrill of going that far. It would definitely show Marisa earned her win, but it really was just a bit of a personal challenge and way to have fun with a unique powerset that got the spotlight. I would have done it the same if Miracle had won I'm sure, sort of how Skeleton King brought in a huge army and then won anyway.

One thing I'm not too happy with was a lot of Teammate 1 dies, then Teammate 2, which feels like it was mostly from me wanting to have my cake and eat it too. Some guys like the Regis it felt right to stagger the deaths, but Chris and Kirika working together to take down Cecilia kind of necessitated they both were around to that point and then had to die pretty quickly after because of standings. It felt easier to kill someone like Almaric earlier because he's had goes at the Brawl before and probably will again, but if Bill or NiseDrimogemon die early they won't come back so it was nice to have the moles together even if they split away for their fites often. I actually tried to avoid a lot of shortcuts to KOing people, originally the only double KO, Princess and Regirock, would be Princess killing Regirock as they fell and then Registeel avenging his bro. Literally my notes say:

Princess Jack smashes Regirock KO
Registeel gets her back KO

Speaking of notes though, I'll share the unique names I gave each post in the Brawl and explanations when appropriate!

Brawl Start!

Battles Begin!

More Early Wipe Outs

Mystery Types (somehow, this is the post after Predator's reveal, seems it came from Ran's powers and Crow's behavior)

Normies Die (I remember I didn't have a plan for who would kill Kakuna in my notes for a while, so it ended up being a "Normie" who died too!)

Tech Goes Down

Fites Big and Big (it was going to be Big and Small but Ninjette fiting the Kobolds was moved to the previous post. Speaking of, really tried to pack the posts with content so I could trick myself into doing a certain workload every day. 5 posts every day, no matter how many kills were in them, made it easy to compartmentalize and set times I should work an how far along I should be!)

Goodbye Champ

Lizards and Squids

Rampagin'

Strong People Die

Rather Weird Stuff (this is the one with the Dwarfelles debut and Zozo reviving Yakuza)

Team Breaks

Big Monsters, Big Chests (Amaretti and Vert, nuff said)

Some Cool Characters Die

Moles Doneday

Small, Secret, Serious

What's all the Hallyboo

Sorry Brine (Emily, Jenny, AND Cecilia one after the other!)

The Bugs of War

Distractions

Overcome the Odds

Sheep Nooooo

Science Stinks

Top 10

Big Eliminations

Top Four Time

Finale

Epilogue

As you can tell from here and previous years the titles aren't too important, they just help segment things mostly. I slap a big (DONE) next to the title when that post is written to visualize my progress, in the same way I write DEAD next to characters on the big list of rankings as I go.

Not sure there's anything else I want to directly say here that won't come up in Character Discussion, so...

CHARACTER DISCUSSION

Here it is, that big part where I talk about each character one after the other! The part that makes this blogpost take so long but is important since I'd forget so much otherwise! I'll definitely try to focus on things I decided to do or not do rather than saying things like "It was so cool to get this character" although I'll probably say that just the same! Mainly, I don't want this to take forever to do and want to keep focused, so let's see if this paragraph is true to what I say or I get carried away like usual!

HARPY

Let's lead right away with our champion, MARISA, and boy am I glad I had my opinion 180 on her before she snagged the championship! To be fair though, Harpy was playing her in a much more positive way this time around so she was easier to like! Marisa's powers were a bit hard to nail down exactly. Sure, it's easy to say "Fire, Heat, and Light Magic", but how that manifests can be very different! I naturally leaned a lot on stuff from the Touhou wiki and fighting games, but I also looked into attacks she had used when she fought Anubis. The spinny move was from that, but I leaned a lot more on fighting game moves like the comet and orb thing when it came time to spice up her moveset. Giving her the katana was actually a bit of spur of the moment decision to help Ravio's thing but it helped so much in giving her a way to fite physically, although since I already imagined a sword duel with Dreamcast's form in the finale she would have probably got to a blade eventually. I really liked having the two finalists be allies the whole Brawl, something we've never had before! It made the final moments feel like they have a lot more emotional impact, something I think was really starting to build up near the end! A very feel good Brawl when it came to some late game happenings. I definitely wanted the Final Master Spark for the last kill but hoped people seeing a Master Spark kill earlier would make them think Marisa's days are numbered. Suspense!

BUBBA I was really worried about how I chose to kill him. I liked the idea of the item storage guy "popping" from too much in him, but I realized fairly quickly that a head exploding can be imagined as very gruesome. That's why the KO pic had no blood to it. I think fites and violence can be fun to read and watch so long as they don't start getting very visceral. You don't see the organs or hear them mentioned save the heart, brain, and sometimes lungs really, people basically full of bones and blood and the bones even just break instead of show. So, Bubba's head just kind of matter-of-factly pops and the focus is more on the junk flying everywhere in the image. The little Moogles were a late addition to the picture actually, I copied and pasted them on the computer because I wanted to make sure every dead character (except three I'll mention soon) were marked in picture form, to the point the Dwarfelles having their KOs squeezed into pictures became a running joke. The moogles were drawn close to their Crystal Chronicles versions but with the big noses that are definitive of other versions, making a sort of nonexistant chunky big nose version. But, Momopie got the kill with her weapon, and since I showed the phoenix down earlier I didn't think I could mark them as dead until it was clear they wouldn't be revived, just like how Majima's first death had no image since it didn't stick. Bubba's belly contents were always up in the air for me, not sure how much I wanted direct references or broad strokes. Mostly he became a weapon storage with little things to help along like potions for Julia so she wasn't totally incapable of going the rest of the Brawl. Shiva's magicite came out because it was specifically shown in RP, but otherwise I wanted to keep things sort of easily understood at a brisk pace. This is a magic scroll so its magics immediately rather than having to take time to say what something like an Antarctic Wind does. Fun Fact: Bubba's squishing kill on Wriggle was originally him smashing down on her in Mothra form, but by the time the squish was coming it ended up working more as a surprise drop.

CLARA is where I mention the three unmarked kills! Her three bugs were all killed at the moments they were mentioned dying, Carnage Beetle at least in an image with Bugzzy but Ladypavise was squished by Puddlenaut and Rigiprayne zapped by Zozo. Drawing them individually would be a whole picture and on the whole they were hard to slip into some fites since they work well on big monsters in their source game but a human won't just ignore a big ol' bug in their zone. However, one of the moments that got a reaction from many people was Carnage Beetle jamming himself in Minim's nostril, and I had a good reason for it! That little battle had me ask the question on why Minim wouldn't just go for a kill on these people that she could very likely get some good hits on, but an unexpected and undignified tactic would throw off the would-be maid and keep her busy in a way being attacked wouldn't. I was a bit unsure how to resolve the rivalry between Bugzzy and Carnage Beetle because of the time limit placed on Carnage Beetle's active time, and I never felt like they'd get to have too satisfying of a battle because of that plus the power gap. I can definitely make someone overcoming size and strength advantages interesting by now, but it felt like Carnage Beetle had a lot of limitations and wasn't even a full-fledged entry or assist so taking time aside with it felt unusual. He got his fite still, but as I tried to think of how to resolve it I came up with the goofy idea of Varan just going "screw you guys for fiting on me" and ending it himself. It also leaves the users up to if they ever want to resolve the rivalry with a more meaningful battle rather than me making a declaration of who won! Now then, Clara was there too! Okay first her bugs had some cool tricks I probably would have kept them around more if she went further. Her placement was surprising considering her vote strength, but I almost accidentally didn't give her a kill. Her and Kracko were both sort of said to kill Varan but also neither was a commitment, but then I came up with a BBB1 callback with the blade down the belly and all and it was too awesome to toss out so she got the grand action while Kracko and others helped. I did enjoy the Insect Glaive being sort of like a pole vault so it was more than a big bladed thing to attack with.

Nikki also underperformed but I guess when Harpy finally snags her win some prices have to be paid. I did really consider if Nikki and Lilith should almost permafuse or something until one dropped out, but the duo worked for a while and the joint kill on Syzygy felt like a good pay off to their potential as a pair. Shotriser's many modes required a lot of reopening of the post they were laid out in, and one thing about Shotriser is it has things like the explosive shot but I feel weird using that as direct aggression. It's described as used for clearing rubble and junk so shooting someone with it feels like counter to its purpose even though it would be very strong doing so. I try to be more creative than using the big boom shot regardless. I did definitely want to have some fun with Cosmo entering machines or at least trying, Vent activating time slow to avoid the lightning bolt shape of Cosmo Nikki moving by a really strong image in my head as soon as I imagined it. I almost altered the scene where Ryndur survives a Wriggle Kick earlier in the Brawl since it would later kill Nikki, but she was worn down a lot and Wriggle had time to set it up better so I decided against it. Nikki hacking Calculator's data on fiters actually wasn't really planned in advance but worked well when things started to come together for their confrontation. Gave me a good out for how his predictions could be thrown off so you can still maybe think there was a point he was on the right path to calculating his victory.

PURUGLY WITH MARS I am very happy become an entrant with assist in that form. Purugly and Isabela going through much of the Brawl alone or with each other only felt like a nice angle to take with Pokemon who had trainers, and it helped both of them did the opposite of our previous trainer entries so it felt even more like they were the right pick for it. Purugly had fewer of the inexplicable elemental attacks Normal types sometimes get than expected, my mind perhaps remembering Persian too much who leaned into that more, but she had the right amount to be more than a fat cat with claws. Her killing Yin-Yarn felt too obvious, a lot of kills I feel like I had to do it where someone meets and appropriate killer, like with Bluejay and Peko fiting since one drinks blood and one fites with blood weapons. Purugly's death was easy to pick since having a dog kill a cat wipes a lot of guilt from anyone's hands or avoids people being upset their more intelligent human character did it. One reason Purugly's death in the tunnel emphasizes she died instantly was also so no one thought she was 187 Hours living while crushed or something. A crushing death also isn't too bad if you spare the details! Mars I felt pretty bad about killing so early but that's pretty much the price for an assistant or team entry: they might be sacrificed to give others kills! Mars did get physical and I didn't want to skimp on having her actually gets hands-on like her entry mentions, I do kind of regret not having her ride Purugly now that I remember that was an option. I liked focusing on Pokemon being more animalistic yet intelligent, so not something like Goomy or Jumpluff but also not something where they're an extension of a trainer like Wimpod or Gourgeist. Naturally there's overlap, but I've written a lot of Pokemon and it's nice to find new angles!

BREE

MIRACLE really did pull off what seemed impossible in outplacing Amity, and I even wonder if Bree had plans in place since her placing higher than the other Ditto seemed so unlikely. She got a huge vote push sure, but this seems to be the only Brawl where that really decided our winners! Marisa got the most votes and snagged the win in what might be a Brawl first and Miracle rode high as well, but this goes back to my comment about this being a feel good Brawl. Miracle not only got her good ending despite not winning but we had multiple moments where I just wrote out dialogue to help her come along it not all at once but gradually. Miracle being a Ditto meant I could technically transform her into whatever I wanted to and her propensity for favoring objects did show in things like how she killed Maya (Maya actually fought her under the idea that photoshop alterations wouldn't "stick" even though that wasn't shown too much) but I ended up leaning on doing a sort of tribute to Dark Matter plot instead with her transformation picks. I realized it was a risky move, referencing characters who didn't all have huge impacts comparatively and some people like Roserade wouldn't even know. I tried to immediately give a sort of basic title so that you would be like "Who is Century? Oh, an armored woman" and no one really whipped out crazy hard powers to understand once they were established. I did wonder if doing it might seem against Miracle's character but that's why the Pre-Fite Show framed it as defying their bad ends, and with so many people turning good from Heart Star world it doesn't feel out of sorts for her to want to pay tribute to her original "friends" and the ones who did turn out to be good. One big thing I had planned but decided against though was a point in the final fite where after transforming into every Brawler Miracle would get frustrated and shift into Dark Matter himself, a big looming force that would even have an image to emphasize the "oh shit"ness of the moment. Marisa would talk her down from it and then we'd have her fite as Miracle Matter instead. I decided against it because it not only no longer felt right with all that happened on the way but didn't feel like what she'd do when it was framed in a friendly finale. I was wondering if Miracle Matter should be whipped out sooner and her killing Vent with it was me doing that whole "oh man, there's her big thing, watch out!" for her. I think turning into Dark Matter plot characters was a nice tribute to the big plot from last year and Miracle's history as a character. Somehow I didn't make the mistake of calling her Amity too much, always correcting myself before it even had a chance of sticking around as a typo. Miracle splitting up did allow for some fun things though beyond the big finale and I think that made her feel really different from Amity. Writing her dialogue had me wondering if I was making her too coherent but sometimes you just gotta do that!

RAN WITH CHEN had so much potential but then they placed too low for my illusion ideas! I actually had Gamecube in the votes say a bunch of them so I wouldn't be tempted, and I even felt a little bad to do the "you win the Brawl!" illusion on Isabela because I almost felt like that's happened before. I can't think of when or how it would have, maybe during a plot instead of an actual Brawl. Ran's powers beyond fun illusions were mostly copying stuff from wikis and danmaku spell cards, but I kept Chen pretty much as a cat girl. Crow is also one of those guys you can use to kill a cat since it seemed Del liked him being a little jerk-like, but it was still justified in universe by having Chen attack him so why wouldn't he go for the kill? Chen's little panic moment of being alone felt like a new angle too and helped us check in on people who would be relevant later, so while she didn't leave many lasting scars on people she still did a lot of legwork for other concepts like motivating Julia more or helping with Ran's attacks. Ran almost had a full on alliance with Isabela and Purugly and would then turn against them but I didn't like any idea for potential set-ups. That's why they had the pre-fite grouping together initially but then it became about her attacking them instead. Ran illusioning up a bunch of Majimas for a Majima Everywhere joke was so perfect that it had to be done, but planning other little Best Illusions for the people was harder than you might. I kept from revealing Majima's in case Bree wanted to joke about it being romantic, but Kiryu I really did feel dude just wants a regular life while Liz went for a joke. Zozo's was left ambiguous partly because I was like "I could reveal something but this isn't the JRM show" so we just get her kind of going "oh, dang."

NEKOMARU fusing with Gun was planned for so long I don't think I remember any plans before it being in the cards. The exact fusion was in flux, wasn't sure how to upgrade him or if Gun would still be alive, but it would help him fite in a more interesting manner and quickly worked in the idea of Bullet having someone to stick to. Nekomaru being a big supportive dude made him a nice pick for Bullet's character accompaniment anyway, and soon Eggette was roped in to make the fusion believable. I think there was some early idea about him trying to help people with their body or fitness and you even get a small reference to that in pre-fite as where he was leaving from, but I think that was back when the parody shows were character led. I remember some talk around the time of Nekomaru's entry getting filled on how there were mistakes about what his electricity could do and I kept doubting myself about them, so he mostly did things that I knew were safe within his powerset. Gunekomaru was also the only image I knew right from the get go I'd get Gooper to do and even considered having him draw the later Eggette image where her mobile has Gun and Nekomaru parts. I really did lean hard on his robot-ness!

JENNY SMITH almost died before we got a Jenny vs. Jenny fite! I actually had that confrontation planned before writing started but imagined it much earlier with a larger group on both sides. I forget where exactly it could have been, I think they would have then fought a group together and lost a member, but I realized too late I had waited too long and decided to throw it in anyway! I did avoid my idea of having the Jenny vs. Jenny eventually devolve into just a string of me going Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny after swapping between the two so often. Besides Tressa giving Jenny Smith a brief boost before her death and the anti-grav skates that mostly just made Jenny more mobile though, I did want to keep her ground and "normal" EVEN THOUGH Bree told me there would be a big twist about her identity after the Brawl. I didn't know it was she was an alien though, but Bree had asked if having the secret side of herself would be a problem and I basically said that it only matters if there were details I need to know. It's come up before where I get a bit of a reveal about a character or some secret card passed my way to write a Brawler more effectively, I wouldn't encourage it too much and you can't really get away with holding too many secrets to your chest (I don't want a fully anonymous to everyone but me entrant or something) but Jenny was clean to go. Her hockey stick got roughed up and it was in the state where I worried it might be broken too much and then she keeps using it despite that, a common worry when writing characters who take a lot of damage since I'm writing over the course of a week and losing track of details doesn't sound impossible. Jenny was definitely thrown into the Brawler's Guild to make her survival more believable and keep her active in tandem. Unless she was fiting someone her own size then it might not be easy to manage that otherwise but the Guild was a good way to put her into active fiting and the opponents they faced were either that sort of Middle power tier or something they could work together against. Middle might sound like it's condescending to some participants but basically High would be kaiju or superpowered guys like Saxton Hale and Low would be things like Bullet without Gun or Zauderberder. Not that this is some metric I really thought of before writing this, I'm sure people get the idea though. Jenny got to be pretty active even though I was kinda ready for her to drop out early OR go far since having a team around you always increases your chances! Her death was always going to be sort of low key unless she went a distance though, just to nail in the "normalness". Also, in my sticky notes, my notes on Jenny Smith is literally just "-hockey stick". I didn't even mention the skates because I hadn't brought them up to Bree before the notes were made!

PRINCESS JACK MOONSHINE I really wish she had four arms. I kept imagining her with them only to look at a picture and be reminded she didn't have them! Despite asking questions about her mask and stuff it didn't play too big a part despite some mask damage meant to lower her power level some, but that was because she didn't really go the distance required for the drastic measures after Bree and I discussed its importance. Her tail was definitely useful to have, but I actually was aching for a little more than a love of punching at times when I thought of how she could fite. You see some horn and hoof action specifically because you don't want to spend too much time just whaling on someone with your fists, and while she could have grappled and stuff, her high power level put here over with some of the big boys. Syia and the Regis all had extra tricks to keep her at bay so I think that was a big reason I felt it so often, I wanted to give her her own trick to pull out to turn the tides! That's how you write a battle after all, a series of counters or successes! And even successes must be followed with a counter! I don't think she's a limiting character design necessarily, I think against some other opponents she could do something with that strength, but her character concept made her a great fit for fiting the Regi Bros and they were going to have a run in with Syia so Princess got attached to that too. I did waver on what to call Princess Jack for short quite a bit since anything short of the three word name almost feels too little. I do hope Bree was pleased with her, I still don't know too much about her source material even with what I asked for, what Bree offered on her own, and some small research. She definitely "killed" Regirock in that he wouldn't have got out of his situation alive and I tried to emphasize not only her power but the power of most of our powerhouses more than usual this year! Princess was handling quite a foe opponents capably until she got blown to bits!

ROSERADE

LORD FELLDRAKE Originally plans for him were much less ambitious. Having Thunderella whip up a big ol' thunderstorm was his late game plan instead, but Mother Nature definitely made for a much more dramatic late game event and one that made use of our host who otherwise would have been mostly a sideline character. However, I was worried that Felldrake going so hard on being villainous near the end might impact Roserade's plans, so I softened a few moments. He was going to be a lot more sinister in luring Thunderella to him, Thunderella was a lot more scared and cried more initially, and it all felt perhaps too cruel and manipulative. I actually didn't have any plans for long term hypnosis beyond non-entrants at first, I worry people will get upset if their character spends too much time under someone's control, but we did have Unity take people over before I guess. Felldrake taking over Missy made his kill on Soleil work better I feel, it was originally marked with my generic "Guy kills Entrant" format so I can be creative later and this really escalated! Sheldgoose was going to stick around much longer, perhaps right up until he would shift to Thunderella, but I think riding in Missy's arm allowed for some good build-up to the Mother Nature takeover. I did make sure Missy still got in a fair fite with Zozo so that she wasn't denied too much by being taken over too. The staff dying to the Heart Star was one of the earliest kills planned because it helped me kill a living staff without perhaps impacting Roserade's plans to keep using him. I even made special mention that Miracle wouldn't straight up soul crush him for that reason! I watched a lot of clip compilations of Sheldgoose and Felldrake on Youtube and briefly wondered if I should pluck some things from the show, I kind of wish I had Sheldgoose talk more because he's pretty funny in the show AND voiced by Wayne Knight which is such a character-filled voice! I did worry about Felldrake's early game, I didn't want him running TOO much but I knew he'd pick up steam later, and we did get moments that showed he wasn't a full on coward like trying to zap Chunor. Maybe if he had a few more spells to whip out he'd be busier early on but I think he definitely found his rhythm with the possession procession and made for a properly bombastic arena-wrecking showdown! I was very happy he placed higher than Lilith specifically so someone doing the big power thing would get a kill with it!

AMARETTI I wish I knew more about how she got those cookies! You wouldn't believe how many cookie-related questions I asked myself as I wrote her. I did realize removing most of the cookies made it look like her time was numbered, but I decided she'd still have little pieces so she could still do her thing up until her death. I'm not sure whether to talk about the fate of her cookies here or in Bluejay's entry... I think we'll wait until Bluejay talk. Amaretti herself got a lot of out of her allying with Vert, more than I realized she would get when I threw them together mostly for buxom babe jokes! I know setting up the alliance was something I struggled with until I came up with Vert just being like "why do we have to be coy in putting these groups together?" almost as if she mirrored my ideas. These people are fiting to survive in a huge competition! Rocket boosters on her limbs technically didn't give her more moves than a usual martial arts type character but ensured their impact and added more danger to her, I think that's why she was able to get mixed up in so many things like even taking on Armor.

STEEL KOMODO

LILITH While naturally I couldn't throw a full character arc on Lilith here since that would be denying SK's his, her getting so far definitely meant I went for a feel good sort of thing despite the fact she'd soon get crushed by mountains after. Mostly, I did want to show Lilith had worked on handling her rage and impulses, hence why it takes a long time for her to lose control. She measured herself, and while she explains herself to Marlow, it was also a nice explanation as to why she wasn't throwing herself into more battles despite being around the ever closing sphere of fites. However, her losing control was perfect for removing the powerhouse that is Julia from play after she got so far, and while I didn't want to be too brutal with it, tearing someone in half is pretty extreme! More importantly I wanted to have the defusal and all, Thunderella's vulnerability punching through before Miracle comes in with the comfort. It would have been really messed up if they had to fite Lilith after that actually, so it's probably good we had Felldrake so far to squash her without it being like "I helped you, now I kill you." The exact powers Lilith's Tanden Engine would draw on I actually wavered on a bit. I wanted to expand her sphere of Kobbers to pull from since she leans pretty hard towards Season 1 faces and Britbro characters in regular RP, but choosing who exactly to emulate was a more difficult pull than expected. I actually did decide it was almost a conscious thing from Lilith, having her pull from the famous first Kobbers because their legacy makes them stronger, hence why we saw Draco's famous eye-melting flames brought up with such reverence when used. I didn't want to reference someone too obscure either, but I did want to reference Doctor Grendel once I realized how similar their torso engines were. Another instance of my old "reference a thought process" thing was having Nikki enter Lilith with Cosmo powers for therapy but I made sure to lay out that there wouldn't be mind alteration in Pre-Fite. I made sure to get those hyper installs in even if they didn't get too big a focus!

VARAN Our big boy for this year, I think more than other giants he did a bit more attacking on smaller people's levels. As in, he used a single claw to smash Syia into the dirt and squashed Bugzzy rather than his focus being on huge big blasts or powerful strikes to kill. It helped in writing what he was up to having so many powerful guys around and the Godzilla vs. Kong segment where he fought Tyzien was one I had a good mental picture of. I'm not too big a fan of beam battles, but I realized the sound based nature of Varan's made for a beam battle that gets the striking image in there before its quickly resolved since both beams would move through each other, being composed of different energies. I didn't think I'd get to squeak his "surprisingly stealthy" aspect in but I did, and while he didn't use gliding much for fiting it still showed up. I watched youtube videos about the guy to see if I was missing anything about how he should move or fite, I was a bit torn on how to implement them though. In the video games his sound blasts kinda are reduced to lasers technically, I tend to defer to entries and what's been seen in RP first for those things so I didn't let it change him too much. I do wish I could have thought of a good way for the firefly-weakness thing, I think I actually worried too much about the whole "explosive-resistant hide". I was wondering what could or could not break it, and one reason the membrane was attacked was because it was a clear soft spot to work with. Luckily a lot of our Brawlers are strong enough to get around kaiju defenses in some way, even his eventual death working because Clara's weapon was made to kill monsters with tough hides!

VENT That glove did so much to make him feel like a very different fiter! I think I almost gave him a zero gravity dimension by mistake before checking my notes and remembering how it worked, a common problem this Brawl as you'll hear later! His old "distracted by the molecule" description came into play in him wanting to ally with Syzygy and see how things unfolded with her attempts to understand Lilith, which technically means Vent wanted to fite Lilith but never got the chance! There was a fair bit of that this Brawl but I tried to avoid them actually coming into conflict. Vent, for example, was kept busy by Kanade and Nikki and such so he never directly hurt Lilith although I think she got caught up in the dimensions once or twice. Similar to how Miracle was picked to beat Maya since her camera effects wouldn't stick on her, she was picked to kill Vent since the dimensions would be easier for the shapeshifter to overcome. I did have Vent take Jenny's gun so he wouldn't be just shifting her around for the fite though. I think the Quantum Conundrum glove really brought a unique fite complicator with everyone always having to think of how to counter it or Vent able to use it to counter people so often. As they years wane on I noticed I give a lot less permanent lasting injuries to Brawlers (as in, limb removals or things that impact their fiting ability, they still lose like fingers or get big wounds) but having ways to shift fites without having a big injury that tells people a fiter's days are numbered is a handy tool! Despite being a reentry, he felt so different it didn't even feel like it!

KAMEN RIDER ZI-O II, aka "do I put the II? I'll put it sometimes." Kouta's run ended up defined pretty heavily by that little line about how he imagines himself a clever manipulator but isn't fully. He did have his Vert fite though, I did want to reference Panty and Stocking in his stuff but not have it be overwhelming since those girls can be A Lot if you let them start to do things. They would be just audience members here at most, but in the end the fite with Vert was a good chance to make some Panty and Stocking adjacent jokes without really roping them in. I do worry maybe I was a little mean to Kouta in having his weaknesses play such a big factor, but he was never shown as a poor fiter. I looked up his finishing moves and really liked the big ol' sword one even if I didn't draw it as wildly flashy as the show does. The precognitive stuff was definitely the most interesting part of writing him, trying to always think of the counters to that power so he doesn't dominate too much, and it was specifically them that pushed him towards Calculator so that them allying makes sense beyond the meta aspect of manipulating a character we wouldn't feel bad for, especially since it was mutual!

CHICK AND STEW I really was tempted to have them do more mid-brawl commentary, almost something like what Jim did when he was fiting alongside Bob. Maybe not as present but still making sideline comments when something of particular note happened. I ended up giving them some stuff at the start on a whim and having them host a Pre-Fite segment let me get a satisfying amount of banter and jokes out of them. I looked up their game roles but it seems like they might go a little more extreme into their archetypes than we see them in RP, but I like how SK handles their banter better. I think it's a case of writing them for a game cutscene is short, snappy, and often not meant to convey too much information and more for quick wisecracking compared to RP where we see them be more practical sometimes. Still, Chick and Stew's personality balance did determine how they would fite and react to danger, Chick smarter but still goofy at times and Stew more prone to error or bad ideas. These two were another "one after the other" team kill that I couldn't bring myself to separate. Unfortunately, the weapons from Mario + Rabbids they use were hard to Google oddly enough, I was trying to learn more about the Bagsniper specifically for its shape and ink. I definitely made those weapons have their extra effect more often they should just for the fun of it.

CORNWIND EVIL

JULIA and some other Cornwind character we'll get to definitely were part of me leaning into emphasizing how strong the strong guys were this year. I still hold true to my "one good hit" policy where even the toughest people can be taken down by a properly placed attack. I don't like the idea of someone with normal flesh somehow being so strong they aren't cut by a blade or shot through by a bullet as if being tough changes the materials you're made out of. I get it, ki stuff, but, this Brawl I really did want to emphasize the heavyweight strength of people like Julia, and that's why she had to lose an arm so early! It was a handicap to her capabilities so she didn't trounce her targets too quickly and was working at a disadvantage, and the Robin Hood persona felt reasonably strong enough to be able to tear that limb off in an instant so that Julia can't be said to have lost it foolishly. Crow being an obvious target for someone who can see through facades and find the evil within worked well too! I honestly didn't have faith in myself to remember her sword was called the Baba Yaga but ended up writing it so many times that I found it silly my initial notes on potential kills/images called it "Julia's Sephiroth sword". Julia facing down Kepler felt inevitable after some of the surrounding stuff even though I was so worried it would do something during Brawl writing to make my portion not make sense. It's one reason a big focus was more on their understanding of Chunor's rampage than broader ideas, and I didn't want Kepler to just auto-win so Julia had good points too like how Kepler didn't seem to be giving Julia credit while Kepler wanted Chunor to be given credit! Figuring out how exactly to make Julia kill Kepler to wrap that portion up was tough since I knew Cornwind would probably be against it, but luckily Kepler's power level meant that Julia would at least see that justification to avoid an instant death, and Kepler even asking her to take her seriously as a foe was another angle to make it work more. The only person I let Julia do her whole "let them suffer" thing on was Crow and it wasn't dragged out either, just more because I liked the idea of Julia stomping that giant blade down through someone and letting him try to push against it felt like a good way to mention the burning touch. Funny thing, when I saw Julia could gift Violentclad in the entry notes I thought I would not ever have reason to use it but it ended up helping Chimata stick it out late game since it was a perfect tradeaway! I did feel like I was missing some important info on her at times, I had to ask Cornwind how she looked without Violentclad for that reason (and so I could draw her death pic!) and the exact details on Baba Yaga's... existence? weren't fully fleshed out. I did do things like have it take a bit to Read the area so it could slice through things so it was encumbered some by its size but not for long, but things like how material it was and how it would react to Suika cracking it were things I ruminated on. Also: decided not to step into the reading people's morality quagmire too much. Feels like I could say something that becomes outdated or make a bad read on a character so generally it was just a lot of us seeing things from Julia's actions rather than her direct impressions on someone.

TYZIEN AND SYIA Syia got to do a lot of the regular human fiting specifically because she was the new blood, using her energy blade technique and doing a lot more of the insanely strong things you'd expect from the pair like hefting up Regice effortlessly to use him like a club. She was handling the human-sized powerhouse angle in her fite and up against toughies so they could hold their own despite the clear shows of how powerful this alien chick is, but Tyzien, as my notes say "Monkey form GOTTA USE". As we'll see with Joy too, I really tried to make sure if someone has a cool trick, they used it this Brawl, and Tyzien was kinda destined to do most of his work in this form regardless. If he went further maybe he'd lose his tail and keep fiting but I really wanted to make sure Oozaru got his time to shine even though I forgot to give the big monkey a kill! Syia and Tyzien were marked as just generally killing a Regi on the big KO attribution image and I ended up leaning towards Syia getting it, but Oozaru Tyzien got to hold his own and have some big battles before he played a pivotal part in Chunor going on her power trip. Another strong image my mind had was Tyzien and Chunor falling down the waterfall, and I almost let Chunor keep her tentacles that were torn off gone from that before realizing in her spell list it wasn't too much for her to bring them back so I had to ask why wouldn't she? Still, while at first I was surprised Tyzien returned, him going monkey mode for his focus moments and Syia fiting her own way kind of made it like Vent where it really felt like I was writing different things entirely for a character. I did waver on how much clothes he should have as Oozaru, Gooper can tell you as much since it was in the image description I asked from him. I thought leaving pants on would ruin some of the impact of the image and as Gooper pointed out, if he's full naked why wouldn't we just use an image of the giant monkey from Dragon Ball instead of making a bespoke one? I let him pick how dressed he was in general but did want the armor on, I just didn't want to make it harder for him! I did worry that how I wrote the fite might contradict different layers of potential clothing but as I proofread live it didn't seem an issue even if I had given him more or less. I know Tyzien and Syia had team attacks, and they did do a few before splitting, but I wasn't sure how many they would have for monkey mode!

BLUEJAY And let's dive right away into that box she brought! I was thinking for a bit what it could contain based on the people she ran into before the fite with Peko would ask her to whip it out, but I realized quickly that not many people had extensive tool sets or hidden weapons in the people she had gone up against. She had been near Joy though, and for a bit I considered her pilfering one of Joy's guns, but to have Joy down a weapon would impact my plans for her, impede both Cornwind characters since it wouldn't be enough for Bluejay to win the fite, and raise some questions. Instead, it became a joke steal, the cookies from Amaretti being what she grabbed since it was something that wouldn't necessarily pluck a good tool in the first place! I did briefly consider not having Bluejay take a bite of the cookies, so that bingo space almost wasn't filled in! I do feel a little bad doing it similar to how I feel Kouta's stuff might have leaned a little too much into humiliation, but it was a brief moment of humor rather than trying to say something about the character or truly embarrass them. Bluejay's melty blood was a captivating idea after reading it and I knew I wanted to have it do the evaporating thing to basically freeze someone, but who it could work on was rough until I realized we had Isabela around! I did ponder if her being fire type might invalidate that, but also, you can freeze fire types in Pokemon and they don't fully resist ice attacks or anything so having her heat drained felt fair game. Bluejay directly attacking Purugly as a result of this might have bugged Cornwind a bit :V I did definitely have my moments of feeling odd about how much Bluejay's blood splashed around as a deliberate tactic, a bit messier than many Brawlers, but I almost sort of distanced us from thinking about it as blood. Peko wouldn't want to drink it because of its dangers for example, and not dwelling too much on how it comes out of Bluejay. I did like that her weapon had a "floppy" mode though! Made it more versatile! Did wonder if I should ever call it Wronghat but that feels like a character mistake, not something the narration would share.

JOY Joy coming in for round three had me skeptical a bit in the same way I was skeptical about what I could get out of Tyzien until I keened on having a big focus on what Joy hasn't done before. That being mostly having Ravenous get a big push as Joy's weapon of choice. I did briefly think about her whipping out her Tapestry mode near the end, I did say I was using big powers a lot more, but I think it would have slowed a fite that needed to reach its climax so instead we got the angle of being deliberately kept from it. She's got to use it before in the Brawl too so it wasn't like I was denying her something we haven't seen before. Her having the water weakness added was actually something I maybe could have done more with, but even before I considered that I knew she'd be part of the fite in the cave as people got out of the rain. So, while it made sense for her to not want to short circuit out there, it was going to be time to check in on her anyway so the cave drawing people together to escape it just clicked in more ways than one! Cornwind did note that she probably wouldn't have kicked off the fite in there and mostly I just think it was a case of people deciding it was time to fite and Joy getting off the first shot, you can't always introduce every fite with a dialogue or big set up, especially since Joy wasn't the focus of that moment! She did get focus in another though as yet another thing I thought wouldn't be relevant totally was in the form of her Arcanine transformation! I almost had Gooper add Arcanine to the crab rave picture, but ultimately the surprise was more fun! It was an unexpected but perfect counter to the crabs who I often wondered if they might have too big an advantage against certain entrants who needed to get in close. I kind of wish she could have stayed in the form longer so we could see her do more than own crabs in it, but Fat of the Land's effect would fade as they retreat.

NINJETTE While I did allude to her drunkenness in the Pre-Fite I didn't want to lean it on hard during the Brawl, although we did a few little stumbly things that were part injury, part that. I wanted to do the whole ninja thing in being sneaky and that's why her and Cloak were perfect for facing each other since they both relied on it. Trying to think up what Bernard would give her without being too cheaty was a bit easier than I though but also I wonder if people expected more? Girl doesn't have much clothes so she can't carry much in secret, and she already has kunai and all that! Really though, it just gave me little tricks in a moment where I wanted something beyond regular ninja tools, but she still felt pretty flexible despite her toolkit being described as typical ninja things. Her katana had an unexpected life beyond her even though I defintiely enjoyed writing the more flexible sickle and chain more since it gives range, a flexible change, and so on. I also made sure to squeeze in a moment where she did her perch thing since it felt kind of interesting. I think having her around helped a lot with shifting around the Brawler's Guild versus Kobold match, to the point Ninjette was originally slated to be an unofficial guild member or someone who wanted to attach herself to them and miss their chance, and the kobolds would attack the guild specifically after some pre-fite thing of them searching out mammals in a less jokey way. I didn't want them to seem to single-minded in their mammal fiting, so Ninjette got moved with them to a different pre-fite specifically because I felt so much of her Brawl run was defined by her fiting the kobolds it would be odd to attach her elsewhere!

RUBY CHAO

CHIMATA Despite her power trading dealie, I don't think there were a lot of scrapped trade ideas. It was mostly figuring out the midbrawl things (arm, Dragon in a Wagon thing) and then the pre-fite stuff. I did go through Kepler's list and try to pick powers that were unique but also things Chao might still have her use after the Brawl for funsies, and for a similar reason that's why Momopie gave up the "redundant" powers so that the users wouldn't feel compelled to trade back. I did worry about having Chimata trade some of her youth to the dragon and Megan since I wasn't sure about Chimata's youth in general! Being a goddess means you sometimes get to cheat aging. I did emphasize she could probably trade for some of it back since she takes years of people's lives as payment, but naturally that would not be a trade in the Brawl since it's a lot to ask for from characters I don't own but control. I think there were random little ideas not really entertained much, I almost worried I had her propose trades too often and I think I even removed one since I thought she should chill a little on that. I did kind of want to use her outfit zippers more and only got the early one in. Her powers requiring a fair trade actually completely changed how Kepler and her were going to trade because I realized people could read it as her taking advantage of someone in an unusual state of mind, hence the return clause since I really liked having Chimata have Kepler's powers! One of my gravity mistakes was thinking Chimata had anti-gravity powers only to read it again and realize I was wrong, hence the Pre-Fite having Momopie make the same mistake. I don't know why I tease myself in the pre-fite so much! I didn't reference the power cards partly to keep up the flow and partly because I wasn't sure if there were any rules about them I might have missed. I'm still surprised that Chimata doesn't have water as part of her spray but I do like the arrangement, I think I had to change her attacking Calculator at one point because I remembered she didn't actually have water though.

PEKO I wish she could have gone further, she's really come into her own since vampirification and her new outfit is swank. I almost had the wine glass around for the joke of throwing it down but it would have been a little odd to have the dramatic gesture only for her to wait to do something notable or wait that long to throw it down. Her whole thing in fiting the Kobolds was a "let's check in on her moment" but Armor had some good counters so I felt it was a pretty good case of showing basically why someone might flee a fite that's not working out. I considered having her drink blood, but Bluejay was a planned target and I never considered her going for Bluejay's blood since she's too smart for that. I wasn't sure where else she'd go for a slurp and again, I felt she was too smart to go in with the tank empty. I think maybe if she got roughed up really bad in a fite it could have happened but she held it together. I was iffy on how much grove power to use, not from a lack of knowing how it works but I wanted to show some creativity without her being too proficient. Things like slippery moss I was proud of in particular so it's not your normal tangle vine, but I did worry like, a shrub might be too big if I wanted to use that. I think I deleted a scene talking about a branch-filled shrub as a barrier appearing mid-fite. I also remmeber a few moments of me thinking she had a normal blade before immediately remembering she had the high-frequency blade so it could carve through things with ease, meaning I shifted her fiting style a bit to accomodate that.

KANADE, another member of our "use the big power quick!" crew. Technically, Chao did say I could have her go Godzilla sized, but that felt like an ace for a hole that would only appear in certain scenarios. In fact, the reason she fought Chunor was because it was basically two girls with kaiju powers in small forms, Kanade proving her better handle on them... right before she rampages too! I acutally worried she might be a little too rampagey, hence why when fiting Minim she was able to cool her jets a bit and fite with a bit more clarity near the end. Basically I just thought if she can rampage uncontested she will stay in the mindset, but having a counter there didn't let her feed the aggression and her real self was able to push through and take the reins. I did worry I didn't use the whip enough, I think I almost threw in a random use of it during proofreading for that reason, but it did end up doing little things here or there. In fact, the ability to use that near the end of her run was a sign she was regaining some control, messing up Minim's eye in the process! I almost felt odd throwing in the spear on top of it, it was like she had a bunch of little tools to draw from and I was always asking myself which to use and if was being used enough! I definitely got mileage out of that tail on the suit though, and one part even had her due the atomic breath to "fly" a little in a riff on the goofy thing but in a serious way since it was more "she was in the air and it was so powerful it propelled her back." I also tried to make sure to give the breath a wide berth and not have it blocked easily to emphasize the power of it. If it hit, it left a mark, even if it might have just seared you like how Minim was half burnt by it by almost dodging it. I can tell you she would have been written a lot closer to how she was near the sawmill if she had entered the previous year's Brawl instead of this one, a lot more athelticism in the mix I wager. Still, kaijugear was definitely fun to go nuts with, although I didn't have it bite because I thought it would be kind of odd to imagine that happening based on its design with her face in the jaws!

RAIKO did a lot better than I expected and her placement still doesn't feel like it was as high as I thought. I think it's because so much of her Brawl became defined by the people she was up against, having that rivalry built up with Eggette's group and not straying from that too much even as she weaves in other people like Joy or Dragon with a Wagon. I actually wasn't sure how Eggette would be able to get the upperhand on her at first before I realized some of the mech options had sealed cockpits. Having both sound blasts and electricity proved to be pretty helpful as it let her hit people with something that wasn't always going to electrocute them and get around things like Nekomaru not reasonably being weak to electricity. I did consider how much I wanted to break up the drum kit or if someone stealing parts of it could work but I didn't want to neuter her options when a lot of the fun of writing her was having the lightning and flight to keep her mobile while playing. Figuring out how rhyhtm impacts a fite is another thing to consider. Conceivably, an attack in rhythm would also be blocked or dodged in rhythm, right? We saw people like Joy succeed more by working with the rhythm but even Raiko's opponents sometimes slipped into utilizing it well. I honestly probably wouldn't have made Eggette vs. Raiko a lasting rivalry if not for two things: one, I pegged Eggette to kill Raiko and just kept having them meet before then, and two, Raiko and Damien working together was practically required but his early death meant it would be good for working in the Gun destruction and all there and, well, Eggette felt like the kind of person who wouldn't let things go easy. Raiko being more fed up with it than intrigued was playing into Raiko's whole laissez-faire style we've seen where she just up and leaves without much guilt if its not jiving, although the scene where she realizes she's outclassed in seeing the big guys fiting up above really was just "yeah we're not going up there". It also helped move that group so they could encounter some extra fiters for a complication!

KIRYU WITH MAJIMA, the only notes I have on my sticky notes are what weapons Majima brought to the table. Everything else was just my understanding of the two from playing Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza 0 right down to trying to show Majima's depth while still being memey. His talk with Zozo helped to show he's got a little more in his mind but I also didn't want to completely do character writing for Chao if he doesn't want to play him close to the games or whatever. Kiryu, I think he's had a bit of an issue being super stoic in RP so far and could afford ot maybe have a tagalong who draws more out of him, Liz being perfect for that in the Brawl because he fit her hunky guy mold and Kiryu feels compelled to help people all the time in his games. Helping her collect herbs felt like the kind of small thing that got more complicated he usually runs into, but I did wonder how to have Majima witnessing it in pre-fite. I decided for a Tree Spy reference and an allusion to his wackier Majima Everywhere tricks in doing so. Almost all of their attacks were me just remembering things they do in Yakuza 0 mostly, down to me telling myself not to always write in Kiryu doing things like the little "start of battle" animations from that game! I did definitely imagine the stances activating and you can see small references to him switching mindsets that way, and I definitely wanted to get in some of the brutal strength he's known for. I did worry it could go too far. In game he's doing things like cramming a box of nails in a guy's face or jabbing people through with spears "non-lethally" but while Chao gave me the go-ahead that yes, he kills in RP, I wasn't sure showing the brutality of some of those heat moves from his source games fits still, at least not against people who don't potentially deserve it. Things like how he killed Hydra Ichi reference those moves though, and Majima was much more willing to go wild with his dagger and all. Yakuza 0 shows a guy who has a less insane bent to him while Kiwami has him brutalize an underling for not laughing properly at something, so somewhere that middleground exists for him being willing to stab like a maniac but still have heart. I haven't played beyond those two Yakuza games so I worry maybe there's more to know that I missed out on but hopefully not! Majima was only killed once despite having a revival source on hand to show he's not a pushover, but I really wanted to have Kiryu and Majima have their fite while also wanting to make sure Kiryu died where he needed to... I think I came up with the Saints and Yakuza fiting pretty quickly and even drew the arrows saying the mutual kills that would occur, but the rule funkiness is definitely something I wanted to clarify to avoid confusion on Kiryu being back. I didn't give a clear declaration on one winning, I feel like that could have almost been an epilogue if they won, but here they got a really good fite and the poison meant it wouldn't drag too long or necessarily be definitive anyway. Drawing the pic of them hitting each other was hard and I used a lot of references of people fiting in real life with kick to the back of the head and stuff but I still don't think it came out perfectly. I did want that "one last hit, who won?" factor though. Last thing in this long entry: I worried about using the word Yakuza not only because it didn't seem confirmed they were Yakuza in RP much (although just like in the games, some people look Yakuza so assuming is another thing...) but also, using Yakuza as a term for a person still sounds strange to me. I felt odd calling them goons or thugs since that seems a bit different in tone too!

GOOPER BLOOPER

MOMOPIE AND MISSY It kind of ended up being that early Brawl was more of the Momopie show while Missy took over and started doing bigger things in the late game, but I did manage to kill one far apart from the other! Good job me for breaking up a team! I think I generally had a lot of fun with Momopie's bigger bag of tricks. I did wonder a little how much Missy could think outside the box with her Wisp Magic since there were specific spell names for seemingly normal actions (flamethrower comes to mind) but I also just sort of used a lot of them for moving around independently or intercepting attacks too so it wasn't like I felt limited, more just wondering if there was a bigger bag to draw from than I pulled from. Missy's clothes made her odd to draw, that robe is worn in a strange manner if you look closely! Momopie, conversely, almost feels too easy to draw, like you're not doing enough when you draw her to make her distinctly something besides chibi witch. I think the image of her poking out of a wall really stuck with me enough to have that be how she kills Cirnoil. Momopie's use of the gravity powers was definitely where I most felt that urge to go anti-gravity, to the point I had to correct my moments where I accidentally did do it. Like, there was going to be some cool stuff with rain drops floating around in the air! Missy was definitely better for consistent aggression with her magic though, Momopie's felt like everyone was an important cast compared to Missy's greater freedom. I didn't worry too much about mana allowances actually, I did worry I overdid that with Chimata but it was a situation where I'd eventually think they've overdone it or need to pull it back, hence why Momopie got a freaking sword late game. But also, you know, I did want her to have a random trick to pull out for the joke, and luckily Eggette had picked up but not really used Falchion along the way! Momopie didn't get much use out of Friend partly because I just felt like there is such thing as TOO much hypnosis in a Brawl, but we got a goofy scene out of it. I was mostly proud Clean had a practical use!

EGGETTE Picking which Mech parts to use was definitely a feat! I would have to remember which ones she used because I wasn't smart enough to mark them down, tried not to use one up before it could find its best use, try to still have varied options and ones that fit the situation. For example, fiting Chris I was starting to feel the strain of the earlier parts being lost, and I even wondered how much she'd reasonably have the pieces pulled in from Nekomaru and Gun. Getting immediate use out of the trombone as a Raiko counter makes me a little proud just like using Clean effectively, although I realized later it was kind of a perfect fit for simple hitting. Hammer requires closer range for example and many of her forms don't have broad uses. Dropping the spiked bombs is a good move but the only thing that attachment does! I think it did turn Eggette into a more creative fiter, although I feel like the destruction of her Eggettemobile did signal her end a little too strongly. It wasn't planned there, I did like time stopping an explosion not to die to it though so I went with it after the idea came to me. Then, the idea of Eggette trying to push Chimata into the time stopped explosion kinda saved it! Like, Eggette still dies, but she doesn't look dumb doing it! The explosion was definitely me going "well, she's kind of out of a lot of options by now". I did hope the fact she had repaired the craft earlier would make people think she could maybe do it again or reuse those parts with something else, but I feel I was overthinking what was going to quickly become Eggette's end. I do think Gooper gave me a good spread of options, it's more like rushing to eat a bunch of candy and realizing you had to make the last few pieces last. I think I even had some written off just to show she had been doing things between check-ins... Like many others though, some like the drills proved to be more impactful than ones like the wrecking ball I might have otherwise thought to be more important! I like the room to get creative but sometimes I don't think I'll come up with anything for it!

LUCINA WITH KAKUNA First, I worried we wouldn't see her other side at all with the way I planned things, but I realized Kakuna's death could lead us there and ensure she snuck that bit of her character in. Other options for triggering it like drunkenness seemed too far out of left field but I think stress worked well enough. Her falchion got a bit of use after her mainly because it was a nice simple sword that could give someone good options. Just like Gooper I definitely thought about her Smash portrayal most when picking how she'd fite or do things, but the lack of pigs in the Brawl meant no rivalries there! Despite having direct ability styles and names though, I think Soleil felt more flexible just in that Soleil had a shield BUT ALSO felt like her thing would have to be defying her normalcy more. Lucina seems accomplished enough, especially with moves like shieldbreaker that are a bit abnormal. Critical Hit almost didn't appear at all and ended up being a whiff because I wanted to reference it so it wasn't like I forgot it but also didn't want it to be how she killed Lily so it was left without a clear spot! Breaking Lily's guard was more interesting than a critical hit usage I feel. Kakuna is a fun concept, I actually have "Stew isolates Kakuna" as my hint for how to KO him but I think I like what we got more and it was more useful. I definitely could feel the limits on what Kakuna could do but also liked breaking through them, I do feel I could have utilized it more though. I couldn't really have my Lucina's alternate mode cake and Kakuna still around too though. I didn't want to always go for electroweb and string shot wrecking ball strats despite both being fun so maybe that's why it felt a little like I was boxed in some more than expected, but I did try to keep him active and varied and hope I did a good job!

KRACKO WITH BUGZZY I do wonder if Bugzzy was underutilized too. Kracko and Bugzzy fite in different spheres, one a flying cloud and the other a beetle who likes to be on the ground. I gave Bugzzy a big moment against Varan at least and it was said he held his own against Brineladies which is always a feat, but I think maybe a few more direct referencesto supplexes and all were in order! Carnage Beetle fiting him actually gave him moments to flex despite my worries about it at least. Also, Bugzzy, please spell your name normally, the double Z thing is strange! And yet, it being strange meant I didn't typo it while the simple Kracko was my most typoed word in the Brawl inexplicably. Kracko being a bit of a meme lord in the pre-fite was a reference to his past but otherwise he was very much the Kirby cloud boss in a lot of how he fought. I tried to keep him amiable and flexible and not without that personality, but he was whipping out all his cool tricks. I actually tried to find Kracko tornado online but couldn't so I'm not sure quite how that manifests despite it being a key part of Marisa's fite and worried I'd screw it up. I feel like I had to squeeze in the Neon Lightning Storm before its moment would pass though, and I kinda wish I could have done Venom Kracko but he ended up hanging around big guys with little poison potential mostly. I did have fun looking into enemies for Kracko to call on beyond just the suggested ones. Earlier I mentioned the issue wtih Clara and Kracko have the KO share and I still feel a little bad that Kracko didn't get a direct kill shot despite being such a fun entrant. I used so much of his kit, including Kracko Jr. in a way that didn't feel artificial because I can very much see some uses coming off as something like me wanting to use it but not having a good reason for doing so. Figuring out how to kill Kracko without some eye gore lead to me picking the comet move that would break up the body mostly rather than focusing hard on the fact the eye was being hit.

REGI TRIO These guys! I did think at first I'd leave Regirock as the last one standing since he loves the idea of Brawling the most, but I'm very happy that Registeel went the distance because I feel his more measured but still rather silly self made him a great fit for later things. I was so happy with the CATCHPHRASE CATCHPHRASE CATCHPHRASE joke even though I knew he was pushing on Pre-Brawl I had to go through with it. The whole gonk gonk gonk thing and all is clearly Regirock and Regice either doesn't need one or settles for the weird anime voice but Registeel only really had the group's boops in my head, hence the joke! He made a good fit for befriending Saturn on the fly although that wasn't always in the cards and more emerged from circumstance. The whole thing with the wrestling ring was so perfect and only possible by them coming together like that, and I liked the chance to reference the wrestling career! You never know which tidbit might inspire something in an entry. Once Registeel was picked to go the furthest of the three though, I knew I wanted to sacrifice one to Syia and having Regirock bottom out felt rude. I did edit the scene after it was all written though... so that Syia would pull out Regice's cool back spikes and jab them into the golem because I came up with the idea late but didn't want to miss my chance to use it! But, Regice got removed early, and I think the Regis being so strong actually helped me justify separating them compared to other teams. Having Regice's special attacks removed wasn't too hard to adjust to either since Registeel could utilize some, and the whole Curse strat ensured that things he did next against Princess Jack and all felt more reasonable and he could be the strong one to survive the Brawl. I mentioned earlier he was going to blast Princess in retaliation for his brother's death and I left that in somewhat with the attack ripping off her arm, but Regirock getting a double KO felt better than the long fall scene ending in Regirock just dying. The earthquake breaking off some of the cliffside helped a bit with dividing things after I realized not everyone was where I wanted them after some early stuff too so good on these boys for having those powers! Sadly, Amulet Coin didn't really crop up, it was kinda waiting for a joke that neve came. Funnily enough, Mayumi being picked to kill Registeel was originally because she would like to fite such famous old golems but became more about showing her army's power and ingenuity since having to break through steel would be so hard for them. I did worry that maybe Registeel felt like he took it lying down a little too much but boy was beat up by then! Registeel also worked really well for the trap joke, although it felt odd to have him not be able to take the fire trap since if it wasn't a Steel Pokemon but a steel robot guy I'd have him no-sell fire.

HOODED PITOHUI

MAYUMI One of the first things I thought of when she entered is how Minecraft puts clay near its water sources so the river was going to be a good source for clay. I'm glad I thought of it too, because although the clay ball was a reasonable limitation and bringing enough to make an army or giant body would probably be a step too far, I did like having those options, so a clay source was great! I realize clay by a riverbed would be wet though, but I actually downplayed Mayumi's water weakness. It helped that she was in the sawmill for the typhoon, but mostly I felt it a little odd to have someone solid enough to chip to turn goopy when wet. Cooked made more sense, hence her death method, but I assumed most people would make the small logic jump in thinking that any wet clay she gathered was dried or used appropriately to overcome its small weakness. While Pitohui saw the big army as a sign of Mayumi's impending death, I actually didn't read it that way as the writer! I wanted the top ten fiters all close together since usually they'll be pretty far spread out, and last we left Mayumi she was rebuilding. It also wouldn't make sense for her to break away and do any more building, so the big army only could be whipped out at that point. In fact, one reason I didn't see it as her ace in the hole is she had a different one I didn't use! The entry mentions she can make herself huge but wouldn't be sturdy, and while the kaiju fite now shows that she can make that work, I took that very seriously as a limiter. I considered Mayumi building herself up into something huge but monstrous, closer to No Face from Spirited Away's monster form in how it moves a big gooey body along with its many arms. She'd basically become a monster physically but still be the history nerd underneath it and tactical at that, but I ended up leaning a lot more into her commander role. We've had army entrants before but Mayumi I felt worked more specifically since she had a few talking allies in the Dwarfelles and Edward. I keened on Edward potentially carrying the clay ball before I decided on them being in the sawmill for a while since moving it around otherwise could be awkward, I do wish he had dropped it on someone though. Leaning into having a big army gave her a unique flavor in this Brawl though and I liked doing actual tactics like the phalanx. Funnily enough, despite almost planning to make her a huge monster, I did worry that giving her a scythe arm might be too against the expected use of her even though the entry literally said I could do things like that :V I'm very glad for the river clay though, because without it the army feels like it was undersupplied. Reasonably so within the rules, but even up until she realizes the river clay exists I felt like I was really having to manage how she built the troops she had.

RAVIO was not only my top vote, but my "pick" for winning the Brawl! As in, I wanted him to win, to the point I thought of an epilogue where his story would suddenly be super busy from all the attention but then people important to him would show up and he would be filling out their order before realizing it wasn't actually one but Saturn and the gang here to congratulate him and then the nervous shopkeeper would be attacked by love! I also planned a different one with mushier Saturn stuff well before Brawl time was around, before their confession even! I even considered... MARRIAGE PROPOSAL? Not very seriously but, I really was rooting for the guy! He got 45th :V I had to mentally break myself away from constantly thinking he had that big hammer around. Climate Baton has become a big part of the rental shop I've noticed and its flexibility certainly feels like a factor, but in the Brawl I didn't want it to go to the options I admittedly proposed to make it more accessible. Ravio didn't do thunderclouds and the like so much as fun things like heating things up or weird applications. I did realize that we were getting further in and he hadn't used his weapon judging accumen at all, so when it was time for him to bite it, I concocted the scene where he would lose his weapon, find Ninjette's instead, hand it off to Marisa... and it just so happened to be such a right pick it helped her go the distance! He didn't do much weapon scavenging himself mainly because I feel being around an alliance makes that harder unless there's a break in the action or an "I take up your sword" moment. Boiling the ink wasn't part of the original plan for Stew's death though, it would just have been cooking him like a chicken, but I felt this version absolved Ravio of doing something super painful on purpose and, moreover, we got to hear in the pre-fite show how he intended to use the Climate Baton so it didn't seem so weird he was going for heat and stuff as often as he did!

LIZ was fun, dontcha know! I do waver on how often to throw in vocal tics like that, Dakota talked that way and it was so underutilized I think people forget she had the accent. I had a bit more fun with Liz doing it mostly because a lot of her talking was done for humor's sake, like her alliance with Kiryu was built a lot on it even though they proved a good fit for each other. I definitely love CKR's drawing of Liz's death because of how silly and simple the punt looks, like she's so small that it would kill her even though it doesn't look extreme. Keeping the sap counter up was another area where I could have just taken notes or something to keep it safe but no, I had to do it mentally and often considered and reconsidered things like whether a sap would have the purple sap added or if she should use red or yellow now since those are workhorse colors and we need them for later! Getting to use them all was fun even if I did worry I didn't emphasize her regular botany tricks more. I did worry too if they had a material cost but they kinda went on Zeldoten rules where she knows to have enough to use them and she'd only really run out if the situation reached that point. Like, she wouldn't come with so little she couldn't pull the tricks but if she kept using them without visiting the jungle or whatever then it would be a lot more limited. I still ship Liz X Kiryu forever. SORRY BREE, MAJIMA'S A MEME BUT LIZ IS TOPS!

ISABELA WITH YUKA Isabela hit 57th place, and that's another where I was like, she should have done so much better but also a lot of people should do well so what do you do about it? That entry art was some of the coolest ever though and the whole build-up of Yuka pondering it over the years meant this entry finally happening felt so important is why this one definitely stings a lot. I definitely would have voted for her if I wasn't limiting myself to one entry per user. But, I definitely tried to get a lot out of Isabela still, doing animalistic stuff but also focusing on her ego and intelligence. I think Yuka dying so early was a shame but felt like it had to happen. She did do a big thing in breaking the illusions so it's not like she turned up just to die and I feel Purugly and Isabela were closer because they both lost their trainers. They were slated to actually fite in early plans instead to prove their superior strength, maybe if Yin-Yarn placed higher than things would have turned out that way. Post-Brawl stuff tells me at least that what we got was probably the best for the relationship between the two trainer teams. Salazzle, a Pokemon I appreciate a lot more thanks to Pitohui, doesn't learn as many moves as I feel it should, I think later Pokemon games keep trimming back movesets so you might think surely Salazzle has Slash but it doesn't. Fire Spin was the one I wanted to use but couldn't due to that weird moveset thing of having some fire staples but not others. Also, I realize Isabela lost her tail but the art shows it there, that's just how art goes! I realized after drawing it I did that mistake, drawing her dying to blood drying on her back and freezing her was already a weird ask already and I tried a top down perspective that maybe didn't work out to complicate it further!

TRESSA Okay, so maybe Pitohui's cast was "the cast of guys who should have done better" because I feel that about Tressa too. I felt so bad seeing the results and knowing her reinvention would not avail her much. I did feel a little weird after I realized her loose alliance of the year she entered failed her and now she was in another alliance, but being proactive in making it and essentially leading it I felt was a big shift and she fought confidently the whole Brawl. I did keep my mitts off doing anything too dramatic that would be a death flag like a lot of Nightmare Chimera uses, but I still wanted to get uses out of the different weapon types that got added to her kit, including the staff one that I joked about since it seemed so tame compared to having a conjured axe and other heavyhitters. I did want to make sure some Merchant magic got in there but wanted to emphasize she wasn't just a merchant in armor by leaning more on the weapons than those tricks. The reference picture having a sword instead of a spear definitely threw me off some but hey, at least she could conjure weapons no matter what she actually held so I could always whip one out to make my vision come true! Tressa's first run I definitely emphasized her inexperience compared to this one where she was always in control and strategic save for the natural flow of being attacked putting a person on the backfoot. She even had a final moment to boost up Jenny as she realized her fate! I didn't expect her back for a Brawl, but I think her especially contributed to the Brawler's Guild existence even if Lucina and Soleil's history with a guild gave it a name. We needed someone who would rope in more people than just those two!

CUSTARDKITTENSROCK

THE CALCULATOR I like CKR's random comic book villains, but I think the more that she enters, the more expectations are foisted upon me. Like, I don't mind that, they're always a little challenge on how I can take the goofy kind of characters I like and make them into threats, but I think back to Polka Dot Man and Lord Death Man and wonder how the next guy will stack up. Even Hellcow, the one without a big footprint in terms of who they are, made people into vampires that are now defined by that trait. The Calculator's shtick was easy to think up though, a man so wrapped up in numbers that he'd think he has everything figured out and in many ways did. I didn't want him to be invincible for it or predict things like exactly what people would say, and a lot of stuff was put into the Brawl to show the flaws in his line of thinking. I didn't know what to do with being told he has OCD and a connection to the internet at first, but we see some of that when his device starts failing due to Nikki and not only does he start having a little freak out, but he uses the internet to solve that problem! I think Polka Dot Man's high placement and Lord Death Man's absurd gimmick make them the memorable ones, I just don't want to disappoint or try too hard to hit those marks again. Calculator ended up riding high to the top though so I did start whipping out a lot more of that energy projector on his head that I wavered on how to use at first. A CKR entry can sometimes be a little too sparse or not give the important details on what she expects!

DRAGON IN A WAGON WITH MEGAN CKR definitely was proudest of this entry even if votes ended up going towards Bullet mostly for her cast. She says we owned the book they're based on when she was a kid but I never remember seeing it around, so it might have possibly been a personal book instead of a family one? Regardless, reading up the book online definitely helped me write the Pre-Fite Show better as I tried to figure out why they would be clinging to this past or how their original book even worked! I liked the idea of the Dragon feeling he needed the wagon even though I then learned the original book had them popping into various transportation options, but it's very appropriate for people to only remember the "iconic" part of something, like how everyone forgets Joey's top percent Rattata evolves. I'm bet CKR's initial intention with some of those injuries on the Dragon and Megan were actually darker than she said or we want to believe, I think it was a lot of adding things that make you look gritty to the picture without thinking of the implications. I've definitely made a joke or two and then realized after it could seem very dark when I was just being SLIGHTLY dark! But naturally, with the reins in my hands and after asking her about them we got it where life was rough instead, and early on I did feel sort of bad for them, hence the unusual KO method that only Chimata could pull off. I wasn't exactly sure how to handle the Disqualification after, originally Chimata only bargained for the health in exchange for youth and then the pair would want to leave after because they didn't want to Brawl if they had their life ahead of them. I really wavered on the exact actions it would take for the technical removal, and I know people have been hoping for an unusual removal from the Brawl like this for a few years so I wanted to pull out some quirky stuff for this Brawl, but considering the little confusion around it I probably won't do something like that again. Keeping the Dragon silent I think made it more fearsome and maybe more expressive even? Not being able to talk let Megan do more and have a more important role, I felt like she wouldn't get too much play even being tough and buff since the Dragon is that and more. But, she did some stuff on top of talking, and we get a happy ending for the pair unless CKR decides to bring them back or something!

BULLET WITH GUN CKR wasn't expecting Bullet to do so well, he was even her last pick for the five entrants she got. Concocting a story behind the pair was a big focus, although Bree's desire for Gun to have more of a personality to it influenced the exact shape of it. I always like the idea of gaps in something's programming or AI and it not knowing how to handle a dog felt like something that kept the robotic drone aspect but let slip in something more personal and emotional reasonably. I did at first thinking of some explicit references to who Bullet's owners are or the villain group that Gun came from, I even considered looking into which Netrunner baddy we've fought before might fit, but I left it open-ended in case someone else wants to tinker with that Post-Brawl instead. I was going to have the rest of the Wild Guns Reloaded cast be the owners who died but why not leave things even more open if we only need the broad details? It's kind of funny that Bullet's defining fiting tool was taking out so early though, but Bullet stayed active and fiting for a long time after! Picking who to kill Bullet was kind of similar to how killing Purugly went down. Animals killing animals, that's just nature! So, Fat of the Land was picked for the task, although I kind of wondered if maybe Bullet should have become a crab instead of dying. There's also the morbid idea that a corpse could become a crab, but I say that didn't happen! Instead, the crabs kill Bullet before any shift can occur, although I wavered on how to handle that since I had to balance both the time Bullet took to put down so he wouldn't be crabbed without it being cruel or mean. I actually liked writing a smart dog here, he knew how to fite compared to some other Brawl dogs! I did still give him a sword for a bit since he felt outclassed powerwise when alone.

YIN-YARN Fond memories of Epic Yarn couldn't get this guy far, but if he had gone far, I had a lot more ideas for him! In Kirby's Epic Yarn he knits together former bosses and he might have done that here too, but going out second to last means whipping out anything too crazy just feels almost artificial? He did do his big tank form which I felt more appropriate since it represents him, but I definitely liked the idea of a guy who could knit himself into all sorts of shapes up until I saw he wouldn't be around long to do it. Completely unrelated to the Brawl, when I look at Yin-Yarn, I do not see that button as a big cycloptic eye despite that being what it is. The mustache is affixed to it so I see it as a nose, and the purple things beside it read as weird yarn eyes to me. I did wonder about using the Magic Sock from Epic Yarn, it got a little play but I expected it to do a lot more than let someone move from one place to another and was disappointed when even the Kirby wiki seems to be a little confused if it can do more than that. I'm not sure how intricate Yin-Yarn would have gotten if he was around longer, but I tried to have fun with him while I had him.

DON CLAWLEONE Our last place fiter. I'm kind of glad I played Rocket Slime after the Brawl instead of before though. While I had played it once before many years ago, Don Clawleone actually stays out of the picture until close to the end, and I might have wrote him too close to the game incarnation to his detriment. I did get a wiki refresher on him and wanted to play to CKR's description of him wanting dames, although how skeevy he was about Chimata wavered in the Pre-Fite Show because I didn't want to make him a full creep. The one move Platypunks can do in Rocket Slime that I would have carried over if I had played it first were their tail swipes, and if Clawleone had done well, maybe I would have gotten things involved like Plob goons or his weird transformations. The scene in the pre-fite show was always planned though to throw some of our villainous types together though, many of them did poorly though so I was afraid to play them up too much as a group or huge threats. Clawleone actually doesn't do the water spray he does in the Brawl in his source game, that's a general Dragon Quest thing.

JUMPROPEMAN

LADY ZOZO Can't say I expected her to be my top performer! Lady Zozo's battle powers still feel like they could be expanded, but I think that's because I mostly write her as the kind of fiter who stands off to the side zapping people. I did watch more of Code of Princess to remind me of some moves she had in that but I think I might have to more on made up powers for her. She already breaks from her game version in plenty of ways so why not? Marlow Briggs was an excellent tool to have for helping me remove Clyde and Jesse from play. I wasn't sure how to kill them off for a long time because they'd need to break down a lot without having Zozo get pissed because she does think of them like kids. Marlow was able to kill them to the point they couldn't fite anymore and then die to reverse their bodies to a state where Zozo wouldn't be too angry about their loss since they're easy to bring back that way. Zozo being a sort of support fiter did make it feel like maybe she wasn't impacting the fites her team was in too much, although part of that is because lightning, fireballs, and lasers are hard to use when your allies like to be up and close and personal with the opposition. Clyde was there to be the bruiser and I think one reason I lean on Clyde and Jesse as Zozo's battle buddy most is because he is the one who can get in there while she always fites at a distance. Like, Belle didn't notice her most of that battle in RP :V But, I did wonder if having Chuck D. Head in there might have been a people pleaser, I bet more people have outside opinions on him since I think I'm the only person who has played Grabbed by the Ghoulies here while Decap Attack seems like it has a better chance of being known. However, the fact I have to look up the Decap Attack manual every time I want to use a potion with him means he's much more work than Big Guy Hits Hard! Jesse is there to give Clyde more options anyway, and I really wanted to emphasize she doesn't have weird fake powers despite being part of a magical two-headed zombie. Zozo's augmentations to her larynx and all produce the kind of real sound damage you could get in real life, high pitches, volume stuff. I do feel bad that it seems like Jesse is rarely awake, but she is awake more when it's not fiting time! The Grey Children have real names too, it's just the kind of thing that doesn't come up for reasons. It does mean Jesse could be dangerous to allies so she might not have done it as much as she would have if Zozo had gone in with just them to help her. That revival angle was too good to pass up, but I also didn't want revival to become such a huge tactic it's always leaned on in the future, hence the rule explanation! I might tinker with it more if certain characters enter in the future, but who knows what the situation might be like then!

BILL AND NISEDRIMOGEMON I remember when Bill was fiting Clara he starts to feel bad about it and then I start to grapple with myself on whether putting that in there even works! Why does my character get to have a little remorse? I'm sure if he wasn't though, the whole "chill" part of his character description would have come up though, and it's not like it hugely influenced the battle either so it didn't feel like me giving unfair empathy to one of my entrants. Sheep was right in assuming the fact the moles built some struts while digging was inspired by his votes, but the one time they did it was part of me originally thinking I wanted to use that tunnel some more later only to realize the weather meant that the tunnels would flood so that wasn't really possible! It does make sense they'd need to support a tunnel if the dirt would soon be damp at least. NiseDrimogemon's drill claws did make it feel like he couldn't be too hands-on in some fites since he could easily tear through some people with a good hit, but size also meant it was easy to keep him distracted. I mentioned earlier I wish I showed more teamwork between the two, but I'm happy Bill's helmet pager crystal thing got a bit of use. Actually, I feel like Bill originally had one more Magitech setting for his claws beyond steel, barbed, and explosive but I just can't remember it. I don't think he used it in RP but I feel like I wanted a little more to work with. At the same time I'm not too bugged if individual moles don't have huge attack pools since part of their appeal is having new moles swapped in each time. I did peg NiseDrimogemon as a good pick for the Brawl even before it was suggested to me, but I was worried I had done more work to give other moles personality so people might want them thrown in instead. Dirt Boss might be like, my pet favorite because he's an over the top mole and one of the first picked for the crew, but I though Mrs. Moley's early push might have people demand her over the Digimon. I did consider having some data problem with NiseDrimogemon to reference his composition as a Digimon but the fites lined up for him didn't seem to have a reasonable way to do that. Maybe if he ran into Nikki instead.

SATURN AND DREAMCAST These two have been slated for the Brawl for a while but I worried they might be entering before their connection was well-established or before they truly found their footing. Luckily, early stuff in the year emphasized their friendship, we started to get more focus on both of them, and it truly did feel like the year they were the right pick for the Brawl rather than just me going down the line with Sega Hard Girls! Saturn's steak knife was slated to be added to her Brawl kit for a while back when it seemed like it represented her and Ravio's connection more, but it kind of faded from regular RP as they ran a shop together and just generally had a lot more to their relationship than a free knife! Still, it got some use since otherwise Saturn really was lacking in means for direct aggression and attack. I was pretty happy with the game environments I did pick even though I deliberately leaned towards the sports arenas and self-explanatory ones (Corpse Killer's graveyard, a level made of food) so that I wouldn't spend too long explaining them. All of the game levels did feel like they had a good impact when they cropped up though and that's the main point! The only really weird one was the battle chamber and I considered playing into its weirdness, but it was also not really the focus of the scene it appeared in but a lightning rod to draw fiters together. Perhaps appropriately Dreamcast and Saturn didn't coordinate too well since their fiting styles are different, but since Dreamcast was already on the rise from her low point this felt like a good point to emphasize that she does like to get rough and tumble even though it used to also have a different importance to her when she thought that was the only way to make personal connections with people. I did worry I might have been bigging up her importance to Marisa with pre-fite and all but I think people liked it so who was I to get cold feet on showing them being friendly? Dreamcast's item picks, I probably should have leaned on more familiar ones she used before but I couldn't help but whip out new ones! Finding practical battle uses for Dreamcast peripherals is harder than the other girls but it's part of the fun. I was very tempted to have Saturn pull out a Bomberman level but she had done that in her fite against Ravio last year so I didn't want to repeat myself too much. I did wonder if Saturn might have been a little too unaffected by Ravio's fall but also she even says my justification for why she pushed through it. It wasn't like Ravio was tortured or anything, he just got squished! Funny thing, even though both teammates died one after the other like many others did, they did it across two posts so it didn't feel like it! Maybe I could do that more...

MAYA Speaking of powers that I struggle to make good for a combat setting, Maya's camera! I deliberately don't want it to have easy use damaging options though. She has used things to cut and stuff before with it but I made it come with a huge mana cost so she can't really use it unless she wants to be running on empty. However, trying to make photoshop tools into attacks can be rough, some are such basic ideas that they aren't really fun to throw into combat and others so limited in scope that it's hard to make them fun for a fite! Having Photopea around meant I could reference them more quickly than opening Photoshop and I wouldn't have to lean on a bunch of different photoshop tool links online that aren't even comprehensive. More than ever I felt the lack of lethality in her kit though. She's not even designed to be good in a melee fite so her grabbing a kill would probably have to involve setting up for something like a drop to your doom. In the Brawl she was mostly playing support as well until Miracle seperated her and she didn't have much to pull from. She held her own against the second place fiter though so it's not TOO bad she dropped. Her camera was actually used to patch over some misunderstandings, I think people thought Jackson Howard's mech was huge when the image actually seems to imply its size quite well if you look closely, so she just shrunk it down to a smaller size that both removes that worry and makes sense of being smaller than even normal human size. Actually, Maya and Vondu were originally slated to sort of work together against Jackson Howard for a while but they got separated in the writing and Vondu less of a coniving sort and more caught up in things. Maya's exact angle on Jackson shifted a lot, but Del did bring up him being a CEO would draw him attention even as he tries to reform and Maya is the kind to go after suspicious corporate entities so she was a quick pick to be his killer... although she had to have Eadis actually land the killing blow. I did briefly consider breaking the camera but that might cause RP problems so Miracle saved it instead by eating it, but then I kind of forgot about it so it only got a small reference later as being in the same void Felldrake ends up in when eaten.

CIRNOIL Probably my least confident entry since the others were picked earlier while she was possible to swap out with someone like Kogasa. Still, Cirnoil is her own character, and I like her powers! To the point I even listed a few powers she might pull out if she teamed up with someone who might understand her powers in the same way people have suggested better uses of ice and cold to Cirno before. But, Cirnoil's allies weren't tar experts, go figure! I really think one big reason I went with Cirnoil though was to get Lil' Cirno in there, that unlucky doll having quite a lot of traction! I would just be writing something and suddenly swerve myself by throwing her in the mix. Transition words suddenly became "unfortunately" as I concocted a way for things to go slightly awry, that cursed doll a little bit of spice wherever she was thrown in. Meeting the Fumo Swarm was destined from the get-go, although I don't know why Malizza can summon them so I was short on details so that I didn't step on any toes on how they're connected. However, having Lil' Cirno as like, the instigator for someone to get Fumo'd was fun and having the doll pop up suddenly to throw things off was a fun joke. Cirnoil herself, I wanted to do more gravity fun with the oil before remembering Momopie's new powers didn't do that, and I had my jokes about her intelligence like her resisting the Friend spell ineffectively. She wasn't supposed to be Cirno 2 though, but she didn't really have the room to get super angry or furious like she does in RP from time to time as she struggles with her new life. I do think it funny she placed so low but still got a 9 in there to ruin the betting corner, I didn't expect much of anything from that bet but Cirno had to make it!

DRACO

SOLEIL went really far on gumption despite having just a sword and shield! I actually worried I abused that shield too much on the way there, to the point I was asking myself if it was even intact enough to keep being used properly at some points. Seeing the damage it took in retrospect helped me think it all checks out, it wasn't like it was losing chunks or anything, and even being set on fire kind of helped it for a bit in being more than a blocking tool. Soleil I think really worked well as someone who could easily slip into alliances and partnerships, considering how easily she just sort of rolled into Marisa's friend group after the Brawler's Guild crumbled. She was friendly and called most people cuties, so why wouldn't she be on board for joining another alliance of cute girls? I mentioned in the Lucina part that I almost felt compelled to be really creative with Soleil's limited options to make up for her perceived normalcy. She was getting up to such a high ranking that she had to earn it, and she was always whipping out unconventional uses for her weapons like scraping Edward off or using the shield to crush him. Part of her being normal meant fiting someone like Edward could feel pretty fair without him having to go as hard as he did against someone like Bubba. I did feel a little bad a possessed brawler killed her, and her chasing after Felldrake so much lead to that point, but I bet there's other fites that could be looked at different if you tilt your head when looking at them. I'm very glad she did go so far so there's no sad stuff about her run, she showed she's a great mercenary even if the power levels are wild around her!

MALIZZA AND EADIS I definitely didn't expect to get them since I thought they were tied to Olympia, but I mean, the Brawl isn't saying you have to be local! I almost didn't add them since Draco did the character swap away from the swarm so late, but we got the best of both worlds! I did wait until both girls were down to whip them out though, didn't feel the Swarm Master would take an unnecessary risk. This was the Brawl for cool tricks to come out and there was no way I wasn't going to use them after their entry got the ideas swimming. I was skeptical of it at first but I think I have that knee jerk reaction to stuff that isn't expected going in. We got them and some great Draco girls so everyone wins and we get the memes and the tough chicks! Konahovski eating Minim, if you look at the picture, CKR drew her shroud form even though I told her to draw regular! It's not a big deal, you can't see too much, but I did like that the beetle was mentioned to have a deadly bite so I picked it as the kill method. I had to edit the horn in the picture to remove it, because while I'll leave Isabela's tail in her KO, I guess I didn't want the horn there? Still, I did waver at first on what bugs Malizza would summon, her entry mentions the "insect versions" of the summoned creatures. Does that mean she might summon an insect version of an actual creature like a bug shark? Does that mean summoned spiders are now insects, or would they be off the table entirely? I did look up old stuff of hers in RP and found the spiders being used so I stuck it to recognizable bugs instead and didn't really feel like I was limited. I did still sometimes wonder if centipedes are good to go just because we've seen spiders before. I did try to work in her other spells though so she's not just watching bugs all the time, and I found a few fun ones that weren't direct attacks to match with her description! Eadis I think I briefly had a similar worry that it was all just heating things up before giving the entry a once over and seeing that fire was super fair game. Malizza's small alliance may not have been one of the most flashy but I think they did a lot of good teamwork because of how fire and bugs allowed for a variety of at range options but Eadis could also get in and poke things with her blade. She was practically the main fiter because her fencing was so useful for keeping people at bay!

WRIGGLE WRIGGLE KIIIIIICK! It was a joke addition but a fun thing to work in! It gave Wriggle some close range options while still tiny, and this is going to sound really weird, but as a big giant moth I sometimes felt like her options were limited! I think it was mostly because there was one other Brawler, Varan, who could really keep up with that, and others who might like Tyzien died early on. Being a giant moth fiting other titans would work, but Wriggle and her alliance often ended up against smaller or normal sized foes where whipping out the moth made her a bigger target and a less precise one. She was completely imprecise with that gun though, a fun running joke and I made sure to have her other attacks almost always work as planned to compensate. Not perfectly or anything, I mentioned earlier the thing with Wriggle Kick not killing Ryndur and the danmaku wasn't always winning the day, but I only wanted her inexperience with the gun to crop up as a flaw in her fiting methods. The lack of major Mothra use was mostly me thinking that she wouldn't benefit from it too much in her current situation, and it does take energy so she wouldn't whip it out for small fites where she didn't need the advantage. Using her big bug legs was something I might not have considered otherwise, a huge limb great for pushing around smaller foes. Her becoming the sort of Fumo Swarm main target for a bit was to reference their lack of allegiance since Malizza died so soon after though, this isn't a user fiting themselves if I'm told explicitly it might happen in some form! I do wish I had thought of more uses for commanding bugs, but I didn't think Wriggle would send them to a quick and pointless death either so they only played a small part and danmaku ended up defining her tactics more.

CHRIS AND KIRIKA Kirika is fun on a bun and one reason her Pre-Fite Show act took the form it did was kind of just me showing appreciation for that side of her. I did slip in some synth silliness with how she interacts with Cecilia, and her fixing the sliced zombies just feels a bit more like part of her little enjoyment of life's simple things rather than being as focused and serious as Chris. Chris I didn't want to make an ice cold stoic type either since we've seen her thaw some but as Kirika's counterbalance she was definitely a lot more focused on the fite and tactics. Her having so many guns did make me wonder on the specifics of how they're pulled out and swapped around and stuff but as always, when in doubt, leave a few details out! The unimportant ones, people don't need to hear about the particulars of a weapon swap in a 94,000 word battle to know Chris is pulling out that minigun and going nuts. The main thing was me wondering if Eggette could have stolen on for brief use but I found a different way for them to interact in the air. The overshield was mentioned sometimes but also another thing where it's like "only bring it up once it starts to impact things", that being when it starts to wane and disappear. Kirika's little thing about light actually taught me stuff researching it, so that's nice! I did wonder about making any explicit alliances with the pair and the moles/Marlow, since I did remember later that there was some fiting between Marlow and Kirika when Chen's running around, so instead it's more about them considering the same part of the battlefield in pre-fite. I did have the names down for the symphogear the girls used, but besides I think one reference to Ichaival it didn't feel like I had to whip them out! Also, naturally, Kirika didn't use her handgun at all, that feels like it would have been there for a big emotional beat or something rather than casual use. She seemed a good pick for a fite with Dreamcast with a lot of damage and stuff and she was separated from Chris for the battles that occured so no dramatic gun drawing unfortunately.

KOBOLD SECURITY TEAM Whose segment was definitely here always! But, I had given up hope on ever getting them! They were long gone and only made small cameos really since, but even when they did show up they had a lot more tricks than anticipated! A lot of Draco's entries had me just read Pathfinder spell lists for fun moves and Armor and Goggles definitely had a lot of that. Armor had a pretty wide selection of spells, Goggles technically had more but they were bardic so I felt like they shifted the battle around less. I think Armor ended up lasting the longest simply because of the people I needed to give kills too more reasonably having the option to take the other two down. Goggles due to lack of armor and Cloak because I wanted the closest to a ninja battle we could get. Stealth fite, rather, I did want them to play into their sneakiness. Smiting became the big central point as I wanted to make sure we got one and I did worry their tactics might be a little too mammalcentric but also they didn't really have to look far for finding them. They explain themselves on why, and I tried to give them a little bit of personality when they talked. Working together as a team was a big focus which is why I felt them a good match for going up against another team, and spells like Glue Seal always intrigue me with the potential they have for strange attacks. I did worry I broke off a bit too much of Armor's armor before he was meant to be at the point where he was worn down to very little. To make up for little Kanade whip action though Goggles definitely got his in, and he used a good amount of bard songs! Cloak's magic missiles were useful too so he wasn't just limited to a dagger and sneakiness, I think they were surprisingly well rounded and did feel pretty Elite, although I did waver on how to refer to them at parts since the name might be too long sometimes but Kobolds only feels a little reductive! I think you can say anyone who doesn't win maybe didn't meet their full potential, but I was very happy with what they could do and did do and they even placed well enough that I could get some mileage out of them!

IVELCHILD

RYNDUR MOUSEBEARD Ivel's new OC rode high! The archer was a pretty good pick for just throwing him into a skirmish and pestering people with his bow, and since he didn't have any close ranged options it made sense for him to stick with it. He got perhaps the most use out of the jungle setting by hiding amidst or in trees, so this was a guy who really validated the arena choice. I did wonder how much of his bow shifting forms was tied to him and how much was inherent in the weapon, I hope Mayumi's use of it briefly didn't break any of its rules! Similar to how I thought Chimata had water though there was a point where I thought Ryndur had electricity arrows and I had to adjust some ideas when I realized he didn't. The options he did have were a good spread, the arrow rain was specifically useful for wearing down Fat of the Land's big numbers. I think the bee shot is the one I wanted to get more use out of but couldn't. The exact make of his armor became pretty important when he started taking damage, I tried to consider how tough it was since he had very little exposed skin to damage and I didn't want him to be too feeble or too tough. His Pre-Fite appearance was mostly to talk about the arena rather than him, but considering his deep run and frequent intersections with other fites I don't think he needed it, and he was a good pick for a character who would disengage since his fiting style required distance! I did wonder how free to act the fire bat shot was though, it has to be a bit since he has regular fire arrows.

PUDDLENAUT Puddlenaut is a unique champion, he had a few humble placements in previous Brawls before his big win. Silence had brawled before her win too but Puddlenaut seemed a lot more chill and less like a guy who would clutch his title close. It did seem odd he entered with no bell or whistle, but because of the arena this year having very few people who would take advantage of the river, that instead became his own little domain and let him have something unique for the fites where he could pull things to the water. He did meet his end in the jungle, and I tried to big up Soleil a little by having her take down a former champion and one that seemed reasonable for her to take down since they don't seem to have a huge gap in power levels. Puddlenaut is tough and capable but last year, he got so far he could find the energy and motivation to keep pushing towards that win. Even his pre-fite was emphasizing that I felt Puddlenaut wouldn't miss the reigning champion title too much since he's pretty relaxed and didn't seem to need that win as much as others. I've definitely gotten into knowing this guy pretty well, but things like the shark arm eating the shield still felt like a little bit of a different idea from former uses of it so I don't think he felt like he was repeating old tricks either.

ALMARIC AND KNUD I've always portrayed the dungeon minions as getting along pretty well in the Brawl, but this year I added a little spice to their relationship mostly to play up Almaric's early drop out. A lot more emphasis on their dungeon past than we usually got, particularly because this would be Knud's big year where he could use his traps more effectively then ever. The jungle works really well for hiding stuff, and like the pre-fite show mentioned, areas like the sawmill I considered for him actually aren't as good as you'd think. Instead, Knud got to go trap crazy and keep having them pop up to interfere or he'd actively work to help them. Some years are Almaric years like Season 9, last year they were sort of equal, so it was the troll's turn this time around! Partly because I wanted Predator and him to have a trap battle where the trap sense was important, so Almaric was doomed to be the sacrifice so that Predator got a kill and could establish his threat and all. Knud went really far though, 22nd place! I did wonder about how to use his new doors, they almost thrive on being obvious and easy to see but don't match the jungle aesthetic. He found some good uses for them and some that didn't work out, but he mostly had a wide spread as his long run alone meant he could keep bringing in new trap ideas. I tried not to lean on ones I've used a lot before (the skeleton fear trap was underemphasized) but also the rolling rock one I leaned on a lot more since it had fun ideas. I even almost had Gooper draw Felldrake running atop the rolling rock since it was fun and silly, and yet Ravio showed it was deadly in the right scenario. Some early ideas for next year's arena might mean the pair might be even more at home, but I would like to see Almaric have a few new spells. Knud teasing him was mostly just to make them work a little less well under pressure so Almaric's early drop made more sense, but adding a little more to Knud lead to this so who knows if Almaric could get a big push too?

VERT Much like with Neptune ivel sent me a video of her attacks so I had those animations to go off of, but I don't think her spear attacks required them as much as some of Neptune's eclectic options. There was a period of time where Vert had no planned moment to whip out Green Heart, but it was easy to slip in to help in the Armor fite since it would have the big dramatic kill from Vert with Infinite Spear. I think mentioning Green Heart was something the Pre-Fite Show considered but dropped, but I do share my wonder with the Kobolds: is Vert TRULY a mammal? She's the same thing as Neptune, and they're like console goddesses, but considering how much cheesecake the series and its spinoffs have I'm sure they want you to think they're mammals for fun reasons ;p Vert being a buxom type was fun for jokes, but I'm not down with doing boob size shaming humor. Vert being drawn to Madeleine and Badeleine was part of her whole sort of thing like she did with Xyra though. I know that's why I threw them together to meet but forgot to make it more meaningful in some way! I almost wonder if that was the long and short of why they came together or if there were other forgotten ideas. Vert's spear moves all are kind of "use a spear this way" but I do like that she came with a set of buffs. In general, ally assisting magic doesn't always get big mention, sometimes its just assumed to be in place, but it kept Vert near Amaretti for a surprisingly good pairing. Terrai Division lowering enemy agility I think was the surprisingly useful tool though, that thing was pretty easy for Vert to suddenly gain an upper hand when someone had a counter for her tricks!

UNICORN JABU AND HYDRA ICHI Vert almost fought these guys according to the flow of the Brawl, but she couldn't keep up with Amaretti's speed, so she never did. Another intentional miss on fiting between a user's characters but still having them rooted in the idea that they really wouldn't have any reason to ignore that other fiter. Unicorn Jabu wanting to impress Athena mostly guided his Pre-Fite Show, I wasn't sure where to put them but since the two boys have such different approaces it felt like it was reasonable that Ichi would have to talk Jabu out of punching higher than they could handle. I had them ending up against the Yakuza guys partly because it made some KO allocation easier and the fun revival gimmick, but also, ivel likes Yakuza! So his dudes get to have a fite with the two stars! Ichi's character art for the Brawl doesn't have his claws visible but luckily they're a lot like Vega's or Wolverine's so my ideas that were bubbling for him survived when I thought "I should google what they look like". I do admit Ichi's combat capabilities were the more intriguing ones, poison isn't a common trick and even if it is in someone's repertoire they often have other attack options. Just look at Isabela for example! Plus, Ichi had more of the less heroic angle for his poisons, trying to land easy hits with it to wear down his foes rather than fiting honorably. Jabu was the honorable guy and unable to handle Majima being the dishonorable guy. There was a lot of parallels between the Saints and Yakuza that pushed them together!

LILY Lily actually had a bit of a good use for our pre-fite show, being a voice of reason amongst goofy villains and helping us get to know Crow's motivations a bit. I didn't want Crow to come off as being barefacedly evil after working to hide it, so Lily being there to pry his brain to learn his motivations helped that out. I did like having the asssassin mentality though, it let her strike from the shadows early on to kill Damien after the fite didn't involve her until then. Of course that lead to trouble for her when Lucina intervened. I tried to find a little more about Lily's personality and history and stuff online, read some of the stuff from her source game and then found some stuff I'm pretty sure was cropped out of a hentai doujin that Went Places. I wasn't sure how far to swing her personality traits based on the different things I saw, it seems like she has elements that only come out when certain people show her a certain type of attention. Luckily being an assassin doesn't require her to like, chat up everyone she wants to kill, and her stuff in pre-fite was my attempt to find some voice for her amidst some mixed messages without perhaps committing ivel to anything that he didn't desire since he definitely knows her better! I did wonder how much having a wind affinity on her weapons should matter, some games have that on weapons but it doesn't really same to change how the weapon actually works. I imagined it more like Talim from Soul Calibur in that the weapon can be boosted by wind power but I wouldn't have Lily do anything too extreme like sending out a huge gust of wind or whip up a gale. I do like an opportunist when they actually have to stand and fite a little after, and that's mostly how Lily rolled for her time in the early Brawl.

M SHEEP

EDWARD LOCKHAND I almost voted for this little guy, he got a lot of support from others though! Being able to carry items around with ease was definitely a power with potential even if I feel sometimes I might not have been too ambitious with it? I should have thought up more stuff for the sawmill to give him, maybe fewer logs and more unique items to hurl about. I think the clay ball was my big idea and then I just kept trying to pick up more along the way. Taking Zauderberder's rug after his death is more in line with the ideas I wanted to use and I still think he got some creative use out of what he did bring, emptyin a bag of items to blow up someone's head from within is certainly a KO method we won't see again! I did also want to emphasize his tiny size, hence him fiting Soleil, but that recharge stand I didn't feel like it needed too much mention when he'd assumingly use it. It was more important for being apart from him, although originally I did think Marina could carry Edward too before remembering he specifically would object to that idea. Instead, the stand was mostly a hindrance that forced him to be more aggressive as his number was coming up. Giving him some of Bubba's weapons was an attempt to broaden his weapon options of course, and it got to the point where I could make note of how item order impeded him when it didn't seem too big an issue in the early game. Remembering he had the umbrella was important for letting me knock off a leg, I felt he could survive it easy while also not making his opponents look too weak by not landing much damage on a small target up until then. That scene where he's falling with everyone else as reverse gravity ends originally had him producing an intact Vondu jar before I realized he wouldn't have one and Vondu's jars were all used up or busy by that point, but the joke of Marina trying to make it work still got through. I think I could have given him more dialogue but that's probably true of everyone. I actually altered Mayumi's appraisal of him from the Pre-Fite Show after Gooper found the real Edward Lockhand in person, I was going more off ideas I had about his potential origin but Gooper's image gave us details so I had Mayumi be better on the mark but not perfect.

ZAUDERBERDER MJF was specifically Zauderberder's only kill and one that wouldn't have happened if I didn't throw in the Secret Fiter Rejects. I might have found another kill for him, but there was a big emphasis on Zauderberder not being a murderer or really fit for combat so he had a very differnet approach to the fite than other people who enter and are fairly normal. Peter got roped up in an alliance to make up for it, but Zauderberder was very much played as an unwilling brawler and I knew Sheep would jive with it pretty well. It helps that, despite fainting at seeing a fite, we had moments where he showed his true colors. He couldn't bring himself to abandon the Dwarfelles to their fate, and he did manage to pin down Chunor of all people briefly, the contrast between her power and his deliberately meant to be a sobering moment for the kraken girl to bring her down from her combat high. Zauderberder smashing the jar also felt like a moment where he didn't necessarily try to kill the guy but sometimes a hit hits in a certain way to be lethal and others it would just knock someone out.. Zauderberder's rug selection, I wanted to get use out of all of them but some like the expanding rug didn't have a clear niche in the situations it found itself in. The camouflague rug was good for disengaging Vondu so he could get to his important fites elsewhere, and I knew pretty quickly the heavy rug would get the most play with its fun and flexible concept. We still got to see the durable one and all too. Flying carpet might have got no use as he was basically considered for sticking around the sawmill for his run, but the moment where he got some courage and gumption after being scared into fleeing felt like a good place to whip it out and use it. I did consider having it reappear in Edward's care or something later one, but the crashing of it into MJF made me feel it was too broken from impact to really work. I'm not sure what post-Brawl implications the kill will have for Zauderberder, but I both wanted to give Sheep the kill if he has plans but wanted to frame it in a way that a guy who doesn't want to kill might find himself doing so.

SYZYGY I decided early on her focus would be Lilith's Tanden Engine and never shook myself from that course! It seemed like the thing most in line with her way of thinking, trying to figure out how something works and more specifically something that could be in the same line of magic as alchemy as far as we know. I was a bit worried I wouldn't capture Syzygy properly, she can be talkative and very precise in word choice in RP and Brawl conversations and observations can't go on too long in order to keep the flow moving. I did alter some of her dialogue after I saw her interaction in the pre-Brawl Jail event, but I think it mostly became more about her being less dismissive and more open to things like Bubba. She was still intrigued by him before but now it's a more direct interest rather than "this is what I can get for now". Her fite was early and had to be wrapped up quickly for it so we only got to see her fite for that skirmish, but she did do a lot in it and I worried she wouldn't going in! She did the power redirect, she did the limb reattach, she did some creepy stuff in taking blood as a writing form for lack of other options. It may not be a full picture of all her capabilities but I think I squeezed a lot in there without it also feel like I was ramming it all in to fit. I do wish I had thought of more creative ideas for what she could create with her circles rather than just how they're used to destroy or alter things. She made a shield briefly but I guess it was always going to depend on what was around her too and there weren't exactly people shedding raw materials nearby. I'm glad she was a noted speedy writer and mover though, I think that more than anything allowed me to do so much in so little time. The exact damage her efforts would do to Lilith varied and I realized early that the shape of Lilith's back would make drawing on it hard, hence the backfire and all, but I think she did a fair bit for her spot even though I know the potential was much higher!

MARLOW BRIGGS I'm sure a lot of people thought about him using four spells instead of his noted limit of two. BUT, the Brawl is a case of extreme circumstances! And he got so far too, so pushing himself to get those last two out I felt like had that sort of "I'll push myself further than I've been willing to go before." It helps that his revival method likely makes him a little loser in real life whereas the stakes of winning let him find some energy to keep going. I did feel a little odd having him wait so long to cast them too, having magic in your back pocket means there were probably many scenarios prior to using them he could have benefitted from them. We actually got a good look into his head specifically because I wanted to justify him not using them but he also kept getting into fites! It's really hard to manage when you got a fun bag of tricks but really tight limits on how they can be used! The weapon was at least interesting and fun and could keep him doing cool things without having to whip out the magic powers, although the magic powers were bigged up as being really strong when they came up partly because, well, in game, they are, but also it gave them more flash and lastability so that they didn't just come out, sprinkle some ice, and go away. Each use was a big thing, and in that way the limits made them more interesting, but I had to pull a little more out of Marlow. I did emphasize they were hard pushes, to the point Lilith practically had a free kill if she wanted it since he was so wiped for a bit. Also, It would have been a huge shame if Marlow didn't get to make a bunch of groanworthy jokes and puns when he whipped them out! I'm mostly happy a practical reason for the death reversal thing was found since otherwise it might just happen and we move on from there. It wasn't huge and didn't impact actual fites, but it let Zozo stay grounded moving forward after she was picked to kill him.

IGUANUS I've said in the past it could be neat if a former villain was allowed to compete in the Brawl. Not like, a redeemed one, one who got put in jail but isn't such an awful person that people would object to them reappearing for the Brawl. I guess it would be more for people like Curse members... and Iguanus is SORT OF a Curse member! In some ways Iguanus feels like an even more incompetent Starscream, a lot of confidence and ego but a lot less coniving or power to back it up. I almost made some joke about the frill like Sheep did when he was fiting in the market but it didn't impact too much due to how it came up. If anything, I feel like I underutilized the lizard form, I wanted to get in the water and do things but as mentioned earlier with Puddlenaut, the river wasn't too popular. Iguanus instead got to be a bit of a threat! I know he was a goofy guy during the threat, but he also was really tough for the Brawler's Guild to take down and coordinated better with the other villains than they did between each other. Since Sheep mentioned his tactical side I did want to bring that up and Iguanus working better with a team is why he stuck with it once he realized people would be grabbing tongues. I did waver on whether Iguanus would have a robotic tongue, but I mean, he can become a lizard and I feel like if any Transformer type would have a tongue it would be that one. From my notes: "beast mode's tail becomes cannon with shell. can shoulder mount cannon but why" I actually think I considered doing it, and I had a good idea too! Keeps his hands free while the cannon can shoot someone who might try and attack him while he's busy! I do feel bad he's got a very unhappy ending ahead for him for losing but I did like being able to see a villain again, especially one with a small footprint in the event he attended. He was a fun part of it but it was a huge crowded event so getting another chance to leave his mark was fun too, especially since it meant voting jokes and the like!

THE DELETER

FAT OF THE LAND When I read "their powers can turn you into crab", I basically had my mind race with how that could impact fites. It feels like every Brawler who knew about that power would know to respect it, and while it is noted that bigger targets take longer to convert into crabs, I still don't think many people would take the risk of sticking around them. That lead to them being a fun little carpet of danger that could weave into fites and change the flow. No one wanted to be near them if they could avoid it so suddenly people were on the backstep or trying to land a hit on something that's hard to hurt. I did realize that not everything thrown their way would necessarily turn into a crab, some elemental forces would be exempt naturally, but also things like Ryndur's arrows, in high enough numbers, felt like they could squeeze through and leave some casualties. The big reason he was picked was because he could attack so many crabs at once, but he also had the elemental shots so he could change the battlefield even as the crabs convert his arrows. The Crab Rave image for Gooper to draw was an early pick once I realized they would gel with Raiko well, giving her someone new to attach to after Damien was gone and few could benefit from her rhythm as strongly. It also made them attack more like a little carpet of bodies for a bit, rising and falling in waves. I think crab pinching and swarm tactics could have been fun alone, we've had both in the Brawl before! But the conversion really turned them into a force of nature most dared not challenge until their options were limited, and while they were more intelligent than your average crab, it still felt fun to have them be pretty animalistic in decisions like on when to flee or not paying attention to certain characters.

DAMIEN While we've had a few fast fiters before, some unbelievably so, Damien being a direct speedster was something I didn't realize would feel so different! Using his speed to his advantage primarily almost made him close to how I might have written Sonic Man had he entered, although Damien had a few other tricks. Once I read about the heat build-up from the Bass Drop releases I wanted to do something with that but I ended up not finding anything in the span of time he had to really emphasize the toll that would take. We got some mild references, but mostly he was fiting at top shape because I'd feel bad to kick a guy hard if he's placing low with a drawback like that. I did wonder if Raiko's presence would potentially lead to the iPod being invalidated, but splitting him up from Raiko meant he still got to pop it in and go nuts. I didn't really have a song planned for him although I did consider it, it's just the kind of think you can't look up in the moment and pick unless you want to arrest the writing momentum. I'm not sure the guys I picked for Damien to fite though were the best fit, a speedster going up against a bunch of metal guys! He held his own and I did make sure to give him the kill on Gun when I considered having Gun go down early. My notes I think had me leaning towards Raiko doing it instead but then I asked myself how Gun would break, and how it wouldn't be cool if Gun didn't do his big bomb, so Damien threw the bombs back at him. I know Gun's exact powers from the game were stretched and reimagined some too, partly to make that work and partly because I decided against some moves that weren't clear. It helps his powers were basically the benefits of Raiko's so the fit felt almost too natural, I was surprised it took to Goops for anyone to bring it up!

EMILY I was wondering if any of Benitagang would get into the Brawl, and totally understood if I didn't get any since Benita didn't seem to like fiting at all and eidolons like Blood Sugar are situational and draining to use. Emily was like, built to be the fiter of the bunch though, I actually had to make sure [The Tempest] wasn't in scenarios where it would potentially cause too much friendly fire damage! I was able to justify splitting the obvious big alliance of Brine and Del chars through it mostly. There's been no physical description of it beyond "Mayan golem" really, but I looked up not only Mayan iconography but actual other mayan golem images on google. This guy ended up my visual reference as you can see if you compare the two images of it, although I didn't end up drawing Emily because of how much having a big golem buddy centralizes your fiting tactics. I wanted to make sure she was still in there doing damage of course, but the golem was a big factor on who could reasonably hope to hold their own against her. Marlow killing the golem had a bit of a brutal undertone to it if you remember Emily gets a mirror of the injury, but that's very specifically why she's not in the KO shot nor do we emphasize how it unfolded for her! However, killing a big old golem felt like it needed something big, hence why NiseDrimogemon was also picked to be a foe for it since he had a chance of really breaking through that stone flesh. I did change how much of the stormcloud I emphasized based on who was in it, don't have to mention all the weather effects if they aren't bothering someone much, but I played with things like it being a visibility limiter too. I did at first tell myself I wouldn't need to put the brackets there for every mention of it... but I did it anyway!

JACKSON HOWARD When I said I wanted Jackson Howard in a Brawl I certainly didn't have any clear idea for how he could fite, but I definitely didn't expect him to come in packing big heat! The big heat actually made him incredibly dangerous as we saw with the fite against him mostly being about avoiding being mowed down in an instant and finding counters to keep that chain gun from revving up and chewing through people. Jackson not being a brutal guy made it easier to justify him not going whole hog on using it to go on a rampage, and it does seem to have limited ammo based on that ribbon so the heavy machine gun does have its limits. The children tunes I wavered on which to pick because I know so many but I'm not sure how many are recognizable. Having a niece around the house for so long gives me a lot more modern material, hence Bubble Guppies getting referenced, but also I threw in Caillou and Dora the Explorer so that there was some broadly memorable things for people who weren't exposed to children's shows as long as I have been. I did waver a lot, as mentioned earlier, on how much Jackson Howard should be aware of the Secret Fiter Rejects angle, and I knew he'd have a bit of a problem with Vondu in the brawl one way or another. However, Vondu broke away and did other things than harass Jackson Howard, so mostly Maya carried that CEO anger forward from the pre-fite set up. I did go with him being almost fully oblivious and think I worked out a way that seemed convincing enough for him to be naive about it. Of course, fiting in a death tournament feels like less naivety would thrive so he was going for kills there. Despite being the friendly guy he was treated like a huge danger simply because that suit is so tough, and mentioned earlier I did like having Maya around to alter the suit to get around a few questions I would have about it otherwise or misunderstandings people seemed to have since we only had card art to go off of. Like most cases, it worked out in the end, just had to make sure it works for every reader!

CROW I was very thankful there was the pre-Brawl Kobber Killer event where we saw Crow kill some people without much concern they were corrupted civilians. That helped frame things pretty well on where he should be towards revealing his more malicious side! The entry did mention it would come out but you always gotta wonder how much would be too much. Him killing Chen had plausible deniability and ended before he could get potentailly cruel about it, and from there it was a lot of relying on Julia for Brawl related judgment his way. However, the Pre-Fite Show I think most showed off his conniving side and I wanted his detective side in there too. Almost forgot to have him say he investigated the Plob to find out they weren't much, although I removed the longer and jokier back and forth I had planned for that scene to keep it tight. Instead, Crow got to show his darker side while it still making sense from a tactical angle. Robin Hood Persona, I definitely leaned more into him being a powerful force than pulling from any game spells, although I did have his wiki page up and referenced it a little. Crow's laser sword actually made it easier to justify him holding his own against a powerhouse like Julia, considering light would be a lot less flimsy than something material in carving through armor or blocking a hit. Crow also felt like a bit of an acceptable target for some of Julia's less admirable ways of treating her targets, but I still didn't let it get carried away, throwing in the need to kill him quicker than she planned to avoid further injury herself. I think Crow and Lily were going to be closer initially, fiting together or near each other, but that shifted and Julia ended up sensing Crow as one of the worst people there because he was a lot more legit bad in some of his behavior than some of our goofier sorts. Also, he was harder to draw than I thought with that mask, it looks so simple but it's easy to make look goofy when he's not a goofy guy!

BRINEHAMMER

CECILIA Didn't expect her to go furthest of Brine's ladies, he's done a lot more with the other four in RP but tractor doesn't know that! That weapon of hers I wondered if it had a better name than a sword but I tried to use its odd shape effectively and reference it when it was important. Part of my pondering on the weapon probably lead to that moment it was turned against her! Cecilia's aura kind of hit on the old issue I have with writing elemental auras but moreso, that being noting when it activates or provided passive buffs is more of an RPG thing than something for a quick snappy fite. It was active when it was expected to be, Kirika even mentions it, but besides when she starts self-blessing it's just doing a lot of passive help up until then. Saying someone gets a boon if it's not directly enhancing or shifting their fiting tactics is just more words! I do like them, they get their work in when something needs to happen like Cecilia could heal her allies because of it. I definitely wanted to work in that two-dimensional blade spell since it was such a neat idea and different from the rest of her kit. Since it came up pre-brawl, ideas like rounds and days in brine lady spells lists I mostly just try to spread out my selections so that they won't often become a problem. It encourages me to be more creative in what I pull from too instead of leaning on any too much or going for the juicy ones first, and you'd think the girls know they can't go too hard too often so they will do the same balancing act. Mostly it never gets to the point where they're almost out of casts for a tier for the day unless I'm deliberately running out that power tier for something spicy or an upcoming defeat or moment of weakness. I do think maybe Cecilia would have got more play in the support position if her alliance had stuck together instead of being split into parts, but I did try to emphasize speed and stuff from what she could naturally do even if many spells weren't doing much when she was on her own. I do think I could have mentioned those metal legs more though.

JENNY Jenny, I definitely wanted to capture her unique attitude. Not so much the sort of meta awareness but having a different way of thinking on things, such as how she was much more willing to see Knud's doors and decide not to fite him or being so impressed with the other Jenny they part amicably. She even smiles in her death pic because she's at least impressed with how she's being killed, and the reverse gravity on bullets was another way that Quantum Conundrum glove really proved to be a fun twist to fites. Jenny's four points were oddly limiting, I'm used to the Brine entry horn of plenty but she could only use four points total with so many cool moves to pick from! I had to be very careful with her not to go over and pick a lot more carefully. She didn't use all the points she had in the end because you don't want to tip your hand too much, but she at least didn't fully hinge on them either. I probably would have used more one point ability augmentation if the pool was bigger but instead I tried to make her regular stuff work. Luckily she had the conjured weapons and just a big pack of guns on hand too so just like Marlow Briggs she wouldn't be hurting for options just because she has to wait for the big options to come out. I did know immediately she had to be the one to kill the Predator because she had the eyepatch with heat vision, also considered the magic within going crazy if the circumstances got there but her eyepatch eye never got roughed up that way nor did she need such a push. Guns were treated as pretty dangerous this go round I feel too so Jenny often found her weapons countered by something but doing good work when they landed shots. Also, while we did agree to call her Jenny the Envy or Jenny Envy, I didn't like refering to her as such since it feels a little odd. I think as she develops more we might not even see the Envy as part of her, or maybe we will! I just was happy when I could usually use just Jenny for either lady in the Brawl since it wasn't like the other would pop in and fite suddenly just because the name is the same.

MINIM Finding a way to reference the maid stuff in the Brawl was going to be hard and sadly we didn't really get anything for it. We got Minim concerned about looking proper for a bit, but when Kanade burned her that was out of the picture and she was more willing to fite in spite of her appearance. Having a power up mode like the Shroud was always going to lead to the question on when to whip it out, and I think fiting Kaijugear was a good excuse but also we would get out of it for some time with Minim's normal skills before she died. Having someone who always goes for the kill or setting up a kill is a very different approach to a fiter than usual. You could say some people would want to do that, but a powerful Death elemental definitely can make that tactic viable and so people she was up against always needed good counters or ways to avoid a quick end, hence the famous Carnage Beetle incident so she couldn't be so focused. She had a lot of point rules with the Necrosis thing and it was pretty easy to imagine she had the right points for doing the moves she pulled off, but she didn't get the big kill buffs often since the Brawl can't hand too many kills to one person barring odd conditions. However, the little curse like powers were great for throwing on the pile to make her fiting more than going for kill blows, although I did sometimes have to work out how a fite would continue when the situation could call for something that could end it quickly. I don't think I stretched logic at all but Shroud abilities especially felt like I had to be careful to not put her in a situation where an instant win would be assured if she picked things right.

KEPLER We've had Brawlers enter before with some instant death attacks and they might whiff or not go off, but I really enjoyed the chance to just have one work unconditionally in ripping Suika's soul out with Massacre. Kepler's spells are crazy dangerous and scary and one reason she fought Julia would have just been because Julia's someone who can take it. Many other entrants could be bowled over with easy thanks to all the afflictions and actual curses in her repertoire. The funny thing about those Tormenting Spell Slots though is like, since she's going in fresh she doesn't have a reason to really draw on her own vitality to cast so long as she spreads her power usage around a bit. She did have a good selection and there are some moments where it can be assumed she upped the Reach or other factors without direct mention, but I did try to mention it when it was important or necessary for things to work! Kepler may not be a giant but she was definitely dangerous enough to be up there at first contending with them. Funnily enough I nearly forgot she had that knife at all until it was time for her big fite and debate, but it also paired well with the asterisk she got so she could handle being attacked by Suika and holding her own against Julia for a bit. I kinda didn't find the Vanguard asterisk as full of potential for her as her own basic skills though, I think the armor is really the important part of having it and more than anything, it felt more important to give Chimata those spells than to have Kepler get something good out of it. Kepler is packed with options! I do have ideas on how to talk to Kepler about her ideas about death and sensation but didn't want to squeeze that into the Brawl, hence the talk focused more on things people reading would understand like Chunor's rampage. She doesn't have an aura in the traditional sense, but I think I used her aura-like abilities better than other Brine entrants this year.

CHUNOR If you thought Kepler's spell list was packed, wait til you see Chunor! I wasn't sure if this brawl would have that kind of big reshuffling event until I decided to keep cranking up the weather effects on Chunor to typhoon levels. I can imagine a lot her powers could have gotten lost in the shuffle, I actually think her slow start avoided that being the case. She was able to get in more unshakeable chills on people when she was feeling smaller and less willing to go nuts with the big spells. Her going nuts and enjoying being a big kaiju in spirit again was always planned even though it was almost contentious if she would do so, but it really helped to have the Kepler and Julia talk later to contextualize it. The Brawl isn't the same as going loco in a real battle or somewhere not designed for everyone to kill each other! Felldrake won't be held to the same standards for taking over Mother Nature as he would if he expanded outside the Brawl, hence why I edited the line where he said he wanted the world and changed it just to the Brawl to tone that down. Chunor letting her power get to her head made for a good... I guess 1/3 big threat thing? A bit early for a rampage but sometimes that's what the tracto demands, and I definitely wanted an excuse to whip out all the cool powers! Many are kind of adjacent meaning even if I wanted water or lightning but didn't want to blow higher spell slots I had weaker versions on call so she could always have a trick, but I think the wet blanket of a heavy rug was important on bringing her down to her level. Having her die while going on her kraken rampage could have worked, but I liked it better that she got some big hits on people there, including a lasting hit on Varan, before she had to be reminded of her place and fought with someone similar in their kaiju-human combo. I did waver if the weather effects was her actual spell or just general manipulation since she can do both! The seasonal limitation is interesting but not totally relevant to that, I think it's more whichever one works better for how it unfolded. Also, I felt a little odd calling her a sea elf, I guess because it's a case where she's a kraken in this body so I felt like I was emphasizing the form too much?

CONCLUSION

And that, my friends, is a lot being said about Big Bar Brawl 11! I'm mostly glad it's done, there was a cycle of many distractions around Brawl time but the Brawl got completed smoothly and hopefully will continue to be in the future! I worried this might feel small potatoes after the big anniversary year but somehow it keeps working well, not sure if I can name a top Brawl and it will always be colored by recency but I was very happy with a lot of what went down in it and found this year's cast very strong, flexible, and full of potential! As always, please ask away or make comments, I'm sure there's stuff I've forgotten about that just requires the right prompt to spark my memory! Hope it was interesting and not too rambly, and see you again when this big cycle happens all over again after showing it's still got legs!

Behind the Fites (and Other Such Business)

Saturday, December 4, 2021

The Post Season-11 Big Bar Brawl Wishlist

Friday, August 6, 2021

How the Big Bar Brawl 11 Was Made