Pushing things back to July 9th was definitely smart. We were still just barely meeting the deadline because of my sisters dragging their feet as long as they could get away with, but it could have been salvaged easily enough. Despite doing more art than any year, I found drawing so much myself to be a very simple task, likely helped along by the fact I had quite a few things to fill my ears while I was working. It's sometimes daunting to dig in hard and just draw draw draw, but listening to stand-up comedy on netflix really made the time go by quickly, and breaks between art much shorter as I didn't need "recharge time" to watch a video or something.
Although it is a dour thought, it is conceivable that with enough time, I could do a year without my sisters helping out with the art with such an arrangement, but I feel part of the fun of the Brawl is having those art styles mix. Since it is in the summer though, even with CKR going off to college now, she'll be back in time next year to draw more deaths!
76 entrants is still a crazy number to look at, knowing we've pushed past three quarters and we may one day have the insanity of a 100 character Brawl... let's not think too hard on that! Instead, lets celebrate an amazing crop of characters with old classics, current trends, and fresh new faces all coming together to make a Brawl that I feel carried itself pretty well!
PRE-BRAWL FUN
After the utter insanity of BBB6, with its roulette and its slots and all, I felt it was good to take a moment and step back a bit from gimmick upon gimmick to avoid the Brawl becoming bogged down with them. I had even worried last year I might've pushed the limits too high, and the last thing we need is an overcomplicated sign-up process. I mean, sometimes people forget they even have a gorillion vote, for retaining too many gimmicks can be damaging in a way! 4 entrants, and regular voting plus the standard by now gorillion, it was meant to be easy to leap into and do your thing. A "reset year" of sorts as we move away from Vegas and into a tropical location. It's also pretty hard to think up a "tropical" gimmick that isn't incredibly forced, hence the Coconut Entry joke I made in chatzy. I think I'll just go for a setting-independent gimmick for next year's brawl's entries or votes, although we'll definitely still have some connection to the fact we're shacked up on islands. 4 is a nice solid number, and with the future of lottos and such to keep us steady for a bit, I feel like if we do continue to grow, it shall be with a manageable steadiness I can grow with.
Taking away votes was the weirder thing, since without the slots it felt like a lot to give them all as normal votes. It's still mostly me looking at the entrant load and saying "well, 1 vote per 10 guys is pretty much fair" to make sure I'm not being too stingy, although it is sad to see some characters get skipped over. Feel like this is as good a place as any to show... MY VOTES IF I COULD HAVE VOTED! In no particular order, I thinned out a list of who I might've voted for if I could have Bruticus and Shaggy, Zeldoten, Brothers Eckhardt, Shade and Skulk, Starscream, Zargeesh, Father Squid, Vyn. Keep in mind of course that these votes are not necessarily me saying I WANT THESE GUYS ONLY TO WIN, but its characters I would have liked to bump up the rankings to see them do well. Bit of a strange lean to Sheep and Draco characters, but otherwise its a lot of guys who were Wishlisted finally joining or interesting mechanically or just really fun characters. Vyn gets special mention since I feel she's a really cool character who was getting overshadowed a bit by the starry-eyed nostalgia that propelled Ilsaria above her. Notably, there were a few other characters who I thinned out of the fake votes, Kindred being one (or two) and... Bob and Jim also being on the "just barely missed the mark". Trimming the list down was a longer task than expected and I don't remember most the late game casualties, but those were some characters who tickled my fancy one way or another.
Picking the arena wasn't really hard. The moment I thought "well its gotta be an island", the form of Brawl Island appeared in my head. I knew it would be possible to find that typical island design online too... by which I mean I spent a while trying to find it before I recalled Lord of the Flies had something pretty similar. The volcano was a necessity of course, for maximum tropical flair, and I had wondered if the lava might be too much of a factor, hence worries arose. If it did erupt, it could potentially kill on its own, or maybe someone would think it unfair if their character dies because lava suddenly was added to the equation. Hence the joke about it definitely not erupting arising, and I immediately got to thinking of how to make the lava come out a different way instead! That's somehow more fair! It wasn't until I was making the jokes about it not erupting to RainbowDash did we get its eventual mechanism for lava removal: the lava tornado. RainbowDash suggested it as a joke and I thought it was such a good idea I took it! I thought about having a late game "OH NO ITS ACTUALLY ERUPTING NOW" joke only for it to fart out a small drop of lava, but another thing that made me hesitant to touch lava too much was how freaking dangerous it is and how people might get snooty about its mechanics. I'm not even sure a volcano can erupt without a lot of magma inside, and most of the lava the tornado drags out cools off to avoid further questions about it. Otherwise, most things about its convection and all are avoided by having guys like Ryuko and Etrohus near it who have certain protections, the lava tornado where the logistics aren't explained enough to raise questions that can be explained by "it works however it needs to to work", and then things like Noodle where we saw her burning up appropriately. I should note, on the Bingo, I saw Drowning, and I didn't even realize you guys didn't get it. Maybe we could have got it if Danai got another kill, but otherwise, it just never came to mind as I wrote guys dying! Closest I guess is when Danai and Polka-Dot Man fite in the flying bubble full of water, but Polka-Dot Man won that exchange.
The jungle/forest/woods was weird mostly because I wasn't sure what to classify it as exactly. Its artificially made just like the island itself, so its sort of all of them and none of them. Jumpropeman just plonking down trees to make a place for battles to take place. I always like a little water in my arenas too, and this year was the one I had to stretch the least to make it. It's an island! Done! BleacherBoats were also an easy idea, although they did become less ghetto as I started thinking of them besides something as literally floating bleachers. Brawl Island is of course to remain there, probably Jumpropeman letting it become its own uninhabited but technically owned island once everyone is done reviving and all. I had worried that the island might be a bit basic compared to the casino the fiters could break into last year, but we still had a few areas to fite that were mix-ups, and a lot of times the arena shifts of last year were holes for one on one fites, which we didn't need as much this year.
Another part of going back to basics was Jumpropeman hosting. I almost had Kap host, but doing that and referee work was a little weird. Bit sad I didn't get a Kap picture for the Brawl but even I was hesitant to draw him, and he did a little bit. Referee is almost always there for joke potential rather than rule enforcing anyway, and him getting kidnapped by Bandages was essentially that. Mac Tonight and Jukebox Jaw make their return as well, singing the anthem and pretty much only doing that. After I played up their rivalry in the Olympics, I thought it would be nice to put it to bed simply by having them join together to sing/play the anthem and then step aside. I still can't bring myself to completely put the moon man aside as a part of the Brawl's DNA, but there might be a day I come up with some other kooky idea and just have someone new singing the anthem.
One might remember in the lead-up to the Brawl DMG's "Updog" entry joke, and for a bit, I did consider alluding to it the same way I did Pudding with a Gun during the Brawl this year, but the concept wasn't really easy to push in. Having an actual Updog show up and not do anything wasn't as fun as the applicability of the pudding, but if Draco had entered Rapping Scottie Dog instead of Commander Fox, I 100% guarantee he would have been the Updog somehow. Speaking of DMG though, having him rise from our past and participating was an absolute treat, and we even had a new user this year! I went from thinking we might just barely have 1 or 2 more entrants than last year to having 10! I fear we are reaching critical mass just because at some point I'll have to admit I'm being ridiculous just... in general, but for now I'm happy with it!
One nice thing again about not having too many gimmicks was just seeing all the entrants and knowing who I got. The roulette was hard last year since I saw so many characters get away, but this year, what I saw was what I got!
MYSTERIES AND SECRETS! SHHHH!
The Mystery Fiter this year was a very important pick actually. He was actually slated for last year potentially, the battle between Underpants and Freeman a strong one decided only by the upcoming Underpants movie that is now out. Perhaps it might have been better to save him for the 10th Brawl as its sort of a milestone. But no, I got John Freeman out before I potentially lost the chance to.
Why is John Freeman important you ask? It's because he's how I found ZFRP! Back in high school, I had found the video series Half-Life Full-Life Consequences and found it hilarious, and I wanted to tell a friend of mine at school about it. We were in the school computer lab and unable to watch the videos of course, but I googled it and managed to find a transcript of the videos on... TVTropes. That started my dive into that site, and while I hardly visit it anymore, it used to be a regular stopping spot for me, to the point that when I ran out of ideas of what to do one day, I scrolled through its Web Originals section for some ideas on stuff to do online... and saw something called Zoofights. I checked it out, read the old Zoofights, and popped over to the forum, where they were just barely starting the latest season. There was this bar with cool people in there... and the rest is history! Now I mean, technically, maybe you could trace back things further, like I had to find Full-Life Consequences by some means, and I used a computer to watch it, and my mom birthed me so I may watch it some day, but John Freeman was the real start I feel of the path to finding ZFRP, and hence, I wanted to get him in there as a tribute to that door he opened for me. Plus, the goofiness of his videos is exactly my cup of tea. I had worried a bit that people might not recognize him (hence why the first video is actually a link to that instead of the original music I had planned for him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7JssFwGZD4 Notably, CKR likes the John Freeman videos despite lacking Half-Life context, and we have referenced the videos in RP and chat and I felt it had a large enough spread through the community to avoid being a complete miss. Naturally, after that, came the idea of what he could do. It was a metal crate year again, the most pointless of traditions besides using Islamic examples for voting, but John Freeman's GMOD physics meant he could make it into a weapon... one I didn't utilize much, but I liked having it available. Mostly of course it would be leaning hard into the memes, and I've mentioned in the past I usually try to give characters new material rather than just repeating the memes... hopefully making it suspicious that John was basically parroting things. All a set up for his death by meme overload, Springtrap giving him a unique death in making the program controlling him crash. I haven't used GMOD myself ever, so I was going by videos and the internet on what happens with models and stuff, but it was basically the GMOD flailing and lack of human-like movement that defined John otherwise and was basically his non-meme content. I bet he seems really weird to people who don't know GMOD stuff... and that's good, because that's how Dolby and Puddlenaut definitely felt!
In the realm of secret fiters though... I felt a bit guilty. I know RainbowDash, and probably others, were confused by the Secret Fiter overload pre-fite show of the past, and while Amity turning into secret fiters was an easy fit, there wasn't really a character to make that work this time around. Perhaps for the best in some ways, as the characters that did show got to do a bit more of note consistently, and that was basically my approach. Don't force the inclusions, just put them in if I've got a spot, and potentially bank the others for another time. A couple people seem to have plans for their secret fiters though... which is good! Made me feel less guilty. Naturally, the character we did get as a proper entrant was SUPER MACHO MAN! Punchout characters are fantastic barrels of personality, and I've mentioned I even thought of RPing one, but I was discouraged by SK's little "just for fun here's what happened to all Punchout characters" thing in the alt-universe forum. I even worried when I got Super Macho Man that he might almost technically if you squint really hard might have possibly been in RP by way of that, but Secret Fiters aren't excluded for mere mentions. The Secret Fiter concept is meant to limit things like secretly sneaking an entrant in that way (or potentially ruining the plans of someone who digs up their old stuff a lot), not limit the fun of having a CHARACTER OUTTA NOWHERE! Super Macho Man unfortunately got pretty low on the rankings, so ultimately he had to cycle through his kit a little fast for my liking. His attitude was fun of course, which I played off with his arrival to the Brawl and Jim and others booing him to stop him, but being just a boxer probably made it good he didn't get too too far. Cornwind's Secret Fiter was also a great way of sneaking in Del's Secret Fiter: HEDLOK! The metal skull robot thing with four arms from Arms was a really awesome Secret Fiter idea I couldn't let go to waste, and while Macho didn't get to put it on, it did help Beaster Bunny become more than just muscles in his fiting style. Hedlok is not a typo by the by, that is how its spelled in Arms, but Harelok is just a fun pun. Our other two Secret Fiters who got to do something were Harpy's Alexander, who I didn't realize I was going to use until I was writing the pre-fite show and needed Hrol and Caprice to be fiting something. His lining up with other skills in the brawl made it an easier fit than the other potential candidates. As for M Sheep's Anteaterina, she was my way of sidelining the potentially devastating Para Para Bros. Appule's gang of four was already pretty strong, but having three guys who can hypnotize you I felt push them over the edge and made it harder for me to keep them sidelined by Appule for too long. Instead, they're off in Russia, trying to make it as ballerinas... which Spy can certainly undo easily enough if he doesn't want to roll with it. Obviously they just didn't cut it! ...or maybe they'll be so good at it they'll permanently be ballerinas? Who knows! Four out of quite a packed batch of secret fiters is not the most inclusive, but I did my best... and still missed a chance for Dr. Deer to potentially call in Chao's Dr. Bees to help him out. You know what they say though, you always got to have some flaw to focus on even in something great to make it truly great, and this Brawl's flaw shall be a terrible lack of BEES. Naturally, the reveal of any other secret fiters goes to their owners, to do so how they wish. Sorry I couldn't get them all in.
THE PRE-FITE SHOW
Man. I have never had more fun writing a pre-fite show than I had this year. The Pre-Fite Show is about setting things up for the Brawl, yes, but its sort of an important component in what makes having all these characters come together so grand. Fiting each other to the death is the main attraction, but the pre-brawl interactions show us the characters and their personalities, it focuses on dialog and dynamics. Every year it is difficult to shove the entire cast into neat segments, and some characters always get shafted (Beaster Bunny and Ice Bear hardly had a pre-fite show presence), but I felt this year definitely did better than most, and at times I felt the show was telling too much in regards to what would happen during the Brawl!
The funny thing is, I almost didn't do this idea. I came up with the React video format pretty earlier as a twist on things, even though I don't like React videos personally, but then the idea of the host came at the same time: Lord Vykarius. I was worried about his usage, partly because he's new and I'm not sure on people's thoughts on him yet, but also because it was sort of me pimping out my character a bit. I guess that's sort of expected as a host, but Attenborough last year was neutral, so going to Vykarius might've been weird. I wanted to make sure he wasn't hard for users with no context to understand, but "dark lord with internet presence" isn't that complex a concept. His speech was a bit more plain and reserved than if he had been RPed as something besides the host of course, but I felt it conveyed him right without pushing into the pimping out territory. I suppose its worth mentioning here why he doesn't use too much medieval language in his speech: its the nature of the beast. You start to talk like those around you unless you make a point of not doing it, and his internet presence has whittled down a lot of his old-timey affectations. When you are speaking its harder to filter yourself, while writing you can take your time to make yourself seem completely different and assume affectations. I could've wrote this whole blog in terrible slang if I devoted the time to it, but out loud I'd likely slip into my natural voice eventually. Vykarius's powers also allowed me to ignore the troubles of how he got the videos, although he was basically in Vague Evil Lord Hall with Throne rather than somewhere specific so his guests could arrive.
Picking the guests was very deliberate and pretty hard to do. It was a good spot to put characters to keep them present, but I wanted to grab characters who had a reason for being there. Jim Johnson would go on to be the Brawl commentator proper, so he was the first pick and probably what got the ball rolling on the evolving concept. Then came Father Squid, who was chosen because he commentated Race Yer' Mates 1. Naturally he was a fit for the demon pre-fite show. Ryuk, as a shinigami, was already sort of removed from things, and in Death Note itself he's a lot more of the commentator to Light's actions than someone who interferes a lot. I'm going out of order yes but we also got Shade and Skulk, whose internet presence and being closely tied to Vykarius through it made it easy for her to rope in. While in the Brawl you could always see what Skulk was up to, I wanted to use the pre-fite show to play up the usual perception where you can't see what Skulk is doing, to better sell Shade's creepiness even as she talked about tweets and shipping. Faith was added because she had hosted BBB3's pre-fite show in a much less interesting way, and I feel of everything she did Brawl wise, this was the most interesting. She was pretty quiet during the Brawl, but here she was the snark machine, saying negative stuff so I didn't dirty any other character accidentally with such sarcasm. Pinkie Pie was the most iffy addition, partly because I'm still unsure of the levels of pony hate in our community, but she allowed us to flit through multiple scenes quickly and tied to Rainbow Dash. She might not have shown up if Rainbow Dash hadn't used the party cannon last year, and her fourth wall ignorance made for some fun twists on what, by the midpoint, was becoming standard procedure. Squid Sisters were able to show up because of the old Inkopolis News segments of last year basically putting them on a similar playing field, and again like Faith it let them get their dynamic going a lot more than it could in the Brawl. Gamera is one of the characters pegged as a narrator, probably THE narrator characters unless we count Thomas's actual uppercase Narrator, so commentating is basically that already! Levi and the movie pitching angle just let me do a few jokes with the Youtube format as well, and again, it allowed me to milk the joke more since the Brawl could only do it a little. Murdoc... Murdoc was me having fun. Denying the obvious Springtrap and putting in the high personality Gorillaz bassist to cause trouble. I don't know why I felt he had to be in underwear, Murdoc does show his body way too much in Gorrilaz shorts and all, but I never even thought of putting him in clothes. The hat was a concession since I couldn't find good art of just him in undies. He did also show some "talk to the audience" type tendencies in the Gorrilaz stuff too, especially the Internet Explorer ads. IT'S LIKE A WIZARD'S POR-AL. Bacterian was of course brought in to clear the room so there was no awkward end clean-up for the final video, and Zeldoten stole the final spot because she's a master thief! Who is also a Brawl champion, so she earned the right to squeak in there. There were many characters who could have been fun commentators, but to keep from getting too caught up in it, those sort of requirements I made of tying into the concept well made it easier to thin things down. After all, you can't have everyone sitting in front of the webcam yapping, they got to be watching something too!
Besides the fun chaos and commentary on Vykarius's side of the video, the Pre-Fite Show still did what it always does: gives us a window into moments of preparation and set-up for the Brawl! Usually its a great way to set up alliances, but as many a person has pointed out, this year was definitely the Year of the Alliances. Technically, we've had team-ups all the way back to the likes of ROB and Owltomaton, as well as RedSpy and Saguaro PI. The real difference this year, I feel, is we went in with two dominating presences before I even started putting characters together. Dolmaridia's massive draw, coupled with a sizable Dangerous Alliance, meant we had two big teams going in, and they clashed a few times throughout the Brawl with various levels of success. To top it off, I made other small alliances like The Monster Hunter Alliance and the ill-fated Cool Ladies. Cool Ladies was admittedly me putting Effie and Ruukoto together to make their early deaths cooler, and Conquest got to meld into the Dangerous Alliance after (even though I was worried it might've been out of character, but really, I bet Dawn embodied her ideals and Conquest would think its not treachery since they weren't exactly devoted to a cause she was betraying. Monster Hunter Alliance was great, most of DMG's characters already worked together, and I got to put Jumpluff and Mario in situations where they could do more than if I had left them on their own. That's almost the main reason for an alliance. This year had a lot of two on ones and team-ups in the heat of the moment and just, characters going into clusters. I'm not sure what determines how a KO is shared on the scoreboard ultimately, but I was hoping this would help ease the harsh wounds of some low placements and that they'd get credit for helping even when they didn't get the final blow. I think for the most part as well I balanced character presence better than some years, although I feel maybe Appule was out of the limelight a little too long as the most egregious. Faith was also pretty stuffed to the side, so poor Horatio is now bankrupt from his ill-conceived bet. With the growing numbers though, it's getting harder and harder to justify who gets no KOs at all, and you can't just have all the assistants killed at the start to ensure everyone gets a kill before going. I tried to spread out effectiveness across a user's cast when I could, but when you place low on the rankings, there's only so much a man can do. Everyone went down fiting still, but I wish there was some way to make it completely satisfying no matter how you place.
Anyway, I was talking about the pre-fite show and what it did, right? We had the Greed garage sale, at least that's what I called it mentally, where Bob and Emily met before they even got that far! In retrospect some of the stuff is a bit obvious set-up: those two present at the place the power-ups would be, Jasper foreshadowing his death to Greed, and Chuckster just being his weird unflappable self. The second video and its arrangement of cool dudes at the bar was to establish, of course, the pseudo-alliance of guys like Akira and Greninja who, while willing to hurt each other, usually turned their attentions towards someone else in proximity. Puddlenaut's drive to kill the mystery fiter came up, Phoenix and Dr. Deer made some bad choices on allies (and Dr. Deer got to milk his 90s stuff a bit, another point I wondered if I did enough in the Brawl proper), and Big and Greninja met. I wondered if they should meet properly here, as I liked Gooper's art of Big hugging "Froggy" during the Brawl and didn't want to sort of spoil it by bringing up the idea early, but it, at the same time, was a good way to make things interesting between the two. The demon meeting was a bit more on the nose about everything, putting all of Lysias's characters together (even though it was implied some wanted to kill each other in their entries) and having Ryuko, Etrohus, and Caeseo's conflict set up. Speaking of Ryuko, people joked a lot about the similar names potentially being mixed up. Ryuk and Ryuko I think I mixed up once, but Maria/Mario/Marie never (although Callie and Marie mixed up a lot, and strangely Dolby and Dia most likely because of proximity). The cool ladies group was obvious (and Beth was a bit of fun) and Hrol and Caprice teamed up here since they'd stick together quite a bit of the Brawl (with Kindred's balance and character presented to explain their Mark troubles later). The concept of the Eckhardts choosing supernatural targets, as well as Arr and Piggy Tyro's relationship and Ino's reliance on the cosmic waste, all in that next one. Polka-Dot Man talking with Team Skull to make you realize "hey this guy can be a threat" and boy was he! While Team Skull are a bit goofy and gunshy. Kevorkian's angle of targeting animals was set up next, Youmu setting herself up to die to Hrol as well with her skill-based approach. Rainbow Dash and Blaze having their dynamic established. The Dolmaridia video was obvious in its use, although I had fun with the Scoopa Koopa joke and nearly forgot to put in Hecatia and Clownpiece because the alliance got THAT BIG, although I kept Celestia and Bulgrave loosely affiliated to prevent it from bloating too much. Monster Hunter Alliance is pretty obvious too, Dovetail's was the weirdest part since it set up basically just a small moment at the start of the Brawl (and let me make a Tony Kapponi joke!). Dangerous alliance meeting to put those guys together, and then Appule's establishing of his crowd support and the underwater alliance plus hints at the mystery and secret fiters. Besides I think Dovetail's part, I feel most every portion did something pretty important to the Brawl or at least wasn't awkwardly shoving things together. Dovetail getting Nibbler though was me reacting to the fact I realized Dovetail didn't come with any weapon at all!
I'm a bit worried about what I'm going to do next year actually. Snapper footage or something similar is certainly a step back, and repeating an idea can rob it of its specialness... but I've got around a year to be creative, and I might be able to do something just as fun. Writing out all the dialog between the commentators was great, even if they were sort of low on REACTING like it was a Youtube video. I definitely didn't want to ape that aspect of React series and make the whole thing annoying, although I had fun with internet jokes still despite perhaps not being the most educated on what's all over the world wide web. I don't think any ideas were really scrapped for the pre-fite show, besides moving characters into better positions. Zeldoten was almost at the Greed Store just trying to steal stuff instead of showing off her confidence, and Starscream was originally poorly shoved into the Dangerous Alliance segment to foreshadow the long dogfight during the Brawl. Oh, one thing also about the commentators, I was glad most of them got to set up some tie to their brawl performance. Squid's demon hate, Shade liking Eckhardt banter so she targeted him, Ryuk hating Juzo's attitude. A second run through the pre-fite show and you'll see what I meant about possibly giving too much away, but maybe that's good. Avoiding red herrings and such means no disappointments or confusion.
THE BBB ART SCRAP MUSEUM
Last year had some choice scraps, and while this year didn't leave up to the previous ones, I thought I'd still share the scraps of this year's drawing. I feel my pace probably lead to the fact that there weren't many scraps, as I could take things at a decent pace and had little in the way of distractions save my sisters standing around and talking to me so they could stall on their art. They all really like to hear people's thoughts on their posts, characters, and art, so they often ask me what people are saying about their things or carrying the Brawl hype in their own way.
Hi. How you doing? I'm just checking you out right here... This floating face is actually meant to be Hrol's, although I didn't even add the scars because I gave up so quickly. Hrol's face is pretty hard to draw I find, although Rainbow Dash did well in her picture of him (where his hair spells out KO and there is no blood, which is just ridiculous), CKR and I both found ways to simplify it. I drew him killing Gino from behind (and I think he looked pretty good there!) and CKR has a way of drawing faces sometimes that makes the features sort of fade. Still, enjoy your floating Witcher head.
Those are all the real scraps I have this year. I do believe I straight up crumpled up and tossed one out though I was so displeased in it, and I can't even remember why or what picture it was. I wager it might've been a kaiju picture like Gamera's death, since otherwise I'd usually use the blank space on the paper still but a big picture can rule that out. Surprisingly, Brawl art is actually pretty small when drawn, at least mine that is. Rainbow Dash fills the paper and CKR often pushes there or can fit only three at best. I can draw like seven or more on a single sheet, but scanning it makes them much larger. You get pictures that are probably an inch tall quadrupling in size! I appreciate the four Brawl draw styles are all pretty different. Gooper is able to bring the color and quality with his small workload, Rainbow Dash goes all out with big pictures with splashes of color and heavy emphasis on certain details, CKR captures typical human form pretty well, and I'm generic! Not saying that as self-deprecation or fishing for compliments, I mean it more like I can usually capture what I need without going above and beyond or (mostly) failing to convey the action, which is good when your workload is like 70 pictures.
A few final thoughts before moving on. I hope the Brawl pacing was okay this year, partially the posting speed but mostly things like a post having three kills or a lot of stuff going on and then a typical two death post. The real hardest part of the Brawl pacing I find is when the tractor does something like, Dovetail gets the Vyn kill AND THEN OH LETS GO WATCH NEMU DIE but now we're back to Dovetail so she can get killed in revenge for what she did. There's probably some way to ease that transition and make it work, or possibly link them somehow, but I do wish sometimes I could just flip two placements for the sake of flow, although occasionally placement aids with things like that rather than prohibiting it.
THE BIG BAR BRAWL WISHLIST!
Before moving into general character thoughts for the Brawl, we'll of course take a look at a list of characters I would like to see in the Brawl, this time segmented by user for ease of their access. This year had so many characters graduate from the list: Celestia, Zargeesh, Greninja, Dolby, Bulgrave, Kindred, Starscream, Piggy Tyro, Father Squid and maybe if we're counting him Skeiron. Old iterations also included Ilsaria and Dudemanguy, who I had given up hope on and thus removed in the last iteration as I tried to be more "reasonable". The universe tends to surprise you that way, huh?
Anyway, while these are characters I'd specifically be excited to see, I'm mostly happy with the entrants I get, even the ones who aren't mentioned! I say mostly to avoid people trying to one day stick me with a Periwinkle and saying "BUT YOU LIKE THEM ALL". These are characters I think could bring something interesting, are important, or just fun guys I'd like to see join the Brawl! Ordered by user ownership but excluding CKR, Rainbow Dash, Ivel, and Lysias for their small base to draw from. For two of them we know they'll do they're thing however they please, and the other two will probably establish some guys in the post-brawl who would be picks, but right now basically have a cast of former Brawlers, and this is only for guys who I have not had in a Brawl yet! Oh, and naturally, I do like repeat performances in the Brawl, so long as they don't rob a first-timer from their spot or something similar. I suppose I should also say I'd love to have Hoodoo Doghouse return for a Brawl, to have Brilliant Kid finally enter her titular character and Walter, and in a crazy dreamworld, Designate_5 would return and enter Rebecca.
SPY
Joshy
HARPY
Xavier
Stella
Garnet
Hansel
Duer
Frankie
Cindy
Kirby
BRINE
Etch
Morgana
Eshe
Eva
Scylla
Rory
Euryale
Trash (even knowing she'd be harder to draw than Pech!)
Kayle
Famine
Trace
BREE
Komachi
Octavious (I had thought it removed from the table til recently!)
Lord Puddington
Sakuya
GOOPERBLOOPER
Baltan/Kauket
Sheryl
Gamble Man
Junko
Rifa (probably with Nightmare<3)
Tron Bonne
DJ Candy
X Demolition
Sakura Atari
Succubus Sisters
Samhain
Rachel
Beheeyem
Viola w/ a Pokemon
RUBYCHAO
Josuke
Eggerman
Patchouli
JesterChao
Corporal Guy (w/Axem Blue)
Mizuki
Federation Force
Jake Marshall
Tom Turbine (I'll never give up on the dream of him in a fite!)
FORMERVENGEANCE
Raul
Anne
Lobster Knight
Long John Silver
Abnur Tharn
Ganondorf Dragmire
STEELKOMODO
Barbara
Daniel
Big Bobby
Rain
Shinobiman
Robin
Stanley
Alex the Raptor
Wiz and Boomstick
Carol
MLG Toon Link
CORNWIND EVIL
Bluejay
Chastity
Scaeyl or perhaps Embla, one of those kiddos
DUDEMANGUY
Daikon (he's died in a fite, but not the Brawl!)
Poser
DELETER
Sam and Max
Bubs
Krieg
Toinette
Rizzrack
Byte
Skeleton King
DRACO
Parsee (I'll never stop believing!)
Rapping Scottie Dog
Vina or Rebecca Sealander
Seacons or God Neptune
Flu
Borodan
Doctor Demonde ( I've got new mad dreams ◉◞౪◟◉)
Cloak/Goggles/Armor
M SHEEP
WREXER (all caps because I reaaaaaally want him)
Drip
Eleven Thirty
This list is probably nowhere near complete, as I'm certainly forgetting some characters. If there was a giant convenience list of just all the characters it would be easier! Some people seem overrepresented simply because of large casts who haven't entered, and then there's guys like Spy where most of his characters have entered so there's just Joshy. I imagine I'll post this blog and remember like ten more guys after, and there are of course characters from the current year who have yet to make a name for themselves who will likely be added. You're probably thinking of members of your own cast I forgot and making me feel bad! As for the glaring omission of one JUMPROPEMAN and his characters, I've got quite a few I've wanted to enter but never found the room for yet. Phantomon is a likely entrant when I have a slot more than I know what to do with for example. Pretty much though, go through my former characters and remove characters like Midori and they're probably just on the JRM Brawl Backlog. If anything, this wishlist is a more like suggestions if you need help filling out your list next year!
CHARACTER THOUGHTS
Now here is the point in the blog where things are going to get very long. I could've put this blog out in one night if I didn't do this segment, but I feel its a good way of focusing some of my thoughts, as trying to address every single event in the Brawl is a bit hard to organize, but getting to them by way of the characters makes it simpler! I shall be segmenting them into user sections and... looking at last year, I imagine they won't be quite as long, but those sound like famous last words, so we'll see what comes as these fingers get to work in earnest. John Freeman and Super Macho Man will not be discussed here, as they were talked about in an earlier section.
SPY
BOB BIFFORD AND JIM JOHNSON
THE BIG BAR BRAWL CHAMPIONS THEMSELVES! Man, I remember how awesome an idea I thought Jim Johnson on commentary would be back when Spy suggested it long ago, but never did I expect the level of use I got out of it. It colored the idea I had for the pre-fite show, and it gave me more interesting transitions between Brawl posts, although sometimes it obscured what might happen next since Jim isn't the omniscient narrator. Still, that's my fault for my word choice, Jim was still a joy to have around! I didn't even think of him doing the transitions until I got to the Gamera battle and realized he had been way too silent in the Brawl. He probably did give some proper commentary while we weren't looking at him, but you can't really pepper the Brawl with it too much without it being distracting or breaking momentum. I did worry that people might guess that Bob would go far when they saw Jim on transitions, and even during the Brawl I tried to play it off as just sort of a thing I was doing rather than a portent of Bob's victory. I probably would have stuck with it actually if Bob did get far enough but failed near the end, although maybe Levi would have pushed onto the mic a bit or something. Also, Jim being a voice that could basically reach everyone made for some fun moments of uniquely helping Bob, like booing Super Macho Man, making Skeiron malfunction from vampire jokes (here is their awful source: http://halloweenjokes.com/halloween-jokes/vampire-jokes notably, the site repeats some jokes with different punchlines or has ones worse than the ones I used!), and of course the important sacrifice as he tries to pull Ino out of the darkness. Killing Jim off like that was to partially earn him that spot technically at the top as well, but also to prevent people from knowing Bob would win. After Blade went all the way with Silence and Nibbles didn't technically die in the fite with Undyne, I didn't want the assistant's survival to spoil the outcome. Although this was the year Levi and Wimpod both survived to the end by giving up. Of course, the main attraction is Bob Bifford, the big ogre himself! When Gooper shared the image of the Ogre Burger right after I rolled the results, it felt like fate, so naturally that was added to the epilogue. Greed also almost sponsored the Blood Bowl match in the epilogue, but Bob ultimately didn't use much of the goodies he pilfered from Emily in the final confrontation. One thing I did notice was that, like Spy noted in his entry, Bob's main strengths are strength, strength, and strength. Bob fought mostly like a footballer, his tackling becoming a running joke because its just the perfect way for him to enter the scene! Some of his attacks were taken from me watching Blood Bowl on Youtube, but I never did find a match where Bob was involved and did a lot sadly. Finding out unique ways to kill with Bob was the bigger challenge. I wanted them all to be slightly football related, so we got the spike and the tackle and... and... well, thankfully Bob managed to make those work for him! You also will notice I had some trouble drawing Bob. Besides the failed final KOs, Bob always looked really goofy until I added the whiskers around his mouth. I didn't want him to look like a giant baby, and missing teeth and having an egg head made it close without the whiskers! Bob and Jim are fantastic champions though, especially after Blood Bowl plot was such a hit. The epilogue idea came naturally (the ogre team's name did too, but not the vampire team's! didn't want to create places in Blood Bowl universe but also wasn't sure how to name them otherwise, so hopefully they're acceptable).I made sure the goblin referee of Blood Bowl plot infamy was present, although now I regret not working that marvelous punny dog Guts McFrenzy into that epilogue though. Still, I'm definitely happy with these champions, and I'm glad Spy seized the win!
GREED
This little corpse baby was quite the useful little guy! First off though, I hesitated to call him a corpse baby because we went from a Brawl where a gorilla being a baby was a problem to having what seems to be a dead baby entering the Brawl, but I think it's clear that even if he looks like a corpse baby, Greed is something different and in control of his faculties. The Store, of course, was his big addition to the Brawl, and I kind of wish Spy had been a bit more lenient with the amount of time someone could spend in there! I worked around it a bit with the Broken Stop Watch so Emily could shop a little longer and skip a few posts without staying so long we have another Lost in Manhattan moment, but I still think like, three or five minutes would have worked a little better. I know why Spy did it though, so it's cool. Another thing is, originally Greed was going to die and then Emily got the Hermit card, but I thought it would be cool for them to fite in The Shop a little. We'll probably cover the items acquired more in Emily's section, but I will say it was hard to pick items for The Shop. At first, I considered just using the proper Item Pool for the shop, but Emily eventually learns how to game the system so I can just draw on whatever cool items I wanted to give her save some of the ones like certain Devil Room and Angel Room items. At his pre-fite show sale though he just had things to make for good jokes or allusions to stuff to come, so I'm not sure how to justify that besides maybe he pulled out all the stops? The money-spilling mechanic was an interesting one, and it made me think of something I never really thought of before: do people bring their wallets to the Brawl? What other useless bits and bobs might they have with them? Ultimately, Greed's targets were Jasper who obviously had money to take, and Emily, who seems like she'd bring a bit just to be ready for anything. Maybe she could pay someone to help her? Or... more likely... she was still thinking of buying something from Greed before he tried to get the money for free! Greed's noose was a bit of fun, it was basically a lasso and as you can see with characters like Dolby, Hina, and Springtrap, I do find a lot of uses for long range restraints. More fun though I feel were the Hoppers. Just the little headless bodies flopping all around being gross. They were probably less useful than the noose admittedly, but dropping Hoppers on people's heads and freaking them out is pretty great. I think Greed's death is one of my favorite KO pictures, just because RainbowDash really worked on it a bit. It's a simple premise but he looks marvelous. Greed is unique in that he went from a Secret Fiter (who Amity even transformed into last year) into a full-on character. I did wonder how strong his tears/pellets were though, even without keeping in mind the strength ramping as he got more money. Do I treat them like water blobs or basically like touhou danmaku? Of course, with the money, Greed was still hitting pretty hard so it wasn't too hard to figure it out. If anything, Emily's baby familiars later were the harder ones to figure out strength-wise! Spy rightly knew Greed was going to be a wonderful toolbox, and he was exactly that.
BIG THE CAT
There were so many jokes floating around Big the Cat as a potential godbeast, just for being dopey and being surprisingly strong, that I decided to play with that idea. Big of course first leaned into normal Big stuff, focusing more on fishing than fiting and looking for Froggy. SK entering Greninja was a stroke of luck there, as it gave Big and Greninja both some angles. I mean, how many times are we even able to say there is a frog around that can enter the Brawl? Otherwise I'd basically just have to pray my sisters might enter something that counts! After Big took it easy for a bit though, it was time for him to shine, getting injected... and needing like twenty more before finally one did something to him. Welcome... LARGE THE CAT! I love names for monsters and such that sound so mundane. It's why the Peach Tree was just called the Peach Tree in BBB4 despite being a giant plant monster. The Sheep is another creature in RP that is given such a simple name but is a well of horrors. Large the Cat is certainly just Big but larger though, so while he's not exactly horrifying, he is given a simple name! One that basically says "well, what's bigger than big? Large!" Spy gave a bunch of cute idea for lures, and I did use girl Froggy in the pre-fite show, but otherwise he was mostly the aggressor with his fishing rod, or salvaging stuff like the syringes for bait. I knew I had to use the spike ball one though, and I ensured he used the umbrella and spin dash effectively because I love that Big has those as skills. I'm glad Big was able to escape the "don't kill cats" jokes, probably because he's so strange that he doesn't register much as one. What tickles me more than anything is that Spy is rolling with his character now being Large the katju. Making him massive also allowed guys like Bulgrave to keep busy and really, probably made a fiter who might fall to the side otherwise make a larger showing. I certainly didn't expect so much when he entered, even seeing the list of skills Spy put and knowing about his weird skills from Sonic Chronicles. Of course, I didn't want him to ACTUALLY find Froggy during the Brawl, unless he had won maybe, but otherwise, you got to keep that eternal search going!
APPULE AND SUPPAMAN
I love the Ki Arts Dojo. I love DBZ's and Dragon Ball's silly side characters. And when Spy entered Appule with Suppaman and the stipulation he would likely have other dojo members in the stands to help him cheat, I was in hog heaven. I was a bit worried about leaving them on the sidelines for a bit, and it did feel maybe I should have worked them into a fite other than the one with Super Macho Man until they truly got going, but I had fun where I got to use them. Appule was the perfect heel to kill Dia, and his pressure on the other members of their alliance allowed them to keep busy for a bit until they finally put the alien down. Suppaman was fun as well, and somehow, even a little effective. He was playing support mainly, that might be why, and I am glad I got to do his many little goofy attacks. When he went up against Odyssey, though, I knew I had to work in Atari Superman to be the one to kill him. Just the blocky Atari thing killing the goofy Superman rip-off seemed so appropriate. The moment Appule was noted to cheat, Bandages and Bacterian were shoo-ins, although I already mentioned earlier with the Para Para Bros were kept out of things. I almost even had Gooper draw the scene where Bandages silences Kap with his wrappings and Kap-naps him so he can't rule them out. Thankfully, no one else was in a cheating mood while Kap was disabled Pro Wrestling Referee style, but Beth did show one of her quieter moments when she knew not to kill him. It's always fun to reference the referee in some way, and it was a unique angle I felt! Bacterian joining the Brawl did make me wonder... can characters like Dolby smell? Odyssey shouldn't be able to for sure, but her biology is much more humanlike. Bandages though, he was basically what I said about long range restraints in Greed's potion but turned to eleven. The Brawl's always a great place to remind people that the large muscular guys who are a bit goofy... are still large muscular guys. And they work at a dojo. It is a bit of a shame they showed up an died, but who knows? Maybe if Spy needs some ideas for next year's Brawl, they might enter legit! I almost even had a portion where Bandages and Bacterian realized Appule ditched them, and they'd strike out on their own as a duo trying to win the Brawl... only to get killed by Beth. Appule himself though, he had all the DBZ moves without all the DBZ baggage. Maybe he should have used the scanner more, probably for a few more jokes than the ones I did do, but other than that I had to figure out just how DBZ he would be. Being able to fly and shoot ki blasts was such a natural advantage it made him hard to knock down out of the sky, but thankfully Emily needed some time to shine again and she could help. I did ponder about the Senzu Beans Appule's allies were said to have, but ultimately, one use was the only time I found for the healing bean to naturally appear. Considering his angle is he is a bit of a jerk, I'm glad he got enough votes that he could stick around and do some fun stuff.
HARPY
EMILY ALVAREZ
Harpy got second place! And I was really really worried what the reaction might be! If you watch the final fite between her and Bob Bifford, I did switch to a point where it was pretty clear who the winner would be a bit earlier than I might normally do so. Partly, it's because Spy's awesome effort post was just so perfect for the moment, but I also didn't want to string Harpy along for so long and then slam down a sudden loss. There's still a bit of a part where it's still up in the air though, so I wasn't just a beat down, and Bob did have to pull it back as he was almost knocked out of the game. As for Emily though, she really tested the limits of my fireworks knowledge. At some point, I just lost interest in fireworks in general, besides the technical side and how different metals produce the different effects and all. What it mostly meant though was that basically any time Emily used a firework that wasn't the bog standard, I had to open google and go on a dive through firework brands and types. I still don't think I wrote it as well as someone like Gooper might have, but thankfully she got some better ammo later in the fite that I did know better! Emily getting all the way to second place on pure gumption, leather armor, and firecrackers alone was a bit of a longshot considering some opponents, not to mention her versus Bob with just that stuff available seems a bit one-sided. Silence and Blade sort of managed something similar, but Silence is much stronger and Blade was resourceful. So, Emily had to be resourceful too, and what's more resourceful than buying a lot of cool swag? Admittedly, I was a bit worried someone might think "Emily and Greed can't both go to the store with the Hermit card!" but at the same time, I think Spy would do that in his own RP for funsies if the idea crossed his mind. So, to make Emily a much more fearsome foe who can tangle with the best of them, I decided to go through the Binding of Isaac wiki and look for some cool stuff. She almost touched the SMB Fan item, which is a bloody saw that makes you have all your stats increase by one.... at the cost of your skin. I almost did it still without the skin removal just to emphasize the weird nature of the items, but the Pre-Fite Show essentially did that with things like the Wooden Spoon. Originally, Greed was going to spank himself with the spoon to go faster, but that was kind of weird! So, from there, I looked up a bunch of interesting items and applied them to Emily. She got some of the simple stuff like extra Hearts and bombs and all, as well as getting enough stat boosts to explain her durability in upcoming tough fites, but mostly it was about the new weapon boosts. Technology was a very easy pick, as it is one of the most beloved strong items in Isaac and it felt a great equalizer. LASER EYE! Which I basically think of being said the same way Maui says SHARK HEAD in Moana. Other than that, Baby familiars in Isaac are also well-loved for being extra pellets, so I went through and picked some of the simpler ones. It was already hard enough to downplay their attacks considering the small selection, but having babies with weird effects would make them annoying to describe with every attack. The Incubus was firing laser tears for that reason, as copying her weapon would make trying to sort out the familiar pellet spray a chore every time they attacked... which was very often. Plus, I worried about the item's technical function, duplicating TEARS, so her fireworks launcher was not, in fact, her tears. I did make sure she got her first kill without the goodies though. Didn't want her to solely be about her Isaac items, and she did keep using fireworks for a long time, despite getting the many bomb buffs. I downplayed which passives she got as well, since trying to list them all would be pretty boring, especially for those who don't know Isaac items. I had honestly expected Dia to be the highest placing of the Harpcast, but I think Emily getting so far was pretty good and probably worked better with the other characters in the final few. Harpy seems pretty happy with the second place though, so I'm glad that all worked out!
ETROHUS
I was probably just as worried as Harpy when the Etrohus votes kept coming in. He almost became a cautionary tale for who you enter, because they might just win! It's one reason I encourage people not to enter garbage jokes or whatever, because if they go on and deny someone really invested in getting the win the top spot in the final two or something, you've basically broken someone's heart with a joke out of control. Its why Pudding with a Gun and Updog were denied... partially. There were many other reasons. But Etrohus, he was fair game, and we have had people like Mac Tonight who didn't want to win and did in the end. Etrohus managed to die before that ever became too much of a threat, and he didn't go down like a wimp either. Ryuko and Caeseo were perfect for going up against him in a battle of big powers, and I really didn't want to diminish Etrohus's supposed strength by having him get owned by like, Polka-Dot Man or something. Or maybe I should say Nibbler, considering how far Polka-Dot Man went! Still, those three were tough stuff who tore each other down before they died off, and Kindred is also in that slot of being strange and otherworldly, so they were tough enough to be the ones to do him in. Etrohus had a pretty good set of skills to cycle through thanks to Harpy PMing me them, and I hesitated to use their names rather than descriptions because they were put off to the side, but mostly I just let the sentence control the terminology used. Like with spell cards though, I always describe them even when they're namedropped! As for the hellhounds, I wanted to reach into the dog breed bag a bit and have fun. Poodles and Chihuahuas are like the default "funny dog", so instead I drew on something else. Newfoundlander dogs are amazing, and after watching a show about them I was even tempted to put one in RP, so I made Etrohus's main dogs Newfies. They're adorable fluffy dogs but also big and capable of putting up a proper fite. Etrohus called on a husky as well to fite wolf because of the natural connection, but I feel the world of dogs is brimming with too much potential to squander it on the basic examples! I nearly lost track of Etrohus's shield as I wrote him. He certainly relied more on his own durability than the small shield, but I tried to give it a few uses before its inevitable destruction. Etrohus was also perfect for the volcano fite, as I'm sure the guy could probably bathe in the lava if he wanted to. Really, it was more about trying to figure out where his breaking point is, and that's partly why the death spirits did him in. Certainly guys in charge of death can take him down! I had wondered if Etrohus was going to appear this year, especially since I was planning to finally use Lord Vykarius and I feared they might be too similar, but thankfully we seem down different paths with our usage. Hope you got the grand death your were looking for Etrohus!
YOUMU
Youmu was a strange case. We've seen her a few times throughout RP, but mostly as a quiet combatant. I'm not sure I really ever got a feel for her personality besides the sort of stoic swordswoman you'd expect... and I guess a gardener, hence her doing that in the pre-fite show! I remember once upon a time Chao thought she'd be my favorite touhou for being ghostly, but I don't think my heart tends to be drawn in such logical ways to characters in a work. Still, in this fite, I did have a bit of fun with Myon, although what it could and could not do differed based on the entry submitted and the wiki I read. Youmu was essentially two people, making her match-up against Hrol and Caprice more interesting. She had some nifty tools too, the hesitation cutting blade and the wakizashi, and I very deliberately avoided using their names too often because they were massive mouthfuls. It's weird when you can slow the pace of some action down simply by inserting a proper noun! Partly why Caprice got the katana and wakizashi was I wanted to play around with them a bit more as the fite continued. Reading through Youmu's spell-cards and all made me also wonder how much of it was interesting to use, especially since the list mostly trended towards her fighting game moves instead. Utsuho got tons of mileage out of her fighting game moves, but Youmu tends to have a lot of prettied up slashes or weird Myon tricks, and I think I sometimes just had them happen without even naming them. Skill Cards they're called, I might've used that term once in the Brawl. You forget what you kept or wrote when you write so much! Maybe if she stuck around long enough, she could've teamed up with Ilsaria and Luitgard for some farming! Instead, I decided a proper sword battle (plus Caprice for the cut through confusion joke) would have to be the way to go down.
DIADEM
I'm a very simple man. I see wings, I think flight! The entry itself made no mention of them not working, so I thought it might be tied to the falcon form mentioned. Unless you're an ostrich entering FYM, I probably would think that of any character, but bless Harpy for making them able to fly. Damaging them was the weird part though, as I wasn't sure if they were biological or not until I got the chance to ask! I probably could have made it work without her flying at all, but it really is a minor point of what she gets involved in so no biggie either way. Notably, I did not use her falcon form, partly because of her noted reticence and because using every tool in a toolkit kind of makes it clear their death may be soon. Even her invisibility was only used a little, but that's mostly because of her huge entourage! Dia being the center of the alliance was definitely important to the Brawl, as it all spidered out from her central position, and it thankfully gave a few characters stuff to do until it was their time to shine. I'm not too surprised she dropped out earlier than the others, but one thing I didn't think appropriate was milking it for drama. Maria and Dolby going for Appule was tied to it, but I don't think Gino would suddenly stop Brawling to fall to his knees and cry in anguish when in like three hours she'd be back. Partly why Appule separated her was to prevent a weird drama milking. I did decide to keep her mostly chipper as well. She could very well be anxious and worried on the inside, but she's gotta know spilling her nervous guts everywhere when actual guts are spilling is not wise. Ignoring the character for a bit, Dia was a strange pick'n'mix of skills we found in other fiters. Magic, ribbons, Milletian stuff, it made for a good bag to draw on that I hardly plumbed due to her placement but could have kept mixing things up if she did climb higher and higher. Had to watch a few Mabinogi videos to know how her spells looked, and I probably oversold the Fireball a bit visually, even though it looked just as strong as a larger one in game. Staves seem a little important in Mabinogi too so I was careful of when I broke it, just in case. So much Mabinogi knowledge I lack!
BRINE
INO
Ino managed to get third place, but I feel in some ways she was sort of... underutilized. I think this is a problem I have with quite a few of the highest placing characters, probably because their high placement means they should be really busy all Brawl. The main issue with characters like Ino and the other character I really feel this for, Celestia, is if you have them doing too much, you rob the lower ranking characters from sealing their kills and going down with something to celebrate. The top placing characters always has to get a few to assert their dominance, but third place onward usually moves into a territory where I'm not sure how many kills they should get and when they should get them. Ino was kept busy for quite a bit, chasing Kindred and all, although I probably overplayed her reticence to go near fire. Brine's entrant even notes that Ino brought a kitchen knife so she's not screwed without the cosmic waste, but she's gotta definitely know how much it helps her and she would be careful to keep it from all being blown away. The kitchen knife didn't see much play because of how useful the cosmic waste is. Not sure if Cosmic Waste is the best name for it, but Brine used the term in her entry and I loved the sound of it, so I tended towards it when I wasn't just using darkness and shadow generically. The main thing is, the cosmic waste had so many fun potential uses that the kitchen knife was overshadowed. I definitely enjoyed drawing the pictures with it, just shading in all that darkness and filling it (as best I could) with eyes and mouths. Still, Brine continues his trend of always placing super high. I think only BBB1 did he bottom out, and we can't count the Brawl he didn't attend against him. Of course, when a character places third, it becomes a question of who will kill them, as it might influence thoughts on the final two. Ino, however, was already ripe material for turning into a mad godbeast, so I pushed her to full throttle near the end. The cosmic waste devouring her as she lost control was a lovely idea, and Jim on the mic trying to call her back out was a great way to make it a "fite" still, even though her opponents were technically trapped and not fiting back too well. I do love a character who loves to fite, so Ino was a joy to get in the Brawl. Wish I had noted her cosmic waste scarfing up more bodies though, to sort of emphasize the growing threat of it.
SHADE AND SKULK
We hadn't seen too much of Shade and Skulk fiting in RP. Being creepy and scaring people, they did that quite a bit, but fiting... well, I wasn't really worried. Brine always has a Pathfinder page or somewhat with all a character's skills in it, so I knew she'd come with a fun bag of abilities. I was a bit worried about how I wrote her though. In the Pre-Fite Show, as mentioned, she emphasizes people's inability to see Skulk, although we see Skulk perfectly during the Brawl. The dialog between her and others I was hesitant about. How creepy IS this girl? She has a smartphone, how much do I emphasize that? I usually try to balance both parts, and Shade did do a bit of livetweeting during the Brawl while still being a scary little girl. Her ability to teleport around people who are afraid was a fun one, and she had quite a few skills to make someone scared really quickly. I didn't want to lightly make a character scared and imply they are cowardly, so almost everyone got hit by some proper terror before Shade started making them squirm. Considering how many psychics were in this Brawl, it is a bit of a surprise I never got to have her leech psychic power from them, but her physical strength leeching paid some dividends, especially against foes like Ilsaria and Maria where she had to hold her own despite being pretty simple physically. Brine probably could have left out the knives and they girls would still be competent, although they did get some decent use out of their weapons and Skulk's ability to act unseen. I did wonder though how devastating Devastating Touch is meant to be, so even though they used it, we often didn't get a follow-up too much on how damaging it was, besides that it REALLY HURT. I'm sure if I didn't point some things like that out people would have just accepted them as is, but this behind the scenes look is already insanely long, might as well put it all out there! The sensory trickery was probably my favorite tool they brought though, as seen when they make the Eckhardts start to malfunction as a team and just throw off other alliances like the Farmer's Guild with it. Notably, Brine did specify that Shade had a power that only worked when she slept...and then I put her to sleep! It didn't really help or hurt her much, but I just thought it would be cute for Jumpluff to put her to sleep after it was said she wouldn't be able to in the Brawl. I also worried about killing Skulk before Shade, even though it was originally planned, and then changed to just Skulk nearly dying to the Brothers Eckhardt. Shade's a fun, chipper, creepy girl, and I feel like she might have a legit breakdown if she was left alone. Skulk has a short breakdown as Shade dies, but since Shade died, Skulk didn't have to make that breakdown last an entire Brawl! Lastly, her powers lined up pretty well with how the King In Yellow made her feel, so that was a perfect moment for her to pop around and prevent things from getting too crazy. They were definitely a fun pair, and I had actually wondered if they were cut out for a proper fite before... turns out, they're more than cut out, placing in the top 20 even!
CONQUEST
Man, this girl is a real powerhouse! Then again, Brine characters are usually pretty strong, so she fits in with good company. Conquest had a few unique challenges in writing, but I think I dealt with them well enough. I've mentioned already my thoughts on how she would go about getting an alliance, but the main worry about her alliance is her buff cycling. She powered up her allies every now and then, but Brine clearly added that condition because it can lead to Conquest pushing herself too hard and breaking herself. Thing is though, Conquest has been battling people for years and no doubt has a cycle all planned out. Sort of like, Slash Slash Powered up Slash or something to dissipate the building energy inside her. On the one hand, I didn't want to have to mention her doing that every attack, and I think early on its mentioned her attacks constantly cycle through the buffs, so hopefully that covered that. I'm not sure if she would have ever pushed herself to breaking save if she was in the final two and so close to winning or losing. One weird question I asked myself while writing was... can Conquest's hair start on fire? Thing is, Conquest can wrap her whole body in flame, so I figure there's something protecting her from having her hair burn off during that, so the one moment where its almost lit, it doesn't start on fire. If it can still burn, there's always the excuse it just didn't catch this time. Having Conquest have stony skin though basically set her up to crumble. It's just a great way for someone to go, shattering on impact from a hard blow, and you don't get to use it often! Conquest was great for fiting foes that were in a high weight class, especially going toe-to-toe with Bulgrave's tank. The Dangerous Alliance already had a bit of power, but I think Conquest adding to them made them scary strong. She wants to fite, she knows how to fite, and she's going to wreck shit with a party behind her to make sure the job gets done. I think I almost had her get inflicted with a status somewhere, but I forget which one it was. Probably Jumpluff stuff if I had to guess, but I don't feel like it was Jumpluff, which made it almost slip by. I can't proofread everything, but I can sometimes remember stuff and edit it as best I can! Maybe it was a Zeldoten potion? I'm really glad the Elementals flipped to our side just before the Brawl. As you saw higher up, I'd like Famine to give it a go as well, and Conquest really got some play. I don't know how much I was allowed to play with her fire, so I tended towards the more expected uses, and since it was only sorta holy, I didn't play it for that angle at all to avoid anything weird. Caeseo's Astra definitely can effect demons for example, but the unholy fire was basically just white fire to be safe. Probably looked cool though!
BETH
I felt bad sometimes using the descriptors "crazed" and "maniac" for Beth as I wrote her, but they did fit her well at least in the terms of the fite. I'm sure she's only technically the two, since she is still a remorseless killer who enjoys it, but still! Beth is cool by me! Especially since she is in that sweet spot of being able to kill characters others might shrink at the idea of killing. Hina is a friendly and passive character... AND BETH CUT HER IN HALF! Bacterian and Bandages could probably have died to someone else, but I really wanted to up Beth's kill count to show how much of a threat she is. Taking down Vince was just part of her cutting into the Alliance even more, and it allowed Vince to show his character a bit more as well as he tried to deal with her. One thing I had a lot of fun doing was having her injure herself gruesomely and have characters react to it. Being so hard to kill destined her for volcano death, but also made her perfect for being impaled on a rock for a while to keep her busy. I had seen Brine's comment while writing the Brawl that he hoped she would get a bunch of kills, and believe me, I was all too happy to oblige. I had almost worried at first that just having a machete might make her a bit bland in combat, but the self-damage, plus having a claw hand, and just being a Jason Voorhees type killer, allowed my brain juices to keep flowing. I did make sure the mask stayed on though, I think at one point I undid some damage to it just in case. I don't want to lock Brine in by saying something about her face, or potentially just get it wrong and need to edit something. It did still get cracked and stuff I believe, but not enough that anyone got a good look at her I don't think. Part of writing this afterwards means I sort of forget stuff I wrote for the Brawl, especially the minutiae! I'm glad people seemed to get what I was going for with the picture of her standing over Bacterian and Bandages' bodies... or however you pluralize that. Fun tip! You pluralize a name like Bandages as Bandages's, but I still don't know how to proper pluralize things like that statement just there! Bacterian and Bandages'? Bacterian and Bandages's? Bacterian's and Bandages's? Whatever, the picture, I looked up the proper "from above human pose" and used it to draw Beth, and I worried that if people didn't keen that she was doing that, they'd think I drew dwarf Beth. No comments though, so maybe I succeeded! Half worried her killing two goofballs might be a bit jarring... but then again her attacks were sort of simple, the art of their corpses silly, and really, Bacterian and Bandages were surprisingly effective rather than complete jokes! I'm glad there was no trouble with reviving Beth from volcano death. Probably would have used lava more if people didn't make a big deal about it. It's like a fitemaster can't even disintegrate characters these days! ...It really doesn't bother me too much, and I still sort of do it anyway. THAT'S JUMPROPEMAN FOR YA!
BREE
CAPRICE
If there's one thing I want you to take away from this Brawl, it is that Caprice is one badass bitch. Over the course of it I kept injuring her and she kept going, fiting all the way up to Emily and getting tons of sharp stuff jammed right into her flesh. I didn't really think of it as it was happening, but boy did that battle damage add up, and whereas I sometimes lose track of how injured a character is, I remembered Caprice's injuries quite well. Her wrists in particular, I mostly had to think back to when I broke my wrist and how functional it was. It wasn't even that hard to think of how she handled her hands, but mostly I wanted to show that she wasn't just psychic powers and a gun, and I struggled with that sometimes. Bree's entrant post notes she has taken down criminals without her psychic powers, but the Brawlers are a weird sort that require cleverness and tricks to take down. Caprice still got pretty physical, her battle with Polka-Dot Man was primarily physical, but its just so fun to have a character who can grab things from afar. I was so happy when I thought of the use for her psychometry! It's such a cool power and not always the easiest to swing into a death match. While Youmu's katana usage was just for funsies, killing Polka-Dot Man thanks solely to the knowledge she got that way was a joy. The Neural EMP I tried to do a few different ways when it was whipped out, but I knew overusage wasn't the best way to use it either. It got denied round one, but disabled Gino its second time. Caprice really got to do a lot because she got teamed with Hrol, so I think she's one of the high-placing characters I didn't struggle to include. Before anyone asks though, yes, I know how strong a magnum is, and that's why it often grazed rather than slamming through someone. You can't mess up a body too bad unless it is going to die soon, after all! Because Caprice being a clone is a secret though, I avoided saying a few things I might have otherwise. Nothing crazy though, and I think I might've called her a clone in narration sometimes just to mix things up despite trying to avoid it. I really didn't expect Caprice to see such a bag of tricks I could keep pulling from throughout the Brawl, but she rally delivered! Psychics have so much potential!
NURSE KEVORKIAN
Kevorkian's a bit of a strange entrant in that she's essentially Breemom entering by way of Bree. Not sure how much of it was conceived by her though, and its not like I'm going to snub my nose and say Breemom has to join the forum to enter, but there are limits somewhere for doing something like that, Nurse Kevorkian just didn't hit them. Kevorkian herself of course is a little bundle of chaos and another useful tool in the land of "they can kill whoever without repercussions." Killing a big oaf like Big who had barely an aggressive bone in his body would require someone who wouldn't care about his dopey nature. With a character like Kevorkian with a bandoleer of unidentified syringes, the possibilities are almost overwhelming, so I had to pull myself back. I had expected Dr. Deer to have more syringes until I gave him a second look, so some of those potential uses were moved onto Kevorkian instead. I know there was fear of Kevorkian causing alliance betrayals, but the Alliances did too well! Kevorkian placed in a drama-free zone, and while I still could have done it, we'd have to keep someone crazy for like, 20 more deaths, and it would get interrupted by things like King in Yellow anyway. Instead, I decided to use her syringes to give characters strange abilities, as well as putting down Big. I almost worried about my language there, since putting down an animal is pretty sad, so I avoided anything too strongly tying to that even though it was essentially me invoking it on purpose. I can't quite say it matches real world Kevorkian's assisted suicide stuff, but it was sort of trying to maybe a little tie it to it without being too bleak? Weird stuff with this lady... although I'm glad Bree approved the hulking appearance from the Clown Nurse edit. Better than a generic nurse look or even generic evil nurse look. I definitely wanted her mutation when fiting Akira to look more monstrous and menacing, but I didn't want to overdesign her hunchback form and risk ruining it, so we got the simple edit in the art instead. I know Bree joked she might put herself in the straitjacket, but that also was a weird thing I wasn't sure where to put unless I went one of the directions I didn't take. Ultimately, it felt a good tool to put Akira out for a bit and give him a little moment with Arsene. Still, I could look at all the missed opportunities, or think about the fun I did have, and she certainly brought a little mayhem and insanity into what is a giant chaotic murderfest, no matter how many other guys are friendly.
DANAI
Some people were worried that Danai's late stat addition might hurt her chances in the Brawl... but that certainly wasn't the case! The little mermaid managed to climb very high in the rankings, so high, in fact, I was beginning to worry about how to get her to even fite the characters left. See, she's a mermaid, and while she does have probably a few means to fite on land without just dragging herself around if I get creative, I can't see her justifying leaving the safety of the water... hence why flooding the arena was her way of getting herself back involved in things to try and claim the win. Flooding the island wasn't even planned as a big event or anything, it was just an idea that came up and helped to push the brawlers together near the end, also giving some play to the mountainside after it was only barely touched earlier in the Brawl. The flood also gave Danai some room to show off her power with the many animals she could summon to help during it, although after she used a hurricane to stop the King in Yellow, it's pretty clear she's no weakling! In fact, I was worried she might be robbed of the kill credit after I got the ponies involved in helping, but the scorekeepers are smart men, and decided to make it co-credit instead. I tried to make it clear that she couldn't build up the hurricane in a second by the fact the island was gradually getting less and less sunny, but she did carefully cool it down after so that the BleacherBoats didn't have to spend the rest of the Brawl reacting to choppy waters. Danai was the big underwater personality for sure, trying to help Nemu during her fite with Gorton and eventually having to take on the Fisherman by her lonesome despite her fear of him. When it came time for her to die, it probably wouldn't have been hard for anyone to do it considering she flooded the island and you can usually justify killing a cute girl after something big like that, but Polka-Dot Man seemed a fun fit. I really liked having the two duke it out, Polka-Dot Man's boat and tools throwing Danai off-guard until they were floating in a bubble above the Brawl, one character drowning and the other trapped. Polka-Dot Man won the confrontation though, but most of Danai's combat before Polka-Dot Man was very removed. She was attacking from afar, controlling the water or the weather to do her damage. She almost didn't get to use her harpoon that much because of it, but instead, Danai got to use both her force of nature abilities and her close quarters combat abilities. The mermaid put on a very impressive showing, so even if it took a bit to get the entry done, it was definitely worth it to have entered her. She was perfect for Brawl Island!
HINA
I thought Hina was one of the characters who might never get into the Brawl because of her general apprehension, but it was a nice surprise to get her! I'm not sure if I overdid the stuttering whenever I wrote her... or potentially even underdid it! Either way, I tried to capture her nervous nature without having her just spilling over herself ever second of the Brawl. She was the main back-up and support member of the Dangerous Alliance and tended to pop in to lend support, most often with danmaku spray and luck manipulation. I decided pretty early that Hina wasn't going to sabotage her allies by accident, as she would probably be focusing very hard on making sure that didn't happen, perhaps to the detriment of her ability to actually support them combat-wise. Bree told me before I wrote that Hina would likely be going to absorb the bad luck of the dead, a point added to the pre-fite show and one mentioned but not really looked at during the Brawl, but it at least gave an excuse for where Hina was at times and it did give her a huge amount of bad luck to move about. Of course, Hina is very hesitant to curse someone who doesn't deserve it, but she did do it, even if she didn't feel the best about it and apologized after. Her ribbons were a great addition, and you'll see as we look at other characters, that pretty much anyone who has long range melee is a wondrous tool for writing. Grabbing from afar, messing things up, Hina's ribbons were very useful, and she even had some danmaku to add to the affair! I feel I may have underrepresented her spell cards, but she had enough other tricks up her sleeves where she might not need them as much as a character like Hecatia. I mixed her amulets into her danmaku a bit as they were technically her weapons, although I probably could have been convinced they were just part of her danmaku by default! It's not a downside really, if anything I probably made them stronger because they weren't the typical light bullet. Of course, the big highlight of Hina's participation in the Brawl... was RainbowDash's art of her. The first KO of the Brawl, where she's smiling all smug, not to mention how much detail RD put into the dress and ribbons, it was a great way to start the Brawl! Most people like Hina Smug face the most, but I was a bigger fan of Hina's death picture, mostly because of how angry she looks, coupled with her hand extended out like she's making a gang sign... it looks like she's stepping into some place going YOYOYO HINA IN THE HOOOOOOOOOUSE! CKR's Saxton Hale used to be the highlights of their Brawls, but Hina took the top spot this time around. Beth, of course, killed Hina as Beth was one of the people who likely wouldn't care who exactly was being killed. Notably, Hina never experienced the potential alliance strife by way of when she was eliminated. Dolmaridia and Dangerous Alliance did clash before she died, but Clownpiece isn't someone Hina's too attached to, and that's why the alliance chose that target for her. Dawn and Conquest were both so competent that they knew ways to keep things working. If Hina had lasted a little long and was around for like, say, when Dawn and Noodle fought Dolby and Maria, then things could have got dramatic, but instead, Hina's death was at a very convenient place.
GOOPERBLOOPER
CELESTIA AND SKEIRON
I was worried a bit, with having Celestia getting so far in the Brawl, that I might have not given her the amount of attention she deserved. She popped in a few times to have fites with characters early on like Harelok and Springtrap, and she was loosely affiliated with Dolmaridia... I think the main problem was there was a stretch of time she was out of the spotlight rather than a total lack of things to do for her. I think another reason I felt that way a bit was she was just brimming with a bunch of different magical spells she could use and even when I tried to cycle through them, I still didn't use all the ones I had wanted to use! I did manage to get in a Break, that was one I wanted to do for sure. Skeiron played a lot of support too and helped keep Celestia out of trouble, but I did wonder... how literal is that freeze ray? I mean, maybe its just a stasis ray, but maybe it encases something in ice! I'm sure the answer is out there somewhere, but this is another case where I had it so that it could conceivably work either way based on the narration whenever it got used. Celestia having Skeiron probably lead to a lack of her using the metal arm save when she was cut off from him during alliance fites and the end after Skeiron bit the bullet. I locked it into mace form pretty early just to keep it in what I consider the most interesting form while also having some battle damage on her. I didn't want her to go through the Brawl unscathed, even though she did get things like a hip wound I believe. I did a lot of hip and shoulder wounds this Brawl, trying not to debilitate where I didn't need to but still keeping both fiters effective. I think another reason I worried Celestia was underutilized was she was entering with that reputation of being the Undying Mom. It was almost like I had to say "Here's why she hasn't died before!" I mean, she got 5th place, so that still was pretty clear I think. Skeiron got to stick around a long time too because he's pretty tough and his regenerator core kept him from being worn down. I almost didn't have him Nuclear though, but a last minute Nuclear was at least enough to sideline Bob for a while before he joined Ino and Emily as things wrapped up. Considering how high she placed, it wasn't like I had a lot of choice on who could kill Celestia, but Ino needed more kills and taking down Celestia did put her over the edge. Celestia didn't go down easily either, even after Skeiron had been separated and disposed of. Celestia didn't do too much moming, because this is a death tournament, but we saw some of her charm when she came to protect Bulgrave and when she was trying to give Maria some time to figure out a Blizzaga counter. I'm really happy to have gotten pretty much the complete Sarahkin set... unless Helios feels like giving it a go someday!
DOLBY AND ODYSSEY
Last year, Dolby was just barely becoming a character when I added her to my Brawl wishlist. Then, she became one of the breakout characters of the year, forming a tight friendship that, while Dia was the center of the Brawl alliance, probably really ties back to Dolby the most. Hell, Dolby probably could have entered without Odyssey and still be a fantastic entry, Odyssey was just a great addition that was almost like a gift on top of a gift for me! He's like a character I'd never think to request but is so full of potential. I got to really whip out some obscure references, like Bigfoot Bonkers, which I found while trying to find out if Snake existed properly at Odyssey's timeframe to draw upon. I didn't go full obscure, using Missile Command from the list of suggestions for example, and people knew about things like Atari E.T. and Asteroids, but then I grabbed stuff like the Mothership from Phoenix. Phoenix is one of those games that really seems hard to pinpoint who might remember it, but I'm sure Gooper did! I wanted to have a game actually from the Magnavox Odyssey too, but it's a bit hard to find gameplay of them due to the fact you put overlays on your screen to play them, and a lot of the games just have white pixels. That was, of course, the joke behind the ghost that appeared during the Vince fite, but I didn't want something like the pong paddle who would have a limited range of movement. Vince was picked to kill Odyssey specifically because Ex-Aid's gamer bent and being able to have a sort of "old games suck" moment, even if I don't agree with the sentiment. Breaking apart the space invader sprite was fun too, since its a unique body type, being made of pixels and all. Of course, you probably want to hear more about Dolby, and man did she make a run in deep. Her and Maria were tearing it up to the point I sometimes forgot who was supposed to get what kill, although Dolby was usually good at pulling out some strange kill while also easily helping Maria in some way with hers. When Zargeesh fought them though, it was time to bring that run to the end, and we probably had one of the few moments of immediate revenge... because Ilsaria had to wait until Nemu died to kill Dovetail! Rankings, you limit me so... Anyway, Maria and Dolby were also pegged to kill Appule for a similar reason, and I think they mostly got so many kills because they just kept having good reasons to kill and no reason to split up. Dolby's magnetic tape was a wonderful plaything, but I did hesitate a little on what she shot out otherwise. Launching a casette tape from your mouth can only be so strong after all, so she used such attacks only when I felt they'd work. Her backpack, though, was a godsend, as I got to put bigger items inside her. I worried for a bit she'd have to pull computer monitors out of her mouth, and while I think she spat up a SNES during the Brawl, the backpack was better for big items. The Apple II, mind you, was chosen because way back in season 1, JRM the character won one in the Betting Corner, so its stuck in my head as the classic old-fashioned computer. I also had some fun with Dolby's biology, like having the huge hole in her side that they put Fox's armor over to fix. She had Puddlenaut pick her up by the head once, the shark teeth not hurting her as much as they might someone else because of her weird rubbery skin. Then we of course had when Dawn made the mistake of trying to kill Dolby from the inside when she found the outside too resilient, only to get pulled in and crunched to death in a KO that I had a lot of fun with but was a little worried people might find too brutal. I almost had her spit out a laserdisc at one point too... until I looked up how large those were and reconsidered! I know she is mostly music focused, but Gooper did say she just had retro items inside her of all stripes, so I played with that to make her attacks more varied. Whatever I expected to get back when I put Dolby on my brawl wishlist, she has done so much more and then some.
DR. BULGRAVE
I remember Gooper was worried that Dr. Bulgrave would be his entrant that placed extremely low, continuing a trend of Gooper being spread out across the board. Instead, we got most of his characters pretty high up! Which meant I had to keep a tank around in the Brawl for quite a while, as Bulgrave didn't have much to fite with otherwise! Maybe he could've cobbled something together, but ultimately, I wanted him to use that tank and dangit I wasn't going to rob him of it. Early on, he was relegated mostly to providing covering fire on kaiju threats like Gamera and Large, if you can call Large a threat. When he started picking up though, most the big threats were gone, so the tank really got to shine as the beast it is. It took down Lysias's beast form and made Golurk struggle to hold it back, but there had to be someone to take it down, and since Conquest is a fierce force to be reckoned with, I decided she was the kind of lady who could take down a guy in a tank. I wasn't sure how exactly she should kill him, but by that point in the Brawl, the spiked wheels had gotten little use, so I decided he'd be done in by that underutilized tool. After all, he was able to fire the cannons quite a bit and use the smokescreen to his advantage. After I came up with that method for killing him though, there was still a giant tank rolling around, so it got driven off into the water to prevent it from making things difficult. I did consider the idea of a different character getting behind the controls, and it could have been an equalizer if I felt someone like Emily needed the boost, but most characters already had something to put them on equal footing with other characters when needed, so into the ocean it went! Although I have wanted Bulgrave in a Brawl pretty much ever since he became a good guy, I always wondered what technological gizmo he might bring along. The steampunk tech had a lot of potential, but the doctor himself is admittedly just a guy, and hence he didn't put up much of a fite when he was plucked from his cockpit. I had thought on the tank entry for a bit when it first popped up, but Clippy managed to make it work without being overpowered, and it did allow me to explain why a paper clip climbed all the way up to third place in a Brawl! Bulgrave didn't need that much help to be useful of course. I do think what I suggested in the Pre-Fite show would be cool, some sort of mechanical showcase between Gooper's many inventors. Maybe not even battlebots or a mech showdown, but still, just him tapping that strangely abundant section of his cast. Maybe if Gooper wasn't known for the sugar mages, we'd think he had a tech wiz thing instead!
TEAM SKULL (SID, MELISSA, GRUBBIN, WIMPOD)
I would have been pretty disappointed in myself if I didn't get to have a bit of fun with these guys before they died. And... it almost happened! Original brawl plans had no mention of Team Skull on the beach looking for trouble, nor did it have the scene where they were on Lucky's back. Mostly because Brawl Plans are pretty barebones sticky notes that say the most important bits of a post, the parts that need pictures for sure and KOs and the like. Team Skull didn't feel like they could avoid the spotlight until they were needed though, so I looked for some spots to use them and had quite a bit of fun when I did. Them wimping out like Wimpod at seeing a few stronger competitors fiting was a great way to have fun and establish what certain characters were doing, and the Chuckster moment felt so appropriate. I kind of think they'd be great fiting him full-on, and I tossed in the set of jokes I thought up if they had done so. Chuckster is definitely a Plant/Fighting Pokemon in their eyes. I had wondered if Gooper would make a TEAM SKULL IS BLASTING OFF joke at some point and almost thought to suggest it to him so they could be doing it AGAIN, but I think his art did the job in making it work well. Another funny thing, even after I planned to have them land on Lucky and think they were dead, I forgot to write it until I was well into Lucky fiting Starscream! I went back and edited it in, but I feel like I could have done more with the idea, or maybe had them participate there somehow. Mostly I just wanted them to be saved from their death, because that chuck should've been fatal otherwise. Involving Sid and Melissa in fites was fun, even though they are Pokemon trainers. I'd like to explore that idea more sometime, probably with a character like Viola or Hiker Anthony, should they ever show up in a fite. Sid and Melissa only leaped in when things were getting too hot though, because they have the built-in respect a trainer has for the battle, but also the misbehaving hooligan side that makes them interfere... plus they just love their little bugs! I asked only for the first Wimpod wimping out picture from Gooper, and put in the triumphant return! Only to make an edited version of Wimpod leaving again. It felt a bit mean to kill the little guy, and I though him surviving to the end was okay. I showed a little mercy this year, as there are some characters who would just leave I felt. Grubbin was of course the go-getter, and when Gooper approved the idea of me evolving a Team Skull Pokemon, I knew the grub had to be the one. I think Grubbin is a cute little grub indeed, but Charjabug is adorable too. A bread loaf battery bug is pretty great! I was a bit worried about doing the evolution, mainly because Team Skull was set to die after it, but I thought it was a great way of making their Brawl mark besides some fun jokes. Plus, it's not often you get a chance to evolve a Pokemon in the Brawl! Mostly, I thought these guys might place low for being goofy and not that strong, but they did pretty well for themselves, allowing me to have some fun with them before they had to go. I do feel a bit bad when I read Gooper had to hold back some Wimpod character development for the Brawl, but even during the Brawl I tried to give him a bit of a growing bravery in him. He did return to try and bail out his friends, but he still had his limits. I'm pretty happy both bugs had such diverse movepools though. It is weird that Struggle Bug is a special move in Pokemon but doesn't make sense with how Wimpod uses it in RP, but I think Gooper is the one who made the right move there. Struggle Bug in the games sends out green wormy energy for some reason? Team Skull feels like a pair of characters I could easily adopt into my own cast, so it wasn't really hard to write them at all. Goofy bad guys are always good!
CUSTARDKITTENSROCK
POLKA-DOT MAN
The surprise break-out of the CKR cast that literally no one saw coming. I bet even CKR expected him to bottom out. When I saw the results I knew I'd have to sell this guy hard as a legitimate threat, but people like Cornwind rightly saw the incredible potential of a guy whose dots are only constrained by their initial appearance. Even then, he's got some strange dots directly from canon like the flying saucer dot and the bubble dot. Besides the ones ripped straight from the comic pages though, I tried to keep all original ideas for dot functions somewhat grounded. All of them are gizmos, they have to have a sort of logic to how they function. Things like the pillars for example are basically collapsible, like a hamper. The dots are fancy for sure, allowing them to fold out into new shapes and stuff. I touched on most of the dots from the comic (can't think of one I missed) and then went from there, although when I asked Rainbow Dash to draw his death I saw a lot of missing potential in my writing. Poison dots would have been perfect to use! I like his cute baby face in that picture as well. Polka-Dot Man also had some fine legs in one of CKR's pictures. I did swap in his real name quite often after Cornwind put it out there. Abner Krill or just Abner has a better rhythm than constantly saying Polka-Dot Man. I also made it pretty clear he is a criminal, a goofy one, but a guy who can do the typical stuff like killing and stealing, albeit in the more lighthearted manner of early comic books rather than something needlessly dramatic and gritty. He is from that goofy time after all, no reason to ruin the fun! I think when CKR finds out how well he did though she will probably make "Weird Batman Villain" a continuing thing with her character slots. I think she first told me her idea of using him while we were on the plane to Wisconsin, if you needed an idea of how last-minute the idea was (as I was in Wisconsin for the entirety of Brawl sign-ups). Thank goodness for that belt of his though, I realized pretty quickly he'd run out of dots at the rate he uses them, so I had it be a storage spot for the back-ups! In the comics he sometimes used it to activate dots or control them, so it didn't seem a stretch either that his dots are tied to it somehow. His death was of course a fun one conceptually as well. Still, this guy managed to beat out Captain Underpants for strangest rise up the ranks, so congrats to you, mister. You worked it really good. I'm also happy that CKR did so well this Brawl. I've noticed sometimes her characters usually become jokes or fun toys rather than true competitors, partly because of their out of nowhere nature, but CKR seems to want to be a legitimate threat with some strong kills as well, so Polka-Dot Man certainly covered that niche despite her others bottoming out.
BEASTER BUNNY
As the Brawl approaches, I tend to start bringing up things I know my sisters are interested in to potentially get their minds working on entrants. A long time ago, I sent CKR a list of games on Newgrounds she could play when she was bored, and amongst them was the game Burrito Bison. I brought it up as a game that probably would have a mobile version these days (since most mobile games really are pretty much similar to old Newgrounds games) and lo and behold, it had one. I had expected Burrito Bison to join the Brawl perhaps, but instead, my sister seized on one of the enemies, the oddly dressed and punnily named Beaster Bunny. A big, buff, chocolate bunny in pink speedos. In game he just jumps in place and poses until you smack through him, so his skills in the Brawl really were just being strong and being a bunny, with his weakness being he is made of chocolate. I did consider having someone bite off his ears because of the common joke about chocolate easter bunnies, but instead Suppaman just alluded to it since I couldn't find a fluid moment for it. Beaster did most of his expected attacks when he fought Super Macho Man, but to mix up his moveset a bit more, I decided that when I brought in Hedlok, he'd be the one to get it. Having four extra arms made his combat a lot more interesting, although his small bunny body was almost irrelevant at that point considering how much stronger Hedlok was. I'm unsure if Beaster Bunny is hollow, it would make sense for him not to be but at the same time a buff chocolate bunny fiting people doesn't make sense no matter what outside of fiction. Sometimes I leave things to the user's imagination! Beaster Bunny started melting, but how much? Your mind makes the image work! I really am surprised Beaster Bunny wasn't CKR's entry to go far considering he got some proper votes and all, but the tractor is a wild beast. Probably got a good place considering his limited skillset, although just long enough to make Hedlok work and be interesting.
RYUK
What a weird, weird entry, and one that sent me looking through tons of Death Note stuff to hash out how to do him well. I watched the early parts of Death Note back when Adult Swim was playing them I believe, but I never got too far into the series. I'm not sure what CKR wanted exactly by entering him, he might've just been in her head since she'd been watching it on Netflix, but I made sure he was on a somewhat fair playing field, even though Lysias and the gang could've probably hurt him without the disclaimer "he's somewhat more tangible" since they're demons and all. He was fun to use in the pre-fite show, that's for sure, since most of his appeal is his personality rather than any skillfulness in battle. Ryuk was also the perfect fit for taking care of Juzo. Originally, Juzo was considered to be put in the stands for his safety, perhaps even with Rando, Draco's secret fiter, tasked with protecting him, and Ryuk would appear there to try and convince the boy to kill, probably writing Rando's name in the Death Note to kill him. I'm not sure if it's Ryuk's Death Note or the one he stole in the show, but the answer is "whichever one it is to make his attacks work," so I think it would be Ryuk's. Anyway, Ryuk trying to get the non-killer to kill was a very interesting angle I feel from the shinigami's perspective, so before I even knew the results I knew how that would go. He didn't do much proper fiting besides that because he basically just had claws to hold back the sudden wrath of Lysias, but his main purpose was an interesting moment. CKR was tasked with drawing Juzo's death even, and she totally approved of the angle once she learned that Ryuk would make Juzo turn murderous before dying. The biggest surprise though was that... I put a Death Note in the Brawl. I alluded to it in the Pre-Fite Show, had it appear, get used, get stolen by Dovetail... and no one was like WOAH WOAH WOAH GET THAT THING OUTTA HERE! Everyone was just totally cool with it, perhaps trusting me I wouldn't get carried away in using it? I appreciate the vote of confidence!
NIBBLER
The only character CKR was sure of this year when she entered her four was Nibbler. Everyone else was thought up within a few days of the Brawl I believe, but she had Nibbler on her planned list for a while. Strangely though, she's only watched some of Futurama, the first two seasons I believe, so she doesn't know the fact that despite seeming like a little pet who can eat anything and poops dark matter, Nibbler is actually a hyper-intelligent alien! I decided of course to play up the pet angle while hinting at the other as if most people would be in the dark like her, but ultimately I felt it a shame if we didn't do a little something with his true nature, even if CKR didn't know about it yet! She probably won't even learn how this Brawl went for a couple months and by then she might know about it! Nibbler's intelligence naturally coming up after eating Gladius, and alluding to an episode of Futurama where it is revealed that cats are actually aliens from Thuban 9 who came to earth to harness our magnetic poles to save their planet but went native when we treated them too well. Of course, in ZFRP this isn't true... at least not of all cats, but Nibbler's still got that knowledge so I thought it would be cute to bring it up. I guess this might be pre-Futurama Nibbler technically, since we're 1000 years in its possible past, but at the same time, we've seen Futurama characters like the Robot Devil, and how would Nibbler get his pet clothes that Leela gave him... I'm overthinking a JRMsister entrant, aren't I? I almost had him poop dark matter once or twice, but it felt strangely out of place. Like, just dropping a dookie in the Brawl or pre-fite show is very weird no matter who you are. Also, I knew the same "oh no cat death" jokes would plague me again this year, so Nibbler was a simple fit for killing Gladius without getting someone's character in hot water. In one episode of the show Nibbler sort of eats himself to teleport out of our universe, I considered something silly like that but again, no place for it really. So his main skill, despite all that... was just eating. Really well, mind you, but still just eating.
RUBYCHAO
MARIA
Maria's limb transformation power had a lot of potential, but there was a good reason she spent most the Brawl using tough metals like tungsten and steel. Mainly, they are durable but also great for beating other people up! Of course, the more I worked with her power in the Brawl, the more questions I had about it. For example: If Maria gets a limb injury with a durable material like metal, does it hurt the same? If she breaks her hand and changes into something like wood, could the hand then fall off because the injury was too much with the weaker material? This does come up a little, as Zargeesh bends in her hand and she avoided making it anything weak after, although at the same time, you'd need some niche use for a weak material anyway, and she still had a second arm. I was tempted a few times to do something silly like have her nose turn into a hard material, but since Maria's entry specifies its a mystery, I didn't want to potentially send her down a weird path because I turned her head metal for one attack. Maybe if she was top two she might shift more of her body, and it might help or hurt her depending, but she just instead had a really deep run. If you are wondering why she tore it up, besides of course placing high and characters who go far usually get a few KOs to justify the placement and keep the finale unclear, it was partly because she paired so well with Dolby. I would sometimes lose track of which one I pegged as killing a certain character, or I would come up with a change to the KO that made them both get credit, like when Maria hugs Dolby to make Dawn break. It helps that the two pair up well, Maria having a lot of brute strength and Dolby having a lot of utility, so they could keep finding new ways to mix things up and earn KOs. Drawing Maria was a bit odd, in that I kept flipping on if her hood should be up or not but the narration had no reason to bother with such details. I was worried a bit her smartphone might not see too much usage in the Brawl, but I think I found two good moments for it, one being telling Shade what's going on with the King in Yellow (I actually worried Maria might not follow Shade on Twitter, this is the kind of minutiae I worry about needlessly!) and again near her death, where Maria literally went through what I went through trying to find a counter to ice with just a material. Another Maria curiosity is if she has any control over the texture of the material on a limb, but as I googled around, I just found exactly what Maria found, and even though I thought of continuing the search, I felt like if I couldn't bring something up easily, Maria's probably in the same boat. Celestia and Maria fought despite their pseudo-alliance mostly because of how late in the game it was, and the fact that it was a pretty loose team-up that neither had done much to maintain. On some level every entrant understands they will kill some nice people, so I doubt Celestia would balk at the idea, although she did show some regret when she had Maria stumped. That fite was where we saw Maria pull out some more unusual materials, and we had a few moments where she had her limbs messed with, like Conquest's weird napalm... man, I really did a lot with her, huh? Sometimes I don't notice who I give a lot of love to, I just slip them in where they fit.
RUUKOTO
Chao gives me a character who can take a beating and lose limbs like crazy, so naturally the tractor denies me my fun! It really is a shame she placed so low in the standings, but that's pretty much the only reason the Cool Ladies allied up. Effie and Ruukoto died one spot apart and Conquest needed a partner, so the three were teamed up briefly to get them to do something before they died. Ruukoto, of course, had a lot more fun tools than Effie to play with before her death. The cleaning supplies could have gotten more play, but there were some moments like Bruticus getting owned by cleaning suds and Springtrap finding his weapon cube filled with cleaning supplies that made it work even though she lost her chance to use them. I kept away from some things just because how much certain things will fuck you up, but I might've pulled out the more brutal bases if she went further. The Brawl is about fun violence rather than gruesome violence though, but we might've even seen our drowning kill by way of too much liquid soap! As it was thought, Ruukoto's chipper nature made her have a few moments where she just soldiers on happily, and come to think of it, so many characters had dialog this brawl. Even if it was just a sentence, there have been some years where almost every character remains silent! I did have fun crunching Ruukoto up like a tin can, and I almost wish I got a picture of Dawn and Noodle sand surfing on the robot maid's back. Ruukoto was also the focus for Hina's bad luck, although I didn't want it to be a death sentence ot be inflicted. I mean, Ruukoto still died, but Ruukoto shouldn't be completely debilitated by the fact she's unlucky. Just things like the grenade's explosion and her leg blowing up, rather than not being able to stand for more than a second safely. One thing I am glad of though is that Chao's after Brawl stuff really accentuated how ruined she got, so even if I didn't get to break her to pieces for long, at least it was a thorough destruction! She has an atomic battery, which could have caused some explosive issues, but I thought that almost too cliche or expected. We don't need another nuclear detonation in a Brawl, at least from this angle. Again, maybe if Ruukoto made it further, I'd be singing a different tune! Another thing, for a touhou, she really did play differently than most of them. Not having the danmaku fall back made her have to fite differently, and trying to make a broom work as a weapon is certainly a different idea. Still though, she could've had a different weapon... WHERE'S THAT MIMI-CHAN, CHAO? I WANT MY LIVING MISSILE CHARACTER!
CHUCKSTER
CHUCKSTER! He was one of those guys I mentioned earlier that was hard to trim from my pointless voting list! He's such a delightfully simple guy. He likes to chuck! It is a shame he didn't kill anyone with a chuck of course, but I made sure he got in two good chucks during the Brawl. One: where Gooper drew him showing off properly by hurling the entire Team Skull team, and Two: where he does the impossible and hurls what we have determined to be a ten ton cat (probably heavier, actually.) I was a bit worried that might be TOO strong for the old Chuckster to be, but I put in a few things to make it seem like it was very much the Chuckster putting his all into it. Mainly, Emily sort of helping him either by way of motivation or giving the tiniest push to make it possible. Really, it was probably all Chuckster muscle moving it, but when I saw Big the Cat had a fire throw ability, this pianta's fate was sealed. I knew he had to be chucked to be killed, and while it might be a sort of expected inversion, I still wanted Big to be able to show off his skills, and chucking the Chuckster was just so natural! I feel like I'd like to have the Chuckster in a smaller fite one day to better explore him. His bat didn't get much play, partly because it was a bit in conflict with his grappler style, but its good to cover your bases, and he was able to hold Emily back and blind one of Large's eyes thanks to it. I've always liked Piantas for being such a simple and fun species in Mario, and now that Chao's been hinting at the Chuckster's hidden depths, I'm really interested in where this guy is going! I only wish he could have gone a little higher. Would he have got a lethal chuck? Prolly! Might also have him crack his bat to kill someone. I also like how he's just so okay with everything. So unflappable. I believe that's partly why he stood his ground and found the drive to chuck Large, although it would've been nice to have him around for our more fearsome godbeasts like King in Yellow or Ino's cosmic waste. Naturally though, even if chucking Team Skull was more joke than killer tactic, I had to have his big thing in here. It's not like the Oceanus facepunch where I can deny it for jokes either. Chuckster's gotta chuck.
HECATIA
I was looking forward to getting Hecatia, Hecatia, and Hecatia in the Brawl after she started popping up in RP, and I certainly had fun with their dynamic of there being three of them. Mostly, the idea of Hecatia betraying herself was a really fun one, and with Satu around, it was pretty easy to set it up. Of course, even Yellow Hecatia wasn't so dumb she was going to kill the others, but she was putty in Satu's hands after the Super Happy touch. She is the wackier one it seems, while Red and Blue can carry the torch of competency depending on the situation, just in different ways of course. Writing their dialog and interaction was a lot of fun and its always a joy to have a character who can pull off a good banter, they just usually require another character to do it! I did wonder a bit, when Hecatia took an injury to her arm in her main form, if splitting up would mean all three had that injury as well, but I usually had the girls act with the need for one arm only just in case. Blue and Yellow using the Mammothman chain partially covered that, but made it more interesting as well, as they suddenly had this long clothesline they could smack into people or strangle Callie with. If Clownpiece didn't have Metal Wolf to keep her somewhat disconnected, she and the three Hecatias might have been sucked into a comedy bit that I'd struggle to pull back out of! Too much banter potential! I think the Hecatias got the most use out of their spell cards this year, considering there were three of them pulling them out pretty rapidly in the Satu fite. I did consider having one of the Hecatias die off earlier, and instead we had pretty much what would have happened instead happen when Yellow turns traitor, in that the other two are more careful now that they can't join back up. It felt a bit weird to just call them colors too, and after Marie made me whip out the green to color her ink, I decided in their pictures, the Hecatias would have their hair color so they looked a lot less weird together. Black and White Hecatias fiting and dying just didn't look right. Red also technically died before the other two, although no one noticed until the others were about to die... and it almost felt dirty to not have an image of a character dying, even if they are technically dying completely in an upcoming picture! Naturally, the Hecatias crushed by a Hecatia is playing in again to my fun idea of the betrayal of self, although this was not done intentionally by one of them. Technically, I don't think Hecatia ever benefited from allying with Dolmaridia, although Clownpiece did certainly.
FORMERVENGEANCE
HROL
The Witchers had a bit of a rocky start last year, but the new trio Ven brought in this year have been doing gangbusters, and I had to have one in the Brawl. Luckily, the Witcher who managed to make the biggest impression in battle was also the one who matched the reference art perfectly... of course, as you saw earlier, drawing Hrol's face was still pretty hard! I almost lost the Witcher over a piddling over him bringing the steel sword and the silver sword, but unlike Lysias's two blades which had different skills, the blades were essentially the same here. Hrol barely even got to use his steel sword since so many of his foes fell under the umbrella of supernatural or unusual. It was very fortunate I got Na-Mes in the fite at the start of this year, as it helped me figure out the signs pretty well and think of battle applications before Hrol came in here with magic plus a bunch of oils and potions. I also got to watch the one video of a Witcher fiting a spider, which sort of showed their fiting style. Casting a Quen constantly is an obvious carryover, but I certainly made Hrol less dodgy than Geralt. In FYM and especially in the Brawl, if you have to dodge roll to avoid an attack, your opponent is usually smart enough and capable enough to take advantage of that and lock you to the ground somehow. Hrol was still plenty dodgy, but he wasn't doing dramatic video game dodges to manage it. One thing I've thought on a bit after doing it was when Hrol hurls the Black Blood potion at Bob to distract him. On the one hand, Black Blood wasn't going to help him much with Nikolai gone and most instances of blood-draining eliminated, but if he had imbibed it, Bob tackling Hrol and getting his blood on him could hurt him... but Hrol was going for the kill on the ogre, not a sacrifice that will marginally impede him. I'm sure its fairly obvious why Bob was the one who took him out. Ogroid Oil made them a natural match-up, and Bob was making a run to the top and needed a few stops to prove he was worth it, so taking down a guy who is trained to fite ogres definitely proved that Bob isn't just getting lucky with his win. Before then though, Hrol managed to show his skill with the blade pretty well, and the signs. It felt pretty easy to progress through most his oils and potions save where no opportunity ever came up, although I was iffy on giving Caprice the healing potion after I did it. It was enhanced by Scylla so presumably safer than other Witcher's brews, so the internal logic was that Caprice basically got hurt drinking it, but healed more to make up for it. Her hands had to keep working somehow, so I thought that was sufficient to not disable her. Hrol was still killer in battle even if he didn't make it all the way, so he's clearly adept. Never did call him a Cat in the Brawl though. That term didn't come naturally and probably would just make things confusing. Dude already had enough generic terms to work with anyway! Witcher, clone, I probably called him swordsman a bit, and emphasized him being a swordsman quite a bit! Technically, adding the grenades would have given him more tools I suppose, but I don't feel like I left many stones unturned with his performance.
ZARGEESH
Microsoft Word was really insistent on me capitalizing Starfighter, so my apologies for that, first and foremost. As for the Hutt himself, I was very happy to finally get him in the Brawl, and I made sure I got the best of both worlds with the guy with giving him a good dogfight in his starfighter and giving him a decent ground battle with the likes of Maria and Dolby. Of course, his entry didn't specify he'd be bringing those weird weapons he was holding in the picture, and while the weapon rule is looser than ever, I felt bringing in an entire starfighter AND those weapons would have been pushing it. It's like if Bulgrave tried to bring a rifle as well. Still, he didn't really need it. The Olympics establishing him as super strong made it not hard to sell how beastly he was against Maria, denting her metal limbs and all. I'm still not sure exactly on the details of a Batil Starfighter, as online wikis and such are very oblique in describing them. They're Hutt fighters, and that's all I really got. Just like Starscream, I figured he would be unable to ignore the presence of someone else in the air, and usually Zargeesh had his targets picked for him to keep him busy early on. He and Lucky squabbling is one of the few examples of a user fiting themselves, but it was more of a passing mention than something like the eventual Starscream vs. Lucky battle. Although I certainly wouldn't want entering in vehicles to become so common that everyone is doing it, it made the sky more interesting and sort of gave me a good look at what writing a dogfight could be. I did omit a planned part where one would be flying upside down over the other to surprise them, partly because I was like "this is kind of too absurd". I was pleased to see Hutts could last underwater for a while, although he wasn't really hassled in the water, it still gave him some time to scoot across it rather than landing directly on the island. When Zargeesh ran off to be Archon last year I feared he was gone forever, but I'm glad the big Hutt came back, and a bit surprised how high in the rankings he got, especially when he billed himself as a bit of a heel! That made him an easy fit to end Dolby's run, and when I noticed those spikes on his armor's tail, I found the perfect way for Maria to kill him too. Because of the armor's strangeness, I spent quite a bit of time looking at it, and that ended up killing him! ...Of course I removed the helmet to make him more recognizable. I love drawing Hutt faces!
PARA "LUCKY" NERIQUE
Man, I can't believe I ever wanted Lucky not to enter the Brawl just because she so happened to share a named with a troll M Sheep entered years back. I was happy that we had avoided Same Name Syndrome with the Brawl for quite a while, but I'm never turning away a character just because they shared a name with a previous entrant. Heck, Harpy's Secret Fiter this year could've meant we had another Alexander in the Brawl too! I think I was just too focused on the brawl quiz and all rather than the potential of an entry. I think my reticence did earn us a few things though, Lucky's got a more proper name now, and she was able to enter with an awesome dragon form that she wouldn't have had last year! With a character as important as Lucky I expected her to go a bit further, but the tractor was not kind here. It did help to keep the aerial dogfight from being a stalemate the whole brawl, but it felt bad killing the dragon so early. It still took most attacks like they were nothing, but a giant robot is a pretty decent match for a dragon, especially since a dragon's wing is a pretty simple weakpoint. If not for flyers though, I'm not sure how I might've justified Lucky leaving the sky. Ven and Lysias rightly brought up the potential of Lucky's AI enhancements making her a more accurate and fearsome foe, but the double-edge to that reminder was that it reminded me she had parts in her that Starscream's null ray could disable.I felt that was a good way to explain why she went down so early. Having even your machine or vehicle get disabled for a bit is annoying. Having your brain shut down for a bit is devastating. Luckily the Null Ray is only temporary. After all, we don't have the Transformers it shot turn up brain dead because of their own minds going offline briefly. Lucky's displacer gun is something that could have been devastating if she didn't have a dragon form that demanded more attention. Fiting with that would have been an entirely different story, but Starscream's body had mass to spare and the displacer had to have a pretty small area of effect to do as it claimed. You can't teleport a heart out of a torso if the gun teleported the whole human instead, or even just tore off the torso instead. I'm not sure about how I drew the KO picture, it looks like Starscream is creating over a hillside to smash Lucky, but I wanted to capture his size and I didn't really know how to draw him punching Lucky on the ground otherwise. Like, I had a mental picture, but it wasn't easy to capture. I really wish the ironic name hadn't proven true for Lucky, I think of the Ven entries I might've wanted her to win most.
DELANEY GORTON, THE GORTON'S FISHERMAN
I didn't know what to think originally when the idea of the Gorton's Fisherman joining the Brawl was floated. I sort of expected "Just a fisherman who is vaguely eldritch", as that was most of what we had seen in RP. Hints, jokes, winks at the audience... and then Ven was like "The Gorton's Fisherman introduces its new product: ready-made godbeast!" Some years I feel like having no godbeast, others I feel like averting it, some I feel like playing into the expectation so much its a joke in itself... this year, I felt like I just had to have the King in Yellow go nuts. Of course, he wasn't the King in Yellow at first, and I was probably a bit hesitant to hurt Delaney Gorton too much since it might seem like enough to trigger the King but I had to whip him out at the right moment. I'm probably the main reason he gets called Delaney Gorton, as I insisted on that name for some reason rather than his other titles like the more reasonable Gorton's Fisherman! Having the ability to generate the tools of his trade made him a fiter with a lot of potential in the first place. I was particularly enamored with his ability to make full-on boats. It made the battles at sea a lot more possible and since Nemu's thing is breaking boats, it made a perfect set-up for their encounter. Danai also having a fear of the Fisherman made her a perfect foe for him as well. I probably could have got a lot of work out of just having any fisherman tool he needed on hand, and it made for a good whaling battle with the big mutant. I think ramming his boat into a BleacherBoat is one of my favorite KOs on a conceptual level, as it shows he just doesn't care about the crowd in a way even past crowd killers couldn't match. They were a tool to him, and he used them to kill. While the Brawl this year didn't have as many "interruption events" as some, with examples being things like the Music Meister's song or the Musical Alliance's music or... anything musical at all really... the King in Yellow was a great sort of mid-brawl reset. It put a bunch of characters in peril and in chaos and allowed things to change around. It also was fun to write all the despair he caused. I know disease was emphasized in his entry as well, and it did show its face, I found that aspect, making the world make you despair with truth rather than falsehoods, that was a more interesting angle than "and now Maria has measles!". Characters probably did get sick or ill in various ways of course, and he tainted the land he flew over and water he drifted through, but the narration focused on the more fun to write parts. I was a bit worried about how harsh they might be, I don't want Dolby and Maria to leave the Brawl in complete despair after all, and Odyssey's was definitely a joke as well as an attack. I wanted the E.T. Atari Sprite in there, and it was the perfect moment. I haven't played Yooka-Laylee yet, but it sounds mostly like its the internet refusing to have a middle ground, so things are always absolute shit or the best ever. Mighty No. 9, I also thought it was okay, definitely not good or anything, but Gorton had to say things to bum Odyssey out, and the Yooka-Laylee part was more of me hearkening back to a joke I like from a comedian about neutral opinion graffiti like "Toy Story 2 was okay". I saw Conquest had something in her notes saying she had bad memories that could surface and hurt her, but Brine never really hinted too much at what those were, so the King only obliquely pulled on them to avoid saying too much or pegging the wrong thing as the bad memory. For killing the King in Yellow, his misty form seemed hard to kill, hence the idea for Danai to whip out her whirlwind. The ponies were added not to truly give them the kill even, but because I thought hope beating despair works better when its not one person. Teamwork is hope, after all. Rainbow Dash was sad I told her not to draw the ponies in the death picture, but I really didn't want them kill-stealing Danai who did most the work there. I do wish she had drawn the King in Yellow's face a bit more... pained and wailing, but she was late on her pictures and it had to be settled for. I think he might be the outright most villainous entrant in the Brawl so far... somehow beating out a zombie nazi. Deadhead could command the souls of the dead, but the King in Yellow made you feel like life is meaningless.
STEELKOMODO
KINDRED
Much like when they entered the Halloween fite, to research Kindred, I went and watched some people play as them in League of Legends. Naturally, as characters in a MOBA, they're subject to a few different rules than they are in RP, but at the same time, it helped me determine a few things. One, and the main one, is the concept of the Mark. Naturally, in League of Legends, you can't necessarily kill everything you Mark, and since in RP Wolf can get tired and change targets (similar to mechanic in League, by the by), it meant that I could justify the one big thing I was worried about: them marking Ino. Since Ino was not going to be killed early but would be fiting Kindred, I hesitated on putting the Mark on her. Naturally, they'd mark anyone they intend to fite to the death, but it wasn't a Mark to be completed, and I didn't want to lock them into fiting her the rest of the Brawl. Wolf's impatience helped alleviate that, and the League play made me decide that it's probably okay. They can also be denied a Mark, after all, with a kill steal. I hesitated to describe the Mark too or put it in the art, just to avoid trouble while I was still flipflopping around. I've mentioned plenty of times this fact about Lamb, but I'll mention it here as well: she has never missed a shot, so I made sure that didn't change here. Somebody skilled with a weapon in the Brawl isn't suddenly going to miss all the time just because they're fiting some good foes. Dealing with Lamb's arrows was about how they hit rather than if they hit, and we had things like Etrohus tanking the arrows, the cosmic waste taking the shots, or Ino using the cosmic waste to protect her skin. All hits still, just not fatal ones. I almost worried, again, that they spent TOO LONG on Ino, since Wolf is impatient. After they left the burning forest though, they started picking up speed. Lamb was certainly the more fragile of the two by way of having a more physical form. One thing, in League, Wolf is basically just a floating head. I like the art of him as a head with a long shadow trail though, so I kept up with that idea, especially since its not necessarily wrong either. League's just not going to put a character in their game who fills like half the screen with his shadow trail. The other abilities were less prone to questions, and it was just about finding a use for niche abilities like blessing the ground. Still, this pair is an interesting embodiment of Death, and while I had them talk a bit, I perhaps made them say each other's names too much. I trimmed some of that down when I noticed what I was doing. Wolf doesn't have to call her "little Lamb" all the time after all. Etrohus's death and his attempt to hurt Lamb during it were a little awkward, holding her strangely as he's about to be eaten, but hopefully it only seemed weird in my head rather than written out. Although I'm happy with them winning the Halloween fite, when it did come time to kill them, to hurt them, to weaken them... I kind of wish past me had given me a few pointers! I was going on new thoughts this time around, but Ino's darkness was certainly suited for taking down another "force of nature" type of character. I technically only had to kill one or the other, but for cases like this, its smarter even for Ino to try and keep both down until one dies. It would have probably been weird too if Wolf died and that killed Lamb, although being weird doesn't rule anything out. I do avoid ambiguity when possible, but sometimes, I just want to get max amount of death out of an entrant, and with a death spirit being the victim, I feel that's only appropriate.
NOODLE
Back before the Gorillaz debuted, I was thinking that it would be cool to have a real world band come to the bar and crash. The Gorillaz managed to take that idea and make something great out of it, eliminating the awkwardness of using real people thanks to the animated mascots of the group while still keeping the band dynamic. Noodle is definitely the main character of the group, with Murdoc trailing behind her, so I knew when it was Brawl time, I wanted one of those two. Noodle I feel was the better pick, and Murdoc still got to do a little bit of stuff in the Pre-Fite show, so I'm glad this band got to add to the Brawl! Noodle's jumpsuit was a strange "weapon" indeed. I remember spending a while trying to find her in the Kill Bill suit where she wasn't like 8 years old with no luck, but ultimately only I drew her during the Brawl so I really didn't need a better reference picture than her current facial appearance and just a picture of The Bride. Noodle's face is sort of strange too, with the heavy dark shading around her eyes and a monstrous grin, but I think I did pretty good on her face in her death shot! Girl definitely benefited most out of the Dangerous Alliance members. Sticking with Dawn allowed her to keep in the action a lot, and even when the alliance was whittled down, Noodle is probably the member closest to Dawn in that she wouldn't betray her. Springtrap could probably get ideas, Vince is likely to flip-flop, Hina could ally with others, and Shaggy and Bruticus were just there for the food. I was somewhat aware of Murdoc's potential anger if Noodle got killed too harshly, but it wasn't like I totally avoided anything for its sake. Caprice was pegged to take Noodle down and finally earn a kill with the magnum, and I felt like a throat shot was an interesting way to do it, so that worked out! As for the jumpsuit I drifted away from in conversation, I tried to think of it almost like Ignazio's old hidden guns in RP. Noodle had a lot more room for weird things like extra katanas, but there was a limit on what she had in there, mostly due to size constraints. Mostly she just had blades, guns, and grenades, and I didn't want the suit to be too overpowered so she never pulled out anything besides stuff you'd sort of expect. Maybe I could have got more creative, but mostly it was focused on being effective. You don't pull out nunchucks to fite a lady with a gun, for example. Her getting tenth place was definitely deserved. Considering SK's luck with getting fourth place though, a bit surprised she didn't place there!
SQUID SISTERS
Man, I would have been pleased if these two had won the whole Brawl, but sadly, it was not meant to be. Their dynamic is definitely a fun one, hence them getting into the Pre-Fite show, as are their ink weapons. Marie never really needed her "ultimate" so to speak as her targets were always out in the open, but the other stuff I had a lot of fun playing with. Callie's ink roller wasn't very lethal, probably because it only really rolled over one character (Dovetail, who could just fix herself), but Marie's sniper was shown to be a real force. Having played Splatoon myself, I know the Splat Roller really isn't a weapon you can kill with unless you get the drop on someone, and while I never got too into chargers, a sniper rifle is a sniper rifle even when it shoots ink. Ink that of course reveals your position, but what're you gonna do? It does make me realize why chargers are so much more balanced in Splatoon though, since you can't just camp and pick guys off without giving away your position with every shot. I did have fun playing with the ink quite a bit, especially the squid forms allowing both girls to make getaways or move in unexpected ways. I did consider how best to kill them though. I used to be a Marie fan but Callie slowly won me over instead, but it still felt like the natural progression was Callie dying first and Marie second. Callie is the more reckless one, partially, but just the duo feels to favor Marie, so her death would feel the more KO-worthy. I made a note that I had to have green ink in Marie's death picture instead of blood, which probably was responsible for the more general smattering of color even in my own art. Still, can't color too much of it, or the art would take too long! I find characters like Callie and Marie much easier to draw than normal humans. Cartoon proportions have more give and are pretty solid, whereas a more realistic character is subject to the smallest proportion issue making them look wonky or weird. Having the "grenades" and Killer Wail helped diversify their moves a little, but I definitely could have got more play with their ink if they lasted longer. I remember even considering characters stumbling across pink ink trails and such as Callie covered the island, but she didn't really have the time unfortunately.
GRENINJA
Greninja was definitely a cool return, and with him I was able to make a full segment of the Brawl that was devoted solely to Pokemon! It might've still happened with Jumpluff, Shaggy and Bruticus, and Team Skull all putzing around, but the tractor was really kind in putting the Pokemon close together (although part of it was me salvaging Bruticus). Unlike the other Pokemon though, Greninja seems to trend more towards his Super Smash Bros appearance than relying on the Pokemon games. I know technically the others haven't been in Smash Bros, but I mean that it wasn't just "open Bulbapedia and go hog wild" with Greninja. All the skills he used in the battle were ones shown in Smash Bros or mentioned in the entry. For example: Greninja uses Hydro Pump in Smash Bros but it is not mentioned, and he doesn't use Spikes in Smash Bros but the entry does mention it. He didn't get to pull off his finishing move of Night Slash, you don't want a character to always earn their kills the same way after all. In fact, Dr. Deer's death by Greninja was inspired by me searching the forum history to check what moves Greninja has used before, and at one point he tries and fails to snap a neck, so I made sure he got it this time! As for his ability, its never really come up for Greninja before, so presumably he has the Water Starter Basic Ability: Torrent. In the Pokemon games though he has two very interesting abilities as well: Protean and Battle Bond. I did consider the injection he gets giving him Battle Bond and turning him into Ash-Greninja, but that made little sense. Not because of the Ash part of the name, but because I felt if he did ever get it somehow in RP, it would be from something meaningful, and not a drug. RainbowDash still drew him somewhat like Ash-Greninja though, even though I gave her a proper reference picture! I don't know what happened there and I did my best to edit the picture to cover that up! Marie had her RainbowDash death altered too, for the head was much too large and I shrank it down. She also didn't have a right ear in the picture because Rainbow Dash only saw one in Marie's picture, which is the strangest assumption I've ever seen! Back to Greninja though, I gave him Protean instead, making Kevorkian's concoction basically an Ability Capsule. Protean wasn't an insane mix considering the Smash Bros limiters put on him, but having him turn ghostly made him a more fearsome foe for sure. I made sure Greninja was worn down hard before Team Skull fought him though to make it clear that Greninja wasn't weak, he had just been weakened to the point they could take him down. I also kept Greninja from talking to much, partly because I was so tempted to make them haikus, but mostly because he's a frog ninja. Some fiters don't seem like the type to talk a lot during battle. Just like Dudeguy Man though, if Greninja had edged into the final 10, maybe he would have had more dialog. Dudeguy kept quiet mostly because he was so tiny and was hard to hear!
JUMPROPEMAN
MARIO ANDRETTI
Considering the character, I pretty much had to enter him in the brawl, although I didn't expect him to do so well. I felt it somewhat unfair to make a character based around the jokes my sisters and I tell and not put him in the one place where they'll see him in action. Naturally, though, Mario's not exactly a fiter save when he's provoked the right way, so we saw that come up a lot and it was a wonderful tool to keep him out of the limelight early on. I guess I'm not surprised my sisters voted for him, but tying him to the Monster Hunter Alliance as well allowed him to bide his time until he would actually have to fite. Dudeguy Man felt like another character I might have to be careful in choosing who will kill him, and usually that means my guys take the fall. The fact that Mario is a blur on camera or in robot eyes didn't come up much because of who he went up against though, mostly just getting dismissed in the pre-fite show and coming up for post-brawl stuff. I did consider not having Jim Johnson do his little spiel, but the Mario as a character is built to be able to survive things like that, and it might even allow things to speed up, especially now that I'm out of my pre-brawl plot hiatus. I mostly wasn't sure about putting the Richard Nixon allusion there, as it could potentially come up at a more important time later for Mario, but again, my sisters would never see it and I thought it nice to pay them tribute when they're the reason I'm RPing this guy. Mario Andretti is pretty strong when his personality doesn't get in the way, as shown as he put the beatdown on Bob a bit, but without the proper motivator, it is a lot of wasted muscle and mass. I definitely didn't expect Bob to be a total bro and offer to buy him a replacement camera after the Brawl, but it was really cool of him! And Komachi saving the pictures? Man, Mario really lucked out, although he's not the type to mope too much if things hadn't gone so well. Really is strange, how far a simple race car driver can get in the Brawl.
FAITH
I've struggled in the past to make Faith work, but I can already tell this year will be the one I'm finally going to be content with what I do with her. Naturally, during her big year, I felt it important she enter the Brawl as well, and it helps address some of the stuff with her past a bit without being overbearing. If anything, her presence in the Brawl was far from overbearing, as she mostly just got wrecked by Jorrovar. I was surprised to see her getting votes from a few people, but I guess she wouldn't be working too well this year if some people didn't like her. After getting that art commissioned of Faith (after that horrible experience trying to commission someone else in the past for some!) I wanted her to enter with her "full OC" look. I took the chance I saw to wreck the Kori Bustard, and while I'll miss it and its cool name, I think the Black Bittern will be more useful and fun overall, as it has more capabilities. I do feel dumb for forgetting I intended to give it electrical attacks in the fite entry, but whatever, that's fine! I didn't specify what the cannons fire either, so it wasn't the best of entries. Probably should've pre-written it! I do kind of wish I didn't have black-and-white Faith enter though, I wanted her to be in full form so to speak, but she hasn't reached that yet really. I do think I probably could have used her hologram tomfoolery some more. I mostly focused on the Black Bittern since it is the powerhouse, but even in RP I've been having fun with her finding ways to use a projected body that doesn't have to worry about damage getting in people's faces. Faith's attitude was also saved mostly for the pre-fite show and her pre-death moment. Jorrovar still had her dead to rights, so its not like I was trying to rob him by saying she gave up and that's how he got her. She just didn't go down fiting is all. Her fiting Skeiron was considered because of their somewhat similar design, but I considered a lot of confrontations that don't end up happening. The main worry I had really was if I should debut the Black Bittern for the Brawl or beforehand. I mean, it wasn't a worry in that "will it effect her votes", just more of a character thing. Maybe I should have entered her with Horatio carrying her around, that wouldn't have gone poorly! While I'm usually pretty content to let my characters get the short end of the stick in the Brawl, I felt a bit bad gypping Faith when I saw people supporting her. Hopefully she didn't disappoint you guys!
EFFIE
I feel like Effie is my weakest entrant this year, not in terms of strength, but in terms of character. She's yet to really find her place in RP and while she has done a bit, I feel like she needs some more time cooking in the oven before she can develop into something better. Of course, this might be her only year, so I had her join the Brawl, sabotaging herself a bit as she is afraid of doing too well and potentially inviting the wrong kind of attention. I really wanted to make sure I got some good use out of her shield, as sometimes shields in the Brawl don't get much play. She used it to attack, defend, and even earn a kill! She didn't even get so far that she ever had to worry about doing too well, so she was mostly just a piece in the three way Cool Ladies alliance. I had played a little Fire Emblem Fates on my Wisconsin trip, and during it I noticed Effie slashes a lot with her spear instead of just jabbing, so I made sure she mixed it up more during the Brawl. Of course, she is just basically a shield and a spear, so I sort of struggled to write her fite entry, making her seem pretty simple next to a mimic, a hologram, and an Italian-American racecar driver. In the game they make a lot of jokes about how strong she really is, and while she is definitely strong in RP, she's a human level of strength. I don't want to go too in-depth about my discrepancies between her in-game attitude and the way I'm RPing her, that's what RP is for! But the other thing is, while the work DeMonde did on her didn't really come up, it could at least explain why she was able to survive a few blows. She didn't become the bloody mess I thought she might thanks to her ability to spill more than most people, but that's because in 69th place, you can't really find the time! Like most of my characters, I don't really intend for them to do too much in the Brawl besides make things a bit more interesting, so I'm not disappointed at all with her low placement. She came, she fought, she died! Just as intended! I do think maybe I should have unbenched Phantomon or something instead, but I don't want Effie to potentially join Phantomon on the bench of Brawlers who I never got to use if she comes into her own later on.
JASPER
Poor little Jasper. The mimic's main thing is certainly his attitude, but placing so low, he doesn't get to do much besides die. I knew I wanted to put him in the Brawl some day, but after deciding that Talbot would give Jasper a fear of resurrection, I kind of shot any chance of him sticking around long enough to show off his sass right in the pseudopod. Greed and Zeldoten were natural opponents for him though, the big treasure chest full of money perfect for the two to plunder, and giving Zeldoten a proper weapon made her a better fiter later on. I almost didn't even have Jasper barf up any gold, considering his placement and the reason he was being attacked, but I felt he's not reasonable enough to avoid doing something like that. Like most my characters though, they are pretty much here to lose and die, and I certainly wasn't at a loss for people to make snide comments or act aggressively, so I feel Jasper's early loss didn't really deny us anything, save perhaps the follow-through on what, a two year old promise of me entering him eventually? Will definitely have to be careful how I dig up other old characters should they ever get a swing at the Big Bar Brawl. I did like an anti-guilt trip here and missed out on votes for it! I had figured Jasper for an evergreen character, but I think this year might be his last "true" year, where he'll sort of drift to the side from there and only pop up when appropriate. Come to think of it, not too surprised a mimic didn't get too far. A mimic is an ambusher, not an aggressor, and Jasper has suffered for that attitude in the past! Oh, one thing I definitely knew I had to do though, was make a unique KO, in that Jasper might be the first Brawler to die of starvation! Greed sucked all the gold and jewels out of him, so now he's broke and starving. He probably has some more important things set aside to gobble up upon revival, but the treasure chest really did lose a fortune fiting in the Brawl. Imagine how mad he must be: the reason he's such a grump is people always attacking him for his treasure, and that's why he got killed!
CORNWIND EVIL
DAWN
Dawn is back, and in a new body too! And this time, she's got a new crew! The new Dangerous Alliance, despite my hesitation, was pretty fun to use and kept a lot of characters in the game throughout the Brawl, so I am no longer too averse to the idea. These characters might not have allied together naturally, so having a few solo agents linked together and seeing them work together is an interesting angle for sure. The worry is of course the idea of too many people allying up, but the idea seems just the right level of popular to prevent that, even if half the characters in this year's Brawl had something like "would like allies" in their entry! On Dawn herself, I'm not sure if this is my favorite body she used, but I like it more than the nanocloud and Aura at least. Its simplicity is part of the appeal, but I also got a test drive it in the four-way fite before the Brawl and come up with various ideas on what to do with it before I even had it in the Brawl folder. Mostly, of course, the feet are for slashing and stabbing, but doing that with a kick is an interesting angle, and it allowed things like essentially dancing on an opponent to hurt them. Dawn also did very well this year both just considering her and considering the performance of her alliance. She didn't die early, so it seemed more her group and managed to stay coordinated better than the sillier members of last year's later alliance members. Amity, Sunshine, and Praline aren't exactly the best trio, but Dawn sticking around allowed her to keep a lid on things, and getting Conquest just solidified the ragtag alliance even further into a fearsome force. I do want Dawn to earn a victory one day, the proper way rather than settling for an ally taking the top spot, but we'll see if that happens, and Cornwind already said he had a new plan for next year so who knows if that might be what cinches it for Dawn. Probably another thing I liked about this body was it could take some punishment, like when I rammed Effie's spear through it. It's fragile enough to break but strong enough to keep going because its an android. I almost lost track of some things during the Brawl, like whether or not that spear was still in Dawn, but I believe I got it right in the long run as Dawn and Noodle do busy themselves to TRY and remove it, leaving it up in the air if it stayed just in case I did mess up! I felt a bit bad with how I killed her. Like, it's a cool kill, but it did feel like Dawn died to an error again, rather than being outmatched in some department. She was trying to wreck Dolby from the inside admittedly, but I did take some time and consider if I felt that was okay to go through with. Dawn, Rainbow Dash, and Gamera have settled into a trio of tradition, so whereas I sometimes wanted more variety before, they're basically wanted by me now since I'm a sucker for things like that. Dawn does keep mixing it up too, so it's not like I'm using old clay to sculpt the Brawl or anything either!
STARSCREAM
Starscream is mostly remembered for being the goofy Decepticon who managed to pull a surprise win in King of Beats, and while we saw some of his silliness in the pre-fite show, during the Brawl he was mostly the powerful 50 foot tall transforming robot that can actually stand as a threat. The Null Rays were of course a weapon with a lot of potential, and I almost had Dawn steal them after Starscream died back before the island was planned to get flooded. I think there was some potential in the null rays moving around or disabling more machines, but ultimately, it is basically just a pause machine, and I got the more interesting uses I had planned out of it. Originally, Dawn was going to shoot Zargeesh's starfighter out of the sky with the pilfered null ray, but I liked the kamikaze kill better. I even originally drew Zargeesh jumping out at the last second but it looked really dumb, so instead he crawled out of the wreck and I hoped people would know he didn't die because of narration, even if the image wasn't too specific on who died. I remembered Starscream's spark pretty much as I wrote that moment rather than planning on what to do with it. I considered briefly having it fly off and possess Skeiron, but it didn't feel right to take over the robot after he made it so far and still could get some mileage in battle. Instead, Zargeesh chomped him down to reference the weirdly canon Death Battle that RainbowDash the user probably still doesn't know about. I almost feel like if Starscream had done worse the Spark could have found somewhere to do its magic, but Starscream placed extremely high somehow! Starscream certainly felt the most flexible of our aerial fiters, helped along by the fact he has a robot form and all. His robot form is capable of hovering in some Transformers stuff I've seen but the fite entry was iffy and I wasn't sure of Transformers canon on it, so he mostly switched with enough room to pop himself back into a jet just in case he wasn't supposed to hover in this version. I tried to draw his jet form a few times too and never liked how it came out, so all his pictures were robot form. Starscream in the Brawl was such a welcome surprise though, and he pretty much brought exactly what he should bring! His definitive weapon, a jet form, and his attitude! It was nice to have him back for a bit, and Transformers in the Brawl I feel are a pretty good fit. Maybe one day Del will give us Optimus Prime, and maybe I can work Lightwing in somewhere, but Starscream was definitely fun to use and a legitimate threat as well!
RYUKO MATOI
Not sure how long ago it must have been now, but one of the Big Bar Brawls, as I wrote it, I watched through the entirety of Kill la Kill on Netflix during my break times. This Brawl didn't have anything like that, unless you count me listening to stand-up comedy as I drew art, but I felt it somewhat appropriate that Ryuko joined the Brawl. Her having the OC Rebirth form threw me off a bit as I basically felt I knew exactly what to write before it was brought up, but since it was basically her default state, it didn't really mess with anything. She just activates it at the start of the Brawl and only changes out of it to go into her super crazy strong mode. While I definitely didn't go overboard with her strength like Cornwind does sometimes, she was still causing a lot of damage as she fought Caeseo and Etrohus, just things that seemed more in line with the actions being performed. The beach was scarred from her sword slashing it up for example, and most craters were formed from characters actually slamming into the ground. Her threads were great in giving her a twist to attacking besides really strong sword strikes, and I particularly thought it was a great way to get around limb removal that might seem damning otherwise. When I was trying to figure out how she would kill Caeseo, I tried to think of the most anime kill I could to match her character, and while some art this year I think didn't come out how I imagined it, I think I captured my intent with the Caeseo kill pretty well! I also tried to emphasize that Ryuko isn't just a force of destruction either. A lot of people seem to think she's an edgy characters because of her design, but she does have vulnerabilities and isn't completely cocksure. During the volcano we saw her in a panic, and while she tried to fite til the end, she wasn't acting like she could still win. She just didn't go down passively. Senketsu was pretty quiet admittedly, although he can be sometimes in the show as well, especially during a fite. I felt sometimes like, Ryuko should probably already be thinking what he's about to say, but I still had him speak a few times. Her super powered mode didn't activate until the point where I felt it absolutely had to be on or else she would have straight up died in the lava no questions asked. Ryuko definitely can get carried away, which Cornwind shows in RP, so even slamming an opponent into a place where he has the advantage isn't going to deter her. She certainly had a wealth of targets even if I hadn't assigned her to Etrohus and Caeseo, so I feel she could have had an over-the-top battle anywhere without pushing into appearing overpowered. Another great thing about the Brawl, characters are put on an even playing field! Still, I think it's pretty easy to worry about an anime character in a fite being too strong, but I never got that vibe from Ryuko myself, perhaps because I remembered the show well enough. She's a glutton for punishment and at least in RP, she won't be able to pull out a convenient form change just when she needs it, instead entering with them already available so its not too Anime. Oh, and of course, despite my usual hesitance to have music for a character... I just had to add DON'T LOSE YOUR WAAAAAAAAY when she was about to kill Caeseo. Some exceptions must be made!
SPRINGTRAP
It's very easy to get annoying when you get meta, and you definitely don't want to break the 4th wall down so hard it no longer exists. Deadpool, for example, works in his universe because he doesn't interact with other people who have that metatextual awareness. Springtrap also works on the same logic, and while he can press a bit too hard sometimes, he is fun. I definitely enjoy using him as a way of taking the piss out of myself and the Brawl, acknowledging the things people must notice and making fun of it. One thing I enjoyed doing was having him talk in his KO image and die that way, although I was super worried my awful handwriting might not be legible. I almost had the KO just be him getting petrified, but that hardly seemed enough to kill him, so it was a death fakeout than the real one. I mean, Springtrap probably wouldn't be stopped by something as simple as petrification in regular RP, right? One late addition to the Brawl was Springtrap hopping into chatzy, as Cornwind had wanted to do the previous year but didn't manage to pull of because he wasn't present at the right time. Springtrap even acknowledges that he couldn't have done it that year, and he wouldn't have had that added this year if Cornwind was late. It's no fun to set it up and have no delivery after all! I think the meta aspect is what made Springtrap hard to keep up in chat though, and why Cornwind had him leave early. I did want Cornwind to have his fun though, so I put it in at a part where Springtrap would not be up to much. His meta nature though means I'd have no issue with him returning again next year, as I still feel I could mine that for a few more jokes before the thing gets stale. I brought back his wires to make him a more interesting combatant. The weapon cube was great for gags and could give the occasional useful weapon when it needed to, but the one use limit meant he needed something to keep him going, and "jumping good" wasn't going to cut it. I felt a meta character just going "fuck it I'm bringing back the power that helps with writing" was very appropriate at least. Springtrap's dialog is hard to write, not because of what he says, but because Word autocorrects all the lack of capitalization and such. I think I made most of it Springtrap style but I'm sure some stuff slipped through still. Two things I'm thankful for though is that Springtrap didn't get a name change and his humanoid form still looks menacing and, more importantly, can pull off the sort of sarcastic look Springtrap the rabbit seems to have. I hesitated to call him a rabbit during the Brawl though, even though he's pretty much still got some rabbit parts.
DUDEMANGUY
DUDEGUY MAN
Man, ever since BBB1 I've wanted this little slug. I loved Ceadeus, don't get me wrong, but it's like, a goal to get a proper username sharing character into the Brawl. We've had Deleter, Saberwulf, Jumpropeman, RedSpy, Designate_5, Ogopogo, Owltomaton... I realize a lot of them are old users and I could keep listing those, but the point is, I love having characters of some significance here, and sharing the username immediately puts them up there. Not to mention the fact that I love the plucky little slug! His fite with Ogopogo back in the day was sadly a loss, but the giant fiting the tiny guy was still a challenge I relished. In the Brawl, I really wanted to focus on his need to overcome the smallness. Sadly, he didn't do much as part of the oceanic alliance that formed because of his small size and lack of ranged capabilities. Gorton was a foe he couldn't really get close in on without having to make Danai act strangely. His main moments of course were fiting on land. Nudibranch vs. Cubivore was a fite I wanted to do before I even got the results. The two tiny animals could struggle with certain foes, but against each other it could be intense without being too unbalanced. I had to link the Shadow of the Colossus music too. Playing up the dramatic angle, Dudeguy desperately scaling something small to us but huge to him. It was proper absurd but still awesome. I nearly disappointed myself by having him kill Piggy from inside the mouth, which I felt almost trended too close to the Ogopogo battle of old, so Dudeguy got out and instead attacked the Cubivore where it couldn't reach. From there, it was a matter of keeping him in the game, and the idea of him on Rainbow Blaze was ridiculously majestic. Teaming up against Mario was a good way to get them going, but the slug had to die. Not before getting to climb up the hairy side and try a second colossus climb of course, hassling Mario until he managed to do what was actually a quite easy kill. I wanted the KO shot to look as mundane as possible. Like Mario had plucked a bug from his hair while sitting on a park bunch and squishing it, except the park bench is a horse and the bug a slug. Main issues with Dudeguy were... keeping the name right and deciding if just saying Dudeguy was okay. I wanted to call him DMG so many times! I wanted to make fun of the unmasking of Contestant R in BBB2 post-death as well, hence the failed attempt but Jim sorta still confirming who it was behind the mask. Other than that, I mostly just had to consider how a sea slug could move around, some surfaces he could stick to, others he had to climb, how fast he could do it, things like that. I don't know what I would have done if he had won though! ...Maybe Kevorkian has some more syringes around to help with the size problem. 1/4 of an inch is in fact our smallest brawler, and any smaller would likely have to be refused entry for being a sentient bacteria or something.
ILSARIA
Man, I used to put Ilsaria on my Brawl wishlist, futilely hoping she may one day somehow return... and then she did! And then she seemed like she wasn't a monster hunter anymore or a fiter... but then she joined the Brawl anyway! And she even brought her classic hammer! It was everything I wanted and more, as Ilsaria also had new angle to draw from, like her farming, her inexperience as she gets back into things, and a sister and some cats to fite alongside. Most of her skills listed were sort of fancily named regular attacks, so she just sort of did them without name-dropping. Her hammer dispensing slime was a bit of a weird touch too, but its another thing where instead of stopping to say "the slime helped this strike!" it was meant to be assumed she smashed stuff better with its help. Admittedly, when her hammer hit things, it hit them very few times, since a single hit was usually enough to mess stuff up, but Gamera's shell cracking is probably a good example where it helped. Her strength was almost intimidatingly high, and I sometimes even worried about how tight she might be hugging that Jumpluff because of it! She got pretty far from all the season 1 love boosting her up, and I'm certainly not complaining! She got to do quite a bit with her Brawl appearance, even though its swelled in size so much since that simple season 1 assemblage of 18 characters where everyone could have a post-long fite rather than needing to put two or more kills in a post. I do think I do think we could have used a kill where Ilsaria just crushes someone with her hammer, but she was mostly a team player, earning kills alongside others by really just banging people up before the fatal blow. It really was tempting sometime to just make her capable, but I tried to balance in the amnesia aspect without overdoing it. You never see her fail much for it, but its more about opportunities she didn't take and the one time when Jumpluff saves her from falling off of Gamera. When it came time to kill Ilsaria again, I did worry about how Shade ended up doing it, mostly because I knew claws tearing open armor would require a lot of power... but Ilsaria's immense power was being borrowed, so I went through with it! What I didn't go through with was using the simile I came up with in my head, "cracking open Ilsaria's ribs like a fetal pig's", since that's more a personal comparison from experience in Biology in high school. Its a random comparison to most people and unless you got in there and cracked them like I did, it might not even have the visceral feel I was going for! I did make sure not to leave Ilsaria just a head this time though, let's keep her a round a little while, why don't we?
VYN
I like Vyn, it's why she's a hypothetical vote, and I do feel a bit bad for her. She had to compete with the nostalgia wave of seeing Ilsaria again, and while Vyn has some potential as a character, sometimes you can't beat the classics. Vyn didn't go down like a chump though. She was a professional Monster Hunter the whole time, being the one responsible for doing in Gamera after all. As mentioned both in RP and the pre-fite show, the Monster Hunters weren't quite used to fiting humans though, so she didn't die doing her profession or anything, she just lost when she faced a human foe who really had a strange skill she couldn't deal with. Vyn's Frenzy had to come up, no two bones about it. On one hand, its clear she has a pretty good handle on it since its been around in her life a while, but the Brawl is so chaotic and crazy that I feel that's a good enough excuse for it to slip out, especially after she gets damaged badly during her fite with Gamera. I almost had her die while still in the Frenzy, but even though she'd pretty much die a paragraph or so after regaining her faculties, I wanted to have Ilsaria and Vyn at least have that last moment together, have them almost take down Dovetail as well, but then have Vyn killed while she's not just a frothing monster. The Dung Bomb idea was silly too and I wanted to do it, so that played a part too. Vyn's kit was a lot more varied than Ilsaria, probably because she's the more experienced Monster Hunter now, so I made sure to move through a few buffs and potions and such by name so she was using her experience to contrast a bit with Ilsaria. I wanted to use her shock trap somewhere but never really found a place for it to come up fluidly save while she was in a Frenzy and probably wouldn't use it. DMG also specified that the Salamanders and that weapon class usually has the user jump around and such a lot as a sort of aerial fiter, so that was done to accentuate the contrast as well between normal Vyn and Frenzied Vyn who would just fite with basic tactics. Gooper put in his analysis I believe that the spread of the Frenzy virus was a concern, and I wasn't sure if that was true, since Vyn seems to have it and the Frenzy was spread by the Gore Magala in RP instead of her. She's also had it a while so I'm not sure she'd be walking around so much if she was a biohazard. Rather than risking inaccuracy, Vyn just never infected anyone. It could have been interesting if she did, but her match-ups were pretty good without anyone else going loco, so I don't feel we lost anything there. It is a bit like the Kevorkian situation in a way: if Kevorkian's syringes or Frenzy had made an alliance turn in on itself, a user might feel guilty their character messed things up. I mean, that's not me ruling out the idea, but a kind of consideration I make when I get things like that. I hope we continue to see Vyn develop after the Brawl, and just know, your fitemaster was a fan of you, girl!
MOZART AND GLADIUS
CATS! I'm sure you know what I'm going to say here. My concerns about killing cats when Cornwind makes a big deal out of it and such, but I think we can skip that and just say that's why Nibbler at Gladius and Rainbow Dash killed Mozart. No troubles with those set-ups! I definitely wanted these two in the Brawl, they're proper characters and have a bunch of unique tricks to the Felyne race. Gladius's tools admittedly mostly found their use through Dovetail instead. While I'm trying to make sure assistants aren't always just scrubbed out to give an early Brawl dropout a kill before dying, she did get put in that role. She got to dig around a bit and put up a fite of course, but ultimately, Nibbler was having a cat snack. One thing I had to change though, the night before the Brawl, was that I thought Mozart and Gladius could swim! I felt like since Monster Hunters did it, it was probably a safe bet their little helpers did too, but on King of Beasts Day, they both played only a little in the shallows and neither seemed adept swimmers. Mozart was already slated to ride Nemu mostly, but the cats and Hunters were gonna swim out to meet Gamera. It certainly wasn't a hard change, and other moments where they were in the water still worked since they were just flailing like something that can't swim! Mozart made a deep run despite losing Gladius though, and he probably played up the "reaction to close one's death" more than anyone really, immediately going to blow up Nibbler the second he could pull it off. His shock trap was also sadly unused, I don't know what it is about shock traps that made me unable to use them! At least Gladius's pitfall got used by Dovetail, and Mozart's scythe and bombs did their things well enough. I was surprised Gooper put the Rath-of-Meow on the stats list. It probably was underutilized, but the foes the Monster Hunters started going up against weren't really the best targets for the tank, and I realized the driver was gone. We got a funny scene with Jumpluff failing at replacing Gladius, but it would've been nice to let the tank do some damage before it got wrecked. To be fair, Mozart got wrecked shortly after, so it wasn't going to be long for this world anyway. While I certainly want to have Daikon have a go at the Brawl, perhaps earn a death in the big arena, I think we got some pretty good use out of the Felynes even if he doesn't enter. If anything, I probably downplayed the fact they were cats, focusing on their tools and stuff instead of, I don't know, making them bring Vyn a dead bird. DAMN! I just thought of something. Suppaman could have totally distracted Gladius with his laser pointer! See? Brawl ideas still keep coming even now! But alas, there is only so much room in the Brawl, and I already feel it is probably overly long already! Thank goodness people are actually interested in reading so many words!
IVELCHILD
GINOCINI
Technically, we did know Gino a bit last year from when Harpy used him, but he still felt a bit untested back then. He was the new kid on the block, so unfortunately he didn't get the backing he needed to go far. This year though, we knew the guy better, ivel had him show up a few times around RP, so this time, he got to go much further into the Brawl and make his mark. Of course, because of Dia, this guy spent a lot of time in the center of the Dolmaridia alliance, making sure he could protect his boo. Their placement did determine how much I would play that up, with many people rightly keening we might have had some straight up relationship confirmation if either had placed really high. They weren't too far apart in the rankings, but I didn't want either hampered by the death of the other really, so Ginocini kept putting up a good fite even after Dia's death. Ice Bear was his big kill, and where I guess he was the chivalrous knight as he properly protected Dia there (and would have done so during the King in Yellow moment, but that was interrupted to keep from breaking him and Dia. That would mean the godbeast had won after all!) I did see ivel mention Gino had a few skills he was leaving out for I guess fairness's sake, but if Gino does make another run next year, I do invite you to spill the bag out and give me a bunch of neat toys! I mean, there are limits still, but I was all too happy to reference the mabinogi wiki for some stuff on Gino too, even if most the skills were sort of simple twists on slashing someone or passive sort of increases to normal stuff. Much like how Youmu was paired up to fite Hrol, I seemed to really want to put sword users up against Hrol, so Gino went up against him as well. The Paladin form got to look properly daunting, with Gino essentially stonewalling his foes briefly with its power. I was hesitant to use all the tricks in his bag for the aforementioned reason of potentially telegraphing his death, but I still used the fun ones! One thing I've sort of struggled with in the Brawl is the concept that Gino is a bit lazy and a layabout. I don't think he'd just stop fiting because of it, but in this Brawl, he did rightly point out that delaying his battle with Hrol might help his chances of doing better, and I've kept him a bit short on words in general to sort of match how ivel RPs. Mostly, I'm just glad he got to do more this Brawl, 20th place is a big improvement for Gino and I feel like ivel is slowly climbing the ranks! Even if some of the characters we talk about later bottomed out, ivel's four had a proper spread.
JORROVAR AND LUITGARD
I had thought we might go a year without CKR mixing up character sizes, but when I told her Jorrovar is a giant, and I even said "a normal human giant" to try and make her think more Goliath than Jack and the Beanstalk, she thought he was enormous, and he's smashing the Black Bittern like its a toy rather than a mech that's about on par size wise with him. I mean, I even had Reduce Person to excuse why he wasn't much bigger than Zeldoten, and that decision was partly to put them on even footing and partly to make the picture easier to draw. Even though ivel mentioned Jorrovar is strong enough to use a tree as a club, and there was a forest right there that I even intended for him to grab a tree from, it just never happened! Partly because I burned the forest down, but that's just details! Smashing the Black Bittern was the substitute. I wasn't sure how important the gauntlets were too his strength, I imagine they'd help him hurt a robot better since hitting things like that bare-knuckled ends badly for you, but I didn't feel he needed them to hold his own. Luitgard especially made the clear, as she could just buff his attack if he needed it. Luitgard was pretty fun to write. Ingrid was a Bard with a lot of options, but Luitgard's main thing is her songs, and her battle mandolin isn't the best back-up, even though she found some uses for it. Elsewhere I joked about how disruptive a song can be in the Brawl since music tends towards hypnosis and such, but Luitgard's songs were nice and understated and lead to her switching to the Farmer's Guild alliance, even if that one was short-lived and partially existed due to the coincidence of Ilsaria and Jumpluff placing so close to each other. I found it hard to justify her running after the leg injury but I did it anyway, since the level of injury was mine to determine anyway and the Bittern didn't truly completely crush her, or she would have died! Mostly, her role was try to support and find out the difficulties of people knowing to target you, as Faith, Nibbles, and others all targeted her to weaken her allies. Poor bard... I'm glad these two did pretty decently though, since they're the other entry besides Ginocini which is uniquely ivel. Phoenix and Puddlenaut are borrowed, but the Milletians are in-universe OCs, so I'm glad ivel's brainchildren can make a bit of a name for themselves in the Brawl now that he's settled into our community some more.
PHOENIX IKKI
I had to laugh when I saw Phoenix Ikki got last place. It's almost Sine-like, just a poetic choice of the tractor to take a character who is proud and ambitious and jam them down in last place. Felt a bit bad for ivel of course, Phoenix really showed his stuff the previous year, but at least the tractor gave him some good spots for the Milletians. Phoenix though, unfortunately, I had to run through all his tricks before he bit the dust. I really wanted to have Vince get Illusion Fisted into just a particularly busy work day, and I liked the image of Hina grabbing him with her ribbons as he just blasted fire all around as he struggled, but he placed too low to put too huge a dent in the Brawl. Most of the research from last year's Brawl was still stuck pretty good in my head, so mostly it was me dusting off my knowledge when it came to writing the bronze saint again. Calling him bronze saint is something I had to look up though! Mostly I remembered his skills and attitude. I did make sure Phoenix didn't go down like a wimp though, basically getting ganged up on big time to make him justifiable as the first death. He's an incredibly durable and strong guy, but characters have their limits. We'll see if he goes for a third run next year, but it is pretty clear that if he does, he'll do much better than this go round. It does sort of emphasize the fact that a character's placement can be influenced by something other than their strength though, and in a Brawl full of alliances, its not surprising a few people got beatdown hard by them working together well. Him overdoing the drinking in the pre-fite show was meant to foreshadow his cockiness, although he was certainly sober by the time of the Brawl. This year's pre-fite show was likely not right before the Brawl as most are implied to be, although Vykarius did releases them the day before. Nebulous pre-fite show time means some things had to happen a day or more due to King of Beasts Day also happening, but I did keep that in mind. I'd never have a character show up wasted for a Brawl after all, unless they're someone like Aiden who just can't help but be drunk 24/7. Maybe one day I'll check out Saint Seiya and see what this guy is like for real. You never should underestimate the strongest of the 100 orphans.
PUDDLENAUT
Naturally, after ivel entered the Puddlenaut, I made sure to watch the music video he is from. I love characters with unique origins, and while the Gorillaz can almost be said to be from music videos, I think Puddlenaut is the first true stepover from that land. I do like him as the heroic mute, something I emphasized in the Pre-Fite Show, and I do like that he has a freaking shark for an arm! I used it for a bit of fun here and there, but it unfortunately didn't get to eat anyone or anything. I did worry about him lifting Dolby with it, but her rubbery body should be able to take a few fangs through the skin without too much worry. It hurt to have it get shredded by the wepon's bullets too, but at the same time, the shark would have to die some day. At least it died protecting Puddlenaut! I probably should have busied him a bit better than I did, but originally I had planned for John Freeman's metal crate to intersect with more battles, Puddlenaut getting into things that way, but it almost felt too random or disruptive whenever the thought came up. He was put up against John Freeman specifically as two not-really-a-video-game-character-but-sort-of characters, hence why Odyssey was pulled over as well. It felt a bit strange to describe him firing spears, as if I didn't think people would understand that he had more of them for some reason... sometimes I get really tripped up on technical details like that and I just hurt the narration a bit trying to make it clear he's firing spears but he's got back-ups, don't worry folks! He did use his spear like a proper spear and sometimes like a video game power-up, but I'm sure by now people at least understand his skills better. After ivel got last place with Phoenix, I was a bit iffy on Puddlenaut also going down with no KOs, but I've mentioned how much of a mess the KO assignment can be sometime. He's getting a second chance by way of Race Yer' Mates to really make a mark, but the Brawl is a difficult balancing act, and I really wanted him there for the fite with the other characters with more obvious links to video games (rather than characters technically from them like Touhous and such). I remember when I first saw the Puddlenaut image, I thought the two viewing ports on his helmet were actually big eyes, and he looked pretty cute. I also considered referencing the video game mechanics from the music video as well, like the helmet revival, but I left that up to ivel to do as the potential revival.
DELETER
VINCE (KAMEN RIDER EX-AID)
I never expected Vince to join the Brawl, although I never expected him to become Kamen Rider Ex-Aid either! He was very fiting averse... and work averse in general, so besides things like Feed Yer' Mates he seemed an unlikely candidate for the big murderfest. Naturally, with a character with a clear personality like Vince's, it was a joy to have him, and I definitely focused more on the Vince than the Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. It felt weird to even call him Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, mostly because of how he was billed but partially because it doesn't roll out too easily. Kamen Rider OOO last year was a natural fit, to the point it didn't even feel much like Beck. Ex-Aid, the point almost is that Vince is in a suit and not really Kamen Rider like. Vince's power probably wasn't emphasized properly, although he was denting shields, breaking faces, and bending in ribcages when he did land his attacks. The main thing is his lack of skill means he's easier to deflect, and Vince wouldn't always have the know-how to know how to follow-through properly or wind-up. I managed to work in most the jokes I had planned for him, like the Beach Episode stuff and kicking someone while they're down. I think I saw someone think Beach Episode might storm the Brawl? I didn't think that was the best. Invading Feed Yer' Mates is one thing, but the Brawl is prime-time for it to hock its wares and pimp Vince out. Getting involved wouldn't add much besides a smattering of Beach Episode jokes before it had to vamoose. Could have been interesting, but I don't want Vince to always have to link back to that whenever he steps over to FYM. Vince also didn't betray the alliance, mostly because when he'd sort of do his own thing the others would wander back to him. Being part of the alliance also kept him in focus, so staying near them kept him safer than trying to break away but still being identified as a member by someone looking to weaken the alliance. For some reason though, I couldn't find a clip of the Mighty Critical Strike anywhere. I'd probably have to select an episode and watch it through to find it, but no one on youtube was helping save people parodying it or mislabelling videos! Its basically a fancy rider kick though, although when I pegged it at first, I thought it was a bunch of punches. My apologies for having both Kamen Riders who enter Brawls kill with Rider Kicks. It felt a bit weird to use the other Kamen Rider abilities as well. I of course want him to become chibi rider at some point and there were a few moments where he got to and could make fun of its appearance, but it was the chocolate blocks that were really strange. He grabbed a few power-ups and used them to jump around a bit, but it always felt odd for Vince to be like, "You know what I need right now? A floating chocolate block with a random power-up inside." I certainly got some use out of the idea still, but some powers are just strange in general, even in a Brawl full of strange abilities!
CAESEO
I don't know how to describe my thoughts on Caeseo besides perhaps... addicted. His old-fashioned Shakespearean diction and his grandiose nature is just such a fun character to write. I mean, with a character like Vykarius, I defer to communicating the idea as being more important than having old-timey or flowery language. I've always said I try to be like Hemingway in that regard, but for a small character or someone I just wrote for a fite like Caeseo, I can definitely dig in deep and have a lot of fun with all the terminology I've got sitting on a shelf. I'll take almost any opportunity to use the word aroint for example, but I don't want to force it either. Caeseo, of course, it just fit on like a glove! I almost feel like I didn't go in deep enough! Of course, Caeseo is essentially the "Julius but not" entry, sort of like Parsephine was for Parsee. You kind of get into the fighting game discussion there, where you either care more about the moveset or more about the character's identity. I am definitely a character identity guy, but even though Caeseo was sort of a Julius who will fite, he still had a pretty strong and fun personality, so it's not like I'm being denied anything, I'm just getting a different visitor from the same neck of the woods. He's sort of like Reinhardt, who I'm loving more and more in Overwatch as I finally gave him a chance and found the hammer isn't that hard to use. One thing I was worried about is, Caeseo is specified to be a divine being. His sword is not divine, a point I bring up with Ryuko and Etrohus to make sure that's clear, and the Astra is sort of nebulously defined. It's star power essentially, and Del has explained some parts of it, but others are a mystery. It can make people terrible or great, its a magic force, and Microsoft Word insists I capitalize it. While it is not always holy seemingly, it can destroy stuff and Caeseo seems to be divine in some way, so his Astra is definitely more than enough to kill Cirase. It might be how he channels it... I looked through the Del worldbuilding topic and all just in case but that probably made me have more questions about how he relates to them! Caeseo, I feel I would vote for him if I somehow knew how fun he was before I ever tried to write him, but that sort of kills the hypothetical of me not being the brawl writer but a brawl voter! Fiting the demons and making sure they stay down was a natural fit for a guy who typifies the idea of a holy knight, and besides a little hesitance in trying to come up with some cool tricks with the Astra without overstepping my boundaries, I never found myself worrying too much as I wrote him. Wouldn't mind seeing him just... around. Being all knightly and junk. Cool dude.
PIGGY TYRO
Oink. ...Okay, yeah, I can't help myself. Piggy Tyro is great. I had watched about two hours or so of Cubivore gameplay before the season even started, so the pig and the Cubivore world were still somewhat fresh in my mind. Del has leaned pretty hard into a sort of Litten-style description of everything Piggy Tyro does being more fearsome and dramatic than it truly is, and while I can't say I completely captured that with all the Pig did in the Brawl, it definitely came out full force in its fite against Dudeguy Man, where the drama was turned up to 1000 to make it appear a fearsome foe. Arr's entry was incredibly fortunate for the pig, as I did feel pretty limited by just the presence of red meat after Del brought it up in the entry, but a color-changing character just so happened to appear to solve the problem! I think I might've leaned too hard into the rules of Cubivore though when deciding how eating upgraded the pig. I trended towards stuff you might see in a normal run of Cubivore, but I can actually say that if he had done very well, Piggy might begin breaking away from those constraints and edge towards being a Cubivore godbeast. Notably, a Cubivore's name can change a lot as they eat and grow, but I decided to stick with Piggy Tyro for simplicity's sake. Changing his name every time he got a new panel would get a bit obnoxious considering the rate of gaining and losing them, but if he had made a deep run, we might've got a more gradual evolution, and then perhaps a godbeast name as well. Not sure what it might've been as I never designed the godbeast form since the tractor results came before that idea got legs. I hope I explained the various panel orientations well as well. Cubivores, for creatures made of simple shapes, can have odd orientations. The fite with Piggy Tyro and Dudeguy was so important I broke my usual "no music" rule I put into the Brawl to prevent spoilers. I felt, first of all, it was more of a song for the tone of the battle. Other places we saw music, it was already basically a fite that ended before the song came in, but the Shadow of the Colossus music did so much for setting up the scope of the conflict. Figuring out how a pig made of panels fought something on his body was an interesting challenge. I bet watching it from the outside it looked really strange, like a pig trying to scratch a bunch of weird itches. I wish Piggy had gone further, but at least the Del wishlist backlog is getting some members addressed.
AKIRA
Persona is a series I've wanted to check out for a while, and while I own a few of the games, I still haven't! So when Akira entered, naturally, I stuck my nose in wikis and videos to figure him and Arsene out as best I could. I probably got quite a bit of spoilers but I wager they'll mostly fall out the other ear before I ever get to playing Persona 5. Personas are currently in a weird spot in RP, where I have written a Persona in a fite both by way of Labrys using hers constantly in one fite and Parsee calling upon hers in another for only part of the fite. I tried to trend towards how Del seems to be establishing it works for the crimeboys, as well as maybe adhering to the games more closely? I don't know, strange territory. Not as strange as figuring out how good Akira's English is! He does speak a bit of Japanese during the Brawl, but during the pre-fite show he speaks some English so he can participate. In RP the crimeboys have mostly interacted with Dawn and Springtrap who can translate, but then the <translation brackets> disappeared at some point so I'm unsure on their status. I put Akira somewhere on the ledge where he knows some English, just like most Japanese people, but isn't too communicative with it, just in case. For his skills, the crimeboy's Persona I knew I had to give a kill with those kickass stilettos. They make Dawn's foot blades look tame by comparison. Other than that, Akira's fiting style accentuated the knife and his agility, and he fought Polka-Dot Man as part of Del's given angle that Akira takes down criminals worse than him. And what's worse than a man who does crimes with polka-dots? Of course, that didn't end well, but what're you gonna do? Akira's gun went to Polka-Dot Man as a continuing threat that didn't pan out when Polka-Dot Man met his match, but otherwise, Akira was getting into a lot of early brawl trouble. He got 33rd, nearly the middle, so he got to play around a bit with his tools before he had to go. I read up on some Arsene dialog to try and make their interaction a bit more interesting, and I tried to limit Arsene's usage per the note that Persona usage takes a bit out of Akira. Hopefully the balance was good, and it did prevent Akira from devolving into a Stand user by just relying on it almost exclusively.
DRACO
CLOWNPIECE
I definitely wanted to get Clownpiece in the Brawl after she started making appearances around the bar, but I certainly didn't expect the weapon she'd be entering with! I pretty much expected the torch, especially since Hecatia used it as a weapon in a fite before, but bringing in Metal Wolf was way out of left field! Not that I'm complaining, a giant mech has a bunch of cool tricks, and it basically made Clownpiece into an entrant who dies and makes a new entrant, with Metal Wolf being phase 1 and Clownpiece being phase 2. Metal Wolf itself, Draco was sparse on the details of what it could do, so I plunged into the internet and found... people really need to talk about this game more! There was no convenient list or wiki of everything the mech suit could do, so I just watched videos to learn instead. Draco had it fly when Clownpiece used it some, but in the videos of the game, the Metal Wolf is mostly ground bound, using its jets to boost around the place, so I kept it pretty much on the ground. There's gotta be some reason it isn't always zipping around the air after all. After that, the question of its weapons come up. The thing has tons of weapons built into it, and it was kind of similar to Noodle's jumpsuit in that regard, although Metal Wolf technically did have a list of weapons that I just couldn't find anywhere. Instead, I integrated the ones I saw in the videos, as well as its missile salvos. It definitely was good for taking a beating, allowing Marie to go down in a blaze of glory as she blasted it full of holes. Of course, even without the mech suit, Clownpiece is still a threat. Her spell cards and danmaku were different than most other touhou characters, and I had a lot of fun with interpreting the Striped Abyss. It shoots lasers across the screen, but how might that work in 3D space? Star danmaku and moons also made her have a unique approach to the touhou bullet blasts. Main thing I was worried about is how Clownpiece is meant to react to Hecatia and of course, her death. I made sure Clownpiece was too busy during her master's death to ease that a bit, as I don't think the Brawl is a good place for a breakdown, especially when Hecatia will be back later. She still had a freakout and was a bit wonky for a while, but nothing too over the top. Speaking of over the top, I was very confused when Clownpiece lost an arm in fite club and put it back on. We hadn't seen that level of durability from her before, and I was very thankful that Vince is pretty powerful and that Kamen Rider and Sentai all have their own goofy logic at times that can play ball to allow it to be a KO. Kicking someone's ribs in isn't as easy to recover from playfully as a limb removal, as odd as that sounds. Speaking of, her goofy attitude at moments like losing her limb might help explain her reaction to Hecatia's death! After her master's death, I mostly had to remember that she was on Dolmaridia, as that alliance was getting unmanageable. She almost disappeared from team fites just because whenever I needed to know how to address things, I looked at my alliance sticky note, and Hecatia and Clownpiece were separate under Moon Girls. I usually caught it after about a minute as I'd realize she wasn't present to do something I had planned, so I'd go pop her into place and then she could get rolling again. That's the main downside to alliances I find: keeping track of their shifting cast!
ZELDOTEN AND NIBBLES
Last year's champion comes around for her victory lap! I've made no secret I love Zeldoten and Nibbles, and I was very happy to see they didn't crash hard like Silence did. Getting right on 30th place is pretty good in such a large field, and I was able to make her go down swinging hard. While Dia's picture made me think she could fly with her wings, Zeldoten's sort of did the opposite, as the absence of wings made me forget she had them for quite a bit. I think I was looking at the mixtures she brought with her when I got the reminder, but thankfully she hadn't done anything like fail to outrun lava or something totally inappropriate. I know it hasn't proven to be the case, but one reason why I had Nibbles sacrifice himself to kill Rainbow Dash specifically was because the pony is always able to revive easily, and I wanted to avoid the problem of Nibbles not coming back from such a death. I know Draco is a big Rainbow Dash fan, and RD herself does like a few of his characters too, but she'd definitely want to take down the champion, both as a user and as a character. She didn't succeed, but the angle worked! Zeldoten came in with a few more suggested concoctions this year and I decided to make good use of them, Invisibility being one and of course, Vomit Swarm being the other. I worried a bit about making Jasper spit up spiders because of it maybe upsetting arachnophobes, but no comments have been made. The Vomit Swarm does, according to the wiki, apparently have different effects according to your caster level, hence why Jasper used the basic spider tear and Zeldoten could still spit out some wasps. I kind of wish being stung by wasps was a reasonable enough death, as I felt Zeldoten stabbing Jorrovar was sort of required to finish him off, rather than just letting the bugs do the work. Maybe he should have had an allergy! Also, I did go off the recommendation list a bit, mostly because an alchemist has a lot of potential and the Reduce Person one was perfect for making Jorrovar and Zeldoten a more even fite. Nibbles was fun to have around again, although I was desperately searching for a vehicle for him to commandeer. If Bulgrave had done a bit worse, he could have driven a tank! Or maybe imagine Nibbles in the Batil Starfighter! Unfortunately, nothing fluid came up. Nibbles and his size were a bit weird to keep track of. Having him small was of course cuter and funnier, like when he and Luitgard show down, but being large is his fiting mode, and popping back and forth between them happened more than, I think, it did last Brawl. Using the size options more to his advantage. I'm glad Jasper died so early too, Zeldoten was the perfect one for taking his weapon and giving it a good use later on. Zeldoten's tail was removed early too because its just such a perfect appendage for easy removal in an intense fite! Being down a hand or more can make it seem like you won't go far, but losing part extraneous to basic function makes you a prime candidate for the chopping block! Also, since the "perfectly normal crab" jokes mostly have disappeared from Nibbles, I elected not to include them, although they might've helped with the size stuff admittedly. If I had been able to before the Brawl, and if I didn't think most instances of me showing any lick of support might give people the wrong idea, I would have posted the Weasel Bandits in the stands holding a ZELDOTEN GANG sign to show their support. I'll never get over this master thief! She's stolen my heart!
SHAGGY AND BRUTICUS
I had expected to maybe get Bruticus this Brawl. Shaggy was another suggestion I had if Draco was running low on ideas. I didn't expect to get them in a pair! Despite my initial assumption that Bruticus and Shaggy were first off a pair like the Squid Sisters, and then the assumption that Bruticus was the main entrant and Shaggy the helper, I think I've already said that this arrangement was probably the best for the two. I got to keep Bruticus around for a while and make him the bruiser of the Dangerous Alliance, with only Conquest really outclassing him in the raw strength depot (well, Vince is strong too, but he can't use that strength like Bruticus can). Shaggy having three heads was great, multiple decapitations for the price of one! Even though he was the lowest placing Dangerous Alliance member, I still really liked my idea for him biting Effie's head off from behind. There were a lot of characters in the Brawl who had their jaws and eating as their primary means of attack and killing, so I like it when I can do something a bit different with that. I mean, Shaggy had a bunch of Pokemon attacks as well, and we saw a few of them before he had to go down. Bruticus's raw strength made him pretty versatile before I even thought of using Pokemon moves, to the point he mostly whipped those out as the mix up rather than the norm like some of the other Pokemon. Being tied to the alliance means he didn't have reason to fly around as much, but I did want to bring it in as it was the perfect means of putting down Jumpluff. I remember having fun writing him in the Halloween fite as well, and funnily enough, he got killed by Kindred, who was also in that fite! It wasn't intentional actually, I just thought Kindred might have issue with a ghost, even if Golurk probably isn't truly the ghost of anything. Him being ghost type did raise the question on what should and shouldn't hurt him, but ZFRP ghosts usually have a solid state, and Golurk would need that to be able punch things and all. I am glad we got more of Team Sealander even if I still haven't landed the Sealander lady themselves. Maybe next year we might see Iku the Gyarados take a swing at things?
GAMERA AND LEVI
Gamera's back, and with a cooler gimmick than before! I remember when I opened that spoiler and saw Gamera and Levi teaming up, my immediate thought was Draco was going too far! You can't have two powerful kaijus both fiting together! And then when I read it... I loved it! Levi being the manager was a great idea, and since he wasn't focused on actually fiting, I made sure he mostly busied himself with the advertising of the film. He attacked a few times to help Gamera out, but the reason he got to survive the whole Brawl was because it was noted that he'd just step aside if the ability to make his client look good disappeared. If Levi had kept fiting after all, he might look better than Gamera, and they aren't making a Levi the Leviathan movie after all! Notably, I did try to look up information on the forthcoming Gamera movie in the hopes of giving a potential date for its release or giving the proper hashtag to tweet out at it... but besides that original trailer, things have been pretty quiet about the Gamera movie. It's why Levi kept saying "coming out... eventually." A good joke in itself, but a bit of a shame. A bigger shame though was I learned about a new Gamera ability that I'm even hesitant to mention, since it could be really fun to use later on! Really, if Gamera had done better it would have totally happened, but the giant turtle is bound to slide up and down the rankings just like Rainbow Dash and Dawn as he continues to enter. I think Levi did a decent job at pulling his shtick, although again I mention he was in the pre-fite show just in case I didn't get the chance to do the SPONSORED BY jokes too much. Probably my favorite part of his fite though was when the Monster Hunters were struggling to stay on him as he flew. We haven't seen that angle done with the giant turtle yet. Gamera's definitely not a bag out of tricks, and being a kaiju always gives him a bit of potential. He didn't seal a kill, but he did start Vyn's downward spiral and required a lot of work to take down. I really should watch some Gamera films sometime. Maybe he would've been perfect for the volcano, that's partially why he was going there! I knew he couldn't fite in it, considering his opponents, but it seemed like an idea he would have. Maybe by next Brawl we'll have a better clue on the state of his movie, but I think this gimmick still had legs even with just the teaser trailer out. I did realize though that one of the few Brawls Gamera skipped, he missed Guiron. That could have been interesting! Still, I'm glad the consistent kaiju we got is both a threat and a funny character, that might be why the well never feels dry... in addition to Draco coming up with good twists for him.
COMMANDER FOX
Commander Fox, I suppose, is the closest we'll get to one of the main Stormtrooper characters entering the Brawl. Stormtrooper B has too much competition from Goopcast, Stormtrooper C is a bad guy, and Harpy's adopted Stormtroopers all fell off the map pretty quickly. Technically, Fox doesn't have a true connection to the stormtroopers besides carrying over what would likely be their skillset were they to enter, but the niche is more what I mean. I tried to emphasize the advantage a laser weapon would have over many competitors by having it just destroy Effie's armor without trouble, because really, the reason troopers aren't too effective in their setting probably partially comes from the fact they're using the weapon everyone designs their defenses around. Of course, being a character from nowhere meant I didn't have much to work with, and I was frightened the day Draco put him in the bar because he might start doing things like showing a personality, but Fox just showed up so he didn't really contradict anything in the Brawl. As a Commander he was the one to try and get the cool guys to ally, but ultimately he was probably the person who got the least benefit from the pseudo-alliance besides perhaps Puddlenaut. He wasn't hard to use from a tool perspective, but I was still a bit iffy on him since he seemed to be submitted to tease me for not allowing Bree to bring along a Del clone. Clones are strangely a common topic this year, but it was just like the rule I put down about Brine not being able to enter with Ven's toaster character. The increased rule leniency is meant to make things more fun and interesting, but if you open certain pathways, you might get drama later on where people try to force their way into getting a character in through a technicality. It's hard to tell too, if Caprice did bring the clone ally, maybe he'd do well enough that Del would want to RP him, and then the whole point of the compromise is undone. I guess Brawl sign-ups always have to have a little shake-up, and this year it was clones and updog. I still encourage people to use established characters, even jokey ones they don't expect to win, and not to feel the pressure of all the slots if they don't have any ideas for them. Fox wasn't bad, but there is a point where if everyone's tossing random stuff at me I'd just stop doing the Brawl, although perhaps first I'd start reducing the entrant slot amount since they clearly aren't needed if it becomes a dump slot rather than an area for people's fun stuff. One thing I do wonder about is, Star Wars in RP has always been pretty much pos-Original Trilogy. How does Fox fit into that framework? We've seen Sebulba in BBBBP where timeline doesn't really matter, but having a clone trooper when we're post Return of the Jedi by way of the Stormtrooper employee backstory does make for a curious situation. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks about stuff like that though.
RAINBOW DASH
RAINBOW DASH AND RAINBOW BLAZE
Rainbow Dash has always struggled with having a good weapon for the Big Bar Brawl. In BBB1 I casually tossed her lance away for being limiting, BBB2 the Custard Kittens were basically their own characters, BBB3's Tank is mostly remembered for his revival rather than any performance in the Brawl, Rainbow Power was basically just More Powerful Rainbow Dash, BBB5 she had nothing, and BBB6 she used the party cannon, an awkward weapon for a flyer to wield. BBB7 though, I feel she finally hit home with a great assistant, because Rainbow Blaze is essentially a second Rainbow Dash but with a different personality. Rainbow Dash has often struggled to find a spot in the Pre-Fite Show as well, but talking with her mentor was a good fit and allowed me to show how they were going into the Brawl. Rainbow Blaze even gets to stick around after Dash dies, helping out Dudeguy Man a bit before getting crushed by Mario. Of course, Rainbow Dash still has the same old tricks when it comes to flying fast and having a small list of skills. She of course Sonic Rainboomed again, basically a requirement at this point, and she kicked up a tornado to make the important LAVA TORNADO. One thing not seen too often though is her play with weather, and she kicked a cloud to zap Zeldoten this year. There may be more potential there! I was really worried the Rainbows helping Danai with her hurricane might lead to Gooper not giving Danai her proper credit. The Rainbows steadied it, making it impossible for the King in Yellow to address all three threats so easily. Still, despite having a great idea for her assistant, Rainbow Dash didn't place much higher than usual. She didn't drop out early at least, landing right near the middle, but by now she's just as much as staple of the Brawl as her revival Mac Tonight. There may be a day she leaves, but I am definitely no longer asking RainbowDash the user to remove her. I craved more variety back then, but I'm just as much a sucker for traditions, and I feel some day, this pony may get her win... it just might be well after a few other people cycled through their wins first! Still, this might have been her best year since BBB3, so maybe partners are the way to go for her?
ICE BEAR
I managed to get RainbowDash into We Bare Bears one day by basically just watching it while eating once, and she started to record the episodes so she could catch all of them. RainbowDash was of course interested in the character Ice Bear, a soft-spoken but hyper-competent and sometimes violent bear. They never do call him a polar bear in the show though, so I didn't in the Brawl stuff either. In the show he is depicted using crazy martial arts, shurikens, but his favorite go to weapon is his axe, and the axe even got an episode to give it a backstory to why Ice Bear likes it so much. Unfortunately, while Ice Bear is pretty fun in the show, he didn't really slip into the Brawl well. If there is one character that I really didn't do much with, its Ice Bear. Probably because he's just a bear with an axe. I like his personality, but what I'm mostly working with are those two facts. I definitely showed he was actually a threat when he took on Ginocini, but he did go down without earning a kill and I think of all of Rainbow Dash's entries, he was the one she least had her hopes invested in, despite him having the most detailed of her effortposts. I had to get her to say it as she was dozing off to even ensure she got the last character in, so we almost didn't have Ice Bear at all! Unfortunately, CKR's rhyme about Ice Bear is pretty much stuck in my head, and I certainly hear her other puns and such as I look across the roster. She was coming up with those as I showed her all the characters so she could pick her votes, and then she wanted to go whole hog and post them all after she did her votes. Ice Bear's death I had to preach caution to CKR though as I described it to her. Yes, Ginocini did basically disembowel him, and Gino was indeed showered in blood, but we didn't need a picture of guts falling out and the narration avoided that as well! This again goes to the fact the Brawl doesn't push too far into the brutal details, or else we'd have probably like six entrants total as people are afraid of there characters being submitted to a gorn cavalcade. There were some moments this year I did wonder if the language was too visceral, like Emily's head and neck cracking in the finale. Doesn't seem like I crossed the line at least! As for Ice Bear, you did your thing, but I do hope Rainbow Dash comes in a bit more prepared next year. Perhaps I should've explored your personality some more to make you have a more lasting impression.
ARR
This thing came out of nowhere! I guess, unlike the Blind Scorpion Nun, she wanted to surprise me with her latest Original Character, but she decided to draw him on her phone rather than taking advantage of my many warnings in advance that she should have her Brawl entries ready early since we were going on a trip! Instead, we got the oddly drawn Arr, an interdenominational dwarf pirate who randomly changes the color of the world around him. Arr was of course a perfect match for Piggy Tyro's seeming inability to get meat besides red meat in the Brawl, but that couldn't be Arr's only angle. His color changing made a good pair for Polka-Dot Man as well, since the many colored spots could mean mayhem if they were essentially shuffled. Of course, it mostly just kept Polka-Dot Man occupied for a bit so he could make his late run later, but Arr, unsurprisingly, placed low. Due to the quality of the drawing of him, I did go for the angle that he does, in fact, appear like that, and Gooper rightly compared it to Hella Jeff, although I tried not to make it the exact same. For one, Arr is weird and hard to comprehend, but he's mostly an okay dwarf pirate! He's open to multiple religions after all! It does tickle me that RainbowDash allowed me to keep that aspect even though I'm sure it was a typo or autocorrect. It makes him more inexplicable. If I had to compare him to anyone, Thomas is probably the closest analogue, as Thomas followed another world's rules while in ours. Arr is probably the same in that regard, his existence just not gelling with our universe and making him a headache. I did almost consider having Goops change the title card to make Arr have his transparent bits as those are actual holes in his form, but I don't think Gooper's image hurts at all. I also like the face on his hat, looking just slightly sullen. RainbowDash said she tried to draw a skull and crossbones and it came out like that instead, which I think is the better alternative. I actually wouldn't mind a repeat appearance from Arr just to explore the bag of potential that is his color changing, as well as maybe looking at his pirate side some more. Speaking of the colors, it was of course just something RainbowDash probably came up with to share more pictures from her trip. The way the colors change the world around him differs, as we saw when some things changed material and some just shifted colors. His radius for the powers, RainbowDash said it was small, and I basically decided its essentially the size of the area in the photo. You can fit his radius on your phone screen. Arr's not meant to be horrifying really, just really really weird, and its hard to tell what hurts him, like when his limb just floated there after being cut off. No answers on what I assume he is, and we're certainly not getting any truth from RainbowDash on it any time soon!
JUMPLUFF
I was so sure RainbowDash was going to enter the Brawl with Jigglypuff. I thought it would be the grand pay off for all the joke bets she was inexplicably placing on it. I might even have expected a Pokemon like Gloom, Swinub, or Piloswine, who she has said she liked in the lead-up to the Brawl. But nope, she comes in with the swerve! She ended up entering my favorite Pokemon, completely oblivious to the fact I liked it so much! She did say she had considered Jigglypuff at least, but she thought someone else might have a Jigglypuff character. I believe the confusion came about because of me counterbetting with Clefairy whenever she bet on Jigglypuff, and somehow it came up the Clefairy family was popular with the forum. Still, I'm not sure how well a Jigglypuff would have done, but Jumpluff put in an impressive amount of work, which I attribute entirely to my quick assignment of it to the Monster Hunter Alliance. Notably, the whole Brawl happens without ever specifying its gender, although RainbowDash has confirmed that the Jumpluff is a her. I expected that was the case, but I thought she might swerve me and make it male. Still, being near Ilsaria and the gang allowed it to participate throughout the Brawl in different ways, sometimes helping a little or in the case of the Rath-of-Meow, hampering the team. I also had fun with playing up the fact that a Jumpluff probably is a bit of a threat, with things like the Hyper Beam kill and the many status effects it distributed across the Brawl. Still, despite having some good moves, it is just a dandelion creature, hence the goofiness of SLIGHTLY LARGER JUMPLUFF and Ilsaria trying to make it look intimidating in the pre-fite show as a lark. Notably, Rainbow Dash often draws characters smiling even as they die, but there's just something about Jumpluff that makes it look cute and happy even as it kills or is killed. CKR drew its death of course, but it still had its :3 face. Since RainbowDash didn't specify a move list like she did Goomy and Joltik, this year, Jumpluff just had her whole movepool to draw on, even if, since its a grass type, its not actually that big. Hyper Beam was the main surprise, although I had to use a Grass Knot instead of a more reasonable Vine Whip to have Jumpluff save Ilsaria from falling off of Gamera. This little Pokemon was a surprise hit, and I wasn't even trying to give it favoritism just because its my favorite Pokemon! If not for Ilsaria, it probably would have been a lot worse off and less active.
M SHEEP
DR. DEER
Alas, poor Sheep cast, the tractor was not kind to you this year! And you had a pretty good lineup too. The tractor can be cruel and wild though, it giveth and taketh away. There were a lot of fun characters in the line-up, and Dr. Deer, despite getting his chance to rise up out of his inability to attend years ago, got pretty low in the rankings. I am grateful for the Consoltaion Brawl giving him room to have fun with his gimmick though. I did what I could though, pre-fite show helping quite a bit with both his main gimmick and the Liefeld Pouch Sword ones. I really was surprised how few of the pouches had tools in them though. I expected a grab bag of medical items at my fingertips, but they were clearly outlined. I got to go through a few of them though, so its not like I can say I wasn't given enough to work with. I also got to use his antlers, which I believe was an angle that wasn't touched on in BBB4. There are definitely a wealth of 90s antihero jokes to make, and that's again when I am grateful for the pre-fite show, but in such a crowded arena sometimes they don't come through. The pouches in particular I worried a bit about. I mean, back in BBB4, where selling out was the main gimmick of the entire Brawl, I still kept it pretty reined in, but with the pouches I had to find ways to worm it in while trying not to beat you over the head with it in the limited space I had to explore it. This came up with Gamera's movie shilling too, but I think the spread would've been easier with higher placement, so I worked with the putty I was given. Dufe is another instance of a small mistake making for an incredibly cool and fun angle, and while I'm not sure we'll se the doctor again, I'm glad for the time he was with us, dishing out his crazy edgy parody while also being a deer. Thinking on it, Dr. Deer is probably more anime in appearance than 90s comic book hero. I feel like there might have been an Astro Boy character I vaguely remembered influencing his design... but that might just be his labcoat making me think that. Still, for a character who was once an incidental piece of Purnima's entourage, he's come far. I laughed recently when I realized his BBB4 picture was literally just a deer. Not a medical deer. Just deer.
NEMU
A FREAKING WHALE!-like mutant! Nemu is the perfect example of why I always want there to be water near a Brawl arena these days, even if in some locations its a stretch like the fountain of last year. Nemu, however, had room to swim and then some. The main island was of course the location for the Brawl, but there was a large range for Nemu to fite in, and of course she naturally had to be opposed by the Gorton's Fisherman for his predilection for fishing. Well, it's technically whaling here, and technically mutanting if we get REALLY technical, but I am just... inappropriately enamoured with whaling. Like, I hate the ideas of whales getting killed, but in fiction, I've found I'm totally interested in this ultimate battle between man and beast. Its telling there is an elephant gun but no "whale gun" after all, and Assassin's Creed 4 and its whaling side game certainly made it interesting. I feel like if they made one good video game that is all about whaling I could get it out of my system. I mean, technically, I'm very against killing humans in real life as well, and I'm even pretty picky about killing animals all the way down to a fly, cockroach, or spider, so I guess its not that weird. Nemu was described in her entry as taking on boats, so a boat she fought, Gorton and Nemu having a Captain Ahab battle modernized. I don't even think I had much bleacher torture planned besides the scrapped idea of Ino fiting Secret Fiters on her way up to kill Jim, but as I wrote the fite I realized something big had to take down Nemu, and if she could destroy a boat, than her weakness is obviously... two boats. BleacherBoat #5 bit the dust, as did Nemu, and I had a lot of fun with the whaling battle. I don't know what would have happened if she made it super far, probably would have had Danai flood even more of the arena then so Nemu could attack some landlubbers. It probably would have been cool to have her strike the beach once or twice, but c'est la vie. I do think the idea of a human twisted to the point of being a human whale is a pretty cool concept, so I hope we get to see her in action this year! When Sheep was posting that thing with the boat approaching Junko's boat, I thought we were going to see some, but she didn't show her lovely mug!
FATHER SQUID
Oh man. Father Squid. All these years, I waited for you, and I finally have you in the Brawl! I admit, when I saw the picture, I expected him to probably have his minigun or some other insane firearm. That just seems like Squid's "thing" after the fites he's been in. The Piecemaker was a good choice though. I had fun with Browny's weapon in his fite with Father Squid, but the little robot didn't get to do much in the Brawl he entered. Weapons with different settings always allow a fite to be a bit more interesting, although I did avoid the Gemini Scatter for a bit. Father Squid is a smart man, so he didn't use the double-edged sword until it seemed like he needed a strong out. It did backfire though, so unfortunately his gambit didn't pay off. I was mostly surprised it was meant to be pistol sized really. I know Browny is small, but I really wanted to draw a big ol' rifle in Squid's hands! I tried to emphasize his age as well, especially when he faced Nikolai. His joints were killing him, and while he had the training to do the actions of a soldier, he was hurting himself to pull them off, and he had to take a breather after. I didn't even think of how perfect it was that Emily had a bunch of ghost babies floating around her when I decided to pair the two up, but I immediately wished I had Gooper draw an evil looking Emily backed by fire, as if she were a demon. I mean, some people thought her picture with all her cool goodies looked evil already, but it was meant to be cool and confident because she was now a proper powerhouse! It was the perfect moment to bring in Berserker squid, the Father throwing his ample weight around and showing that yes, he is quite the boxer. The scuffle with Emily was partly to emphasize her strength too, even though she was still outclassed by the hefty mutant. I felt a bit bad having his face tentacles get shot off, since I'm sure that is uber painful, but I mean... so is getting a limb chopped off, and tentacle removal is at least more of a change of pace! In the Pre-Fite Show, Father Squid was quite the talker. You notice he was suspicious of pairs a lot in the pre-fite show... I wonder if he has any real-life experience with that? I did leave Sister Alice out of the affair though just so she didn't dominate things with her overwhelming personality. Maybe I should have put her and Murdoc in a room just to see what would happen... Anyway, while Sheep cast had a lot of potential and were unfortunately hit hard by the tractor, I think Squid got to do quite a bit and show of his skills, personality, and tricks. I would be so sad if he had finally joined the Brawl and then been tossed out just as quickly as a corpse. Thank you Sheep, one of the original Brawl wishlist characters has finally had his go in the arena!
DOVETAIL
I was fully on board the horrific Dovetailmass train with people like Gooper going into the Brawl... and then I saw how low she placed. There was of course still room to do some fun stuff with her, but her antagonistic flair didn't get to manifest by way of her becoming some horrific mishmash of people's ideas of what she should be. She didn't get to go full gorilla if people had been rooting for her to win, or become a breakable stick lady if they hated her. She was in constant flux though, despite the images showing her default form for simplicity's sake. It was changing so rapidly that besides a few moments focusing on that fact, you can't really say she ever looked the same for two seconds in a row. Since she got 60th, I decided to instead focus on a different but equally fun route, and that's how she seemed nearly unbreakable. My favorite part of doing that was where her spine was wrecked but the eyes of people upon her quickly fixed that. After all, why would people want to see that? They are watching for cool deaths I suppose, but they'd probably rather see the fite keep going there. I did get in an odd spot where I wondered if she could regrow full limbs after they had been removed, but Dovetail was quickly killed so there was a conceivable amount of time needed to do so if she can that she just didn't have. Much like Conquest never had troubles with her levels of buffs, Dovetail never was low on "battery" power just due to the nature of the Brawl. Other than the looks though, next came how she would attack... and I noticed her missing weapon pretty quickly. Nibbler filled that role for all of two seconds, but there was enough early game death and confusion that Dovetail amassed a few decent weapons. I did wonder if "inside something's stomach" was a valid point for Dovetail to reach in and take something, but Nibbler exploded and removed that worry. She just plucked Gladius's weapons from the remains and went on her way to use them later. Her getting the Death Note was meant to amp up the fear of her a bit, but I knew I couldn't get away with her using it, hence its destruction by the Squid Sisters. Besides, who knows how many characters in the Brawl secretly have real names we don't know yet? That's a pretty common twist, and unlike Ryuk, she can't see beyond aliases. Hell, I used the name Dovetail the whole Brawl even though her real name was given! There were moments I thought of using it, but I just shrugged and went with something like "the mutant" instead. No realy reason there, just felt like it! Dovetail's probably really pissed about her 60th place, but considering her powder keg personality, I doubt she could've made it far conceivably anyway. She'd earn someone's ire quickly. Sorry I didn't get to go full monster with her Sheep... maybe she'll give it another go in a fite someday though and really let loose!
BROTHERS ECKHARDT
I legitimately thought these guys might win. I don't know if it was Gooper's push that made me think that, but I thought Sheep had a winner on his hands with these guys. They had so much potential! Like, their entry was sort of weird. I pretty much planned that Cavendish would probably go down the same time as the brothers, the only idea I had where he didn't involved Lucky's displacer gun ripping him out of their body, but I mostly treated them as one very odd entry due to their placement. If they had done better, maybe we would have lost a brother along the way. I was very anxious about potentially getting the brothers wrong. M Sheep does specify which brother is one which side of the body, but he uses their right and left rather than the viewer's, and I worried that maybe I had it wrong sometimes? Most the other evidence supported their placement though, so I don't think I ever mixed up Maurice and Eugene. One thing I made sure to make a note of was Sheep saying they likely could communicate almost wordlessly at this point, and I tried to balance the kind of things they say out loud with their wordless communication. It even came up as a tactic as Shade tried to confuse them! Shade's powers to inspire fear and confusion were just a perfect match-up for the pair. Original Brawl plans had them pseudo-killing Skulk, where she'd be rendered useless for the rest of the Brawl, but I wasn't sure it would be in character for Shade to keep fiting if that happened, hence it just became a means to sideline Shade and Skulk instead. Sadly, that meant the Brothers never cinched a kill. I felt a bit bad underutilizing Cavendish as well. I mean, I did put him in the foot so Shade could do something fun to him, but otherwise I never got to really have him shore up a limb too much or do a lot of the things that made the concept of a character who is a symbiote inside another character so interesting! Maybe that's why I thought they'd win: so they could do fun stuff! I'm not sure how important the Zweihander really is, but I thought it was a good focus for their opponent choice, at least a first opponent, since having some heat on it would make it better for regular foes. On the other hand, they clearly have that sword with that function for some reason! You don't get the supernatural killing sword to hunt rabbits with. I love two-headed characters, I love dapper gentlemen, I love Cavendish's concept, but I don't love that they placed so low. I had so much more to do with you three!
LYSIAS
LYSIAS AND JUZO
I mentioned earlier I like having a user's namesake in the Brawl, and Lysias, being a new user, well, I definitely wanted to have the Lysias character enter! Not that I knew what he was before, but still, I'm glad I got him! He probably did push the weapon limit a bit further than its meant to be pushed, with two swords and an assistant, but if he comes around for a second Brawl I'll just tell Lysias that. Speaking of the two blades, they were almost essentially one blade with two settings, so it wasn't like he was getting too big an edge. He had a hot blade and a cold blade, and of course, Juzo was more of a limiter than a helper. It's always weird when you have a situation like this, and that's probably another reason I didn't mind too much about Lysias having two swords and an assistant. Juzo's ability to see five minutes in the future didn't do much, mainly because the situation he was in didn't really give it any usefulness. Talking his way out of Ryuk's Death Note would have just been less interesting if Juzo looked ahead and knew what was coming. Some people thought I might ban such a power because Jumpropeman in canon hates time shenanigans, but I believe he's mentioned before altering the future isn't so bad because its technically the right of the present to do so. That's another conversation of course, but Juzo's main function was for me to break a character who entered a giant bloodbath and thought no one would kill each other! I've mentioned in Ryuk's section a few ideas I had for it, but ultimately, it had to be Ryuk, for being able to test the boy's limits and give him something interesting to do before he died. Juzo almost originally just went straight to heart attack, but the more heart-wrenching attack on Lysias was not only more interesting, but CKR approved! Killing a kid can be risky, especially an innocent one, but he's old enough to know what he's doing at least, so he's no Baby Winston. He's nearly Shimmer's age from when she entered a Brawl! Still, a death without blood and all felt the safest route, even if it was mean in other ways. Lysias, though, I'm glad he got in pretty far. You don't want someone to do terribly their first Brawl, but Lysias broke into the middle of the pack thankfully. As a demon of wrath though it always felt hard for me to justify him not flipping out at little provocation... but the user seems to have him trying to regulate his wrath as well, and it is literally why Juzo was there! The King in Yellow was an easy way to say "okay, this can make him into a demon beast" without having to say too much bad or good about the character. Having an embodiment of despair pushing you there is understandable. Lysias didn't get to be a beast for long, but he did put up a decent fite against Bulgrave before he was broken to the point nothing solid remained. Gotta make sure a demon is definitely dead, considering how tought they are to kill! I didn't use his possession ability because... it was worded oddly? Lysias is getting better at RP, but he still needs a bit more work on the grammar to truly slip in perfectly. There is a lot of potential there, but its kneecapped a little by run-on sentences and the like. I almost didn't think I would get to use the Morpheus Headbutt, but Ryuk was set up so perfectly for it! He mostly got to use his other tools too, maybe not to their maximum potential, but that's the curse of anyone who doesn't get to the endgame. Still, I hope Lysias performed sufficiently in Lysias's eyes! ...That's probably the main reason username characters aren't used much anymore. A bit odd to talk about them, something I notice when the character Jumpropeman comes up too!
SATU
Sort of similar to Kindred having never missed a shot, Satu has the power to make anyone love him, regardless of their orientation. Naturally, in RP this is going to have some limiters to be fair to everyone else... in the Brawl though? That power can run rampant! Besides keeping Nikolai on a leash and avoiding the potential of a user's own characters fiting each other, it was a bit of fun to play with it with the Hecatias. Satu was almost Lysias's sort of sidekick, in a way, as the two worked together until one of them died, while the other characters from the Lysias crew got split off and dealt with. The thing I find most interesting about Satu (or Suta, although it seems he's going by Satu again, which is the name I prefer personally) is that he is a Lust Demon. I've talked about this in chatzy at least, but whenever you see a lust embodiment in fiction, they're almost always also pretty prideful and definitely selfish. I suppose that helps emphasize that lust is meant to be a DEADLY sin, but having a character that embodies the concept be a friendly guy who is eager to please works on the lust in a different way! A generous lover tends to get love in return, and Satu certainly seems at least intrigued by those he can win over with his powers alone. How do you convince someone you can't control to love you? The old-fashioned way! Of course, he is still a demon though, and he came to the Brawl to kill, so he used the love powers to get an edge and kill some people. In Satu's BBBBP, his head gets knocked off, but Lysias is easily able to heal them. Demons are very hard to put down, but with Satu's death, I basically decided Dia would put exactly as many icebolts in him as needed to make him unable to piece himself together. The picture doesn't capture it, because I'm not an artist, but he was blasted to bits, and that's always a pretty safe bet to say "yeah, that guy is dead." I didn't focus much on his blood stuff, mostly because Nikolai obviously had a harder lean into it and I didnt' want him and Satu to be doing the same dance, but he did use his mindreading to stay a step ahead. His mindreading seems pretty limited at least, so no worries about underusing it, but the big surprise was that he had no weapon. He had typical demon strength of course and his hands looked perfect for raking flesh, but I felt he could have used like a knife or something of that ilk. His Super Awesome Touch of Happiness was a bit of a weird name, so in my notes I called it "sfw orgasm touch" so I didn't forget he had it! I knew Lysias said its not lewd, but its a much more concise way of putting it! I feel if any of Lysias's demons got the most play, it was probably Satu, even though he got ganged up on, he still felt the most effective when he was dishing out the damage.
NIKOLAI
Nikolai was a very unique challenge, in that Lysias entered him in the Brawl with the character having the intent of fiting his own characters. Naturally, the Brawl is no one man's platform, and that's one big reason characters from one user never really have a showdown and are often in meta alliances or, like Ko and Clash last year, just get along and don't fite at any point. Fites are were characters from different users fite each other on an even playing field, whereas if you want your own characters to battle, you can do that yourself and you control the "fairness". If someone is reading the Brawl and it suddenly just became about Lysias's characters only at some point, it kind of kills the main appeal of the intercharacter combat! That's a poor term for what we do at FYM, but its the one I've picked for some reason! Anyway, naturally, I looked for a way to wheedle myself out of Nikolai fiting the demons, and Lysias gave me the perfect way! Satu's love aura made people fall for him easily, and the young prince seemed the type who might not know what to do with such feelings. An adult can work through them pretty well, but he's sixteen mentall (much older vampire-wise) and such feelings can really control a teenage mind. I do think it's interesting what Lysias is doing with it post-brawl, but during the Brawl it definitely served its purpose, and Nikolai showed his desire for the demons to die by ditching them when things got hot. I did wonder if Nikolai was susceptible to sunlight. Jim Johnson was specified to have protection but Nikolai was given a pretty basic description of his vampire traits, and no two vampires in fiction ever follow the same rules. He seemed safe in the sunlight by Lysias's writing, even though I put him in the forest at first to protect him just in case... before I just threw him out onto the mountainside for his fite with Beth and Father Squid. Naturally I was cautious about who Nikolai might bite. Meat Boy was a vampire for years after the halloween fite and Ceneric was a bitch to revive after he got bit. Nikolai bit Beth, who is so mutated as likely to not be affected, and almost got Father Squid. The cross was put inside his collar just to make it work just in case Sheep decides to bring up how un-holy his squid priest is, but I really wanted the priest to kill the vampire. Part of why Father Squid shot up Nikolai so much was the everpresent problem of how much it takes to kill a demon, or in this case, a vampire. The picture might not convey it well, but Father Squid basically made sure there wasn't much identifiable as Nikolai left. Someone in the bar made a good point the Piecemaker may be blessed too, making it even more devastating. Despite his powers trending pretty close to Remilia's, I didn't feel like I was repeating myself. Probably helped Remilia was also a touhou as well as a vampire, but even the vampire bits I felt I had wiggle room. Wish I had done more shadow manipulation... but that's what Ino was for, right?
CIRASE
Of all the Lysias demons, its probably fortunate she was the one to place the lowest. From his RP, Cirase is certainly the one who is getting the least love, so I don't feel so bad that she underperformed as part of the group. If anything, it's appropriate, because now the demon of Envy is completely jealous of the other demons for doing so much better! I was also somewhat worried about my depiction of her going in, as we had seen a glimpse into the other three Lysias characters and their personalities, but Cirase wouldn't appear until Brawl work was well underway and hard to reverse. Thankfully, I managed to guess her personality pretty well, as she entered the bar and proceeded to be a jealous brat! The demons are also very loving to each other surprisingly, but even Cirase seems to test that, so that made leaving her behind more palatable I imagine. Caeseo was too risky of a foe for them to fite though, and if they had stood and managed to take him down, all three demons and definitely Nikolai wouldn't last much longer. Part of why Cirase got sprinkled with Astra after her proper KO shot though was because these demons do seem pretty hard to kill, so I had to make sure there was something to make it official. Sprinkled with the divine being's Astra is more than enough to destroy a demon. Having not seen Cirase in combat, I almost lost track of what she could do... but that's why I make the sticky notes! Cirase had quite a bit of potential to be a nuisance if she really got to explore her abilities, but no one ended up on the wrong end of that claw, although she did mess up Caeseo quite a bit still. Cirase was certainly hard to draw, her clothes are so detailed and confusing that I definitely had to simplify to make it work. She got cut in an odd way mostly to avoid it being a typical bisection, as well as getting her face in the picture for her reacting to her loss. She almost looks like how I might draw a less chibi version of Gooper's Succubi Sisters. Girl had telekinesis as well, and that's a tool I can get a lot of play out of, which we saw with Caprice's longer run. Super speed, we've technically got a few characters who can do that, but Cirase used it where she could. Her toolkit was explored quickly because of her second to last placement... maybe I used super speed to get through it all?
So there you have it! My thoughts on all 76 characters in the Big Bar Brawl 7! I wrote the character sections out of order, mostly just hopping around to write whoever was going through my head the best at the time, so I definitely repeated myself, went off-topic, and probably forgot stuff I really wanted to share with you all, but hopefully you still enjoyed my thoughts on each character! I hope some parts didn't sound too negative, it's not like I'd kick any of these characters out of the Brawl after all, I just worry about a lot of stuff as I write and think about what to do with this big battle, so sometimes that comes out wrong!
Before we move to the conclusion, I thought I'd add a little collection of things from my google search history while I wrote the Brawl, just to show you at least a snippet of how the Brawl research goes. Naturally, sometimes I go right to youtube or wikipedia instead, but this might give you something to look at at least! Google searches related to the Brawl included: "hina touhou", "gmod crash" "gorton fisherman" "glowing orange plane things" "glowing orange plane guiding things" "hydreigon sky drop" "nonplussed" "shakespearean insults" "milksop" "arroint" "aroint" (had to double check my shakespeare definitions and spelling just in case a lot!) "futurama cats" "hopper binding of isaac" "magnum slug" "gamera he's really neat" "gamera movie" "super macho man" "motorboat" "whaling" "blow up a fishing boat" "boat oil" "newfoundland dog" "hecatia" "hecatia lapislazuli spell card" "cubivore height" "medium sized dog" "medium sized dog height" "piggy tyro" "piggy tyro cubivore" "cubivore" "arsene" "protean" "old atari games" "snake game" "old computer hardware" "laserdisc" "dragon size" "the whole kit and caboodle" "youmu konpaku spell cards" "phoenix game" "insulation" "fiberglass safety" "fiberglass hurts skin" "fiberglass" "clownpiece spell cards" "euthanasia" "loping" "roman candle" "infinite items in store" "infinite items in store binding of isaac" "binding of isaac sword" (Emily almost had the Spear of Destiny item, a spear that looks like a sword that floats around you) "pathfinder alchemy" "crab claw anatomy" "corona" "corona volcano" "mulligrubs" "mulligrubs in a sentence" "bedlam" "flash paper" "bandages DBZ" "atari superman" "cow catcher" "first video game" (thought about Odyssey having it in place of the Odyssey games when that hunt wasn't going too well) "ski magnavox odyssey" "skifree" "odyssey fun zoo" "magnavox odyssey fun zoo" "hina spell cards" "mighty critical strike" (just realized, Vince should call his Mighty Critikal Strike, considering his supposed voice!) "strong metal" "chromium" "chromium durability" "fire dampening material" 'kindred lol" "mabinogi paladin" "furrows" "80s computer monitor" "apple ii" "witcher silver" "batil starfighter" "yelling bonzai" "list of breads - wikipedia" "incredulous" "hard plastic" "how hard is acryllic" "interesting materials" "vampire jokes" "brandenburg" "brandenburg bread" "bread types" "heavy material" "dark matter" (Maria almost had dark matter arms! Also, you'll see I got nervous about leaning so hard on the same metals and tried to diversify many times!) "fire resistant material" "fire resistant gypsum" "no-freeze material" "ice resistant material" "icephobic metal" "serengeti" "firework flamethrower" "blood bowl touchdown dance" "blood bowl team names" "vampire" "warhammer flesh pits" "bob bifford's ogre burger" "blood bowl kickoff" "vladislav" "warhammer vampires" "mac tonight" "john freeman" "hedlok" "charjabug" "golurk fly" (a lot more names went here like Greninja, getting pictures for the art, but we'll skip ahead) "cricket's head cat" "moldwarp" "zetta" "zetta disgaea" "alexander disgaea" "snarks" "gamera movie twitter" "gamera friend to all children" "what's inside a bean bag chair" "para para brothers" "ballet moves list" "blood bowl field" "football spike" "e-liter" "lent her strength" "do you capitalize hutt" "to mar an object" "en masse" "steepling" (lotta spell checking here!) "holding ak-47" "cassette tape" (I worried the KO with the casette tape wheel as an O was too weird, but I did it anyway!) "dbz spirit bomb" "mabinogi fireball" "rider kick" "blizzaga" "blood bowl victory song" "salamanders monster hunter" "mele kalikimaka"
And that's it! Except a bunch of character names like Ryuk and stuff. By the way, Mele Brawlikimaka is essentially Merry Brawlmas! Of course, Brawlmas is in the past now, so now, let's move on to...
CONCLUSION
Every year I always get nervous that the Brawl won't be able to live up to the previous years, but even when I simplified things a bit this time around without any crazy new gimmicks, I still think we have a Brawl to remember on our hands! So many great characters attended, and I only wish I could have properly used them all and gave them the spotlights they deserved. For now though, it is finally time for me to put a bow on the Big Bar Brawl 7 and say: IT IS DONE! Of course, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to leave a comment here and I'll do my best to address them! I love you all, no joke there, and thank you for joining me in my seventh year of doing this ridiculously fun murderfest!
See you next year!
"I wanted to avoid the problem of Nibbles not coming back from such a death."
ReplyDeleteThe problem being that he WOULD return? Because dunking someone in lava, then saying "I hope they don't have resurrection problems." is kind of incompatible.
In regards to Etrohus and winning:
ReplyDeleteI was full on prepared to take the win. I wouldn't enter him in the Brawl otherwise! Sure, I got nervous... but it was mainly because then I'd have to write a sad epilogue for him :U If he did win, next year's brawl would have been pretty great, especially since he'd be significanly depowered for next year. JRM, the pastabilities. Bruuuh.