The Hidden History of Big Bar Brawl 12!

 

Welcome to the behind the scenes blogpost on the Big Bar Brawl 12, and as you can no doubt see, we'll be diving right in with some scrapped art to start! I'm certain everyone has noticed my propensity for doing profile shots of the kills, someone standing on the left or right, their attack in the middle, and the victim on the other side. But, despite this being the easiest, I still get ambitious sometimes! This works to varying degrees, Marisa killing Metron this year was sort of a perspective shot and we usually get a few vertically oriented kills instead like when Sophia stabs Sapphire, but conveyance is an important element of art! Unfortunately, sometimes the drawings I'm making don't end up coming together. That lovely smiling face up there was originally meant to be Annie giving Byakuren the poison to KO her, and I tried to do a thing where instead of pouring it into her mouth while she's down, she'd pull Byakuren up by the hair to administer the poison. I had drawn Annie's body and hands and was working to put Byakuren in them but soon I realized the hair idea just wouldn't work with that arm posing and in a little bit of frustration at the wasted time I drew a big goofy head on Annie to cheer me up. It got me to laugh so success!

I'll also mention here the one Brawl dream I remember having during work, that being that I for some reason in the dream just kept drawing Byakuren art. Over and over even though it was already done both irl and in the dream! I kept realizing I was redrawing the same art but it kept happening, I'm pretty sure Cassidy's death by bike being the main culprit in this dream.

However, we have more scraps to look at too!

Rafael killing Phoenix didn't work mostly because I couldn't figure out how to pose Phoenix for the clubbing, you'll notice the "NO" there just in case in my hurry to scan and crop art I might accidentally use it. That's one reason I've done a big old X over scrapped art before! Also of note is that much of the art is gigantic when scanned even though when drawn it's super tiny. Like, you can't even fit the tiniest of the brawl's pictures on a monitor when first scanned and much cropping and shrinking is required and then it somehow looks enormous still. I can sometimes fit seven normal sized kills on a single sheet of paper with some room to spare but they can be as tall as the screen if I wanted them to be after scanning. The NO there is written at normal handwriting size if you need an idea how crazy the blow up is!

Not a particularly exciting scrap, but I tried to draw Cassidy shooting up at Baccarat from this angle but the gun and the leg position meant she couldn't really hold it right.

Priere stabbing 3DS, except I had forgotten 3DS was on the ground during the kill so I started drawing it for an upwards impalement before realizing I had messed up. I like how I drew Priere here better than anywhere in the brawl, mostly just the hair. Facial construction is also pretty hard for me so when it comes together simple and clean like it is here I feel bad having to toss it out.

Initial attempt to draw Sine dying from the poison she got coated in. Wanted to emphasize the suit damage and would have had the poison puddle around her and obvious gunk on her suit and stuff. The face was looking bad though and I went with another safe side shot.

An early attempt at both the final KO shot and Ultraman Trigger's epilogue. The little thing up top was the beam from the finisher and the surface I was drawing on (a binder on my lap) had a little bump that made it jerky. Beneath it though is me struggling with folded legs since I wanted at first Trigger's hand and maybe a kid or two sitting on his other knee. The size was actually the issue here, as on the paper it was too tiny to really draw people. Even the actual epilogue pic, which was nearly a third of the sheet it was on, still had little room for drawing detailed people in scale with the giant! I wanted a lot more folks around him then I put in but this year I actually didn't start with the epilogue pic which became a bit of a habit for a while. First art was Isabelle killing Marisa not for any reason but where the cursor was in the document last. I think even though we didn't hit 100 images like the last few times I might have had a bigger share of art than most years, CKR and Goops doing 5 each while I did the remaining 86. It's certainly not the most I've drawn I don't think since bigger brawls did require more art and there were no real hiccups in the drawing process! Some art I considered asking goops for but didn't included the spaghetti mess of Amanda, Min-Min, and Betty Spaghetty when their limbs were all entangled briefly as well as Tron riding the upgrade Tombstone into battle. I try not to give him art that might be immediately invalidated or not lead to much unless it's a really fun visual like Dakota with the gun. I also almost asked him to draw Trigger and Knucklotec when their hands were locked together in a test of strength, and I thought of doing a little BIG BAR WAR image where I'd have the thumbnails of the different characters on each side to help people keep them straight.  Ultimately I was still scanning and cropping and adjusting images even at 5 am the day of the brawl so it wasn't something I could squeeze the time in for! That doesn't mean I was really cutting it close, the cropping process is just kinda boring and I had to do things like post pre-fite and I was enjoying talking to you guys again!

 

 

ARENA AND HOST

 

Some time after the last brawl I started pondering what kind of arena could host the next Agaman brawl, and immediately I was drawn to the idea of ruins. Thing is, even as I considered having a freaking huge temple everyone could fite inside, it became clear that it would stretch believability. Even just one giant would mean the arena would have to be enormous, like a stadium as tall as a skyscraper, and while I considered it being subterranean to get around this, that wasn't really the best idea either. I actually don't know how good a close-quarters brawl would work in general, even if there was a big open central chamber, but I went with making the interior spaces optional, but even then I needed to figure out how they'd work!

I ended up looking into Olmec civilization stuff specifically once I considered Knucklotec for hosting, mainly because he's based on the Olmec stone heads. The images I linked for the idea for the arena were supposedly Olmec but I think someone mislabeled one of them after I looked into them again after announcing the arena, but still, a little Mesoamerican consistency was probably wise. I wanted the pyramid for sure, and an old idea was actually the temple being shaped like a Japanese dojo with a big central area, the enclosed interior spaces as barriers around that central courtyard, and instead of a main building it would be the pyramid, but I think spacing it out was wiser. I actually forgot for a bit to give it a water feature and that ended up with the whole "alongside the Alli Achimama" river aspect. I actually didn't expect to use the river as much as I did, I even remember thinking I wouldn't get to use Grunty's wings or floaters on the Witchywagon and both came up! 

The interior of the pyramid was in flux a while, I've mentioned elsewhere there being much greater finds inside. Something like a blessing where Knucklotec fites for you, or video game style power ups like increased strength, or even just straight up weapons. Thing is, we again get into the idea that only some people could even conceivably enter the place so fairness would be a problem. A lot of what we did find inside ended up being the kind of things similar to the sawmill from last year, stuff you'd have to be more creative or clever to get good use out of... aka more Edward stuff to throw. I did consider having more chambers like a legit treasure vault or armory but I try to avoid taking too long to describe things mid-brawl and the one reason we got the sacrifice chamber description was primarily for the jokes and the whole leaning into the Digger history of Rock and Roll. One thing I do wish I did more was make more use out of the courtyard even though its layout was deliberately simple. I felt like I had to remind people of its features since it wasn't often relevant they were fiting on stone instead of grass and dirt except when it was! I actually didn't know how much I wanted to use the jungle until we got more and more entrants perfect for it, and I think it benefitted from being an off-to-the-side thing instead of the major focus. People who could benefit from it went there while others could focus on different things!

I decided on the ruins battlefield before the host though, and for a bit I wondered who could host. None of my local characters had the right energy but I also didn't want to do a full OC who I would have to do a lot of work to establish or would be a bit confusing, especially with Sey being a new user joining this Brawl and some clarity would be needed. Knucklotec was a perfect fit though, a recognizable inoffensive choice who has some potential for that BIG energy I feel a lot of JRM male characters lean into. However, I did try to play him as a competent god even if he was played for humor at other points. I've made no secret I wanted him to get involved in the Brawl and at first I considered the idea of a mid-brawl addition to the standings, a Hidden Fiter so to speak where he joined as an entrant, but how that would work and the possible pushback against it wasn't worth the surprise idea. I avoided some of his powers from Super Mario Odyssey like the ice stuff and considered his little mummy summoning powers but I figured since he wouldn't brawl too long I could just lean on the punching and even decided to immediately hint at his only pseudo-serious nature with the fact he's a God of Punching rather than something normal like battle. I did tone down his YOU WILL BRAWL IN MY ARENA intro just in case it might come off aggressive or evil, but the pre-fite would do a lot to show who he is. I did have a bit of a hunch he might have post-brawl legs for appearing in normal RP, and I think flying independently moving fists is already a decent enough power. Him being an ancient Agaman revived god I worried would need a lot of explanation but I think I found room in the intro post to quickly introduce it even if you didn't know about the whole Soul of Agama plot's outcome and all.

I actually did consider Marvin the Martian not showing up as referee at all this year, it made sense for Knucklotec's followers to watch over the Brawl even though they don't really get mentioned much now after I decided to keep Marvin. Again I just wondered if an alien with future ray guns might break the theme. I did swap the Brawl anthem partly because I've been wanting to move from the old one after Mac's retirement but I'm not sure if there is going to be a new one to settle into. It doesn't make sense for an old McDonald's jingle to keep hanging around and Jukebox Jaw isn't too charismatic as a musician. The theme basically stuck around as a way to introduce new characters and things like that each brawl at first so I'm wondering if it's even important now. Might find a use again for it one day though so no retirement for it yet!

The Big Bar War was actually inspired by a need to reshuffle some fiters a bit. Plans were putting people pretty far apart and I didn't want to contrive a weak reason for some people who were slated to kill each other to meet too much in a row, and with no real big catastrophes this brawl to reset things like how a Godbeast showing up or big arena damage can often shuffle the cast, I came up with the big late game alliance war! I did consider making a little title card for it showing who ended up on which side but time was running out due to the scanning time's length. I didn't know if I wanted to do the whole Marvel "Two sides run at each other" thing at first since that's come under criticism these days for happening so much in those films... but also the Brawl has never done it and the lines quickly broke so it was more about the brief cool visual of a mostly united Brawl. I actually didn't realize for a bit that Grunty and Clawleone would not want much of a part of it so they'd be independent, but the numbers came up almost even for the alliances I cooked up and some things like Isabelle in pre-fite saying she'd be happy to fite Julia were just for justifying her opposing her ally in the brief war. The only reason it got wrapped up so to speak was because soon those alliance makeups would limit the ability for others to kill each other, so the length of the war couldn't be too long, but I also managed to squeeze Amanda getting killed by Scars in there to keep it going a little longer despite wanting that planned kill to work out.

 

Oh, and while I'm sure everyone figured it out already, the whole thing about destroying the temple being part of the religious rites for Knucklotec's followers and how the ruins were only recently built WHILE still having that historical tie was totally to avoid any kind of "Destroying history" objections. I think a big reason Knucklotec ended up having his associated lore was part of avoiding breaking the hearts of Mayumi-type characters with the inevitable temple and barracks destruction. I actually wonder what people expected from the barracks though, I liked it more as a tight space for smaller fites while the temple had more of a focus on big rooms or spaces you could move between to escape people.

 

Also, I'm sure people noticed moments closer to Fite Yer' Self situations like Edward and Morloc messing with each other and the obvious Baltan and Metron scuffle. I'd like to know generally what people thought of it! Go further, don't do it with your characters unless specified, any feedback on it beyond like, actual inevitabilities like if the two finalists were from the same user! 

Another note: I did try and consider an extra entrant slot gimmick or vote gimmick. Originally Knucklotec's blessings was a 5 point total you could split up across different entrants, so it could be something like 2 points to one fiter and 3 to another or 1 point to five different fiters or just 5 to one guy. I thought it was too complicated and figured many would just go for the 1 point to five different people concept anyway and just had it be a free batch of five low value votes. We'll probably have less votes next year because Blessing pushed it a little high but I also have no gimmicks or anything planned yet so who knows!

PRE-FITE SHOW

 

 For perhaps far too long, I had no idea what the Pre-Fite Show should be. The earliest idea I settled on was Knucklotec intervening when characters almost started fiting prior to the brawl, slamming his big hand down like a wall to block people from hitting each other. Thing is, contriving enough instances of this wasn't really the best, and some characters getting attached to these moments probably wouldn't have worked with what I wanted to set up in their pre-fite. The ones I did think could work actually ended up in Marvin's Referee Diaries segment that was also meant to point out more of the ref's potential work as well. There was also a removed segment in the pre-fite show where a longer chat about what entrants even get for entering a Brawl if they don't get first place, but when I saw Sine's huge bet I pulled back. The original concept was the really low placements would get a couple hundred bucks, the rest of the field would get somewhere in the thousands, and then the top ten would get more impressive payouts but nothing close to the millions the winner gets. The main reason I would want to keep the numbers small is to avoid some very unfortunate ideas of desperate people entering just for the money. Trying to get the big cash prize is one thing, but poor people throwing themselves in the grinder for a small payout is a bit rough to think about. Also, I really want to avoid the idea of someone entering the brawl and going "hey, got my cash, time to peace out or give-up" so the payouts would probably never really get too crazy for lower ranks. Something more like a set of really good paychecks from a solid job at most. Probably best I removed any talk of it just to keep it safe for now.

From the original Knucklotec interventions idea though came that eventual search for content he went on. It actually ended up a great way to introduce our host before his eventual participation in the Brawl itself and establish some things like why he's specifically the God of Punching. I tried to balance out his moments of silliness with more respectable god-like activities, but I think one of my favorite things to write was his reaction to modern unfamiliar ideas. It's a pretty common cliche for someone to kind of reject it or be baffled by it or basically just not open their mind to a new thing even though they presumably did that all the time in their homeland or original place in time. Knucklotec, while not understanding things like Neptune's Vtuber show, was not enraged nor did he say "this new stuff is dumb", he was humbled by his lack of knowledge and tried to keep up. Not everything clicked with him of course, but reveling in ignorance and avoiding adaptation isn't really a good way to behave! I do wonder if leaving out his "combat sense" might have been a wise idea but it might see Post-Brawl use to justify him showing up.

One thing about the specific places he got the info was basically the idea soon became interrupting other potential pre-fite show ideas. Swanky Kong having a game show set up for the pre-fite feels like something I COULD do, or Neptune hosting a Vtuber show as the full pre-fite, and so on. Not every idea ended up from that mold, but things like the visit to Komi would initially have the footage she had presented as advertising with the idea some prospective brawl could have been a bunch of paid infomercials or something like that. I think breaking away from that is better, especially since you avoid the whole "wait, that idea would have been better than what you're doing", and it also gave Knucklotec some time to interact with people instead of just spying or interrupting. Heyman felt like he could have carried a pre-fite possibly, but also, maybe not! Some ideas would stretch pretty hard, but on the other hand, some pre-fites it really is just "here's a thing, look at it" and that's not too bad. Knucklotec having a little story to it felt more fun than just excuses to present important set up stuff.

And boy was set-up important this year! I had a long sticky note dedicated just to team-ups, since there were even quite a few two or three character groups to keep track of. At one point I know I even mixed up Min-Min and Madeline's team affiliations before getting out of bed and going to correct it! Thankfully it was during a part they were more providing help to the team than a major focus but the Pre-Fite was written second as I was still struggling to have it come together and I bet that impacted my ability to keep things straight.

Big alliances were pretty natural to cook up since some almost came pre-made. I do wish I had come up with some names for ones like Miko's group and Stella's, but calling them something like the Taoist alliance was even brought up as feeling wrong when the umbrella widened beyond the pre-existing grouping. 

Olmec's presence in the pre-fite was something I wavered on, the reference to Legends of the Hidden Temple working a bit better when Knucklotec was interrupting other pre-fite show concepts. However, when I did decide to include him, I came up with the lore of him being another ancient Agaman god but one who adjusted and found worship elsewhere. As I imagined the interactions between Knucklotec and Olmec it actually started to feel like their strained relationship was like two romantic exes meeting up, and so I decided to roll with it. I didn't make it canon when they met partly because I didn't want it to just be a joke that two giant stone heads were in a relationship once, but I still had to make the joke when it was revealed in the final pre-fite segment because it is a little silly! Still, when the two interacted it was handled with the seriousness of a real former relationship, so hopefully the right middle ground was found.

For the Cardholder focused segment I remember originally Clawleone would approach the Cardholders on his own and Josuke would realize he would be good for a card and lead him into a backroom where he'd get his card. Then I realized I don't think Josuke would do that, so I reworked it to have the secret meeting first and then Clawleone meets the others! The funny thing about writing the Brawl itself is I had no compunctions against having the Cardholders turn on each other but it never felt like the right moment or situation. Placement probably played a big part, maybe if they died in a cluster or something I would have made it happen, but otherwise it was more lack of assistance when the others might need it as they aimed for personal goals or things like that. Chao specifically told me he was cool with Clawleone getting the green 2 after he thought it over but even he didn't know what it would be until the Pre-Fite, although I'll talk more on this in the user section!

Originally I remember Valerio specifically spying on Grunty interacting with the other Cardholders but I didn't know how to work Rafael into that. On the other hand, while Valerio in RP said he wanted a crack at the bruxa, I wasn't sure if that was a mark of approval for a little fite yer' self! In the end he was attacking the Witchywagon some but that was when Edward was on board to kind of give him a focus besides Grunty.

Some other meetings included things like Baccarat and Flu meeting up, the idea being in the results later that they basically swapped their luck. Flu went far but Baccarat got a low spot. Katsu and Roman actually got a brief alliance as I wasn't sure on the heel vs. heel thing, I considered having a third person join their brief alliance but I think it worked better on Katsu turning on Roman when he realizes the partnership wasn't so equal after all. Little comments were subtle foreshadowing too, like Cuppy saying he could go for a burger, something no one would even think would be followed up on! However, I think most other things will be covered in discussing specific characters, so time to move onto...

THOUGHTS ON EVERY BRAWLER

 

Here's the long part, but of course, there's two special entry types we should talk about first so let's get right into the stuff on the Mystery and Secret Fiters!

When I started thinking on who to have as a Mystery Fiter for a ruins-themed arena, I at first tried to have it be someone on brand for the setting. If I hadn't RPed LEGO Indiana Jones this would probably be where he showed up I thought to myself, and Lara Croft or other explorer types crossed my mind but they didn't feel right. I tried to think of just general South American things or media but no idea was really striking my fancy. I do mention that I try to pull Mystery Fiters from all sorts of sources so one from a real world legend/myth seemed like a cool source, but the reason we ended up getting the Pied Piper of Hamelin was just because I liked the idea of him riding around atop the rats and guiding them like a little army. I mentioned elsewhere I had hoped to have him get pretty messed up, lose limbs and such so soon he wouldn't even be walking, he'd just ride atop waves of rats to move around, but I didn't think it came up too naturally in his short time in the Brawl. I think actually Steve's Review did a video about a creepy stop-motion animation from the 80s about the Pied Piper that inspired me to think about him and it eventually evolved.

I did worry at first it would be a bit like Chicken Man but he had no control over the birds and the rats tended to focus a lot more on a full on army rather than clucking chaos. I've noticed people more and more use Secret Fiter submissions as backdoor pilots for characters they're considering but for Mystery Fiter picks I almost always think of them just as a cool shakeup or fiting style others can throw themselves against, and we got things like Sousa taking the pipe. I tried not to get unbelievable with the rat movements, they never formed a hand or anything that required dexterity like that, just a big mass of teeth, fur, and claws you didn't want to be caught in. His appearance is actually based on a specific piece of Pied Piper art I found online:

I liked the colorful youthful look, just a nice guy with a horrifying army that he's happy to tear you apart with!

Bunger, over in the Secret Fiter world, made me glad I didn't live with anyone who cares about Brawl results! I kept saying "Bunger bunger bunger" to myself after it got picked. The little Bugsnak didn't get too far into the Brawl but I did wonder if I could increase his size or something if he did need a boost to stay in the fite longer. The Island of Giant Bugsnax is a post-release DLC for the game I still haven't tried that has a giant Bunger, but it's a different species so I couldn't just say it was that Bunger. Then again, I've had fun with very small or humble character concepts before and I did enjoy things like Edward riding him briefly that wasn't possible. I did try to emphasize the curly fry horns were fairly sturdy all the same. I did want him to die by consumption so that he could pass the burgerness off to someone like in the game, and Cuppy ended up a good pick because then I could do my little Phantom of the Opera joke and all and even trick Gooper into drawing art of him without him knowing since the peanut butter inside a Reese's cup is about the same color as a bun! I almost drew some sesame seeds onto the bun after I got the art but figured it wasn't necessary. It's been a bit since we had the "this animal just wondered into here" kind of Brawler which I tried to portray Bunger as. I honestly wasnt sure any of Spy's freebie Secret Fiter picks would get in but hey, I'm never good at predicting Brawl results! One thing I did waver on with Bunger though was if he could do things like spray condiments like ketchup as an attack, individual Bugsnax don't really do much in the game unless they're bosses.

As for the other characters we will sort it by users again this year, but we'll go in order of the users entered so I can just scroll down the topic and cover them all in order!

RUBY CHAO:

First up we have ANNIE, and with her it was mostly about finding out the balance on what exactly is in that bag. I didn't want healing in general to invalidate too much damage in the Brawl nor did I want Annie to become a glorified pack mule full of buffs so I tried to think of both times she could contribute with something to help her pals and to actually really fite with what she has on hand. Her using the sticky substance on Nova's skates was probably one of the biggest interference once user's character had on another on of theirs, but then again it was partly a way of keeping Nova in place so others in her alliance could get focus. I actually wasn't sure how much Shirabe and Annie would interact until I saw they both went far and decided they'd path things up a little in the moment for late Brawl battles, especially since Annie's style still was pretty big on indirect combat. I did write some moments to focus on her training with the two Pitohui ladies actually coming through as she wasn't a weakling in combat and she did a strength buff at once point to be more formiddable. I'm always looking out for more unique kills and the giving someone a poison orally was one I was sort of proud of! Edward was actually meant to spend a bit more time using Annie's stuff after her death before the bag burst idea struck me.

Josuke probably got more out of this Brawl if he had been picked by the lotto way back when! I don't always take some time out of the big battle to focus on dialogues or character things, but like Chunor last year, Josuke's state of mind felt like an important focus. The day I was writing Josuke and Baltan was actually the same that they interacted in the bar and I used that to inform their interaction, but Heartful taking him down was supposed to be a sort of old-new Kobber contrast. Josuke rejoining the Cardholders before his fall made a bit more sense because his journey wasn't really complete yet although I tried to still have Baltan make some good points in the conversation. It turns out, Josuke's actually not supposed to be able to heal himself with his Stand power, but Chao said that can be chocked up to the card so thanks for covering my ass! Mostly I just liked the idea of playing with those unbreakable fists but didn't want him neutered for his later encounter. Things like the fist not breaking but the arm doing so are an example of having a little fun with the idea, just thinking out the limits and holes in a power can lead to nifty scenarios. I reread a little Consolation Brawl for him and Baltan, specifically to see if they had met there. Decided not to play up the hair since I feel he would've wised up to it fully unless something really weird happened to it. Fun fact, while CKR didn't do much art this Brawl, I gave all of Josuke's stuff to her! I was hoping he'd look better in her style than mine.

Next up, SAKI AND MIKO who ended up having quite a little alliance for a while! Miko outlasting Saki I felt like worked well for it as their alliance was locked in against Stella's for a while so Saki could both avenge her and get killed by someone in quick order instead of Saki kind of puttering around looking for a purpose after she avenged Miko. Saki's kicks were treated as terribly powerful, which they canonically are, but I handled it with the same way I might handle a gunshot or something, a thing that can't hit too often or you'll wonder how someone's standing, and when it did hit it always wrecked something good. Miko I did want to emphasize her special charisma, both in making the alliance in the first place and in a few mid-brawl moments like convincing Stella to top her off for the continued alliance battle. I actually worried I didn't write her charismatic enough during those moments but I wanted to not bog things down in too much dialogue! I think Saki worked better because she had wings so she could feel more effective even when kicks were missing. It wasn't just whiffs in the air, she was wrecking the ground and a fearsome figure in the sky when she was building up for a kick. Almost felt weird when I finally had her punch some too! Miko again, for her Komi kill, was meant to show of the tactical mind that comes up in her entry form. The pre-fite show segment helmed by Miko making the alliance was one I actually wasn't sure how to work in too well, moreso how I would frame it. I think early pre-fite ideas had a lot of "coming across the scene naturally" instead of people arranging things like meetings. I was never too certain how deep I wanted to get into Miko's light powers, partly because a danmaku storm near a bunch of buddies wasn't the wisest! She still got to do a lot so no regrets, especially since placements meant the Miko alliance got a good deal of focus!

For BACCARAT Chao actually sent me a list of the cards he's used and what cards he hasn't as well as ideas he had for those he hasn't used in RP before. There were some blank spots on the list where I was free to make up what I wanted for him and that's where we got things like the mallet and saw, although the mallet was bigger in the art then I meant for it to be in the writing. Baccarat is actually kinda squat in that image too but I liked how it looked! Still, I tried to get a good mix of both cards Chao came up with and ones I did but also didn't want to rob him of getting good use out of Baccarat if he ever has some cool moment perfect for certain weapons. The sniper rifle atop the AT-DP was a very early image I had in my head though and I didn't want to write Baccarat like he was avoiding the good stuff on purpose. On the other hand, I didn't want to use up too many cards with him getting a low spot, but I think I still had good fun with his variety and I almost wonder if he'd still use the same quantity if he got deeper, just for longer periods per card. I was worried about Edward grabbing the deck near the end and making a card weapon, even PMed Chao right after it happened with my excuse saying Edward's power and the deck could interact in a weird way if the idea wasn't kosher, but it was totally cool and something allowed! That is partly why we only saw the one weapon in the scuffle over the deck way later in the Brawl and I'm sure Chao didn't mind a Sheep character borrowing a card, but I also think Edward's situation worked in my favor there. At first I figured he'd go straight for an Ace or King because Ed's smart enough to know a high value card would be stronger, but his missing arm meant he didn't have the time to search so I didn't wipe out a too powerful card on Edward's card folly. I enjoyed drawing Baccarat a fair bit too, I'm happy with what I did with him even if he didn't get a high placement.

Last of the Chao characters this Brawl was NOVA, who I didn't call Wii to avoid confusion, partially because so much of the Brawl I felt like I had to keep mentioning the Wii glove. It's probably more a me thing, but when I'd want her to grab something from long distance I felt like I couldn't just not acknowledge the tech that allowed it to happen! This will come up later with the Nintendo girls but I find their breadth of powers sometimes overwhelming but Nova's little collection is surprisingly easy to handle while still flexible. Drawing in the air with the nunchuck is something I enjoyed but felt I could have done even more with, it's such a simple space control thing and as a skater she could get a good deal out of it by boxing targets in or even giving her ground. While it did eventually come up, I didn't anticipate her orb aversion to come up in a reasonable way. I don't like pulling the car over to go "see, I noticed that thing in the entry form", but Seam was a natural fit for doing it in a way that was natural and something they would have done to any other character. The Wiimote speaker I was looking for a good moment for but it ended up very small in presence, it's more just a good way of saying how the mobile members of the alliance kept close to Gamecube and Virtual Boy since they didn't split up as much as I expected! Nova's death pic I also was quite happy with in terms of how I drew her, I think just the posing and details even if it's not necessarily how she would have looked in that moment.

GOOPER BLOOPER

I really didn't expect STELLA AND KOMI after Gooper teased Dorothy for Brawl, but I think Komi was a good assistant pick! Coming up with the idea of Annie helping Komi go invisible really helped me make the sneaky ninja work when otherwise she was in an alliance that spent a good time in the open. I bet Komi could have put in work in the barracks or something too but it was a good way to make the ninja-style approach work in the context. Her quick immediate kill was meant to really stem from her lack of defensive options though. She had done quite a bit assisting the team until then so it's not like she went down without a fite, but sometimes one good hit will take someone out, especially if they're just a normal lady. I know Gooper expressed surprise Stella still had enough gas capsules to keep going for a while but I figured she had a good amount on her person before Komi's fall. Maybe I imagined them smaller than Gooper did? Annie eventually concocting some stuff for her was at least an attempt to address she would have been running low. When I'm in the middle of writing a battle I sometimes don't want to click away so I can keep the thoughts coming, so while at points I emphasized the gas color, at others I just described the effect so as to keep up the writing momentum. It's certainly not a big deal, I doubt people remembered the associations, but I did like moments where I could say a cloud of color appeared and then reveal its effect. I am a little sad I didn't find a moment for her to go full verbal beatdown, but at the same time she was part of one thing I did this Brawl. There were many moments meant to emphasize someone outmatched and hard-countered, like when Stella fought Sophia. Sometimes this would lead to them overcoming things or getting clever, others it ended about how you'd expect if you can't do much. Stella actually was able to overcome a disparity in taking out Saki, but not so much Sophia!

For METRON AND SHAKERNAUT I'm also going to start by talking about the assistant first! I actually kept finding little uses for this guy despite the early drop, mostly because I'd think of something cool for someone else like the Tombstone upgrade or Valerio's eidolon being able to change an interesting part of someone's history. I had to change Shakernaut from a full bury to a less deep one to make it work though. I didn't really think Shakernaut would be too helpful to the Cardholder alliance on its own after Metron's fall hence it not sticking around after his death. Metron's vehicle controlling powers I had to ask for clarification on from Gooper so I wouldn't go too crazy. One thing I thought of was controlling Tombstone but even though Tron rode him after the upgrades it certainly wasn't fit for a vehicle classification earlier. He didn't mention the Witchywagon in who he thought it could control but I was sure it was fair game but still made sure in the pre-fite Metron would acknowledge it as such in case that was deliberate, but it wasn't, just an oversight! This is more a Marisa thing but I was worried her stealing powers wouldn't be able to do much for pretty much the reasons mentioned in Pre-Fite, but giving her Metron's power let a shift in the Cardholder activities happen! I do wonder what I would have done if he brought his card, maybe something sneaky in pre-fite. I was actually a little surprised in realizing Metron doesn't have too many physical abilities, but I still wanted him to get a kill personally, hence the Master System death having him instigate it. I also just liked the idea of being on a big laser eye as it fired.

Next up, BALTAN AND KAUKET! I did feel pretty bad about their placement, unlike Josuke they wouldn't be getting too much about their chance to finally Brawl, but I did have Baltan part of that moment and had some fun with him! I almost felt I might have made Baltan too silly in the Pre-Fite with the binoculars bit but tried to counterbalance it in the Brawl with his more serious talk. Since I got to pick who of the two died first I did go with Kauket; she's the more serious and capable fiter but I think Baltan definitely had more traction with meaningful characters here to interact with. Him vs. Metron will probably stick as an example used on acceptable Fite Yer' Self even though it didn't go wildly far, but it was also a perfect setup for Dannick taking down Kauket. I certainly didn't feel Baltan had enough excuse to go gigantic, Josuke acknowledging it almost as an admission of that, but the teleport trick was meant to show that he could be a little clever when in a corner. Another thing you don't see much in a Brawl is someone straight up getting knocked out but not killed and I liked doing that with Baltan's taze on Dannick.

TRON WITH TOMBSTONE definitely went further than I expected, and it gave me some room to keep upgrading Tombstone! I actually wasn't sure of how I wanted to use the Servbots or when, but when I realized I hadn't tapped Shakernaut's internet ability much it was the perfect way to call them in and even shove some of the responsibility for it off Tron. Their little invasion was mostly for me to bulk up Tombstone admittedly, give him not only the bigger behind for future riding and extra defense but the little arms let me do that fun thing where you slowly lower someone towards a spinning blade. Drawing the blade was actually kinda hard, it doesn't look too impressive with its rectangular shape and it felt like I wasn't conveying it speed! Still, it also was treated as basically a mobile murder blender that few wanted to touch even if I sometimes struggled to remember Valerio got his fingers sliced early on and needed to account for that. I did consider Tombstone's blade being a permanent part of the Witchywagon after its absorption into it, but that thing just kept getting wrecked! Sometimes when I'm drawing KO lines I don't even think too much about how a kill will unfold, Tron and Sine being paired up because scientist ladies and maybe Tron would want Tombstone's tech, but then the W.I.L.L. element made it more interesting as instead of them being against each other, they almost allied before Piddle took that from them. Tron herself I worried at first would just kinda be standing there but she got in a good bit, I think her fiting Morloc was the best segment focusing on her. Originally I almost had Goops do some art of Tombstone shredding The Eightfold Hands but I'm glad I didn't, Tron kicking the big hole in it was probably more fun. I actually didn't really ever think Tron fiting beside Rock and Roll would happen despite the three having history, I think that was mostly because we hadn't seen them interact in RP really so I let Tron do things appropriate for the Battlebot and Rock and Roll focus on the exploration of the pyramid.

BYAKUREN, a.k.a wow did I keep that bike around longer than expected! I wanted it to get some focus, fiting on a motorcycle is pretty novel, and even though I intended to wreck it after Cass was killed by it I brought it back for a bit because it gave Miko's little alliance a unique centerpiece for a while. If anything I probably struggled more to get in Byakuren's grappling focus due to the foes and situations she found herself in, but I did try to get a little Meme Man influence in with her attitude in the pre-fite. It's not full meme, but the Battle Babes joke felt like it could have gone back to her history with him. I do wish I found a good use for that enhanced senses thing, maybe if Komi was someone else's character she would have gone down to Byakuren sussing out her invisibility. After her leg injury I did have a moment where I thought to myself how much someone who could float pretty effortlessly would want to fite on land. It probably does give you a sturdy support so you aren't spinning and swirling around when hit, but how much would you commit to being groundbound if it was painful to do so? Sort of like how Madeline got a kill mostly on her own, Annie's kill on Byakuren was meant to show more of her fiting expertise rather than just using the right chemicals or ingredients. Annie wrestled this tough brawler down, unconscious requiring something extra to turn into a death but still, in a non-lethal fite that would be a win! I know the weaknesses mention Byakuren and Miko may disagree at a point, but I think the fact Miko's alliance was emptied pretty hard at a rapid pace meant emphasizing the teamwork was a better idea. Besides, the Brawl's a big deal! I'm sure they could set aside smaller squabbles for a bit.

Draco:

After nearly a decade, FLU finally joins the fun. I'm not sure how much I would have played up his whole "fated to die" thing if it hadn't come up in votes, things like the analyses do influence me! I played Flu as touchy and careful, but considering how far he got it thankfully didn't define him or anything. He stood and fought pretty often, he just handled himself a bit skittishly during moments like the Ani fite, and yes, that KO pic I literally used the Han Shot First scene as a reference for Flu's posing. The AT-DP was surprisingly useful, I was a bit surprised it wasn't Flu with just a blaster at first but the walker proved its worth as it kept providing new little benefits. His actual skill came through, he was a good shot despite his nerves and he had a few good tricks. I actually thought I'd get him out of the mech sooner but it was a good unique danger on the battlefield I kept coming up with more it could do, even after its destruction. Flu's river fite with Yui is one of those moments that comes up during the writing and one reason I just started marking down in my notes that a character kills another rather than any specific KO method. Not sure I'd have naturally thought for his final stand to be while swimming!

For SUWAKO AND SANAE I did realize they wouldn't be able to stick to their alliance too much just because of the greater degree of power and maneuverability they had but also tried to make sure it didn't come off as abandonment. Oftentimes these two would be handling some huge threat the other Antivenom allies didn't really have the power level to go toe to toe with. The Touhou Lost World spell card limits were an interesting twist on me just opening up a wiki and going ham, but it also meant they were perhaps more focused on specific maneuvers, some I had to think more carefully about. I didn't want them using their Last Word to be a sign of an impeding death, hence why Sanae used hers a good deal before her fall, but it did make me have to skip on using spell cards for her later stuff! I think having the list also made me avoid more generic danmaku spray more than a usual touhou lady would use, but having Graze be a real ability rather than just a concept of all Touhou ladies being dodgy was also a fun twist. I certainly wouldn't have minded a full power Suwako who could become Dinosaur Toad or Titanosaurus but at the same time that might have made her unable to fite alongside Sanae as the power skew became too big, and both girls ended up putting in work! High level geomancy was flexible, and Sanae's miracle power was very quickly pegged as needing to get used and Cassandra was a perfect target. Sanae being a healer also was pretty helpful, while I don't want to completely invalidate damage people take so that lower placing fiters aren't invalidated in contributions, healing also lets me deal heavier damage that I can dial back after to make a skirmish feel more even or unpredictable! I did make sure to specify that the temple's structures were mostly plain rock so that Suwako can have her cool moment of throwing the pyramid at Isabelle without it being too Magneto-esque!

We haven't seen too much ROCK AND ROLL in RP (at least outside of dating a certain green witch) and that's why, as mentioned earlier, I was a little iffy on having them come in contact with Tron during the Brawl, but the Digger path was set pretty much the moment it came up in the entry form. Some characters just seemed a perfect fit for the pyramid, and the two exploring it lined up with their source material well. Speaking of that source material, I tried to look up how Splash Mines looked and unfortunately what I found didn't really want to show them for use as actual proximity mines but her mix of skills being sort of adjacent to Almaric and Knud having traps and invisibility too made it an easy fite to come up with. While it is mentioned Rock has better jumping and the skates exist, sometimes it is just wiser in the writing to assume that when a character is moving they're using their movement options, something that came up with Shirabe too since I didn't want to keep saying "they dodge with their roller skates" which is a bit awkward. Rock and Roll were kinda caught in a trap filled room too so it was likely more in small amounts. Placement meant the two wouldn't really spend long between deaths but I figured people would like to see Roll a bit more so she lasted the bit longer. I did try to make sure that Roll at some point used her more support oriented nature to assist Rock though, but unfortunately we didn't have time for her to get all gadgety or pilot anything. Still, while they placed low, they gave the pyramid one of its good fites before it came toppling down.

SAPPHIRE is one reason I felt a bit odd calling Stella's team strictly a Hoshii Holdings alliance. She works for Stella, but Sapphire really was the center point of the team because of her much higher power level than her peers! I didn't expect her to shift between human and dragon mode so often, she did prefer fiting in human form as I initially imagined but many dragon-appropriate moments arose both with the dragon fite I wanted and just ways to basically skew the power dynamic of a situation. Sadly, I couldn't think of many accountant-appropriate moments, so I instead leaned on her being a burger fiend for sillier moments so she wasn't just this fearsome warrior the other girls stood behind. I wasn't really sure too many people in the Brawl would qualify as chaos-aligned (besides Isabelle) so that was left on the table. This is relevant to Silvania too, but I did waver on how much armor damage I wanted. It was naturally supposed to be a super tough defense on Sapphire but also, she's fiting super tough people, so trying to find a good balance of it breaking was key. I actually think that's relevant to Rock and Roll too with their armor, figuring out an acceptable breaking point is often a part of making a fite work without making something meant to be strong seem suddenly weak. Sometimes I do wonder about weapon scavenging, some brawlers even enter with it as a potential advantage, but some weapons just don't feel like they'd be grabbed, but the trident was a good way to give Sophia something more dangerous than yo-yos for her deeper run. I had to often reference the dragon image of Sapphire because my mind really wanted to give her claws when she's pretty much pure flipper in the big form!

I was happy SILVANIA made it so far, and only partially because it meant more time to play with her wide magic set! Seeing a bartender go so far is certainly a good sign when they often seem to place a bit low. One thing about Silvania's huge bag of magic was me trying to both emphasize her mana pool wasn't infinite but struggling to contain my desire to play with more fun spells, but there was a gradual slant down in the level of spells she used, hence why in the Julia skirmish near the end she was relying on less dramatic attacks. I actually wasn't thinking of the hail storm near the end being so long to cast but it also gave a good way to have Silvania step aside for a bit while also contributing something I felt important to keep Trigger a bit groundbound. Guy having his head smashed from hailstones if he tried to get too high into the cloud kept him in reach for the final battles. The choice of a hail storm wasn't arbitrary either, some of Silvania's spells have different effects based on the seasons and I made sure to use the summer ones for max accuracy! Her Home domain magic wasn't quite as flexible as her Animal one, maybe if she had reason to enter the pyramid or barracks it could have but her helping Reines seemed natural after their almost mother-daughter moments pre-Brawl and Reines definitely didn't want to go indoors. Panserugelbjorn (whose name is easy to remember if you separate it into three parts) was played pretty close to an animal, even more than things like Bunger. I didn't want him to be a sort of tacked-on part of Silvania's incredible kit so he often kind of lead ahead while Silvania tried to support his action of choice from afar. Implosion is a mean sounding spell with that whole "minute" part, if it was an instant maybe it would have been a KO tool. I actually kept some parts of Suwako's death by being filled with light understated and simplified so that it avoided going as hard as Isabelle's power implied as well. Anti-magic was an interesting tool though, my own characters ended up being the ones to suffer but again this was part of the whole "hard counter" idea that cropped up here and there. In the end Silvania's druidic side was pretty underplayed and her cyborg parts saw perhaps less play than if she had to keep getting her hands dirty, but she was really packed with potential, pretty appropriate for someone who is basically post-adventuring when usually Brawlers are people who are sort of starting their careers.

Brinehammer:

I certainly didn't expect ISABELLE to have such a support-oriented moveset back when she hit our radars, but it's a good contrast! I do wish I had gotten more out of it, in retrospect I'm imagining some insane shenanigans with dragon mode Lohe for example but at the same time Isabelle's brawl companions were mostly on a pretty high level to start so they wouldn't need as much aid. I bet if YuugenMagan got further it could have been more a team of two between them. For Isabelle considering things like how often she'd utilize teleportation and telekinesis were probably some of the biggest considerations in a fite as was how often she'd be hanging out in the air. She can create her own leverage in the air though so it's not like someone like Byakuren who could benefit from grounding herself for a while. I do wish I thought of a moment for her independently controlling a limb or something, but even putting down Isabelle permanently felt like it had to be a quick moment due to things like her powerful regeneration. I do feel, beyond her support stuff, I did cover quite a range of her spell list, although I didn't go for the Power Word: Kill in the end. It is a good "here's an obvious closer" spell but it's not as flashy as something like filling someone with light. I definitely didn't want to snub both Power Words though, hence why her fite with Suwako became so defined by it and it also helped us get Suwako down to a level where a goddess losing would have no shame. With no saving throws or anything like that in RP, a lot of things just get to pass through unimpeded and I'd feel weird saying something like a blinding spell was half-resisted unless a character very clearly has aspects of that in their own power set. Her death to Grunty's engine was actually meant to represent that weakness about underestimating technology!

For REINES the whole question of this Magic: The Gathering inspired mana system came up. I do like it, I feel in a traditional fite it could have incredible mileage in ramping things up gradually and is similar to how I would have RPed Harth from Hearthstone had I committed to it. However, a Brawl is pretty long in-universe I feel and the ramp up would probably be pretty significant before we even really get to moments that might demand the character, although it could have been an interesting way to have an early drop out if necessary since they couldn't bring everything to bear. However, having this flexible mana made the idea of a minion army easy to execute, and while at first I wasn't sure if I wanted to repeat the army of goats joke that people were comparing to a previous Brawl, once I saw "Engoat" on the spell list I couldn't resist the chance for a new direction for it! It helped that Reines could mix in other creatures of course, the Grave Elemental my personal favorite conceptually, but I made sure to look up the Capricopian card from Magic to ensure I didn't stray too far from its concept. At first I basically imagined it as the reptile kind of hydra but with goat heads! I'm pretty sure part of the Big Bar War concept did emerge from the increasing numbers of summons Reines could have active, and while on a plot she might not go so hard, in the Brawl I often think that if a person isn't too busy they probably would make sure to cast those extra spells or build themselves up with the stakes so high so I couldn't really justify only a few small allies for her. Silvania has a finite mana pool so she wasn't always going hard, but the mana regen introduced a new way to manage a mage! I knew pretty early I'd want her to clear out some jungle so I wasn't tempted to fall back on using it too much, hence why she became the one to kill Boss Horsehead as she was exerting her control over that natural space. Things like the X Spell mechanic are usually not emphasized as drawing on it but just have their power enhanced/decreased based on if I felt it was used in the moment, it's always a little battle to decide how much detail to throw in. For example, the Stick Hags get mentioned but there isn't much saying what they do besides help in fiting but they never got a focus moment so I didn't pull over to talk about them. It is good to have these options though, you never know if someone might have a mana drain or spell steal option or what where it could impact the way things unfold!

With DANNICK I really fixated on those chained hooks for some reason. I think I just liked the simple but different weapon, we don't get too many hooks! I had to remind myself she had number limits on them! In her entry form it's not mentioned she has a sword outside of when Demon Armor is active so just to be safe I had her focusing at first on magic and such until it was time to put on the armor and I felt confident in having her swing a blade around. Being able to put her on the Witchy Wagon actually gave this a pretty good reason for being the case so you aren't left wondering why she's not getting in there physically. I actually was struggling to justify Marisa getting split from harassing the Cardholders after getting Metron's power but Rain of Gore saved the day, a Brawl of weather effects if there was one! In some ways Dannick is almost like a pre-development Isabelle and I almost wonder if Brine did that intentionally, but I also worried about leaning into that too hard for fear I might brush off some bit of deeper character we hadn't seen yet. I didn't entirely avert it of course, but the dialogue she did have I avoided her leaning too hard into the pure sadist angle. I think I drew too many chains in Kauket's death picture because I couldn't help myself, I even had to erase and I think trim some out after scanning as I just kept drawing more and more hooks from this power that was oddly fun! Being able to alight was definitely part of it too, it just gave a nifty long range attacking option.

I didn't find much use for human form LOHE in the Brawl itself even though I find myself almost enchanted by the art used for it. I don't know if its the eyelashes or attention to the lips or just the color choices but it captivates me with its style. Still, while it could have been a good way to get her indoors and her one big use for it was briefly entering the barracks, the dragon form was more flexible and fitting for fiting in the open. I think one reason there became a small theme in the Brawl of being up against something that counters you hard was realizing Lohe's dragon form scales would be pretty tough to crack, thus making Sine and Carol have to really work to earn their damage versus some dragons who have been softer to slice or harm in the past. The distinction between flame-resistance and explosion resistance became important as one needs to consider what exactly an energy attack might constitute! How much of that damage is heat or force, and the answer for that changes with the attack type. The mining lasers on Sine's suit I figured have to be more impact for example since they're already used to break through stone conceptually. I remember in the Carol/Sine fite I wanted Lohe to use Mage Hand but its weight limit lead to it being rejected, I just wanted something to make the aerial battle tip more towards her in the moment. Similarly, I considered having Lohe pull out Hidden Presence but worried it might feel a bit unbelievable as a mid battle skill and is more a good way for a sneaky approach or during some midbattle break. Another thing I was constantly asking myself was if I could work in that weakness about her voice, but again, the tides of a Brawl are varied. If her opponents had been a silly type it could have turned that way, but I was going pretty hard on the magic-casting dragon elements as her thing.

I really anticipate YUUGENMAGAN placing so low and I think the fact she did ended up disrupting Isabelle's little alliance a fair bit. The whole "electrical punches like an arc wielder" aspect made me a bit afraid of who I was willing to put her up against, I didn't want to nerf the punches to keep up the fite and Cherry disrupting her with her own electric powers was a way to dodge the obvious dangers of the fairly normal girl's potential high damage from taking even one of them. YuugenMagan's unique nature was definitely a fun focus as the eyes served like little targets and the electric body had its little flexibilities like collapsing and reappearing. I actually didn't call her Yuu too much specifically because her fites put her close to Yui, and when Yui was sent elsewhere I felt it was safe to start abbreviating the name some. I realize now YuugenMagan is the official touhou way of spelling but Brine has seemingly not used it in his own stuff, so Brine, if you are reading this, what's the word on that? I can go through and pop in the fix real quick if need be. That does remind me, nestled randomly in this character section I shall mention this was the first year I wrote the Brawl in Open Office instead of Microsoft Word. I had to tinker with a lot of settings starting out to make it look normal and not do weird things like autocompletes, but it had helpful features like a word replace function I used for Valerio and Pokemon so they'd have their little accents while I could type in the moment without worrying about them. On the other hand, the ctrl+f feature in Word let me see a sidebar with every instance of a term so I could easily flit about the markers I had for images while Open Office just has you jump through them one by one which made the art side a little harder. I don't have a Word license on the new laptop so I had to made do, but I wager I could get used to the small differences in time. Back on Yuu, I wager I probably made her a bit more projectile focused than she'd probably like to be, but also, are you going to try and fist fite a lady made of lightning? Her foes probably would do their best to deny the in-close options!

Steel Komodo:

While I've mostly been following the order of entrants as they appear in the topic, I feel I have to lead with ULTRAMAN TRIGGER here as he is our champion after all! Being our first kaiju-size champion did mean I had to make a lot of unexpected considerations on how to keep him busy, especially with almost no one able to match him in size. However we did at least have some powerhouses who could conceptually keep him busy so he wasn't just standing around doing nothing thanks to people like Isabelle. Some moments like needing to recharge were a good way of sidelining him briefly, but I definitely didn't want him off the table so long it felt like he was being put aside just to make things easier. In fact, when he gets submerged in the ground up to his waist it was a bit of a jab at my handling of Aevar back in BBB3 where I had him basically trapped in the ground for who knows how long before I was ready to use him again, but Trigger pulls himself out quickly enough that it's more just a situation than an excuse. Speaking of being in the ground, his ability to electrify himself was almost a bit of a knock on his ability to conceivably fite smaller opponents. However at least when Neptune was one him stabbing him so was Valerio, Trigger not wanting to harm his ally in the moment and Neptune not really dealing heavy damage anyway so it wasn't stupid for him to avoid using it. I did include a part of the pre-fite to emphasize that using the electric power constantly would probably be demanding on his power so instead we got a good mix of that in the brawl rather than repeated denial of cool contact fiting. I actually worried for a bit about things like how to even wound Trigger, after all Ultraman is a show for kids to watch so he never got his foot chopped off I wager, but even a being of light is finite mass so I figure it might work differently but still be possible. I was perhaps more interested in his Claw and Bow form for his weapon since a sword is just kind of a simple sliver of metal by comparison, although in the finale I was thinking of having Julia straight up steal and use the weapon for quite a while before recalling that he can just summon his weapon back. We still got a taste of that though, but there were certainly a lot of little mental adjustments to be done! He's a fast giant, but I made sure to throw in a comparison to swatting a fly so that people wouldn't assume he was missing on account of being slow, he's just also up against powerful foes! The opening where he tries to stomp a bunch of people was sort of similar in that it was designed to push off a question about why he doesn't just crush everyone. Once I knew the results I knew I couldn't have him return to Joy form for fear of rule lawyers or the like although I could see if having a little mileage, like that being an excuse for a brief break from battle or something. I was a little worried SK might make a canon reason for Ultraman Trigger sticking around longer for the Brawl before Knucklotec offered his blessing. The epilogue pic of Trigger was a bit difficult to draw and I had more ambitious ideas for it originally but it was hard to do the scale and while many years I draw epilogue art first this was just somewhere in the mix and I think that meant I knew I couldn't commit as much time to it. I do wish I had mixed in a few more flashy announcement things, Trigger has a lot of that stuff in his solo positing and all, but the Brawl needs to be done expediently and I sometimes have to rush through things like announcing attacks or acknowledging the way something unfolds. Another funny thing is I was emphasizing how the moon reflects sunlight just in case people wondered how he could recharge energy later in the brawl! This is one reason we got quick mentions of form changes for example, although I knew near the end limiting Sky From was key. The hailstorm not only pestered him physically, but it blocked his access to more recharge light, something I should have emphasized.

VALERIO also went quite the distance, although in general SK had some incredible highs. Naturally the biggest challenge with Valerio was trying to balance in his xenophobic views without it being flanderized or, even, the opposite. The reason he'd grab Neptune's sword is because of course getting caught up on every little thing that's foreign would be absurd, but he is still going to get his feathers ruffled if people draw attention to it. On the one hand, we kind of had a little "done wrong than done right" thing with him like we did with Josuke, where one person's message can't quite stick but then later Shirabe goes up against him as his inverse to make a point that challenges the character's core. For Josuke though that was to help him see the light, for Valerio was more to prod this part of Valerio as SK hadn't moved too deep into the turnaround yet and I didn't want to leave him in a pickle by having Valerio undergo a huge change. However, it is pretty easy to get angry if someone's got your argument backed in a corner, so hearing a hard truth was a good means for provoking Valerio into his fatal mistake. Still, I didn't want Valerio's failure to just be "he lost it" either! A lot of considerations with a complex character like this, and while I was a little worried when the character concept was revealed way back that it would be a bit too hard on the xenophobia, I think SK has crafted it into one of the most interesting character arcs of the season. To speak on his Eidolon, I did leave out the little brackets but it seems that people who use characters with eidolons do this too so I didn't feel too much shame in doing so. Journey Through the Decade did avoid abbreviation because sometimes I worry with certain acronyms people might not pick up on it quickly in the moment. The barcode power was so immensely flexible I could probably write ten brawls with it and never get all my ideas out of it. I wish I had Clawleone stay in platypunk form for longer as a result of it, but the limit on it being one altered history and Valerio had to focus to keep it going did lead to some premature cancelation of some powers. For example I wanted him to get the crowbar kill on Switch but I had cool JTTD powers I wanted to do mid-fite between them as well (no points for guessing why he killed the girl who notably complained about being in Agama!) but he just got the crowbar back for the kill. Moments like the Shakernaut revival and Clawleone reversal are definitely where I'd love to go with such a power set even if the entry emphasized its usefulness in making weapons, but I made sure not to leave out Valerio's preference either. It doesn't make sense if someone changes their fiting style just to make it cooler for the writer! One thing about JTTD was its usefulness at pushing Valerio towards that more angry side later in the Brawl so that it wouldn't reflect so poorly on Valerio. Guy got goaded! I did ruminate on the idea of attempting to draw JTTD in a KO pic, but it would have probably been hard and I'd get something wrong!

GRUNTILDA AND PIDDLES I had initially wished would have gone just a spot further for a final four with a clear villain in the same way last year's final four centralized on Felldrake. However, Grunty dropping a place lower meant Sophia got her big moment so it wasn't a loss! Grunty certainly had a lot to do in the Brawl, her Witchy Wagon a great focus for the Cardholders and very flexible thanks to her repair powers. I don't know how I would have written it without her ability to keep patching the thing up and I think the fact it finally got too wrecked that it had to change forms was almost me acknowledging it had trucked on for an absurd amount of time. I watched some videos of her use of vehicles in Nuts and Bolts to better understand her mechanisms and had a good deal of fun going down the wiki's list of Gruntbots to vary up her attacks. Her spells actually felt a little small in scope by comparison that I often worried maybe Grunty herself was sitting back a little much but you can't say there was ever a moment where she wasn't busy considering all the work she had to do! I didn't get too ambitious with the rhyming to keep a good flow going but I did try a few times to slip an interesting one rather than going for easy stuff, but I do remember from Banjo-Kazooie some rhymes were really strained so it might have been in the spirit to do so! The W.I.L.L. was an interesting situation, I knew I couldn't just tease it and then never use it, but I wasn't sure how to use such a powerful almost instant kill at first. However, I settled on it at first for just Tron Bonne, but it felt weird to have the W.I.L.L. get swept off the table so early. Originally they'd just empty the gun gradually of life so they can start using it again, but with her Cardholder powers it felt feasible they could expand its capacity a bit and so the idea of adding in a second tank was done pretty much just so Piddles could get a little comeuppance for using it in the first place and not being against the idea of Edward potentially betraying Gruntilda. I've said elsewhere the Cardholders didn't explode almost because there wasn't a good moment for it, their independent streaks meaning they didn't feel they had to work together if they didn't want to, but Piddles being attached to Grunty made me consider the idea of her being noted as disloyal a bit closer. She never did break her trust technically, Edward betrayed the cat here, but Piddles would have loved to see Grunty shot by the W.I.L.L. no doubt. Piddles has no visible hands so I tried to avoid drawing attention to that as she could hold things in Nuts and Bolts seemingly where she does seem a kinder cat than the fun way SK RPs her. Early on I wasn't sure how to handle the idea that Valerio would want to hurt Gruntilda based on his comments in the past, but he kind of chases after her at some points and at others has his focus elsewhere without hopefully straining believability, although the pre-fite already did some justifying work too!

 

KATSU THE INCINEROAR versus Roman Reigns was destined to happen the moment the feline entered, but the more I though on it, the more I thought two heels gravitating towards each other probably would go a little different in the wrestling world. I know heels fite all the time but there isn't the whole magnetism of a hero versus heel thing to work with, so it ended up getting that heel twist of them trying to work together but it not working out as the flashy Incineroar is denied the attention he craves. I wanted to make sure it didn't feel too abrupt even though I worried it might feel that way in the Brawl, but Pre-Fite lays it on thicker with Heyman doubting the cat and setting up the little rivalry the two had. Katsu was a good pick for keeping the difficult powers of Rafael at bay early without straining believability. I do wish I had reason to use his Z-Move, he didn't get a KO though and I feel a little bad when someone does an ultimate move and I have to show it didn't score a meaningful impact. Katsu has used it in FYM before though so it's not like he's never had a chance to explore his moveset, and him being against a fellow wrestler also meant we got some pretty straight wrestling action that required me to use many youtube videos of moves to make sure I remained accurate! I didn't stray too far from his Smash moveset since that's most of what comes up in his entry form, meaning I didn't plum Bulbapedia Learnsets for nifty attacks like I often do with Pokemon. While I did peg Cassandra for destroying the Kayfabe engine and all pretty early on, I wonder if Katsu had done better than Roman if I would have inverted the events as seen since I often can't resist a good appropriate battle. Funnily enough, while people expected Pokemon to battle each other here, the varied strategies the Pokemon entries employed barely made me think of them being from the same franchise. Katsu was treated more as a wrestler than the fire cat from Game Freak, so him going up against Tokaru or Raihan's team never really crossed my mind as I went all in on this Pokemon's unique approach.

I felt a little bad CAROL didn't earn a kill, but it was just a confluence of factors that lead to that situation. Maybe if three SK entrants didn't do amazingly I might have bent over backwards to give her a kill, but Carol in the pre-fite even says part of my justification for not going through with it. I think Carol could make another Brawl run and still be interesting, although we did get a small problem of Carol and Sine being incredibly similar in their powers that probably lead to them cannibalizing each other's moments. I wish the field was a better fit for Carol's tech side, Tombstone could have been an interesting Technopath moment perhaps, but Carol also didn't go far enough to make that feel right. However, I did try to get the firecracker her moments of showing her capability on her own against Ian and against a tough foe beside Sine as they gave Lohe a hard time even when essentially outmatched due to the dragon's resistances. Funnily enough, when Cornwind told me about the nano battlesuit Sine would use I asked him to leave the nanites out because it felt like it could do way too much, but when Carol entered with the nanite powers it was a boon because it gave the two some clear differentiation and one I could tinker with like moments where she lost an arm but could make a nanite replacement. Funnily enough I think if Sine had been more pro-allies Carol might have been able to utilize her technopath powers as part of an alliance with someone like Tron. I can understand if SK doesn't give her another run, retired characters are retired after all, but I think she could have another shot and still feel fresh, especially if she doesn't inadvertently end up pretty similar to another entry who she will also being fiting side by side with!

HarpyKuro:

MARISA would have really benefited from the Mega Man idea during her champion run a lot more, but you would have to be pretty prescient to know you'll do well enough to include such a power! Here however I did feel bad I couldn't really see the power to its max, but I also didn't want to sacrifice too many people on the power's altar just to give her a cool bag of tricks. Spreading KOs out is hard enough already! Metron's power was a useful one to take though in that it gave an excuse for keeping Cardholders busy and split for a while, but I do wonder the boundaries of this ability. How far could the power taking go? I never really considered its depths because Marisa wasn't destined to rack up a bunch of KOs for her championship defense, but at the same time she did make it a decent length into the Brawl so it wasn't like she fell out early. Perhaps if she had stuck with her alliance more maybe it could have come up, but also, her alliance got most of their kills later in the fite! I didn't want her kills to be just the Master Spark this year but I fell into that trap anyway, it's just a good punctuation mark! I think it was important to set it up though for the inverse later, although as mentioned I do have basically blanks in the planning for how someone dies these days but Isabelle was slotted to take her down to do a good show of power that the champion took someone tough to beat and show Isabelle is no slouch even if she wouldn't win the Brawl. One thing about Harpy's quick entry style this year was little details I ended up unsure about, like say, Marisa's broom is never mentioned in the entry! I figured it would be there and it's in her picture but as we all know with Dia wings, sometimes the image isn't the truth! I do appreciate the effort to not have her just reenter with the same details but Marisa was already pretty flexible too be honest, but I did think a lot about her new trick and it's never bad to have one!

The ability for PRIERE to turn into the Felicitation baton felt like something that wouldn't come up when I first saw it, especially since she has really no connections to others in this Brawl so I'd have to create an alliance for someone to wield her, but it found some niche uses like breaking a fall! A lot less physical damage if you're a thin baton bouncing away instead of a human grinding into the dirt! Well, demon, but she's all fleshy and such. Speaking of that, I almost went the whole Brawl without really making many boob or thicc jokes, hence a brief moment of laying it on thick with with the boobies in Switch's face. Some things people probably expect and shouldn't be denied, and it was quick enough that it wasn't defining Priere's Brawl run or anything. Her lack of magic attacks was definitely felt in moments like when I wrote her briefly tackling Trigger. Magic buffs do let people conceivably punch above their weight class but as mentioned earlier, a lot of buffs are sort of quickly brushed through rather than a character focus. It does mean Priere could take some heavy hits from people she was up against, but her own skills weren't quite as broad so she wasn't going to be reaching into the toybox for something that ended up defining the scene. I do wonder if I laid it on a little thick with critiquing that whole "killed 10 billion demons" claim, but it does take over like 30 years if you were even to count to a billion if you say a number a second, so it is kind of an unbelievable claim unless you carpet bomb a huge swathe of hell or something! I'm sure being a long-living overlord makes that more possible but still... that's a lot of killing! I tend to think a bit realistically about big numbers being thrown around I find though, and besides the pre-fite jokes it's not like it influenced her Brawl run or it felt like something I had to prove or disprove.

Pretty early on I knew exactly how LAHARL-CHAN was set to die. The votes were swinging pretty hard in Trigger's favor and Laharl-chan got little love so I figured it was safe to concoct the idea of the demoness picking a fite with the titanic brawler and losing. I didn't expect it to be first place vs. last place perfectly though, the votes usually don't hash out that way, and I always worry about repeating the whole "first place kills last place" idea I used all the way back with Mac Tonight since people might think that foretells the winner if they notice it happening. Still, an egotistical overlord looking to prove her might throwing herself into the deep end and paying for it made a powerful character going out immediately more feasible, and while there was the little rivalry set up with Priere, it felt less like Metron and Baltan who should come to blows. Priere goaded Laharl-chan into a contest instead of the two facing off, which was a convenient way to avoid unproductive Fite Yer' Self! They wouldn't be able to smack each other around for long, but maybe if Laharl-chan had lady luck on her side she could have had at least some offscreen feuding with Priere. Laharl-chan was probably the clearest victim of harphype though, having only really appeared in an antagonistic capacity in babyplot and thrown in the Brawl without people knowing her too well unless they had the Disgaea context. I was a little worried about having to rush through her powers in the Trigger fite, but since the worry there is usually telegraphing an impeding doom and fiting one of the top vote getters so early is kind of that already I removed the cuffs a little bit and indulged myself. She has a solid range of magic and all, I almost forgot to include the cool idea of her making people forget their own abilities, but that also gave us more time for her to face Trigger without the Ultraman whipping out the heavy stuff to wrap it up too soon. In fact, I actually reworked the scene some since I realized originally the kill was too fast! One advantage of writing regular fites in the past was getting the feel for how long til a kill I think, so I needed a bit to reacquaint myself with that aspect of Brawl writing.

For HAKRA AND ANGELLICA I didn't expect Angellica to be part of the entry despite being fairly sure we were getting Hakra this year, but it was a smart pull! While Angellica's monk skills were compared to the ones seen in Final Fantasy Tactic they were also not said to be directly from it, so instead we got the ki use as I saw fit to bend it rather than directly lifting techniques from the game. Considering they ended up in a mage alliance, having a physical fiter was probably a good call too. Hakra's magic though was my chance to get a little wild with a blank check. For the constellation magic I whipped up myself I always tried to copy Harpy's approach. If I had a character making spells based on constellations it would probably be more direct or all with the same twist, but Miss Bearington isn't just "a bear" and the dipper isn't just the item appearing for use. Hence, Dorado wasn't just a swordfish, it was one made of gold to reference El Dorado. Surprisingly, a fair bit of official constellations get kind of boring as they become things like a microscope and octant as more modern scientists started inventing them while others are just pieces of larger constellations and I wasn't sure about splitting them up. One constellation is literally the poop deck of a ship! Still, I tried to have her constellation magic be multifaceted instead of just direct translations of what the stars are said to be already. Angellica going a little crazy over Hakra's death wouldn't come to be, but instead we got her freaking out as they were separated to carry over some of that idea. Funnily enough, while I've told Harpy before it's a shame when Hakra's notable wordiness isn't expressed in a post when it feels appropriate, I ended up not having too much room for it in a Brawl, but again, a Brawl is not a big place for words so I couldn't quite have her be the rambling magic nerd.

AMANDA MUSE AND GUADALUPE went surprisingly deep in, but that allowed me to have a lot more fun with them! Guadalupe's object manifestation was specifically focused on items tied to common dreams people have. Hence, she attacked with teeth for the dream were teeth fall out, money for dreams of fortune, tombstones for dreams of death, and so on! Her entry still mentions a monster truck so I knew I had to throw that in there or miss a chance for awesomeness and the skateboard she grants Amanda is another moment where we embrace the more common media portrayal of dreams as places where logic just goes out the window in favor of the writers getting creative. However, if you give me too broad a power then you really are taking the limits off me too much! I had to rein myself in somehow and deciding to try and have a logic to an almost inherently illogical power I felt was key to making sure Guadalupe felt like she wasn't just pulling things out of nowhere. Her full moon trick I think is better saved for Cassandra's section though so we'll save that, but I will say that her specifically pulling it off was a result of me having one of the Big Bar War allies Amanda made already marked to kill her before I had divided people up, so Cassandra forcing some breaking of ranks in the two big alliances was important to getting Muse to her destined death. Amanda Muse's rubbery powers and over the top nature was definitely fun and let me be a bit rougher with her than many entrants. Having Guadalupe and an illogical body on hand meant I could slice her legs off early and her sticking around so long after isn't out of the realm of believability. I do often worry hurting someone too hard early might be a death flag in some people's eyes, I even made Ostarion take a hit early in the Brawl the year he won specifically to toy with that, but some characters just bounce back better from things like that and thus I don't need to hold back! Guadalupe and Angellica's wardrobe change from their art is something I made sure to nail in my head even though it ended up not mattering much, drawing Guadalupe was probably destined to never really happen with her intangibility. Her being intangible was a neat angle I found, it meant she really focused on the support use of her powers than more active forms of participation.

Very happy we got YUI as she was the rising star of Harpy's cast. Laharl-chan suffered for harphype being her only lifeline, Yui though it was a case where the harphype had to be embraced because it was appropriate! Yui had been getting a good focus and missing out on her until maybe next year when the flame faded would have been a bit unfortunate. In her entry it mentions Mao made a modification to her and I wondered if I would use that at all until we got to that river scene. To make the fite a bit more than just Yui bullying Flu in a setting she's more familiar with, I had the Mao mod be something that helped and hindered her in equal measure. That sawfish decoration in her hair is something that might not have even come up otherwise and I still worry addressing it might not have been the right call. Is it part of her, separate, these are the kinds of questions few people ever need to ask! Still, Mao has modified body and objects before so it isn't out the realm of possibility his secret upgrade went here, and it gave her something beside the rocket tail to do some ranged action. The rocket tail, despite its obvious danger, was actually less lethal seeming than the laser chainsaw so I leaned it on a bit harder so Yui wasn't always slicing through things with ease, although her attitude also worked in explaining why she wasn't carving up the whole Brawl with ease. I didn't want to write her dialogue as full caveman but I did worry whenever she spoke on how clear her speech should be, it is endearing she's not quite all the way there but also not fully broken English either. I do often feel a little weird having my own characters be a centerpiece of an alliance, but I think Yui was going to end up with friends anyway and she had the Antivenom connection in place which also kept her believably busy and up against foes she wouldn't fillet immediately. I did worry a bit about the rocket tail death perhaps being read as humiliation, hence why in the Brawl itself I never addressed it as her butt blowing up, but the detonation of her tail full of rockets still felt like a cleaner way of killing her than something that might be directly painful or make you wonder about the morality of whoever killed this sweet pure sawfish woman!

Hooded Pitohui:

While I worry I didn't capture the voice of SEAM even after reading like all their dialogue on the deltarune wiki, they were surprisingly flexible with that toy magic. I've always had a weird fascination with lawn darts as this sort of deadly toy that existed for a while so it wasn't a far stretch to make it the killing weapon for Nova's death, but trying to come up with other toys that weren't just branded ones was an interesting challenge. It almost distracted me from Seam's very wide net of magic types though, not that it showed in writing the Brawl. I tend to pop open the entrant forms when I'm trying to think of a cool spell for a specific moment so I certainly got refreshers on what they could do, the enchantments ended up perhaps one of the better areas of team support in the Brawl as Seam's magic kept being a great way to enhance a little fite even if they weren't participating. I think their weariness ended up deemphasized for that reason as they often weren't in the thick of things as they instead were aiding the other members of the quick to thin out Academic Alliance. I had worried about the bubbles of darkness Seam pulls the toys from but in RP itself we don't se Seam draw items out of there every time, again I imagine for expediency in writing since if you know a power's function, you don't need its process explained every time. It's more a flourish that could be neat to mention but sometimes I get hung up on these things! I guess Seam might have been part of what people thought might lead to mid-brawl business deals, but it's not like Greed or Chimata where it felt like a big part of a person's angle was to come in making proposals left and right. For some reason, even in a brawl with swords, the seam ripper felt like a bit of a brutal weapon to me, and at times Seam's magic felt so versatile I almost didn't feel like I had to whip it out. It was there when it was useful though... maybe it's just the fact it's a seam ripper and the user is named Seam that it felt so intense! I did wonder how far Seam's aversion to mentally restricting people went, they never faced the issue but the whole Pied Piper business is mass control of wild animals after all and hence Seam ponders it briefly. Being another foe like Muse who could take a lot of damage and keep moving though, it was fun to have them get knocked around and not really be put off by it, although I avoided ripping them up before it reached too far because... picking on an old cat is mean!

With MADELINE AND BADELINE returning after I accidentally dunked on them in their Rejected Secret Fiter Guest Appearance, I knew I had to do right by them this time! Madeline got the focus needed to show she could take down someone tough on her own (or at least, with the help of accepted ally Badeline) while Badeline also got the small win of having Madeline actually team up with people she gelled well with. Pushing forth both parts of this entrant's sort of split focus: proving one's self but accepting help when needed! It's not to such a degree I basically wrote her through an arc or anything but I wanted to make sure it wasn't just the Madeline show with Badeline providing cool superpowers on top of it. Of course, since Madeline herself is mostly just a slightly gifted normal girl her attacks wouldn't be as flashy as what Badeline could bring to bear, but I wanted to make sure the spotlight was still mostly on the main entrant s that I wouldnt' fall into the temptation of making it all about those special powers. In fact I sometimes worried Badeline wasn't doing enough to assist! However, luckily the fites involving Madeline's broader alliance could at least keep people busy and Badeline would swoop in with assists even if she wasn't throwing herself directly in the fray the way Madeline was. Also yes, please, in the future, tell me if I'm mispelling a character's name consistently! The mention in the entry form of her looking for a weapon that fits made me wonder if this was a loose end for me to potentially snag on or a hint at future character work Pitohui might have planned, but I felt this Brawl was a bit low on weapons that were easy to steal so I'm not sure how tempted I would have been anyway. Some weapons like Sapphire's trident certainly wouldn't be good for a potential click anyway as they belong to someone clearly while Neptune's sword could have felt too basic as the breakthrough weapon type.

Unfortunately I don't like playing as MIN-MIN in Smash so her abilities felt less familiar than someone like Katsu's... but also that's because in Smash so many of Min-Min's skills feel similar so it's not like there was some deep well I wasn't drawing from! Instead it was just going to be a matter of fiting with those stretchy limbs, and early on I came up with the idea of the noodle limb pileup because of it. Betty and Min-Min were candidates and Muse has the rubber hose kind of inspiration so I almost had art made of them in the ultimate arm tangle, but I think it was best as a brief hinderance. In fact I often worry making art of a small moment, even one worthy of a picture, might feel a bit underwhelming when the fite moves on quickly from it. It's best not to burn time sitting in one space though! I do wish I had thought of more creative uses for her arms, it was actually a bit of surprise when writing that she has no real normal way of grabbing things from range with her three hand types, but I feel in the right situation she could have gotten pretty flashy with limb use! The three she has are certainly a good mix that ensured some variety, and considering she was part of an alliance it didn't feel like she had to leave her comfort zone of using her limbs from afar very much. Her whole heroic nature and friendly attitude was certainly why I felt she would slot into a group fairly well even if there was none that really matched a sort of People's Heroes concept that might have felt like a more snug fit. However, it let Min-Min stay active and in the action for quite a while too! When I was drawing the lines for who kills who in the Brawl I actually forgot to put Dakota the horse on the paper but already I had the Betty Spaghetty fite planned for Min-Min so giving her the kill on the horse when I noticed my error was just an obvious way to make sure the noodle-armed hero left a mark before she'd have to meet her end!

SHIRABE joins the ranks of people you're just supposed to assume are using their thing when they do, in her case being the roller skates. I think in a few points it is mentioned but again, she's a ninja, she's going to move around a lot, I don't want to say she's skating every time she does so! It's not a real problem, it's just something I'm oddly cognizant of. Anyway, I really liked the idea of using the big shuriken more as a slicing and slashing weapon than perhaps a ninja would, but at the same time, distance wasn't on Shirabe's side in many of her fites, and throwing and calling a thing that big back felt like it needed some appreciable delay to sell its power and heft. This wasn't some tiny blade that could come sailing back, its return trip would be just as deadly and I think I rejected a few ideas of that being the killing blow. Sometimes I like returning weapons, other times they stop the fun, so there's no best way to handle it! I liked that the throwing star had little sawblades so it wasn't always the commital big star throw although I also had to resist leaning on them so much because projectiles are always a good trick. Log Substitution was really fun to play with because it was perfect for getting her out of binds against the oddly physical foes she went up against. Of course people like Doppio and Valerio would want to get in close and Shirabe's actually more a midrange fiter in some ways due to her weapon's size. It was a little hard to emphasize true ninja abilities with how I decided to position her foes, although her intro in the barracks was meant to lean into the actual stealth. She ended up in the open or situations with no easy escape, but also it let her get into little alliances like with Annie or Sophia rather reasonably since she didn't depend on stealth like Komi would. Naturally I needed to delay Annie joining up with her or else Shirabe would not have much independent work until near the very end, but she went surprisingly far. I didn't expect her to be the best performing Pitohui entry, I thought Seam might claim that, but that meant I probably spent more time thinking on Shirabe's mindset and lead to moments like how she'd feel about Valerio and all that, so it was able to draw more out of her and make her more than a ninja in the Brawl. 

And last of the Pitohui characters, TOKARU AND NEPHILA. To make sure I didn't just keep calling them Seviper and Ariados in the Brawl I sorta nailed their actual names in my head but probably ended up with the opposite issue where I didn't call them by their Pokemon species enough! Tokaru so much so that even as I see wild Seviper in Pokemon Go now I call them Tokaru first! I actually really enjoyed writing their moment in the Brawl a lot even though they went down with no KOS due to placement, although Baccarat and Ryndur both were struggling to stay up after. If not for their need to perform well in later fites that kind of damage those two took probably would have been debilitating or deadly in other contexts! Maybe even a double KO if the standings had been nicer. Still, I remember a lot of little details of the fite, maybe because I felt I was finding my Brawl legs more with their skirmish in the jungle as it weaved between characters and had neat little moments like breaking into the AT-ST or Tokaru's fang straight up stabbing all the way through Baccarat's arm. Tokaru being the more independent and Nephila being the put upon aide felt like the right way to write their brief time with us, the two not able to be said to have not worked together but also Tokaru wasn't really going to be able to help a bug up in the trees much. I actually remember getting towards the end of Nephila and Ryndur's fite and not being sure how to wrap it up as I was nearing it actually leaving Ryndur unable to defend himself, but sometimes I do like the slow drain and a spider burning because it can't put out flames felt like it worked and was a bit of a different death method. For some reason I really liked the image of Seviper sharpening its tail by rubbing it on bark and I feel I must have seen that somewhere, maybe even in Pitohui's RP, but I can't be sure. While they got no kills and I'm sure others would have wanted more from them, I love their little spot in the Brawl and is one of the things I remember easiest when thinking back on it, again I wonder if it's just because I'm the writer but it felt like it had the right moving parts, the right amount of wear on both sides, and I don't think I left out much from the two Pokemon in how they fought as definitive things like the Electro Web or Tokaru's weaker poison were relevant. I know everyone wants people to go further but I'm pretty satisfied with the shape of their battle!

Seychelles:

Our new user and their only entrant, RAIHAN WITH HUMMER AND GATEKEEPER! I remember during entries I thought the Sandstorm would be a bigger deal but I think also making it too big a deal would probably make taking out Raihan or Hummer a bigger deal for the Brawlers. However it was part of the big reason behind making Cassidy teaming up with Raihan make some narrative sense rather than it just being Bree and her friend's entry working together.  Since these Pokemon use the four move locked set there was no wiki digging for cool moves, but naturally I made the same assumptions as I did for when Pokemon like Goomy entered the Brawl with a limited moveset as well. There's no reason a Pokemon can't do basic attacks with their body despite having the locked moveset, but it's not like Flygon's natural wing and claw could rend metal without explicitly using their special attacks. For Gigantamax Duraludon I tried to keep to the game mechanics as well, you get three turns of attacks with a G-Max Pokemon so it only used three of its special moves for the fiting. Originally though I did have the rockfall just be a way of shifting around Brawlers but I edited it out so that it could contribute to Stella's kill of Saki. Basically every move that Gatekeeper did while big did some work, although Depletion on Trigger wasn't enough to save the giant Pokemon from its fate. The wiki dig of Trigger's moves made me want to use that earthquake move as an attack and who better than the skyscraper sized Pokemon, who I did take quite a few shortcuts when drawing mainly because every time I tried to add detail it would make it look worse! You shouldn't even see Gatekeeper's face from the side but that made the kill look less interesting so I fudged it a little. Hummer and Gatekeeper didn't really have any combo moves from what I read of their attacks, it's not like a rain dancer being teamed up with someone with thunder, but I did try to make Duralodon and its Iron Defense a wall that could step in and protect the team. For a bit I actually wasn't sure how I wanted to handle Raihan's death, the Pokemon were definitely physically involved in the fite and had natural drops but their trainer couldn't really stand against superhumans, hence why he dropped so quickly after Gatekeeper rather than having much solo time. Again, it can be assumed Raihan was issuing orders for attacks often enough even if I didn't write out the dialogue every time. I did try to make sure Gatekeeper going big didn't lead to an immediate death as has happened in the past with super modes and such, the death wasn't too far since it can't really sustain a three attack form for too long though and that made it feel a little less bad than having the super size mean death is iminent. In fact, in early plans, I had considered Gatekeeper going big early to keep Trigger busy and then reduce in size, Trigger even killing it while it wasn't even G-Maxed!

Cornwind Evil:

SINE was a surprise, I had really thought she was done with Brawling, but I guess Dawn had been too until I requested her, so we never know how the fates might align! Cornwind did say he had a good feeling about winning this year so maybe that motivated the entry some? I do think Sine wanting to go MOSTLY solo was a good way of keeping me from doing my typical pre-fite Cosineau meeting, but they do take this more seriously than most people! As mentioned earlier Carol and Sine having similar suits was a bit of a worry at times as I didn't want them to just be clones or feel like they kept doing the same things as each other, but if you notice Sine got one kill with her unique flares and one with her mining laser, both skills unique to her version of the Rescue Suit. Funnily enough her placement here was only a single spot over her BBB2 run but still far better just because of the field size and she did quite a lot this Brawl! Again, her difference from Carol in having the voice modulator thing also was a big inspiration for just having a moment to use her classic WORDS to her advantage and kick of the Big Bar War. Planning when to use the Unibeam for her and Carol was another thing, you don't want it to only crop up before someone's going to die and I had different plans for kill moves, so figuring out when to whip out such a draining attack would be important to avoid telegraphing someone's fate. I don't know if this is Sine's last run and that might even change even if that's the plan, but I definitely tried to treat the character with respect. Funnily enough, even with the power overlap with her wife, I think Sine's solo plan did let more focus on her than other times she's swung around for a brawl since BBB2, sometimes being part of an alliance means you show up a lot, other times being on your own means you can weave into many conflicts easily. One consideration I did worry about were things like the shoulder-mounted stinger missiles and how many she'd reasonably have in the armor. Iron Man probably uses them like once a fight but he doesn't get in Brawls now does he? Sine had many moments where such tools could help so drawing from them more than once was logical, but how many solid explosives fit in a pretty lean battle suit? I tried to limit it somewhat but also not deny us some cool attacks.

I think it was very fortunate I played WWE All Stars close to this Brawl as ROMAN REIGNS AND PAUL HEYMAN were more familiar to me because of it, mainly because I binged a Youtuber's channel who does career retrospectives and stuff. Funnily enough that's why Heyman stalled by mentioning a specific steak restaurant as I learned from comments the dude loves to big up the steak restaurants he drops by at unusual hours. Otherwise though Heyman was an interesting consideration. I will continue to say that barrier he had wasn't completely invincible for the sake of never allowing such a thing in a Brawl, but rather than showing the limits in a way that might bug people, it instead was a good fit for the Bloodgorger's ability to eat anything, a line-up of powers I thought of pretty early. It also ended up being a way to get around the kayfabe engine's sometimes over the top defenses and assistance as I could strip it away without people saying that maybe the kayfabe engine would have kept Roman going. On theo ther hand, that engine was very helpful for keeping Rafael busy as I wasn't sure how I wanted to play literal magma and kayfabe is the perfect place for loose lava rules to become a literal aspect of the fite. Those earlier mentioned videos and WWE All Stars lead to my better understanding of wrestling moves and terminology both in general and in Roman's specific case. Roman's not in that game though! But, like, I finally won't forget what an Irish Whip is! Roman being a heel here was why he was specifically chosen to take down the big vote getter of Jaco Sousa, the in-character jusitifcation I think making it work better than if just some other Brawler happened to kill Sousa and drop one of the top seeds for the Brawl so surprisingly early. I've mentioned I didn't want to just repeat jokes or concepts from the TTT after Heyman's performance there was kind of the most memorable part of it, but before vote closing I wasn't sure what ideas I wanted to do beyond the shield break. Like, Heyman countering the Pied Piper's pipe wasn't the reason that he faced off with Sousa after the pipe was stolen, that kill was planned first and then later I worked out the idea of Heyman's contribution, although also it was nice to have him briefly lose his voice so I could take a break from the dialogue heavy character! I almost wonder if Jim in older Brawls hadn't done the commentary thing if I might have been tempted to have Heyman do more general commentary too, as in, I had this thought during Brawl writing even, but Heyman sticking to his client made his assist style unique. It did make me not write much Roman dialogue though, the talker always could phrase it in more interesting ways than the fiter!

Our second run for JULIA I didn't expect to go as well or even better than last year but it sure did! I've mentioned it in bits and pieces elsewhere but the finale was an everchanging beast as I tried to figure out how Julia could cover the power gap. Sure, Julia is one of the strongest in pure power here, but size still meant unless there was an equalizer it might have been too David and Goliath but David loses. Originally I planned Glutton to sort of spread out in a set of long thing limbs almost like the Iron Spider attachment in Spider-Man but with even more arms. They'd take different shapes and Julia would walk on some of the limbs so she'd be taller if not nearly of a height with Trigger. This was going to be caused by eating Knucklotec parts even then but I realized the big fists made more sense as the strange corruption, but I was thankful the entry specifically allowed for odd reactions between Glutton and what he ate so it had some grounding instead of being a pull from nowhere! Glutton being not quite a symbiote made it hard to refer to him then and even now as I keep leaning back on armor-like being. I did keep getting tempted to do symbiote powers, I had to edit some parts of the Dannick fite when I leaned too hard into it mostly by way of it taking less weapon shaped forms. This isn't Cauren with Ensemble! The ability to be removed allowed Glutton to have some moments in the Trigger fite that a symbiote couldn't, mainly getting out of binds like separation. Redemption ended up getting no play in the Brawl, mainly because I needed to keep Julia topped off power-wise for that finale. She did fite Dannick and Gruntilda as her continuation of that old justice-obsessed mindset but it was written to feel like she did so with less fervor, but if she had whipped out Redemption for either of them it would probably have to go away after as I wouldn't want to insule someone like Trigger by saying the Redemption shard hurt him. The fact it's supposed to have build-up time also makes sense as to why she never whipped it out, it just wasn't convenient!

For IAN it was a matter of figuring out even how his motivations might land. We got early confirmation he would keep his card secret but also he might be tempted to assist the Cardholders in secret, but they weren't exactly going to stick around him so he became more of an independent Brawler. I did like the idea in his entry of him being wary and picking his shots, hence his attempts to be an opportunist. He'd stand and fite sure, he may have tried to avoid Trigger's attention when the attack didn't work out but he was willing to confront YuugenMagana and Carol at his own risk, but he'd open with an attack meant to put things heavily in his favor first. I kind of skipped over the mention of the Ditto support deliberately, I feel like Amity and Miracle support MANY brawlers so we can't have them powering everyone up, and then there's that small question of if powering someone up from the stands is even fair game. Naturally, reading the finger gun as an option made me tempted to whip it out, although it wasn't always intended to be a kill move. However, getting his gun away from him did feel like the kind of backstep where he'd actually resort to the power and it was a good way to bring the Yuu fite to a close, a flashy finisher rather than just using one of the gun's modes. Naturally since I was provided a list of gun types I tried to go through a good deal of them, although I also found myself asking why he might use something like a submachine gun when he's got better options and no ammo limitations to draw him towards it. The whole card influence on his shots leading to the Wanted bullet bend was probably more because of the nature of where he fought. Flashy ricochets in an open battlefield weren't as easy to justify but I didn't want him to just be firing normally either, so the twisted bullet path felt like it was a good shift. Also, I don't remember vetoing Ian's extra guns even though I believe I did, but it does feel a little hat on a hat considering Incarnate is already a gun fiesta. As for why he got wrecked by both alliances, the ego had to be punished somehow! Ian was more of a pestering sort than a jerk, at least that's what I tried to make him, so that the punishment was for overextending rather than really treating people poorly. I think it was SK's vote that emphasized Ian's blades over his guns that made me make sure not to forget myself they did have some slashing options when the opponent closed in!

While I expected Liz and Ard after the DYM last year, I'm certainly happy we got SCARS instead. A legitimate surprise as nothing on the wind had really suggested it and now we have Scars art too! That weapon did raise some interesting questions though. With it able to cut so easily, why would Scars need a garrote in the Brawl, and even when I had her use it on Panse I had to really convince myself it was justified over the blade. Then again, Scars having the greater focus on Julia's success over her own was a solid excuse for her not just taking every chance to kill she had, as killing Panse immediately wouldn't necessarily put Silvania on any backfoot. The blade's incredible ability is why I wasn't tempted to think up a secret trick despite the entry form saying she might have snuck one in, but the poison needles at least had clear purpose in that they're projectiles and weaken a foe. While Julia's broader alliance was one of the looser ones in terms of people even sticking together or working on the same side, Scars was made to be the one absolutely loyal one since she was fiting first and foremost for Julia's success. Still, I didn't want her to only be the Julia assistant, hence her mutual kill on Panse being a mostly independent fite. I do try to avoid doing Double KOs too much for fear of them being seen as shortcuts or undermining that mystery of who will come out on top, but while Roxie and Pablo would die at once, the only one I had marked down as a definite 2KO in planning I believe was Scars and Panse. I didn't want Panserugelbjorn to go out early and just be a pointless addition to the Silvania entry and one reason he got a kill was for that reason, but I also wanted to make sure Scars got a kill all her own so I figured they'd just do a mutual takedown. I think of Cornwind's cast here I would have been happiest with a Scars win and even had an epilogue idea if she had that I like too much too share JUST IN CASE. Scars killing Panse was actually I think an extinction of her being willing to hurt anyone too. I wrote Panse pretty cute at times and before the Brawl we mostly saw Panse just being a chill animal, so while we knew it was a killer owlbear at heart, having someone else do it could have been a little mean feeling without more justification. I don't think it's that big a deal, but killing an animal that acts like an animal can risk such things!

Jumpropeman:

One thing I realized long ago about LEGO INDIANA JONES is he's not really the best fit for combat, but I was so happy with his arc last year I had to enter him this year! I had thought most of his friends weren't going to enter, but having Edward along gave Indy a good focus for his action and a way to stick in a fite without having to address the fact that whip isn't as flexible a weapon as you think! It's not meant to break flesh or body, so early on I realized the Witchy Wagon was a good target, hence why he'd end up going down to Grunty as he tried to use his power there. I think mostly the thing is, unlike in a LEGO game, reforming LEGO bricks into a new object isn't too believable without the right stuff. I think of things like Indy making a little car out of something but the wheels wouldn't make sense to build for example, so it tends to be him building simple objects like battering rams. His attitude is probably the better aspect of him to focus on no matter what he's up to, hence why we got things like him talking to Flu after realizing he couldn't repair the walker. I wasn't sure how I'd want him to kill Rafael originally, although he was picked because whipping the lava armor off gave him a unique edge and it's usually good to have someone die because they were countered or overcome rather than lucky shots or whatever. Indy's gooey magic body probably was always going to be something with situational importance so it ended up not showing up, especially when the death he ended up with was one that was total rather than a weardown. I feel a little bad that him outrunning Knud's rock was just kind of a throwaway moment, but he also had his rock escape last year on Regiplot so I didn't think milking it would be the best either. I think I could have worked it in more naturally is my main regret. 

For ANTIVENOM I wavered even on entering them as a team! I thought of a Master System/Pablo entry, a Roxie alone entry, a Cherry and her dad entry, but seperating or leaving out members felt strange so I asked permission from the group and made sure to reword the Brawl rules since we had already had four member teams and such in the past. Most of these musicians aren't capable fiters after all! I think Chao was pushing for Master System to use her Sega powers on top of her keyboard in the Brawl but honestly they're so similar it didn't feel necessary. Plus, I didn't need to think of Sega games to tie her disorienting effects to, but I also had her fite a robot she couldn't impact and an alien. She was one of a few of my characters I sacrificed on the altar of giving other people moments, I bet if she was someone else's character I would have been more creative and tried to squeeze more out of her, but I do that already when they're on plots! I kept to mostly calling her Master System instead of Madison partly to prevent confusion and partly because no other Hard Girl has been called by her real name in the Brawl, although that's often because the name isn't known before the Brawl. Cherry dropped sooner than I might have done if Pablo hadn't become the surprise hit of the Antivenom band, and considering the band placed so high I didn't want too many to drop out early. The double KO was more from me trying to keep them around to justify the placement, although it did lead to a good combo move at least. Funnily enough I think Pablo might have the most flexible music powers, there's nothing like Roxie being resisted by things she can't poison to keep him down. Cherry and Master System being upset about dying early was something I meant to follow up on more post-brawl and we saw some of Cherry's thoughts, but still haven't got to Madison. I was wary about damaging any bandmates too much before they died though, they have instruments that need to be shipshape to use and it's not like Roxie can play guitar without a hand, hence why she lost a foot instead! Funnily enough even though the Pre-Fite said Sanae might take up Master System's keyboard it felt like a power down to me so it never happened. I almost nerfed Cherry's rockets harder since she is the toughest of the team, but generally I don't think they came off as too strong. If anything, maybe I wrote them a little too weak...

3DS AND SWITCH are a good show of me gradually getting a bit overwhelmed by my video game girl powers. Always needing to think up or dig up a 3DS game and then figure out its hazards to draw from for 3DS kind of makes the power less appealing after having already done so as much as I have with other girls the past few years. Post-Brawl we now know she has a power she didn't use but also not really one she was ever in the kind of bind it would make or break her performance, but mostly I think I might just trim down power sets to be flexible but not so broad... like Switch's! Switch is based on hardware features and the Switch only has so many of them, although I did add the Labo to make sure there was some more eccentric ideas on the table. I didn't have her use the Labo robot because it feels like it might one day get a big flashy moment as Switch's big trick, but considering her death it's not like she would have been able to whip it out to win and Valerio, on his surface, isn't the kind of foe that feels like you'd need a big power to beat. The main thing about writing Switch was how often she should be Joycons or her normal self as the Joycon form is a lot more flexible but switching in and out of forms too often would be disorienting for the reader. I've often struggled with how strong I want the stylus to be and even feel weird describing its Pop power, even when it's a simple burst of power, so it always feels a little overexplained when it happens. Naturally I had 3DS die first so Switch and Nova got more time to work as a team but I didn't split the group as much as I thought when I wrote the two Nintendo pair entries. GBC will probably get her year next year but it felt like we already had too much Nintendo with these girls and the pairs were already present and obvious in RP while GBC is more of the leader and a singular figure for it.

Over with GAMECUBE AND VIRTUAL BOY we find someone else sacrificed on the altar of others looking good, Virtual Boy! While not a full pacifist she was going to be the hardest of the girls to write, not so much because of her aversion to causing pain but because her powers are really weird! Again I bet if someone else entered her I'd be overwhelmed with how many possibilities I could think up but I've been writing her for a while so I don't like repeating myself too much. As such I try to think of cooler options she can tweak in new ways and that just wears down the list of believable options to tinker with. Originally more girls were going to get extra powers the way GBC and 3DS did before they were upgraded to main cast but Virtual Boy's idea was still to have instead more specific conditions applied to a situation like a brief application of tennis rules from Mario's Tennis or something. She was the assistant though mostly because of her mindset rather than my willingness to sacrifice her for the sake of others and she doens't feel bad at all about her performance. I do wish I had given her more attention in some form, but Gamecube at least got to do her stuff. I think her powers of the Nintendo Girls is the easiest to write even if I do dig deep sometimes, again for variety's sake. Still, it's easier to make something shoot out Wavebird's gun, although pulls like the Spyro head shot felt weird even for me! Wavebird's size is still something I feel is nebulous and writing out her announcing all her attacks would be tedious so again, make your assumptions it's happening every time please. Gamecube not outliving her allies was a good thing for her as she never got put too hard upon in the physical capability department, although Don Clawleone was picked to kill her because I know some people would feel bad about their character doing the deed. While her "So I was thinking" statements are a big part of her character, I kept it to the Pre-Fite where such musings feel more plausible to come out. One thing that has kept me from doing it more often is it doesn't feel right to throw them in randomly, she has to be in a situation where she'd just be idly musing about something!

It was hard to pick my fifth entry when I decided no Game Boy Color, but it let ANI to continue to be surprisingly relevant. The reason she didn't get a kill at all herself though was again me placing my own entrants on the sacrificial altar, but being part of the Academic Alliance meant she wasn't straight up shoved to her doom without contributing. Her and Sousa were almost like the parents of that alliance and basically the reason it even came together, not sure I'd ally Hakra with Sousa without the connective bridge of the more serious professor. Brume magic also falls into a similar field as digital magic in that often I'm sitting there trying to concoct a cool power from a limited but still very broad resource pool. Wondering about which old magics to reuse and which new ones to try and cook up has made Ani's actual battle time a bit more complicated than it needs to be. Naturally I don't want one or the other because mentioning cool tricks in a Brawl entry only to have none appear in the Brawl is bad form I feel even if you have a huge fountain of opportunity to work with. I was perhaps a bit too tempted to lean on normal magic at times and had to fite that urge even though it's part of Ani's kit, which raises an odd question. Why would I be fine falling back on a fireball but not using another cool book-based trick only the second time ever? I didn't expect Ani to do well but it is nice to be able to enter a side character that might have otherwise never had the chance to fite in a Brawl, I don't think she was on anyone's radar for an entrant!

M Sheep:

The surprise return of EDWARD LOCKHAND was actually a pretty good chance to experiment with stuff I didn't do last time, although I almost totally repeated the old "what if someone has a coin in them and it expands" KO method he used on Bubba last year. However, while I was careful not to bust the purse in BBB11, I ended up doing here and keeping Edward going for quite a while, after he lost his arm too! Again, I am cognizant sometimes I raise some death flags so every now and then I like to throw in something to surprise people, although I'm not sure how feasible it was that he kept holding the coins in between his fingers as I needed him to carry a few at once. I guess it depends on the coin's thickness more than its size. I enjoyed playing up more of his moral strangeness this year after the interesting interaction with Sonho on the Soul of Agama plot. Some things were certainly left deliberately unexplained, Edward working with Piddles after she and Grunty killed Indiana might be a lot for him emotionally depending on how Sheep plays him... but it could also be a conniving plan to get that later revenge by pushing back those feelings. On the other hand, maybe he was more willing to put aside personal problems in pursuit of that top prize, and that unique mindset is also why we got that moment where he admits he's out of his league against some of the last fiters and sits back waiting for them to kill each other. At least until he finds Baccarat's card deck of course so that we didn't get fully inactivity. The stand I feel got emphasized more this Brawl too although I did intend to leave him charging more initially before I realized it didn't pan out with where he needed to be at a point. Some Edward discussion has been spread across previous character stuff... Chao stuff mainly, like him being slated to use Annie's chemicals and all a lot more than he ultimately did because I couldn't resist the purse busting end for Indy. Baccarat's deck was meant to make you think Ed still had a chance since he'd have a variety of weapons if he could overcome Shirabe, but he didn't win out in that fite! I think being just Indy's partner (Consistently, he made a few allies like Sophia with quick thinking!) helped Edward take the lead a bit more, I might have had more power fun last year but I think this was definitely more a character year for Ed, especially since he was barely put together near the end.

Who could have guessed JACO SOUSA would place so low with so many votes? 53rd place for who I think did have the highest vote total shows the tractor can be very fickle even Trigger who was at least nearly the same placed top and Laharl-chan placed bottom. Sort of similar to Marisa this did mean I didn't get to be as wild as I wanted to be with his device and its mix and match magic, although also I was a bit confused about its nature as the spiral shell piece and the batons both appeared important to function. I used stretchy language to ensure that it was more often noted the device was performing the functions than specific parts, but I perhaps also made the small mistake of putting him on a team of magic users which limited which magic he could take and reshape. I really should have gotten creative with the digital magic being absorbed from the Nintendo Girls, but the Pied Piper's music was a fun way to mix in something unusual. Almaric was a godsend for quickly piling in the spells since I didn't think Sousa would be the kind to just turn to Ani or Hakra and say "fill 'er up" unless he had an immediate plan for how to use it. His bad back was the reason for the specific way he died to Roman Reigns but he didn't stick around enough for me to emphasize his fatigue too much in this rather fatigue heavy brawl! I can definitely imagine a lot more shenanigans if he had gone much further with his eccentric personality and the potential for a growing magic collection, although I was a bit unsure how to draw him since his face claim doens't quite look how the professor is described in RP but also I get nervous when drawing a fully original costume. Luckily that Roman Reigns attack covered a lot of the body! I do feel the Academic Alliance Pre-Fite Show segment was a little rushed specifically so I didn't get caught up in having the philosophical debates, however light-hearted, I imagine Sousa and Ani could have over the alliance and tactics. Still, I hope I at least showed some of his adventurous side with things like quickly scooping up the pipe of the piper for some rat dancing!

I think BOSS HORSEHEAD was probably the biggest surprise for characters we know entering, I really hadn't thought of who in Sheep's cast could fill spots besides some of the more obvious ones like Cassandra but Horsehead returning afterh is plot day is another interesting bit of us getting a chance to get to know a small antagonist a bit better. Boss Horsehead might be one of the highest placing fiters to earn no direct KO but I felt it fit in with his character. He wasn't going to get his hands personally dirty unless someone confronted him, and even among his powers there weren't many built for killing and he is specifically noted as averse to putting in extra work. Trying to balance that laziness with being an interesting fiter was an interesting ask, it's why we didn't get stuff like the shapeshift. However I'm glad I put some jungle in so Horsehead would have a domain to harass, a spoiler who would shake up fites nearby and lead to one of the more important Brawl shifts with Knucklotec joining the fite because the 10,000 fiters boast was an easy means of justifying the Brawl host battling. I do wonder if I hadn't had Reines around if I would have been tempted to use those little gold hairs as a way of taking him over, but with her powers capable of wrecking the jungle and Horsehead relying on it, I knew his fate would be to finally get his comeuppance after a lot of petty harassment. I also thought it would be cute for him to get caught in Nephila's web so long after her departure for the end, spider webs won't just go away after all and it was a nice way of saying "hey, remember that stuff earlier in the Brawl?". Naturally I'm going to wonder if I could have made him more a bother during jungle stuff but I also wonder if it could be laying it on too thick for Horsehead to always poke his nose into fites nearby with some silliness. Still, his strangeness lead to a good focus for an untraditional fiting method of mostly not even trying to go for the kill too hard, just revelling in the chaos he could spread to those who dared enter his neck of the woods.

Originally for CASSANDRA I did want her demon form to manifest but struggled to think of a means of doing so. If Widow Maker hadn't whipped out the calendar in the vote I might have even just said it totally was a full moon that night you guys! I thought of other little things like maybe Isabelle flies up and is framed in the spot of the moon that isn't visible and that completes the full moon, or maybe I'd use the whole "moon is sunlight reflected" excuse and have some sunny thing trigger him, but I wanted to seed in people's mind it could be an unusual method besides the actual moon, hence Seam's failed attempt before Guadalupe used dreams as an easy way to justify manifesting one. I think I might have been able to use Lesser Demon more than I did, I think I was worried of oversaturating it since I wanted to save Bloodgorger for the good stuff against Roman Reigns later but also didn't want Cassandra to be whipping out imps the whole time until her end. It was a delicate balance, especially since Lesser Demon's touch sounds pretty deadly, even more worrisome than Bloodgorger's concept eating since that dude at least ain't smart enough to normally use it unless it is in his way of a meal. Cassandra's wards and bindings are something I realized I wasn't using enough but again it's a bit odd to throw in somewhere that someone's just doing some defensive strategy so we mostly got mentions during direct moments of relevance. Of course, once demon form was on the table she became a pure brute, and while that did spell her end, I think the demon form is kind of the rampaging monster that would just keep going until it was finally put down compared to a mega form or whatever that not everyone would go out of their way to immediately end. How "weird" to make her was a worrying aspect of also wanting her in the Academic Alliance, I think she'd know better than to talk ill directly to the two professors but also the group might be a bit too social and in Hakra's case friendly for the awkward demonologist we've seen elsewhere.  Not every alliance is one of hobknobbing and karoake nights though so I figured she'd at least recognize the value of not being a lone target if her demonds were down. I do wish I could use the poetic language for the demon summoning without again impacting fite flow or giving myself a bunch of work, I quite like how Sheep describes them! I think the desire to get her to demon form eventually lead to no real rebelliong from the demons, although it was a good way to get Bloodgorger off the field after his kill and put Cassandra in positions without her literally heaviest hitter. Similarly, her need to speak her spells wasn't often mentioned until it became a hindrance with her nearly blowing herself up, that also a justification for why she'd want to go demon form since she was doing fairly well before the almost self-KO!

One thing I tried to do this Brawl was build scenes, and CAP'N MORLOC was good for that with his ship. Sometimes in a Brawl people are just kind fiting out in the open and with their usual attack sets and I don't think entirely avoiding that is either a possibility or a good idea, but things like the early fite on Morloc's ship provide a pretty distinct moment in time to remember, hence why the later ship fite was also focused more on the exterior as he fites against Microwave Man. Things like Neptune and Valerio fiting on Trigger were more interesting because they have that unusual setup to the fite and I think that's just another way to add a bit more energy and memorability in the same way that having multiple fiters in a confrontation spices things up. I was a bit sad I couldn't think of anything for Keen to take literally and I worry I didn't write Morloc's dialogue the best, I think partly I expected to be able to punch it up some more later and ultimately I couldn't decide where the line was on how piratey to go even when cross-referencing old things he said. He's a multifaceted spider whose personality feels like it needs a deeper understanding to really get his language right and he ended up talking a fair bit more than characters I would usually avoid talking for that reason! Originally I thought of putting some alcohol in his peg leg to drink when the Eightfold Hands was wrecked, but I realized that was very boring! Instead I clung to the mention of the ouanga in his list of gewgaws, and Marinette was my choice for a loa because she is noted to be a violent possessor. However, Voodoo is a religion where even without denominational splits you can get some variance on exactly what a figure is like, some marking Marinette as benevolent or only angry in certain situations. Being trapped and freed certainly feels like it would ignite anger in anyone and ouangas in general are a mean of storing a spirit and can be used maliciously like here to possess Tombstone or you can strengthen your bond with the spirit, although you'll find that even in voodoo practice they've sometimes leaned into pop culture's understanding. For example, a ouanga is pretty close to a voodoo doll as most people understand it, but it's purpose varies on who you ask! Still, it was good to have an ace in the hole for when Morloc's ship was wrecked, although I did waver on where to put that cannon on his ship. It sort of seemed to move between decks and that's something I can attribute either to Keen being commanded to do so or just the chaos that ship went through. I remember thinking it was going to spend some time on the water when it first entered but its flight capabilities and Morloc's treasure quest meant he never got near the water for it held no interest to him. Fun fact: again, Microwave Man was picked to kill Morloc in the line drawing stage and only after that did I realize how perfect the hallucinatory spider bite could be to give this ill-fated superhero a "happy" ending despite placing not particularly high. I think when drawing that line even the idea was going to be just the cannonball getting huge to end Microwave Man since a cannon kill sounded cool. Not sure I mentioned this elsewhere as this writing phase drags on but also Tombstone almost tore to the Eightfold Hands to shreds and it would have been possible Goop Art when it ripped through the timber in that patched spot mentioned in the entry.

The Deleter:

While RAFAEL didn't seem to have the best grip on English in his small appearances pre-Brawl, I didn't want to play that up and end up possibly being dismissive of his ability. Instead I took sort of a simple approach to a person with very limited English, his pre-fite moment of needing to remember a word was because it was a less typical one while his other vocabulary choices were simple. Perhaps realistically he and Valerio would be speaking Agaman, although that seems to swing between Portuguese and Spanish even more this year so I kept Bruxa as our only term since it was important to Valerio's opinion on Grunty. Rafael being teamed up with Valerio was to keep him from being a bit too isolated, Rafael is noted as being slow when encased in magma and I didn't want him sort of waddling up to fites unassisted. We kind of got a taste of how he'd do while too isolated as he couldn't shake Flu, but his magma armor was also a good tool for explaining his survivability up to 23rd place. Eidolons are noted to be physically taxing but I often don't want to ruin the fun by having someone's powers cut at out a key time, especially if they need to get a kill it's better to bring something interesting to bear. However, with the power of lava it was useful to be able to say Rafael couldn't just keep topping himself off and more lasting damage could occur to that encasing of molten rock. It was hard to figure out some metal for Black Album to munch on, his fite with Phoenix was partly because Phoenix could reasonably take the heat but that armor gave the little tadpole something to bite too! Rafael's slow style means he's not exactly going to be able to walk up to the Witchy Wagon and let Black Album take a bite after all. I did consider making some use of those breathing tubes in his magma armor as a weakness, I think subconsciously Indy burying him might have evolved from that, but the armor was breaking so much that it also didn't feel like the tubes were his only means of getting oxygen. Of course the big balance of Rafael was respecting the power while also not having him just roast everyone he comes across, hence why most people he went up against either had a good excuse to not be melted alive or had to keep some safe distance as they fought. Rafael seems like a swell guy and I kind of wrote him as just a neat guy to know, although crushing him in a pit is probably a rough end... I think it was almost a kill tied to the laser cannon of Flu's walker but the writing pulled me away from that and I had to make the conclusion somehow with Indy's own limited powers!

Naturally I didn't address the unusual circumstances surrounding the entrance of DOPPIO since it's not really my space to tug at that plot thread, although I did reread a lot of Doppio RP to try and do him justice. I don't know if I really did though, I also pretty much went down his entire JoJo wiki page to learn more on him but I worry because I gave him no one to bounce off of we didn't really get to see more of what's going on in his head. I wasn't sure how much I wanted to lean into the phone idea, it feels like a concept that could get a bit trite if overdone in a short span but I also wanted to pick a really good choice for when he does lift the "phone". Pre-Fite was exempt of course, but with so many rats around the arena, Doppio lifitng one felt like it hit that line of absurdity that you wouldn't have wished for a second go round on the phone to make up for something underwhelming. I'm not sure how much Doppio could really walk back from calling in the arms and Epitaph, the way I wrote things I think technically means he did get a call first to use Epitaph since he was using future sight before he got King Crimson's arms as back up, but without it he didn't have too much to work with in battle. Epitaph does work with his initial avoidance of danger unless he's been goaded into it or forced though. Precognition isn't new to the Brawl but I did like doign the twist of there just being no way out of a situation. You're not future sighting everything ahead after all, so Doppio finds himself dying because he was in a pickle that his actions leading up to that moment made unavoidable. I did try to have Doppio disagree some with the man on the phone to at least poke at some greater depth than what I guess would call the grab bag of personality traits we expected me to use. Naturally he'd get upset about phone call denial at some point for example, which isn't saying it's bad to have a predictable element, but I don't think the Brawl is just about going down the list of what we expect to see before the character bows and steps off stage. I think the fites he got into he was actually a pretty fearsome foe because of his dodginess from future sight and the power of King Crimson's arms who I really had to balance the actual hits for so that no one was taking them without the right amount of expected damage, so maybe I'm too hard on myself for not like, having him fite alongside a friend or ally.

CustardKittensRock

I haven't played Death's Door so I don't know much about POTHEAD and when I tried to look him up on Youtube I mostly got the earlier parts of the game where he's kind of showing you the ropes. Perhaps if he placed better I would have dug even further to see if he had hidden depths but CKR did explain some stuff to me when I asked her and it seems she really was hoping for a lazy knight who got others to help him. Unfortunately my ideas meant he did so without really offering his soup much, but who knows how many ZFRP characters would even be comfortable eating clam chowder out of a guy's head! The idea of him joining Cap'n Morloc's crew came before I even realized how perfect he would be for Sophia to latch onto, the whole crow's nest concept and him trying to get out of doing stuff a pretty early idea I settled into. Considering in battle he's a dude with a sword and kind of a shield I think having the chaos of the ship battle and many small opponents really let him be more than a standard weapon fiter. I was a bit disappointed I couldn't get the angle on his kill image right as I kept trying to think of how to best show it and wasn't sure I could show Bunger well. Bunger itself was a bit hard to draw just because the exact spacing on food parts was important so seeing Bunger from behind or something felt like you wouldn't even see the kill right. He's a pretty simple fiter concept all things considered but I did try to make sure he got his laziness across while also having a good stand as a fiter when he is involved in the fite, I remember CKR being disappointed the Teen Girl Squad didn't really wreck any other entrants so you gotta give even the jokes some respect!

 

For MICROWAVE MAN's section I guess I'll mention here that CKR now mostly gets Brawl moment summaries where she hears about interesting moments as well as the fates of her characters. One part of that was her suggesting, after hearing about the happy ending for the Dragon in a Wagon, that the dragon and Megan would return and be WORSE off than they were before Chimata gave them a chance to turn their life around, although considering how quickly she abandoned the idea I think she was just making a joke there. However, I do wonder if hearing about Calculator and the history with people like Polka-Dot Man made her wonder about curtailing my usual efforts of bigging up her comic characters to see how I handled it. She was even pretty insistent on the line "As powerful as your microwave" as we talked through it so it wasn't just us extrapolating from the line that she wanted him underpowered. In his source comic he was making bullets float in place with his "microwaves" but I did, as part of research and the effort post I made for him, at least go digging so his powers weren't completely useless. They are still mildly cranked up, partly because of reasons my effort post again justified. If you gave a guy candle powers he can focus the fire much harder than the little flame on the candle wick, so Microwave Man, even if he can't go nuts with the waves, at least can focus them on a part of you compared to the machine that bounces it around a small space for an even cook. And considering how quickly some of the food I warm up for my mom becomes super hot, it has potential! Still, him targetting Morloc was specifically because the small size of people aboard the ship was a perfect fit for making the powers more intimidating than normal and Microwave Man usually had to put in extra effort to really harm someone beyond the brief eye- and ear-stinging. I did try to avoid getting too detailed in how that might feel, partly because I don't know how far it could go! Microwave Man's entry having that tragedy of a permadeath on top of him being a nice guy instead of a villain did lead to that hallucination death so he could go out happy instead of just a "sucks to be you" quick kill. I think Microwave Man might be her deepest pull since I never even heard of him before this and he seems to only have a single issue to his name. I still send her weird superheroes and villains I find from time to time but since she's never picked them I think that just guarantees she'll look elsewhere!

I didn't expect CUPPY to have much legs when she told me she wanted to enter him as part of her usual "has anyone used this guy yet" chat. She had apparently gone to Hershey Park pretty recently and seen the guy, but something inspired her to get a bit dark with Cuppy. I didn't outright confirm he ate his family even though he directly addresses the strangeness of his autocanabilism, and while in the past I've had things like Birde the Early Bird say its not weird for birds to eat other species of birds since that's part of nature... yeah this chocolate guy eating other Reese's was not something I intended to downplay! He is more of a goofy dark, that's how the whole Phantom of the Temple concept came about after all, although the main reason the pyramid has instruments was just to make that concept possible. I was very fortunate having a burger face looked like the peanut butter filling of a Reese's so I could get Gooper to do some good art of it. I didn't really think of him as much of a fiter even though his whip ended up being a fairly decent way of getting involved for his brief moments of battle. Of course him versus Bunger was mostly a comedy segment even if the little burger put up a good fite, but Cuppy still managed to be some trouble before and after burgerfying as again I don't want CKR to be sad hearing about another, even intentionally goofy character going down mostly after doing some comedy bits instead of kills. The candy man getting eaten by the rats was just as easy to conceive as Bunger's death being by consumption so his fate was all wrapped up early on. I did wonder how thick to lay it on with Cuppy in the Pre-Fite Show to make him a bit rude but not like, detestable or anything. I even wavered on the term autocannibalism for fear some people might just be repulsed by that alone!

I remember this specific BETTY SPAGHETTY AND DAKOTA toy being in the house when CKR and RainbowDash were little and funnily enough, around Brawl time, my father was even making Betty Spaghetty jokes in relation to actual spaghetti being made from her. I'm not sure what her cultural penetration in general was, but she was part of the "doll evolution" around here and I even remember the tactile feel of her limbs and clothes... which sounds very weird but also appropriate for this weird girl! One of my favorite things about writing the pair was just imagining Dakota being ultra casual about using human limbs, hence the drinking scene in the Pre-Fite. This horse isn't a stranger to moving like a human and is just living its unusual horsey life! I think me being enamored with horse doing human things did partly lead to Betty just being a pretty normal girl until you get into her having tons of interchangeable limbs she sees no issue with. She was laughing and all during the Brawl to make her still a little creepy, but she also didn't see this fite as serious as some people, more just a chance to let loose than anything. I thought about her having actual wardrobe differences with some limbs that could have appreciable advantages, but generally I think there was a lot of mileage out of things like Betty running on all hooves or people punching with hoof hands so I didn't need to think of like, a Betty limb with some helpful jewelry or whatever. That tactile memory is why there was a point where the hair was used as a choking noose though, that stuff was surprisingly solid and sturdy! I mentioned the noodle pile-up earlier in Min-Min's section, I guess I didn't mention my wavering on whether the limbs could animate while unattached though which would have been relevant. I guess on some level they'd have to be at some points, the limb swapping was quick because the two were likely pretty used to it but even then they were quick swapping on the fly quite often and there's probably moments in that where they could have almost been immobile if there wasn't some lingering life in a limb or some way to put life into a new one. Naturally the burning limb pile was not something too preplanned as perhaps I would have worried it would spell Betty's imininent demise too much if I ruminated on it for long, but considering Betty had no issue using burning limbs immediately after maybe not!

And last of CKR's entries we have DON CLAWLEONE. CKR remembers Rocket Slime a fair bit and played through it a few times and this time I also had a refreshed memory of the game having played it not too long ago. She remember Clawleone having different forms, and while she seemed to like what he did in the previous Brawl with what time he had, she still came up with a fun way to bring him back. However, I think being extended a card by Chao for the don was a very helpful tool. Dragon powers are cool and all and we got things from his teeth, claws, fire, and snake like body, but the cigars gave him a more flexible means of shaking up fites and a power set I hadn't really done before. A lot of it IS smoke but I made sure to emphasize the ash as well as a neat trick and of course making a bunch of cigars gave him just that tiny bit more of something he could do. It helps that the tricks with the cigars weren't too dangerous on their own so he would have to move in with his dragon parts so that neither side of him was comparatively underemphasized. CKR did ponder other power-ups for him before settling on the dragon form, I think she's become quite attached to him but who knows if that will change since I've thought that about other characters before! Been a while since we've seen the Custard Cats and I know one year she had ideas for them and just lost interest by the time the Brawl rolled around again. I certainly expected him to do better and was rooting for him most of CKR's entries even though I thought people might latch onto Microwave Man more, but a full run up to ninth place was still impressive and I was even more thankful for the card for it! Naturally him and Grunty felt like the least likely of the Cardholders to truly cooperate as they both seem to like being the boss but at the same time unless there was a direct moment of power assertion I didn't see them doing much more than quibbling like they did in the Pre-Fite, and since there weren't really people to order around with people like Metron going down quick it never came to that. As said elsewhere I wish I had spent more time with Clawleone reverted back to his weak Platypunk form by Valerio but Valerio couldn't really justify too much time with that power up and I wanted Trigger to get the kill in a way that wasn't just a quick and mean squash on a weak foe.

Bree:

I watched quite a bit of Persona 5 Strikers gameplay for SOPHIA including a dude who was analyzing her moveset, but I think ultimately her personality was the more important part of the puzzle. Her yo-yo use was pretty easy to imagine and it's not like she'd use the Warriors-style attacks to clear crowds in a Brawl, although I did underemphasize her magic spells almost deliberately, hence why Pothead even tells her to keep them in reserve. Pithos already gave her a nice tool for long range attacks so she wasn't holding back for no reason, but it gave me something to whip out later for a different take on reserving magic. Sophia being almost an assistant by design meant there wasn't much of an onus on her to use these magic attacks in every situation as well, her running support meaning she didn't have that degree of action focus that necessitates the big attack variety until later in the Brawl where the spotlight did hit her and I started to give them more use in doing things like punching holes in Trigger. Her making it all the way to fourth was a surprise but also her assist style was perfect for it since she wouldn't be committing to lone battles often. Bree specifying that helping people didn't necessitate their humanity was a huge boon as it broadended just who she could help and how the moments involving it would unfold. There's definitely been some Brawlers with approaches that didn't gel with the Brawl itself like Cauren's surrender focus, but aiming to help others do well is pretty flexible and means Sophia is still fiting normally enough without raising the question of how she gets so far. Her non-confrontational manner also meant she could be in moments like Edward and Shirabe fiting over Baccarat's deck without them really having to heavily damage her. I do believe an early idea would be that she'd get so far into the Brawl and be pretty tattered so that Silvania and Sophia would actually die almost at the same time, Sophia just a bit ahead of her, making that final four almost a two on two that goes badly for the one side. Also like, she's a healer so I don't know about the tenability of her getting to the finale in such a rough state! One reason she was latched onto Pothead and Morloc's crew was even to ensure she had some early showings so she wasn't just a person waiting til late Brawl to start making her impact. Generally that is a big purpose of team-ups and alliances anyway, but Sophia going so far without that urge to kill meant it could have been easy to slip up and make her barely present. Sophia, when fiting Trigger near the end, was a case again of me wondering how much Trigger's electrify body power should be use, and I even thought of editing the fite to have her time her movements to avoid when he activates it or having some built-in resistance. That late in the Brawl though and edits are harder to do as I try to beat the midnight hour!

Bree showed me Sleepless Domain in anticipation of the entry of HEARTFUL PUNCH and I'm very happy she did! I don't keep up on any plot-based webcomics but the vibe of it is very close to how I like to write even if it is about magical girls, a genre I wouldn't say I am drawn to. The character focus, mix of humor and serious moments, thinking about the world, it's all how I like to make a story if I can, and naturally I was pretty hopeful Bree stuck with Heartful Punch post-brawl and it looks like that's come to pass! Mostly because I feel HP is a good match for her RP style, friendly, goofy, but kicks ass and has heart and all that. However since Sleepless Domain has no explicit power listing and even the fan wiki is kinda sparse I did have to scour to see what HP can do and I also didn't want to overemphasize those few moments in the comic she seems to use projectiles. She's Heartful PUNCH not Heartful DART so I kept those to a minimum. Her being part of a team let that work a little better here since she could get in there, and it was just a good way to show some of her personality (and also maybe nudge Bree more by showing some of that personality :V). I did try to avoid calling her HP since I wasn't sure if the acronym clicked with people and I even avoided Kokoro too whle in magical girl form which probably lead to a lot of insistent terminology moments. Having her be the new generation in the Josuke debate was a good way of getting her talking and I tried to endear her a fair bit to other RPers to again encourage her being in normal RP... it's a good webcomic and quick to read you guys! There was that pressure of trying to make punches more interesting by way of hearts though, not just have it be strong hits so that there's more to the powers without bleeding into breaking away from the punch focus. It was mentioned in chat I had no clue how monster sense could manifest in a Kobber battlefield full of technical monsters so I dodged the question instead, it's not like she got ambushed or anything so it could have been ringing often for all we know. I kept feeling like I should mention her cool heart scarf but also found myself asking WHY would I mention it unless it had something relevant going on like it getting grabbed.

I wavered on how to handle perks with ROSE OF SHARON CASSIDY, who I am also sorry for calling her in full name for things like the voting list and all since it lead to people calling her the wrong short name! But, the thing about a lot of perks is they tip things slightly in a direction. Cassidy was outside the whole Brawl so you don't feel the perk that changes her competency based on if she's outdoors. The damage increase from guns again is just the kind of thing where I wrote a gunshot being a little more serious, but some people can handle a hit fairly well. Baccarat did take two shotgun blasts to go down admittedly, but that was more because I wanted him to waver and drop the weapon for a moment of "is he really dead?" when he was already gone by then. I did have a good bit of fun making the whiskey a weapon and a way for her to interact with people, throwing bottles is a good trick to have and oddly sort of unique! The dynamite limitation was smart though, making each one thrown an important moment compared to whiskey bottles that can come out anytime for an interesting long-range projectile that notably wouldn't be as lethal as firing those guns she's made pretty deadly with her perks. Her repair perk came up a little as a result of her wearing her weapon with her other perk, but even in my sticky notes on her I realized that marking down some would just be like "this does more damage, AP recovers faster even though I'll probably just sparingly use VATS already". This isn't meant to be dismissive, it's an interesting set of considerations and I bet some of this would come up more in an RP fite, but the fact we weave in and out of attention for Brawlers means AP regeneration usually has the time to happen. VATS I did basically the way I've done it before, that being time slows down seemingly for the user, they get an idea of how accurate shooting certain spots is, and get to fire more accurately and a bit quicker for it. I guess the AP regeneration in a way means they can't spam it and thus the question doesn't come up why it's not being used more. Naturally I try to treat a strong gun as strong so we had moments like Dakota taking the weapon to extend fites without you asking why someone hasn't been shot dead or things like the bullets ruining Byakuren's leg instead that still show its strength.

ivelchild:

For ALMARIC AND KNUD, Knud was naturally a good fit for the pyramid, but I didn't want to sideline Almaric a second year in a row so he outlived the trap-laying troll this time. There are years they did make it a good deal in together like BBB10, but this year Knud kind of had a killing room full of traps to diversify from his standard fare. I did feel a bit bad I didn't rope in Sheep's cool idea of a false wall Knud used to block off a hallway and trick people, but at the same time I didn't really plan for the interior of the pyramid to be too maze-like so navigating it wasn't often a problem. The two both having the curse-style abilities this year did make me want to emphasize them even if "Weakening" isn't as distinct as like, getting jabbed by spikes or something, but they used it a lot in the fite in the sacrificial chamber to tip things around in their favor. Roll and Knud both being sort of trap-focused lead to that conflict, especially since the two could sort of sense what the other was up to, but I didn't want the repeat of the Predator situation either. Maybe if there was a year between these two Brawls then Knud could have flourished in both, but I'm not going to knock down the warlock too much. When they're on their own the minions often get to seem more like a threat I find, the fact they need to carry the fite on their shoulders alone often making them a bit more powerful and capable. I do think they work well as a pair of course, but considering how many years they've entered and how all over the standings they've been it does let me stretch their capabilities like a rubber band as needed. They're gathering quite an array of options as the Brawls go on so flexibility isn't a problem, although I do sometimes ask myself things like "can I believably get a Rampart into this area". I pretty much didn't even acknowledge the old "knud need resources" thing specifically so I wasn't a broken record this year, he was in the temple before most people and had the time he needed while at the same time not too many posthumous traps so it didn't completely stretch into something incredulous. After all, being in the pyramid also limited where he could conceivably had placed them and the temple was ill-fated to be wrecked. I did want to focus on that hammer quite a bit more with Knud too, just continuing to poke at areas that might not have been explored previously.

RYNDUR is back and you know I was happy for it! He comes in with a pretty helpful set of varied abilities and this time he wasn't as much a pester from the jungle even though he still liked to be in the trees. I do wonder how he might handle himself in a non-forested arena, but here he was a bit more of the aggressor instead of opportunist and things like the new Pulse Bow shot were good for it. Ping-ponging off trees is a pretty expected idea but I liked things like having it enter the walker's cockpit for something really scary to those present. For some reason this Brawl despite having both Dannick and Ryndur with fire bat attacks I avoided both, I think just generally they had more flexible fire options or ones that didn't need that touch of extra life. Still, things like the Daedalus Stormbow's arrow rain are still a good way of diversifying from Green Arrow type trick arrow stuff. Ryndur being killed by Reines was again as part of the druid asserting her dominion over the natural side of this arena but when I gave into the goatness I realized how perfect Ryndur was as a potential goat. It's probably the pre-existing beard, although I did realize he wouldn't be able to do much after becoming a goat so sadly that had to be the end of the road for someone with such a heavy focus on one attacking type. I do worry maybe Ryndur was sidelined for a bit too long after the poison of Nephila took hold, it's a more reasonable way to stay out of fites than like, being stuck in the ground, but I probably should have rolled him into more action sooner. I guess it makes Nephila's impact more meaningful but I'm always afraid of those moments where a user is like "haven't seen this character in a while" since we all do kinda want to see our character in there doing stuff even if we understand why they might not be on stage at a certain point.

I wanted to do right by LILY a bit more this time around. That scene in the barracks where no kill was had but we saw Tombstone, Valerio, Shirabe, and Lily was mostly placed as is mostly for an early appearance by Lily before she'd head to the pyramid, but even then she beat like 15 other people so she was weaving into action more to make up for her dropping early the previous year. I still haven't played her game and I only have the snippets I've uncovered to go off of, but having two swords actually ended up being one of the more flexible parts of her I found as I could mess with an arm or disarm her without it debilitating the character. Placing her in the Pre-Fite was one of the harder cases, but at the same time, after two years of being baffled by some of the stranger Brawl entrants, that might just be her "thing" now as she is pretty serious in how I've written her and not as likely to put up with it even if people like Betty she didn't directly get mean about it. I think I also didn't want her to be so stealthy that she kind of blended in with the background before it was her time, Lily able to hold her own out in the open for a fair bit and even against multiple attackers this time so I wasn't just shoving her down despite the tractor deciding she'd go a fair bit further this time around.

For someone who is on well beyond their second run, PHOENIX IKKI comes to us with one new move, the Phoenix Down! Naturally I made sure to use it, but the Phantom Fist didn't get a moment this year primarily because of who Phoenix went up against. Rafael was a good fit for someone who could tackle Phoenix and take him, but not only would that head be covered by magma a fair bit making the Phantom Fist harder to hit with, but I can't say I really know Rafael well enough to torment him with the vision. I definitely don't want to lean on some bad Brawl outcome when visions of Brawl outcomes are on that precipice of becoming trite, I only had Microwave Man's include a Brawl victory specifically because it was basically tied to how he wanted to spend his last moments on Earth and it's not like he'd go off and have a party in a believable vision. Speaking of the two were paired partly to let Phoenix do a little more before his drop albeit Microwave Man isn't exactly the dude drawing in conflicts so I'm not sure how that panned out. In the Pre-Fite I did sort of soften his ego a little, some years that has been his downfall but he knows the Brawl and has a DYM win under his belt so this isn't like the year he dropped hard early out of overconfidence. Perhaps if he got further in he could have been paired with someone more complementary than Microwave Man. The post he dies in is actually called "Some Undeserving Drops" because I felt bad he got 60th place when he seemed to be at least on a tiny upswing, other people in that post were Cherry and YuugenMagan (and Cuppy who wasn't part of the title choice :V). I didn't share the post titles this year mainly because they were mostly pretty boring and practical, I didn't have much imagination for what amounts to a divider more than a real important element of planning. In fact, I didn't have the Big Bar War as the post title for its debut until later I realized how boring the previous post title was!

And last and DEFINITELY LEAST, NEPTUNE! Really though, this was a good year for Neptune precisely because I'm now coming at her from knowledge playing her game and people saying "yeah no go ahead and let her be full memelord". In fact, I think her pre-fite segment was so fun to write I can imagine her even being a pre-fite host, hence the premise of that though sooo... Anyway, I did crank up the Neptitude and Nep jokes and all that nep, making up for lost time! She was probably one of the most comedic characters, doing things like acknowledging that weird trope where people speak important things to others in a different language or noticing she got to be Purple Heart without that being a "you're about to die" power up. I tried not to lean too hard on the jet form even though it's a very good aspect of Neptune's odd powerset. Honestly I think her being a shoo-in for allying with the Nintendo girls let that comedic side be a bigger focus too. Her sword skills are useful and all but it brought something different to the group and let her interject with a joke. I never did truly consider the Neptendo Hard Girls as the name for the alliance and actually the whole Nintendo Hard Girls (PLUS NEPTUNE!) joke was almost me acknowledging that I didn't want to change the alliance name just for Nep. Moreso just it gets a little bit of a wording wall if it's a pun on a name that already isn't too hot and with users like Seychelles reading for the first time it's probably better not to have such an alliance name. In general this was a bad year for good alliance names though so maybe I should have taken my easy out and ran. I did try to consider where eggplants could come up in this Brawl but didn't want it to be artificial, Guadalupe wouldn't reasonably summon them without prompting as an example of an idea that didn't last long in the head. Her vtuber thing came together surprisingly easy though and the chat being awful is just part of real life stream chats so her getting worked up over it there at least let me show I haven't forgotten it's a thing! This was also a good year for those buffs to be relevant, I think if we get more Nep in the future she might cling to groups more often just for the fun dynamics.

And there we are! It's done! Super sorry for the constant delays on this one, life ain't predictable and RP is a roaring beast this year. I hope there's a good amount of interesting detail in here and not a lot of waffling or going "this part of the Brawl exists". These things get so long, everything above this paragraph is over 30,000 words meaning this is like a third of a Brawl! The character sections definitely do it but no one really wants to be left out there. Still, this should be more a celebration of what the Brawl is and not my excuses for being late, so, thank you for once again being patient with the part of the Brawl experience that rarely does get done on time! I hope it's still at least fresh enough in the heads that my intimate familiarity didn't make certain statements impenetrable without recent context. As always ask any questions you got as you might stoke some things I forgot to put in here that way, but no matter what, we'll be here again next year with another awesome Brawl in a new place!