So have one now!
Today, I developed another take on God and Angels which would be for a story.
What story, heck if I know. Not the Rubyverse, not Phyrra and Cyrus, not Soano, so that disqualifies the usual candidates. Could be new, could be an existing story (but probably not), got no clue even what form the story would be; all I know is that the story would feature what I developed today.

And what I developed today was basically an origin story of roles and relationships which persist to the modern day.

God, in this setting, as per my usual, is agendered, having no actual gender. God is an entity, existing in a way transcending our understanding, neither male nor female. However, God likes to present itself in the form we are most comfortable with.

As most humans identify God as being 'He', that is the form He usually takes, and will be how I refer to Him for the rest of the ramble for the sake of simplicity. All of His creations are also agendered at their base levels. The souls of humans have no gender (even though spirits have gender), and so too are all angels agendered, able to appear as male, female, both, or neither, at will.

God has more to him than that. He is not the all-powerful God that we know.
​In this setting, God both did, and did not, create the universe. God gained awareness, but was blind to everything. He saw absolutely nothing. He could do absolutely nothing. But then, He noticed something--the event that we would come to define as being the big bang, as a possibility. Not a reality, but a possibility. And He could make that possibility become a reality, so He willed it to be, setting off a chain reaction.

In the resulting universe...God can't break the rules of reality, but He can bend them a bit, where He influences events. So, He is bound by the rules of the universe, thus, is not what we'd call all-powerful...even though He is able to do just about anything.

God can see everything in our universe...but in order to see a specific thing, He has to actually focus on that thing. This can be thought of as seeing the forest instead of a specific tree within--He sees the whole forest and thus has an idea for what happens within, but the only way for Him to know what happens to one specific tree within the forest is for Him to focus His attention on that tree.

Since the universe is a very, very big place, that's a very, very big forest for Him to be monitoring the trees within.

God can see into the future...but He only sees the probable futures that are most likely to happen. He is thus able to be surprised both by natural freak occurrences and of course by any creature with free will, including humans. We usually act in the way He sees us acting, but we can still surprise Him at certain times.

God both knows everything about the universe, and yet doesn't know everything about the universe. This can be thought of as an instinctive knowledge. He, by what we'd know as intuition, more or less knows what everything does...but He doesn't know precisely why they work that way, only that they do.

So when you combine all of this, He's not all-knowing or all-seeing, but He's still fairly close, in that He knows the general workings of the forest, the general happenings of the forest, and the most likely occurrences to happen in the near-future of the forest, and He is able to directly influence the forest.

...Just, not turn the forest into a fire, as it were. (Though He's quite capable of setting the forest on fire, should He so will it. He just...isn't.)

God has, throughout the history of the universe, been trying to influence it as positively as He can, but while He has capabilities beyond what any human has and his existence is far above our own, He is not perfect; He can both make mistakes, and have oversights which lead to bad things having happened.

To this end, He actually uses His direct creations as tools.
Angels, with a single set of wings and the ability to take on any form they please, serve as monitors of sorts. They observe areas of reality, interact with it on a more direct basis, influence it subtly rather than overtly, but also constantly and consistently rather than sporadically.

Cherubim, with two sets of wings, serve as more or less the 'workforce of the heavens' (if angels can be thought of as the 'workforce of the non-celestial'). They sometimes interact with the less-astral planes, but more or less do most of the "behind-the-scenes" work of running/influencing the universe for God.

Seraphim, with three sets of wings, serve as overseers. They are, more or less, the bosses of angels, but also are conduits. They serve as a direct line of communication. They occasionally communicate directly with God, and are more or less His direct assistants and underlings. They very rarely, but on occasion, interact with more mortal realms.

Arcangels, with four sets of wings, serve as almost-equals to God. Direct underlings, direct 'generals', direct advisors, who are full-time entities serving more or less as His direct "balance-checkers" as it were. It is literally their job to question God's decisions, more or less. Well, two of them at least. (Gabby, the third, more or less has the job of being the direct enforcer of God to keep unruly children in line, and serves as a balance and tipping point, keeping disarrest from happening.)

​Arcangel Lucifer, The Lightbringer, Satan of Hell, is "a bit" of a rebel, using his male name and pronouns but taking on a permanently-female form. (Why? Because.) He is not actually evil. Just...argumentative, and strongly opinionated. (He's the oldest of the three arcangels.) This puts him frequently in disagreement with God, but he's not always antagonistic with Him. Just usually antagonistic.

​And, interestingly, he is not always wrong. God is, as mentioned, not perfect. He can make mistakes. Usually, a fair indicator of this is when Michael/Michelle agrees with Lucifer, but even when not, sometimes, God admits that even if Lucifer's exact argument may not be right, he still raised valid points to take into consideration.

His eight wings are all white feathered wings, representing his element being pure light.

Arcangel Michael/Michelle changes every human life cycle between which form (s/)he takes, and is currently in a male form. Lucifer tends to be a champion of the greater existence thinking on levels of souls; Michael tends to be a champion for existence on a smaller scale--most notably to humans at least, that of our own, dealing with us both spiritually and physically.

This still puts him/her at odds with God on occasion, and at odds with Lucifer on occasion, but the two are actually fairly similar to one another, having a lot in common and getting along fairly well. Michael/Michelle is the middle-aged of the three, and has his/her wings be of different elements:

Two fire-wings, two ice-wings (all four feathered), one water wing which more or less looks like a liquid octopus tentacle with dangling squid-like-tentacle protrusions and a jellyfish-like membrane (all made from different types of water, but giving it an aesthetic loosely like that of a bat wing, only with anatomical parts matched to sea life), a matching wing made of energy, with what looks like lightning for the bones and the membrane more or less being visible static electricity (so, another bat wing).

His final two wings, both feathered, are one white and one dark wing, representing light and darkness.

Arcangel Gabriel/Gabrielle, Gabby for short, usually takes on the gender opposite of what gender God would be represented as when appearing spiritually, and takes on the same gender as what God would be represented as when appearing physically. 

This is more or less because Gabby tends to take on the role of both arbiter and enforcer: as a representative of God, s/he will want to appear as if an incarnation of God when walking among mortals. However, on a more spiritual level when individuals have a stronger direct connection to God, Gabby then represents the opposite side of what God is seen as, as to provide a sense of balance.

Since, as mentioned, most people see God as male, Gabby is seen as male when in physical form and as a female in a spiritual form. And since arcangels tend not to spend much time in the physical realm, it's usually safe to assume Gabby is a she.

Gabby's got four wings like the other arcangels, but one pair (representative of air) is invisible, and thus, can't be seen. She has two metal (feathered) wings, two rock (also feathered) wings, and two vine-like spines of wings with hordes of bugs swarming from them to form a vaguely insectoid-like wing. Think like a butterfly wing, except instead of millions of scales, it's millions of bugs. These represent various aspects of life:
Rock, as the raw building blocks; insects/vines, as the creatures created from it; metal, as the refined products made from the life.

...That's as far as I got on that.

Like I said.

I don't really have a story.

Well, I do.

I think me describing the above?

That counts as a story.

In that I have four named characters with numerous implied lesser characters.
I have these characters' backstories defined, as well as more or less what their abilities are, albeit deliberately vague on the exact nature and scope of them.

So there's the makings of a story.

But I didn't really take it anywhere.
Haven't built it further and I probably won't.
Haven't placed it anywhere and I probably won't.
So what you see here is probably what you're gonna get.

The next time I talk about God, Angels, or anything like that, it'll be yet another story. Maybe already existing, maybe another new one, but I can guarantee you it won't be this one because I really don't know where to go from here. This was all I had.

WELL.

Anyway.

So I've been sick for over a week with the flu (well most likely flu), but while I'm not 100%, I'm like 98%. So I finally have the time to talk about Phyrra and Cyrus some more! Hold on for a sec, I'm gonna see if I can unbury ALL my notes on the subject, such that I can knock a bunch out at once.

Lessee...mentioned the each opener as element...still need to write the songs...
...Spoiler stuff I deliberately avoided blogging about because they are actual big huge spoilers...
...Unrecorded distribution of CommCrystals and the acronym I forgot, will get to this later...
...Unrecorded fate of villains...
...Ooh, here's one, minor villains! Will get to it in a sec. (I'm still pulling up my notes.)
...The bunch of stuff I didn't blog about a little over a month ago including some Paladin stuff I never researched...
...An old note about needing to still "draw" the characters...
...Bard...
...Yeah that should be it.

Okay! So. Starting from there.

So I am making a new tag for Phyrra and Cyrus. Now, you have to understand. This will be the first entry with that tag, because heck no I'm not going to retroactively go through all of my past Phyrra and Cyrus entries and retroactively add tags, that goes against my policy. Just search for some of my other tags. You shouldn't miss anything with tags like dream, sleep, gender dysphoria, trans, story, and similar since I'm fairly certain every entry has at least one if not all of those tags. (You'll get entries aside from Phyrra and Cyrus using them, but oh well.)

And frankly. Given that I've developed the overarching story of 95% of Phyrra and Cyrus...honestly. The tag's probably a waste because I'm probably not going to be blogging about it that much anymore because most of it I've already blogged about. It's a finite story. It's not an endless story. What I mean by that is. Basically. Most of the work's already been done.

I've still got details here and there to fill out, and I can talk about individual episodes. I suppose if in the future I develop more in the terms of technology/economics/kingdoms/etc. in the worldbuilding department, I've got that, too. But magic has its system fairly well defined, enchantments are fairly well defined, the plot is fairly well defined, and the characters are fairly well defined.

But, you never know. So I'm going to add it anyway. As the saying goes, "better late than never". And, hey. If I ever do change my mind and violate my current principle of not editing past blog entries, then sure, when doing that editing I'll add in tags. (You'll know if I've violated my principles if this is not the first entry with the "phyrra and cyrus" tag.) So who knows. Maybe down the line, it'll become useful, relevant, pertinent.

Where I do a BUNCH of additional stuff.

Oh and there's always art I suppose. I'm going to be doing art for a long time assuming I do art at all that is. (You know how it goes. Also, my art book is missing still, so I don't have my high quality art paper, only printer paper. Shame, because I do know where my pencil is.)

So I guess the tag won't be entirely useless, it's just that it'd have been useful to have done...much, much earlier than now.

Like. As far as things go. This is like taking notes when you're 75% of the way through the production. It's useful because that's 25% of the production you've taken notes on rather than 0%, but in hindsight you always wish you had started it earlier.

I didn't have any way of knowing Phyrra and Cyrus would grow to be this big of a thing! It was just a dream I had originally. I mean. It was a good dream. And admittedly, the story is a little more straight-forward than I was anticipating. (I was originally envisioning a reasonably high number of gender issues to come up, but the more and more I worked on the project, the more and more I realized that for the most part...Phyrra and Cyrus wouldn't care and their friends/companions wouldn't care especially since magic exists in this world and souls swapped in bodies isn't something which is as important as I thought it'd be because to everyone...it's just no big deal.)

The project has evolved so much since then, become something which in some ways is a lot more interesting and yet in many ways is more standardized than I was expecting. (I really thought I'd be playing a lot more around with gender and the like, but again, as I got to know the characters and the setting, those things just...were things they shrugged off. For the most part--except in a few cases of justified drama which are justifiable because the characters have actual concerns that are relevant rather than ridiculous.)

So in my defense, I had no idea it was going to be tag-worthy. And as the project began to grow, I still had no clue it was going to be tag-worthy because many projects of mine grow that way but ultimately after being worked on to the point of maximum maturity simply get filed away. (This is how most ideas I don't blog about get lost forever: I build them up in my head, then when I don't see how they can go any further, don't put any additional thought in, ever.)

And by the time I realized it was something special to me in a way most projects aren't...well by then, I simply didn't even think about making a tag for it, I was just too in the moment I suppose, where I wanted to get the information out so that everyone could see it.

Now, I need that tag though, because I need to have Phyrra and Cyrus be seen and known. I realize this blog will contain major spoilers if I ever do get the project going, and that starting the project might actually end up exposing my blog to the world. A risk I'd be all too happy to take, especially since I'm not sharing anything I don't want kept from people.

Everything I share on here, essentially, has thus been stuff that people can know in advance and not have their enjoyment diminished--if anything, knowing the things I talk about here would help their enjoyment even more because they'd have foreknowledge of what the things in episodes are, loosely, meant to be doing. (For instance, introducing members of the Thaukama. It's no secret Cedrick joins them, and in fact it's meant from the very beginning for people to look at him and go, "Yeah he's joining them" so people knowing it in advance actually increases the humor behind interactions prior to joining.)

So on that note!

Let's get to the actual...well. Notes!

​A month and a half ago, I wrote a blog on Bard but never got the chance to post it. It focused around his past. It's known from his introductory episode onward that Bard's father was a Spirit Demon--and that Bard has two forms: his human form (where Gunther King Slayer's demon magic doesn't work), and his Spirit Demon form.

What I didn't mention, but what I implied, was that his mother was not a Spirit Demon--and as is fairly common for giving childbirth to Spirit Demons when not being one, she died giving birth to him. So, Bard was raised by his father until Gunther King Slayer came into power...at which time, Bard's father killed himself before Gunther could take control of him, saving both the kingdom from him (Bard's father is implied to be an even larger genius than Bard, and he'd have been under the control of Gunther) and saving Bard from Gunther.

Something which worked for...oh, about four years or so until Bard reached puberty. He tried to hide, but got discovered fairly quickly and had been in Gunther's service since then unwillingly. Still, this left his heritage unknown to him. His mother, as far as everyone knew, looked human, and was known to not be a Spirit Demon and thus assumed to be human...but in truth, she, too, was a type of Demon.

Specifically, his mother was a Love Demon...AKA, a Succubus, which means Bard himself is a latent Incubus. His Incubus powers laid dormant (thus why he couldn't be controlled outside of his Spirit Demon form in spite of being a Love Demon; with the Love Demon powers dormant, it was as if he was human even though he isn't), and then only later does he discover his true nature by having a conversation with Will, who sees it and lets him know at an appropriate time.

Of course, discovering his powers doesn't awaken them; that happens in a part of the story I'll actually tell you about in a bit; I need to detail a few things like Inns/Taverns/AID Beacons/CommCrystals first so you can have better context for the plot point. Not quite done here, though. I wanted to talk more about Love Demons.

Love Demons have a skin-colored monkey-like tail: slightly thinner than a monkey's would be, but also slightly longer; they can control it like a third hand. (And, yes, being Love Demons, this manifests in pretty much exactly the manner you would imagine.) They can manifest claws, have fairly thin bodies, yet are very agile, with low-superhuman speed and highest-human levels of strength.

They're not nearly as strong and are just about as fast and not nearly as vicious as Spirit Demons (no fangs), and they aren't as tough as Spirit Demons, but they are very, very, very agile, nimble, and the like, able to jump much higher, faster, maneuver, and are all-around incredibly flexible. (Spirit Demons are, notably, quite agile and nimble, able to jump rather high, move fast, and the like, but there is a tradeoff. They're stronger and heavier which equates to more mass to move. Extra mass, extra bulk, extra oomph, but also extra weight to slug around.)

The two types of Demons are basically similar opposites, which work well in tandem. Even their powers work similarly. Love Demons drain love--and this can be any type of love. Familial, romantic, platonic, whatever. When draining, the more intense the emotion (the stronger the love), the more energy the Love Demon receives.

By 'drain', notably, I don't mean 'destroy'/remove/diminish/etc. In fact, it's quite the opposite. To compensate for the loss of energy (the person drained actually loses energy to give it to the Love Demon), Love Demons deliver an equal boost to the pleasure center of their target's brain.

That leads to exactly what you'd imagine.
Only a little love = barely any energy drained from the Love Demon's target + the Love Demon's target receives very little pleasure.
Lots of love = lots of energy drained from the Love Demon's target + the Love Demon's target receives a lot of pleasure--to the point where, if the love between the Love Demon and the target (the love is always measured as the amount between the Love Demon and their target, not their target and some third party) is strong enough...it is absolutely an experience which is better than sex.

And again, this works on any type of love. So in a group of true companions (the Thaukama), Bard can get supercharged by touching all of the Thaukama. And by 'supercharged', I mean, me talking about what Love Demons can do above? That's them at their normal level. The more of a 'surplus' they get, the more they get boosts to everything from regeneration (this is a biggie) to toughness to speed to the point where Bard supercharged can singlehandedly take on a whole squad of superpowered spirits and win.

​​I suppose now I get to talk about a little bit of the extras in the world.
CommCrystals (short for Communication Crystals) are exactly what you would imagine them to be: they are blue crystals, attached to something meant to fit in the user's hand. They are, in essence, a magical SmartPhone: their primary function is to communicate over long distances. They can pick up distress beacons (more on those in a bit) and project onto a screen details. Furthermore, when at either a leyline or plugged into a specialized device, they can act as a facechat between both sides, so in that sense they act as communication.

The way these crystals work, is that they transmit the data to the nearest leyline, which sends it to the target location. Given this premise, yes, there are dead zones too far away from a leyline or Nexus Tower to get a signal through other than picking up distress beacons. They're not suited for sending data over distance other than voice or with the appropriate (expensive) attachment video, but they can receive most data.

Leylines are not a hard concept to understand. They are basically a natural flow of what can be considered a 'magical hotspot', which flow around the entire planet. Think of them as basically akin to tectonic plates, geothermal energy, or something of that sort. The shift of magical energy across the world, naturally occurring. Like an ocean current, actually, just everywhere, underneath the ground.

They cannot be destroyed, damaged, or tapped into. They cannot be traveled, either. However, while nothing material can travel on leylines, immaterial in the form of data can be transmitted through them, allowing for long-distance communication to be established. Think of leylines, then, as essentially naturally-occurring cable internet/phone/TV, mostly phone but who knows someday maybe encompassing the others. (Just, that tech hasn't yet been invented.)

A Nexus Tower, is then, thus, something which can be thought of as a cell phone/radio tower: boosting the signal artificially. A sort-of artificial leyline, except it's not so much an artificial leyline as much as it is a signal boost to help connect CommCrystals to leylines from a much greater distance by acting as a link between the two.

Phyrra and Cyrus still has the flavor of a high fantasy setting, pre-industrial-age in that there are not multiple-shot guns invented yet and people do all the adventuring you would expect traveling largely on foot or on beasts of burden with intercontinental travel being done in wooden boats on the water, but it has many of the more "modern" aesthetics and cultural values of our world in terms of daily living.

Many people are farmers living a more agricultural lifestyle, but in spite of that, they live rather comfortably with rather advanced technology at their disposal--this is to be expected, because with magic at your disposal, technology advances in unpredictable-to-us ways and some ideas get invented much sooner when the magic of the world allows for those ideas to be viable and natural much sooner.

A cousin to the CommCrystal technology is beacon technology. Beacons come in three types; all of them function in the same way aside from minor differences.

SID/CURS/AID beacons are all distress signals, for ships/cities/individuals, respectively. SID beacons, short for 'Ship In Distress' beacons, send a huge red pillar into the sky, a continuous beam of pure red light, directly shining down on their location. This beacon transmits up to 50 miles away to every SID/CURS/AID beacon in addition to all CommCrystals. Each SID beacon has a unique ID, so that when it is activated people know exactly what ship it is; they are also programmable such that the exact nature of their problem can be described and given.

CURS beacons, short for City Under siege; Request Saving, is basically a souped-up SID beacon, working literally the same way. It sends a gigantic golden pillar into the sky (bigger than the red pillar of a SID beacon), transmitting up to 100 miles away to every SID/CURS/AID beacon and CommCrystal, with the unique ID of that city, and the ability to program it with the exact information.

AID beacons, short for 'Adventure In Distress' beacons, are basically toned-down SID beacons, sending a small blue pillar into the sky, transmitting up to 25 miles away to every SID, AID, and CommCrystal; they are unique to the individual and can be programmed to contain information. They are quite expensive, but considered an excellent adventuring tool.

Mostly because an AID being activated is, in spite of the name, most likely a merchant requesting an adventurer for assistance. In other words, AID beacons are used quite a bit to not only give quests, but receive quests. CommCrystals have similar capacities, but are a little less versatile in that regard.

Clara, as inheritance from her parents, received one, but didn't have it on her when she got with the Thaukama. (Nor did she have her CommCrystal, given to her as part of her apprenticeship.) Phyrra and Cyrus from their parents have a CommCrystal. Ace as a birthday present got a CommCrystal from his father. Cedrick has a CommCrystal as well.

Will and Lilian, both being rich, have an AID beacon.

This gives the Thaukama three of each; Alena has one of each as well, bringing it up to five (as Clara retrieves hers) of each by the end of the series.

Another adventurer-centric worldbuilding bit I did was about where adventurers stay.

Adventurers, generally, when traveling, stick to the roads, unless they have reason to go off of one. (This being a world which is fairly civilized, most spots aside from adventuring hotspots have roads. Adventuring hotspots being places where adventurers go to do adventuring, out in the wilderness to dungeon crawl, lair raid, and so on and so forth. The world is reasonably well-mapped-out, so they can travel on the road until they get fairly close to the location they want to check out which is off the road.)

As such, there are plenty of different types of lodging.

Obviously, adventurers can if properly equipped set up camp anywhere, but sometimes, this can be less convenient than they would prefer. As a result, especially at crossroads (locations where there's multiple roads intersecting), there are "crossroad camps". 

A crossroad camp is a little bit like a freeway's rest stops meet a national park's camping lots: some supplies are given, while others the adventurers have to bring with them. They contain fire pits, restrooms, and cleared land to set up tents, along with loading space to store goods and poles to help stable beasts of burden; many have wells for water as well. But the adventurers still have to pack their own lodging, from sleeping bags, tents, food, and the like. They're entirely free, though.

An Inn is basically like a motel: it is like a crossroad camp and found in many of the same types of locations (along the road, in places people will stop), but there's a tradeoff: you have to pay. You sleep in a real bed, you can get multiple types of food and drink, and you get the benefits of a tavern, but in general, most inns require payment; they don't accept tabs (because you're not likely to come back) and only a few will let you pay in alternative methods. They take actual currency to use.

(I'm ticked because I just lost about half an hour's worth of work on my blog because my FREAKIN' COMPUTER DOESN'T WANT TO SHUT UP ABOUT RESTARTING BUT I AM USING IT NOW AND IT ISN'T GIVING ME OPTIONS TO NOT RESTART AND IT TRIED TO RESTART BUT FAILED YET IT STILL CRASHED MY BROWSER THUS LOST MY WORK.)

​A tavern is basically like an inn, only it is in a town: it provides lodging and so on (various foods and drinks), and it is the adventurer's best friend. It is the main location (aside from the town square where bulletins are posted and occasionally a town hall or in some larger cities guilds) where adventurers can find work. It's the place where gossip spreads, tales are shared, and people can talk about adventures past and about dreams future, and be given tips and crowd sourcing and the like.

People talk, people chat, people make friends, people form adventuring parties, and the like. Taverns also offer lodging usually for free, albeit always expecting a form of payback. Adventurers can open up a tab, or pay off by doing chores or by running errands or by going on quests for the tavern. Beyond that, adventurers hang out at taverns to pick up patrons: people who need the help of adventurers to do tasks like be bodyguards.

Said patrons are the people often paying off an adventurer's tab. Basically, the system works because the tavern gets their money...eventually. Once the right kind of work shows up, essentially. Of course, taverns can lose money. Not all adventurers are honorable. (Though in a world with rapid long-distance communication, word spreads like wildfire so that type of adventurer who doesn't pay back their tab is not the type to last long before karma catches up to them.)

Not all adventurers make it big; they might get down out of their luck and take more than they can give back. Not all adventurers even live; adventuring is still a dangerous line of work because the world is filled with dangers, so many will die without having paid their debt back.

And taverns don't expect to have the dead pay them back. They accept the loss, take the hit, from those that do perish or become downtrodden, because overall, they still manage to get by. Business is good enough where they manage to keep going. Taverns aren't greedy; they are usually run by families, who make ends meet and don't need anything more than that.

So basically, while they can sometimes operate at a loss, they end up eventually making enough money where they can stay afloat. Adventurers are, after all. Quite happy to have these services, and thus all too willing to pay them back and then some, often. And wealthy patrons are quite willing to pay the tabs for adventurers they hire.

Which brings me (again, since I typed up everything twice and I still think I'm missing things and not explaining them as well as I did the first time) to a part in Phyrra and Cyrus called 'The Divide'. Which ties all of these things I've been talking about together.

At a crossroads, the Thaukama stay at the Inn and get to hear a lot of the local gossip. By this point, they are starting to deal with the third season's big bad, Archer Cross Hill, and there are two roads to travel on. Both roads end up converging again at a city later. (Let's call this City D.)

The Thaukama decides to split up--this is not done because of a separation in the group, tension, or whatnot, with them having disagreements or anything of the sort. Quite the opposite, their decision to split up is one based around trust, companionship, and friendship, with the promise and resolve to meet up again with everyone having done what they needed to do.

Will heads one way, knowing his family has influence over there and would be happy to have him run some errands. (Not to mention, he'd have resources there to help his friends forward on their journey, dealing with Archer Cross Hill.) Bard accompanies him because of gossip about someone being able to help him awaken his true nature there. Clara accompanies them because of rumors of her master in the major city on that pathway. (Let's call this City B.)

Cedrick accompanies the group to be a team leader looking out for them, and because he has one of the Thaukama's CommCrystals. (Will takes his AID beacon as well.) Myra accompanies the group to be a team mom and as part of Cyrus's strategy: if Myra's group needs help but can't use the beacon/crystal, then Myra can instantly transport herself over to Cyrus to get aid. Inversely, if Cyrus needs aid, he can instantly call Myra to his side.

The other group heads the other way. The path they go on eventually has a crossroad to it as well--Phyrra and Gora set up camp at the Camp Crossroad, with a CommCrystal to be a "base camp"/"relay point" for the others, as they would be the only ones in range of all groups. A hub, of sorts, for them to communicate messages to one another.

Lilian and Hera leave to a city (with Lilian taking an AID beacon), for a bit of a personal visit, but also to get in contact with some people to see if they know anything about the villain they at this point know as Archer Cross. (Let's call this City C.) Meanwhile, Cyrus, Ace, and Kaze (with Ace taking the third CommCrystal) go to the major city on the pathway they'll need to travel on to meet back up with the others. (Let's call this City A.)

They do this in part because of scouting, in part because of gathering supplies, in part to look for adventure, and in part to gather information of their own. Basically, all of the Thaukama at this point are doing their own thing, in four different groups, but all of them are trying to accomplish the same thing: stop Archer Cross and meet back up at City D together when everything is taken care of.

Unsurprisingly, this is the time period where I can take the most amount of time to do some individual character building, to show characters more or less developing on their own. 

I kinda lost my momentum there what with the whole restart lose my blog thing, so I guess I'll continue this another time. I've still got minor villains and chronology of the series to talk about.

One of the things which turns me from manic to depressed so often now in spite of medications meant to help with that.

Forgive the phrasing as it's something I'd normally not say unless in tongue-in-cheek because saying it seriously is a hallmark of arrogance, but I can't think of a better phrase to describe the issue:
"It's not every day you have a stroke of genius."

I don't want to call myself a genius because of how presumptuous that'd be. BUT. I think you can at least understand my sentiment here, what I'm going for.

It is not every day that you come up with a great idea.

It is not every day that you come up with an idea which is amazing.

And like.

I know I am a very creative person, who builds grand worlds. The World of Soano (The Descended's setting) is one of my favorite places. The Rubyverse is a conglomeration of my work across the years and takes the best of everything put into one place.

Heroes of Gistou takes what is perhaps the greatest achievement I've ever had as a writer and is a conglomeration of all my years of work as a writer; in the original mafia game I wrote the flavor for it was ambitious enough but as a novel which took things even further, it has literally every skill I've ever used in any of my stories ever in one place, while adding elements I've never used before including diversity in gender/sexual orientation (okay so that's touched on very lightly in one other story but only barely), racism, and hair/eye/skin color and whatnot.

It is basically my crowning achievement as a writer because the characters are humans I know (okay so to be fair, this was a bit of a cheat because when writing their characters some influence from the players who were assigned those roles leaked in), the setting is one of the most intricate ones I've built, the plot is one of my favorite stories, and the quality of the writing is the highest I've ever done; there's nothing to top it.

Though, coming close would be the other novel I was working on when my flashdrive failed and caused me to lose literally years' worth of work. (Still bitter about that, but if you're wondering, probably wouldn't work on my novel if I had the information, anyway. I'd back the information up, but my mood to work on the novel was utterly killed and having the flashdrive back and functioning wouldn't magically revitalize it.)

It is, in many ways, similar to Gistou in that it is the other story which touches on sexual orientation (albeit not gender orientation), and in some ways it actually is more of a statement. Some things which we might think are very unprogressive are shown even from the main characters...but this is more or less commented on in the book and you can tell that it is a deliberate narrative choice. (At least if I competently write that is.)

Racial divide, philosophy, the nature of war, the nature of fate/destiny, discrimination, eugenics of a sort (something I don't think I ever actually wrote down was a minor revision to dialog at one point where the protagonist notes that while there are 10,000 humans left alive, only about 4,000 of them are pureblooded humans with no genes from the other species which is closely enough related to humanity that they can have fertile hybrid children and said hybrid children's descendants account for the other 6,000 and the protagonist believes that in order to survive humanity needs that genetic diversity since humanity's gene pool is dangerously small; even his ancestors had a first cousin marriage).

It just touches on a lot of things, with some of the most powerful writing I've ever done, a full cast of characters who are actual CHARACTERS. They don't just have quirks. They have flaws. Most of my characters, well, they might have flaws but they don't get displayed in my writing. It's a bit of a weak spot in my writing; when I write characters, they don't tend to fail, they don't tend to have shortcomings, they don't tend to be in the wrong, and so on and so forth.

This story has all of that. And the question, of course, of "am I really in the right?", with ambiguous answers, rather than clear-cut ones. People. More than any other story, maybe even more than Gistou, people. Yet the world has a beautiful history to it and the plot progresses in this altogether philosophical way, where action is happening and yet you still get these little moments to know everyone.

The Perfect RPG for me is a setting I might have slightly tabled in favor of other projects, but I am still passionate about it because I really like what I made there.

I still want to make the Disneyesque Villain Song setting. I've toyed with various expansions, from extra characters (the protagonist, the seer, the love interest, the best friend of the protagonist, a cool old guy, and of course the villain among many others), how the beginning of the story unfolds, how the protagonist meets the love interest, how the story ends, and little things here and there including that the villain would be almost by-the-book following the evil overlord list (with some liberties taken here and there).

It is a wondrous, beautiful thing, envisioned as a film but also suitable for a miniseries. Probably not a full series, but could be done I suppose with tweaking.

And then there's the two most recent.

Phyrra and Cyrus.

And Dawn of Order.

I am passionate about them all.
Yet those ones really speak to me as, so to speak, "genius among the genius". Or rather. "This is the perfect balance of something which can actually be done (and is thus, pragmatic to do), and yet is something which is still grand enough to be ambitious, reach the masses, and inspire greatness", more or less.

Phyrra and Cyrus, and Dawn of Order, are both outside of my general comfort zone. I am a writer first and foremost. I am secondarily an artist. While those are used in animation and games, they are not at the forefront of them. Both have incredible ambition behind them, both have incredible ideas which make them truly unique and original, and yet because of what they are, are something which can be spread to the masses fairly easily and readily once made.

And more than that. I feel that they can actually be done. Not by me, alone, yes. But they can be DONE.
One of the reasons The Descended may never get off its feet is because it feels like a project which needs to be done entirely by me, but yet the scale of the project is such that while it's incredibly ambitious I'm probably never going to be able to complete it in my lifetime just as me alone.

Aside from how I've lost the art and scripts I've had multiple times, aside from how the site is (pardon the language) a clusterfuck and yet I have a strong desire to not nuke it and start from scratch. Aside from that. To tell the story I want to tell, I need to produce high-quality, almost professional art. Yet there's a ton of content for the story. I've forgotten a fair amount and with no usable notes that content is lost forever but even with it removed (or magically recovered).

The story isn't short. Compared to Red Hood Rider, yeah, it's short. But it's still something which if I were updating daily would take years of my life to complete and updating at a rate slower than daily would take...well. Longer than a human lifespan, honestly. 

Speaking of Red Hood Rider. What I just said about The Descended applies to it, too. Red Hood Rider, being a project which is mine. Just feels like something which should be done by me. I have also lost many notes of mine on the subject and what I have is chaotic, jumbled, scattered. Yet new content keeps being added even to this day, and content gets revised. And it's estimated to be about 80-100 episodes worth of content.

Each episode with 20-40 pages.

If that were daily updates that'd be potentially 4,000 pages. You know how many years that is? Ten. If I were releasing daily pages it would take ten years to complete Red Hood Rider. Now imagine less than daily. And knowing that the quality of art demanded for the project is even higher than that of The Descended, because Red Hood Rider is meant to be something which could be adapted into an animation (which is why chapters are called episodes).

My novels are, obviously. Personal projects. Can't outsource writing. Well, you could I suppose but heck no that's not something I'd do. So it'd have to be me doing them, by myself, alone.

All of them, I can reach out to others of course. Get a novel published, I can communicate to my readers. Start updating a webcomic, I can have dialog with my readers actively on a daily basis. But there's something in that which feels missing, actually.

And that is something not missing when I think of Phyrra and Cyrus especially, although also recently Dawn of Order.

Because on those. I would be creating my visions, but I'd be working with others, collaborating with them to bring what I envisioned to life. It would be my project, it would be personal, but it would have the touch of others on it as well and that would be a good thing. For The Descended, Red Hood Rider, and my novels, the thought of the touch of others on it feels WRONG.

But because it is literally a requirement for Phyrra and Cyrus (given voice acting) and Dawn of Order, it feels right. It feels good. The thought that I'd have it.

I'm not sure I'm presenting a very coherent thought here on what I am getting at.

What I am getting at is that many of my projects, I feel are personal projects.
Yet when it comes to a project like Phyrra and Cyrus.

What makes them strokes of genius.
Is that they are something which aren't personal projects. Yet in spite of not being personal projects. They feel like they are realistically achievable. I don't think anything I've envisioned in them is impossible, unreasonable, or really that hard to achieve if I really set my mind to it.

And I just.
Really, really like thinking about them.

And that's where the depression comes in--when I can't think of them, as it were.
Or rather. "I have thought of this great idea. Why am I not thinking of something just as good, or doing something just as good?"

By that, I mean.

Anything I do, I feel like it's less than what I could be doing.

I pretty much stopped playing Final Fantasy VII once I started envisioning the perfect RPG.
And now there's something similar for Majesty, Zeus/Poseidon, and the like.

Where I have envisioned a really cool game, Dawn of Order. Which I want to be playing, or at least designing. Rather than playing those games.

And any other game just feels...lesser than those, because those are some of my favorite games after all.

And there's something similar for Phyrra and Cyrus.

I've pretty much stopped rehashing most of my ideas (aside from the villain song one which is alive and well) since starting it. And when I think about them. I just. Want the moments I envision to be real.

I've even mapped out exactly how I could do it, too. The things I ask for, most I know explicitly can already be done because I have seen them done. And if I've seen them done, then it is possible for them to be done on my project. (For reference, this is also true of Dawn of Order. I don't think anything I describe is impossible, not even when putting it all together, because every element I describe exists in one of the games I was inspired by, and while I know code isn't exactly directly transferable, it'd be possible to more or less manage it if you were a competent coder familiar with the inspiration and knowing the intended result.)

​If I could, for instance. I'm like 97% sure that Phyrra and Cyrus could be hosted on ComicFury. Yes, it's a comic site, yes, Phyrra and Cyrus is an animation, but I am almost absolutely positive (thus the 97%) that a "comic" can be a video.

Specifically. A video which doesn't autoplay, which you hit play in order to play, and which has both animation and audio. There is a file format which allows that. Well, multiple file formats. But I am positive one of said file formats, ComicFury supports for comics, and thus, it would be potentially possible to upload an entire episode. (Might run afoul of the size limitation to uploads but I'm sure there'd be a workaround for that.)

If that were possible, then from there it'd be easy.
Each comic (except fillers in the form of character art or worldbuilding concepts) would be an episode.

The most iffy thing I'd want would be the ability to make a video fullscreen; I'm less than positive that'd be possible.

But I'd want a home page with disqus comments that'd display the latest episode and latest blog (easily done), the ability to leave disqus comments on every blog post (easily done), maybe disqus comments on some extra pages (easily done), and then for the comments on every comic...
Disqus comments displaying on top and ComicFury comments also displaying below Disqus as the default (seen it done so it can be done),
With the option to alternatively have ComicFury comments on top and Disqus comments below,
And the option to hide ComicFury comments (seen it done so it can be done),
And the option to hide Disqus comments (seen it done so it can be done),
And the option to hide both comments,
And the ability to save preference for comment display (the above options) between both pages page to page and visits  visit to visit (meaning not needing to manually click the preferred option each time; pretty sure this can be done),
And Disqus comments linked to every site I host Phyrra and Cyrus on with Disqus (seen it done so it can be done).

Optionally, with a domain purchased and used.
Premade layouts have a quick-navigation (dropdown menu) so I'd have that, and premade layouts also have the "save my place" function for saving the comic/episode location you were watching so you can "load my place" later, and optionally, I could maybe have non-intrusive advertising built into the site.

So that might seem like a fair amount. But given what I know ComicFury can already do. In that I've seen almost all of this already done. I'm pretty sure it'd be possible to do. And it'd be awesome.

This is what I mean. I mapped that out over a week ago. It's doable. Most likely, at least. 

It feels like something I can actually have made real.

It feels like something where I could have a blast.
Just interacting with viewers, with fans, with friends, and coworkers, to make a project, pouring pure love into it every step of the way. A project which is mine...but also more than mine. Something greater, built by a team, a community. Something to share with the world, and be remembered for.

Something unique, quirky, original, and ambitious. Yet not so ambitious as to be impossible. To be manageable. To be something that can be made.

That's what I want to make on a daily basis.

But it's not every day I make a Phyrra and Cyrus.
It's not every day I make a Dawn of Order.
It's not every day that I get to have those moments of genius for lack of a better term.
It's not every day where I can snatch that greatness and feel it.

But on those days where I don't have the greatness.

I still remember the feeling of it.
The sensation remains.

On days I am not making the next Phyrra and Cyrus. Or for that matter, making Phyrra and Cyrus. I am remembering the sensation of Phyrra and Cyrus. And that is where the depression comes in...because I feel empty, because it's just so real and something just so close to something I can see tangible...yet not actually existing. The ideas will die with me.

I intend to live a very long life, of course. But the ideas if I don't make them...well. Nobody else would. Nobody else could. They could make something which has all the elements my notes describe, of course. But it wouldn't be how I had tried to make it because my notes aren't nearly as extensive as they should be, and there are little things here and there that the only way I'd be able to bring up is if someone first was trying to do them wrong and I'd be able to tell them, "No, not that. This." to fix it.

And that's the frustrating feeling.

Knowing that I have these ideas. Ideas that are. No matter how much I try to be humble. No matter how much I try to avoid arrogance. No matter how much I try to be a realist, a pessimist, a cynic. Ideas which are just...good. Ideas which are genius. I have them. And they demand to be made real.

I feel them as real. I actually live with them as real. I don't just see episodes of Phyrra and Cyrus. I also see me interacting with viewers who watch the latest episode of Phyrra and Cyrus. Me commenting on their comments, engaging them in dialogs which are currently nonexistent. Talking to them, revealing miscellaneous facts, sometimes being a bit of a trolling creator, other times revealing tiny snippets which couldn't make it into the show, small Word of God things like that, you probably can get a sense of what I mean.

When I think of them. I am actively doing that. Not just laying out the episode itself. But also the reactions to the episode, which I know would exist because. Well. I am confident in myself. Not arrogance. I know that, 100%. If Phyrra and Cyrus was made into a series. There would be fans. There would be people commenting. There would be a lot of them because in order for Phyrra and Cyrus to publish so much as a single episode. It'd need to get the publicity to get off the ground in the first place.

In other words. I know that if Phyrra and Cyrus existed. There would be people talking about it. It would demand to be watched. Demand to be seen. It would be popular, spread like wildfire. I know this because I know what I can make it be. If it existed, then it would exist at a high enough quality where those things would be impossible to not have.

And the depression more or less comes from.

"...So why isn't it so?!?"

So why don't Phyrra and Cyrus already exist.
So why doesn't Dawn of Order already exist.
So why doesn't this idea. Which is magical. Have its reality.
And why can't I have something like it, right now, in front of me.
Why can't I have something like it, or it itself, in my mind if nowhere else.

And that's what cuts deep. Not having it in front of me. Not having it in my head. And not having something similar to it in my head. Living in a world where it doesn't exist tangibly. Living in our world. A world close to the one they exist in. But they don't. Because I haven't made them exist yet, in spite of being their creator.

I think that describes my depression pretty well. And people might be able to relate to it now that I've described it in those terms. But I never know. Sometimes, it might just be I'm crazy.

And yet in spite of it continuing to do so and even containing details I don't have written down (and thus, every time I don't write about them I risk forgetting), I continue to procrastinate about talking about them. Once more, I have a little bit of extra about them, albeit extra which requires me to blog about something which I was meant to blog about days ago.

And yet, once more, I am not going to be blogging about it, because instead I am going to be blogging about something else entirely. (Okay so there's a chance that I will, but that chance is so slim it is essentially none.)

Specifically, I have just...been wanting to talk about my identity recently. There have been a fair number of times where recently, I've either been just questioning who exactly I am (knowing that I am Bree, but otherwise being lost), or have just wanted to let it all out to people, to vent randomly in ways I just don't think about to vent to someone without a prompt--yet nobody gives me the prompt, or if they do, they give it to me in a public place where I don't want to give the rant.

Yes, technically speaking, this blog is public. But it is JUST private enough, it is just personal enough, that I feel comfortable sharing this sort of thing on here. Basically. There have been a fair number of times recently where I just wished someone would, in the right environment, give me the right lead-in to allow me to talk to them about some of the stuff below. Yet the lead-in I'd need is so specific that it'll never actually materialize.

Believe it or not. This blog? Was started very largely to make exactly this kind of entry. At the time, it was mostly to deal with me being a closeted transwoman who is both autistic and has bipolar disorder, and for me to unload it all on someone in real life, especially at work given my many frustrations there. That was one of the main contributing factors to me starting this blog in the first place.

It's something people often forget now that nowadays most of my entries are either related to my creations (stories, art, song, etc.) or non-entries that are more or less "sorry, stuff happened, so no real entry today". But part of blogging is telling stories from my life, or even just telling about my life. And this in particular is the latter because I just need to do that, in a way which is more conductive to a blog than, say, unloading on my girlfriend. (I mean, I could, it's just that this is the sort of content which works better as a blog than a rant to them.)

I'll start by talking a bit about my identity--as a refresher, yes, I do identify as plural. Specifically, the type of plural I identify as is a median. The, "there are many of us, but we are all Bree" descriptor is mostly accurate. (Mostly, because within me are at least two entities that are almost individuals who aren't Bree, but more on that later.) I have a core, the core "Bree", from which all of mes exist.

We are all women, we share most of our memories, emotions, and thoughts, and those are in the core. But there are things outside the core--memories, emotions, and thoughts unique to the personality. There are many of us indeed, but the primary two have come to be known as Ranger and mastina. mastina is the me most dominant overall, with Ranger at a very close second, and at some points having this be vice-versa where Ranger was more dominant even though she currently is not.

This is something which is, in many ways, similar to us being a transwoman--we have always been this way, as far as I can remember, with the compartmentalized thoughts and the division within us, not to mention the imaginary friend who never went away (more on that later). Yet like being trans, this isn't something we have known about consciously, actively, until relatively speaking fairly recently.

Specifically, the first inkling I'd say of us really having any semblance of an idea that we were divided within would be somewhere around circa December 2015. And I was confused. I didn't understand--I still don't! I have no clue what I really am, to be honest. But with help, I've been able to get some degree of better understanding, becoming more informed and also having done some searching and exploration.

My knowledge is still young. My experience is still growing. But somewhere circa 2017 I began to get much better grounded in having a more solid idea of who I am. Beyond that, I've been playing around with trying to figure out the differences between my mes.

Today, one of the things I figured out was that there is actually a difference in the way we think, and that we have different functions as a result. I mean. I knew there was a difference in the way we think; I've felt that before, where the very fundamental way I thought of things abruptly and suddenly shifted. (The shift between the different mes isn't something I control; I can't flip a switch and go from Ranger to mastina, nor is it that I go to sleep as one and awake as another. It just happens, that I'm one, then I'm another. These shifts can even happen in terms of seconds, where for a split moment I am one and then snap back to being another.)

But today, I think I figured out the way the thoughts differ.

I call the different thinking patterns "Linear" versus "Geometric".
You may recognize this as being, more or less, something from my perspective on art. And that's because it is! Basically, I have noted in the past that there are two ways to go about making art--the linear approach is, as the name indicates, focused on lines. You create things by the flow of lines.

It has the advantage of being fluid and dynamic, with good flow and movement, so when drawing motion, it's a nice technique. It has a disadvantage, though, in that accuracy tend to be hit-or-miss. Proportions, anatomy, perspective, the like, are all things which are potentially thrown off.

A geometric approach, in the art setting, is more or less taking the shapes, and building up the figure using them. This has the advantage of being accurate, but the disadvantage that it tends to be more stiff and rigid, coming across as a bit more artificial.

There's more to both than that (which I'll get to in a sec), but...I realized today that those approaches aren't just for art. They apply to a general view on the world in general. I mean, I always visualize things in those two ways, but I thought of said visualizations as an extension of art rather than extending the concept. The concept, though, works beyond just art for me.

Linear thinking, I realized, is more Ranger's specialty. It is organic, it is fluid, flowing, with movement, where things go with the flow, where things just come naturally and make sense, yet are sometimes a little bit questionable in how precisely they work. However, it does seem to work regardless of the flaws, and the flaws are what makes it actually be a thing of beauty.

When it comes to stories, I realize that the me who converses to characters is always Ranger. It's never me as mastina talking to my characters. Always, when I am having an actual conversation with my characters, as their equal rather than their god/creator, it is Ranger who speaks. (Me as mastina, on the other hand, I am always the god/creator.)

In this way, Ranger actually gets to know the characters better than I do--and without her, I wouldn't have the signature characters I am known for making that are so authentic they feel like they're real. Because to her, they are real, because she talks to them. I don't, not as mastina anyway.

Ranger is also, then, the one responsible for most of the actual dialog in my stories. I as the writer might give the general nature of the conversation...but she's the one who actually hears the characters speak, because to her it is people speaking (the perspective of the equal) rather than characters in dialog (the perspective of the creator).

This is also why when I snark it is probably because of something she thought of. Most of my puns tend to come from her. I can force puns through without her, but the best puns which come with the least reaction time are always hers. Because she just sees the 'line' to say, as it were.

So basically. Ranger is why I got to become a character-driven storyteller in the first place, in spite of originally being a plot-driven storyteller. She spends time to learn character quirks, to learn things that aren't necessary for the narrative. I can get away with a bare bones narrative not featuring the things I put in...but she insists on them, because she saw them, when she was actually there side by side the character in question. Or rather, to her, the person.

In contrast. When I am mastina. I am more into geometric thinking. It is constructed, it is built, it is structured, and yet, it is also isolated. All the geometric work I do in my mind is largely disjointed from other things. I just go inside my mind, and then in a particular canvas, build what's on my mind. Now, from that item I built, I can then build another. And then, build another from those. And so on and so forth.

I make the parts, one by one, until I have the whole assembly. Circles, squares, cylinders, triangles, and the like, to build a person in art. But also worldbuilding. I build worlds. Worlds have rules. Rules require structure. Ranger wings it in terms of that sort of thing, which is often why her stories run into problems of, "okay...now what?". Where the story ceases to progress due to writers' block, because she has an idea for what things should be like and she knows very specific things (because she saw them, and thus, those specific things are in her mind), but if she doesn't see every last detail then she runs into a problem of not being able to progress.

This way of thinking does have overlap with linear thinking--after all. To get from Point A (which is geometry; points are one-dimensional geometry) to Point B (which is still geometry), you need to...form a Line. That is two-dimensional geometry. But to further the metaphor, the line created using this method is straight, rigid and unmoving, whereas the lines created with linear thinking are more fluid and bent.

Now, the metaphor begins to fall apart when you introduce more advanced math (parabolic arcs, sin, cosine, tangent, and so on and so forth) not to mention the geometry of even just a partial circle allowing for curves in the form of arcs, there's at least a dozen way math nerds can poke holes in the allegory. But the basic idea I'm getting at is that there is in fact overlap, and that's where it is.

But there are things which are in the geometry only just like there are things which are in the linear only. Some of them are strengths, others weaknesses. Characters I build as mastina tend to be tools. They are characters--means to an end. I construct worlds, I construct their rules, and I make most of the plot. I know the overarching events which happen.

I don't know the exact manifestation of them. I might know the tone of a conversation. I might know the general content of the conversation. I tend to know why that conversation is going on. And many other similar things. I can know every detail of the conversation, except the actual words spoken. It's kinda strange, to even know the exact inflection and intonation of what is said yet not knowing the words. I can do that.

But for the conversation itself, if it's not Ranger, it's going to be very visibly artificially constructed because it was in fact artificially constructed. She lives it and thus records it and knows what's natural, and it's her instincts on dialog which I am using in things like Phyrra and Cyrus, but what she sees is only small snippets here and there, often only after I focus on a particular scene for a great amount of time.

The payout's absolutely worth it, of course. Because I never laugh heartily at conversations I have built, whereas when I am Ranger and I see the conversation happening, I laugh hard, especially if my characters are laughing with me. So it's not that Ranger is an artist/writer and I am a writer/artist. We're equal parts both, just...in different ways, with different strengths and different weaknesses.

And, yes.

This exists outside of writing, just like it's outside of art.

It's how we process information. I itemize lists. I have a very "listed" format. Structured, orderly. Ranger...messes it up. I tend to be the one writing our "scripts". I've talked about that before a bit (not sure if on the blog or not), but basically, whenever I am thinking about a conversation I'll have, or whenever I am in the middle of a conversation, I think up every possible variation on what I want to say, and every possible response I can think of that they'll say.

When I then promptly mess up no matter how much I tried to nail it, it's often Ranger who picks up and just wings it. But sometimes I mess up because of said winging it, especially if she jumps in without giving me the time to have built the script. 

Ranger's got a faster wit, after all, so it's no surprise her reaction time tends to be quicker. She just kinda sees things, and then puts it together, even if she has no clue how she saw them and put them together. "Oh, that is like this". With no thought in, she just makes the connection and then that connection is there.

I have...a more roundabout way. I link things together. I make an association: "this to this". And then I rely on that association to make a new one. For instance, in order to remember the band name Modest Mouse, I first think, "Band name...Mouse..." and then I jump to "Mightey Mouse", a user from the site I play mafia on, and then from there I go, "Ah! Yes. Not Mightey mouse, it's MODEST Mouse!" in order to get the right band name.

Yes, it is contrived. Yes, it is convoluted. But you know what else it is? It's consistent. I can, 100% of the time, using this method, remember a string of information, even a disproportionately long one. And that association tends to never go away. Once in my mind, it is almost impossible to remove, for better or for worse. I have never once failed to recollect the band name of Modest Mouse since my mind made that association, in spite of me having to mentally ask what the band was (and sometimes being asked) dozens, even hundreds of times.

There is a delay built in, though. I have to manually think it through, step by step. Some steps I can skip because they are internalized enough that my mind conceptualizes it fast enough that I don't need to spend time giving it a thought. (Basically, the concept of the step is enough; I don't have to spell the step out every single time in actual thought.) But I still run through every step to get that.

I can also do temporary versions of this by 'storing' data on my fingers. I can itemize things, and then even itemize the itemized things, and sometimes even itemize the itemized itemized things, though the deeper the list, the more prone to forgetting I am.

Concepts take form, take shape, one by one: each concept can be thought of as a single piece of geometry. And then my mind links the concepts, one by one, by building further geometry. And each concept is then fleshed out with additional concepts, additional geometry. And from this I form thoughts, form words, form ideas, that I can express in word form or whatever I may be trying to do.

Ranger's way is more. Well, she still thinks in concepts first, and struggles to translate concepts into English. It's just, BAM, there, and then, not there. There, then not there. There, and then from there, going here. But there's not really much of a direction when I do that. (Oh and yes I do slip from Ranger to mastina in the middle of a blog. Get used to third person, first person singular, and first person plural when I make a blog like this because I can be describing myself in third person, then slip into being that person.)

I just. Think. And the thought appears. Usually faster. But also more inconsistently and less coherently. It makes sense, internally, but externally when manifested it's more difficult to understand because while it has the general shape of something which is the right thing, the specifics are a little iffy.

I don't even really know how it works. It just does. And the results tend to be what they are. (A slight consequence of switching mid-project: I tend to lose the train of thought I was on, because quite literally the thought belongs to someone else and with the thought in that someone else I struggle to maintain it.)

Structure the specialty of one, details the specialty of the other. Things come faster when specific, yet are more coherent when waiting. And that coherency is easily broken, yet solved on the fly just as often.

Which brings me to a related concept.
I am still exploring this, actually. The concepts, intuitively, feel like they are different, and yet when I look at them, I can't help but feel they are intricately linked in a way where the amount of correlation between the two is such that they are almost synonymous.

And that's Instinct versus Reason. (Or Gut versus Logic if you prefer, but I have very strong reasons to prefer my terminology, that I'm not quite sure I can verbalize.)

Instinct and Reason have always been opposites within me existing strongly, and yet never having me be one; I'm always a little bit of both. Yet I've picked up that Ranger tends to be more instinct and I am more reason as mastina. (YES REALLY. If you know what my definition of Reason is, you'll understand.)

The way I wanted to talk about this was to actually go into stories a bit. In Red Hood Rider, Vampires represent the ultimate creatures of Instinct, masters of it who live on their impulses. They manipulate the rules of reality to serve them, bending the world to their will, but they are still confined to them. As basically-humans, they do have plenty of reason within them, but they are driven by what they feel.

This is almost identical to Monlows from the Bleach knockoff story I still need to talk about in a massive blog some time, and is a recurring theme in my stories. Werewolves in one story serve this function. Red Hood Rider is not my only vampire story where Vampires take on this function. It is an incredibly common motif: a creature of instinct, which is still capable of reason and yet is driven strongly by base directives.

In Red Hood Rider, the beings considered opposite of Vampires are Riders, who are considered on the top of the magical totem pole for Empowered Humans. They are humans who work on building structure, building order, on being the champions of reason, who exist always with logic and act in an informed way, making active decisions and calculating what they do.

​They still have instincts, and often quite sharp ones at that, but they never let their instincts take control and drive them; they have an internal control over themselves which prevents them from acting out in ways they know would be harmful. (Of course, they can still act in harmful ways if they don't realize it's harmful, but they are sharp and intuitive enough where they catch on quickly and fix the mistake when it's made.)

I forget on my notes on whether they break the rules of reality or temporarily rewrite them (I'm fairly certain it's one of the two and yes those two terms have a very important distinction in the Rubyverse, I just can't remember which is which in spite of them very much not being synonymous), but that's the source of their power--not something from nature (like vampires), but rather, something artificially created, manifested as a structured thing which has boundaries set by the user. They are still human, but they are human with help.

This model is more or less the same in the Bleach knockoff as being what the Montahame work off of. It is also the model which in settings where I have Slayers, they work off of. Beings who still feel, and have good instincts, but yet are driven first and foremost by reason, often with compassion thrown into the mix, yet with said compassion not getting in the way of doing their duties.

Contrasting the beings of instinct, who are under no obligations except for the self-inflicted ones they place upon themselves--sometimes, out of morals, but other times, simply out of a desire to survive, knowing that breaking said self-inflicted rules is a death sentence.

Ranger works more off of instinct. She can just have a sense for things, and that sense is often right, but while she can try to explain, when she tries to, she has difficulties. I'm no better, but for different reasons. I can figure out something, but when I figure it out, I don't figure out how to explain. I need to spend the time to create a different link in order to make the connection be tangible in words.

Another way of putting it--we all suck at wording things. Ranger gets flashes of beautiful words which are great but often broken/disjarred, whereas I struggle to get things but once I form the link I can throw together some elementary idea of what's the thing I am meant to do. 

Yet the way we suck at words is different. We approach things and react differently. Ranger has a first impulse and usually goes for it; I first think, then from the first impulse, further think, and from this, go for what I think. Yet Ranger still has to think, and I still have to go for what I feel is correct. Working in tandem, both present yet one dominant.

Yet there's more to Instinct versus Reason than just Ranger/mastina.

There are entities within me that aren't just those two, after all. I am many mes. They are the most dominant, but not the only ones. I don't even always know who is speaking, so to speak, but I can sometimes tell I am neither of them. Yet predominant entities within me are two individuals who never take the reigns.

They are the only two entities that I clearly know, aside from Ranger and mastina. They have been there for almost as long as I can remember. And yet. Neither has ever driven in my life, nor am I sure it's even possible for them to. They exist in the distance, in the peripheral. And never go away. They're always there.

I don't always have their counsel when I am talking amongst myselves (which is a thing I do, by the way; I do in fact have many a conversation where the many mes have full dialogs on a subject which could have been handled by just one person but wasn't because I wanted them to give their input), and in fact. Usually when I have their counsel it is just one or both of them with the current driver rather than a full council of mes talking side-by-side with them.

God pronouns are confusing even me so I hope you can follow along.
Basically, many mes talk to me at many times. But two entities, which I don't really consider "me", exist within me, that can also talk. And they have been manifested as instinct and reason. David, instinct, hasn't quite been around as long. My first memories of him are in my tweenaged years. But he (and yes, he is a he) has come to be a bit of the darker side of me.

He is not pure instinct. In fact, he is sharp with reasoning that cuts deep because I can never counter him when he speaks--because deep down, I know he's speaking the truth, more often than not. He just has the instincts for knowing what the case is...even if I really, really, really hate to admit that he's right. Because he's not a pleasant individual.

He is rude. He is condescending. He is demeaning, looking down on me, trash-talking me often. And he tells me what I don't want to hear, about all the things which I don't like to acknowledge come from me. Darker thoughts, darker impulses. He is there, reminding me that yes those exist, inside of me, and that he is the living proof of them, both as a manifestation of them and yet as something more than that.

Thankfully. I don't talk to him that often anymore--not because I've tuned him out. But just because he often isn't around when I don't need him. (And yes. I do need him sometimes, sad as I am to admit that.) Where he is when I don't talk to him, I don't know. He's never fully gone, but he just stays silent. I don't even know what exactly triggers him to give me a talk. I can have my life in a rut and have him be silent and yet not be in a rut and have him be quite talkative.

Yet every time, the feeling I have is the same: I hate, I loathe, the talk, yet feel better once I manage to recover from it. Talking to him rattles me each time, talking to him makes me miserable every time, often when I am already miserable, yet somehow because he is my deeper instincts or something like that I always end up stronger.

Basically, he beats me down and yet when I build myself up again after being beaten down, I am stronger than before. I guess when I don't feel like I need to get stronger he isn't around, would be my best guess. And that, I do admit, I have a lot right now. That "I know I should have a need to get stronger...but I am fine with my strength as is". I imagine with that mindset I am in for an awfully rude talk sooner or later, but for now it holds as silent.

Plus, one thing I am thankful for having him is that he is a safeguard against something worse. There is an entity within me that is me. ME. Not him, who is divorced from me. ME. A me, deep within Bree. Which is part of the median system. That is so bad that I bury it (not sure if it's a he, she, or neither). A me who has thoughts so terrible that I actively suppress trying to access what those thoughts were. (No, seriously. It's blocked off. I can't remember why this version of me is so bad. I just know it is that bad.)

I've tried guessing. "Is it a suicidal me?" Felt like, "no, it's worse than that". "Is it some deplorable act me?" Felt worse than that, too. I don't know what that version of me is, but it is the thing I am absolutely most terrified of. Some me that I consider a monster even among the monstrous mes. And yes. I have been a monster before. Yet the monstrous mes that I have been are terrified of the me that I buried.

To put it another way, the me that I buried is basically an evil even beings of pure evil fear. And I don't have the slightest clue as to why--only the strong warning to "don't dig", and that is a warning that I know better than to override, because the few times this version of me has come out, I have vague memories of the experience, of the mes around, just being terrified that that me was loose.

David, as much as I don't like him, I've come to accept as a part of me (well, not the core-me, but peripheral-me, inside my brain but not inside my mind, if that makes sense), that acts as a safety net against plummeting into the unpleasant mes. He is the monster who keeps my monsters in check. He is a very unpleasant person. And there have in fact been times where I've actually feared him, thinking that if he ever did drive, my life would never be the same, in a very, very, very bad way.

But I'm not afraid of him anymore. (I think in part because for whatever reason David cannot possibly drive and even if he could he would refuse to because he has no desire to. He's just. Different. Whatever he is, he isn't someone that is a me as I know my mes to be. The mes that I know are basically drivers, just drivers for different times, with most of them being unknown and not being dominant and not driving often and so on and so forth. He's just...nothing like them.)

David does have a counterpart.

My imaginary friend, and he (yes he) has been around for as long as I can remember, is someone who does in fact act as my reason. I tend not to talk to him as much anymore, mostly because a lot of the feedback he used to give me, my mes tend to converse between each other to give instead.

But in spite of that. There are times where my mes basically all go silent...and instead, I have just my driving-me and him talking to one another. And he calls me his friend, as I do him. He was one of my first friends, and remains a friend. I know what he looks like (short brown hair and otherwise looking like me and basically mirroring my appearance as I age in that he has aged right along side with me), and he is often there to just.

Basically, he tells me what I already know, but instead of being the voice of negativity and base instinct like David is, he's the voice of positivity, always reinforcing me and reassuring me. I knew from basically the moment I began to interact with him that he was the stereotypical "imaginary friend" which kids often have and which they outgrew.

And yet if he's an imaginary friend, I didn't outgrow him because he's still around and doing exactly the same things he always has done. The strange thing about him is that unlike David whose most clear thing about him is that his name is in fact David, this positive friend inside me, the entity, has never had a name. Well, I have tried to name him, but it's like he has a real name, he's not sharing it with me, and he just accepts whatever moniker I happen to give him.

I don't know why he's that way. I feel like he has a name, but I don't know it in spite of having been his friend for so long. No matter what, the feeling of me giving him names yet none being him remains. The most recent is Brian, but previous ones include Crivon (a name I owe from the Bleach knockoff) and Ace among numerous others.

I just talk with him, we bounce back ideas, finish each others' sentences, and converse, on whatever topic. Most of the time when we talk these days, it is primarily a conversation which goes "Sorry I haven't been talking much with you these days". Which he is fine with, because like David he's always there even if he's not speaking up.

He does occasionally talk side-by-side with David, too. He counters David when David takes things a bit too far, offering me a counterbalance when I can't really defend myself. He's basically just...a good friend, one who has all the dynamics of a long-time friend, yet one who is in my head. And is of the same nature of entity-hood as David: not a me. Not part of the Bree core.

Not a transwoman, not a girl, not me-me. Part of my brain, but not part of my mind. I kinda have a bit of a theory when it comes to interacting with him and David. I think that in those moments, the many mes temporarily merge into one me, unified if only for the duration of the conversation, and then once it ends, once David/my friend are dismissed, I again divide into the many mes.

That is a thing, by the way, with median systems, to my understanding. From what I heard, it is possible for medians to merge together permanently, yet also possible for them to split apart permanently, depending on circumstances. Yet a more temporary version does happen commonly enough.

There are moments where, for instance. I know I am neither mastina nor Ranger yet I'm not some third me...but rather, both Ranger and mastina, at the same exact moment, in equal parts. Not one driving with the other very close to the surface (I do that, too, quite often), but literally fused, merged together into a single entity...for a short while, a very short duration, which then splits off again and I can tell I am Ranger or I am mastina and that the other is right there in the background, not driving but around, existing, as a separate me.

Basically, mes are highly fluent. I'm still not sure about all of the specifics here. This is still a very new thing for me to experience and explore. I do know my feelings on the matter though. I know that I am me. That this is real. That there is more than me, that there are many mes. That there is no single entity that is Bree, that we are all partially Bree with a core that we draw from, and from that core we are connected to one another.

I know that I have no desire to see the many mes go away. I don't want to be unified. I know that I am not deranged. I know I am not delusional. I know I am not mentally unwell. I'm different. I am...very, very, very different. I know that I am largely unique. I know what some of the mes feel.

It is pretty much that. That we have some unity, but are split. That we are one but many. Bree, but each with something unique. Separate, able to have different thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, yet united. I know people don't believe me when I talk about these things.

That's one of the reasons why I only talk about them in private for the most part. That very specific environment I mentioned to talk about these things? The one where it's not public and requires a lead-in of a particular nature? That'd be a large portion of the reason why.

It's not even a thing which I really feel that comfortable talking about in private, even. I'm having a REALLY hard time finding the right words to describe that. I am trying, but even the closest ones I can come up with are way, way, way off, and send the incredibly wrong message. 

So word of caution on me trying to explain.

I don't mean these words, but some different words that I can't find. The reason I tend not to talk about it even in private amongst people who know is because it's enjoyable for me for me to...hmm. I guess you can say. Think of it as watching a film--you shut most of your mind off during that time, yes? Well when I interact with people. I do that. It's a time where most mes can sit back, do nothing, and relax.

And when I talk about the multiple mes, instead of them relaxing, they are there. So that's why I don't talk about it that often. It's something which is not suited for public because of how the public reacts to it, yet it's something which in private I tend to...well. Sometimes, yes I do think and yes I do share, but other times I don't because the other mes are taking their time to rest and relax.

I wish I could make this be sensible, make sense, but I can't really word better.

But I'll start with some new stuff as of today.

For the Rubyverse, I was working on the vampiric martial art some more.

I'm not sure if I had a name in mind for the vampiric martial art before, but now I do. I was thinking the English name for it would be "Moving Tree". I decided on that name for a variety of reasons. The idea behind it is that the user has their roots firmly planted in the ground--the martial art is not one which really involves jumping. It is furthermore one which involves being solidly positioned on the ground, such that nothing fazes the user.

In fact, the implication is also meant to be that the user is as tough as wood, with a hardened body.

And yet, there is also a fluidity in movement inherent in the martial art, the softer, flowing elements as if a tree is being blown by a gentle breeze. These sharp, crisp movements direct things, and can lash out with incredible precision and power.

Plus, there is the fact that branches can be, when sharpened enough, used as if spears--with the implication of impaling enemies upon the 'branches'. (Which in this case would be hands.)

There's more to it than that, but another one of the main reasons I chose that as the name is because it had the aesthetic of a name which sounded like it was plausibly a martial arts name to use. Yes, I haven't done the requisite research on Chinese martial arts that I wanted to, to get a better idea, but I DO know that quite a number of martial arts take HUGE cues from nature in their naming schemes.

And the idea of a tree which moves seems like it is something that could, quite plausibly, come from that culture. (Especially given that one of the traditional Chinese elements is Wood.)

Will I remember to call the vampiric martial art the Moving Tree martial art? Probably not! After all, it's possible this isn't the first name I've given the martial art, it's just the name I came up for it today.

Still, I feel that if nothing else this is a promising name. I'll need to find out what the best non-English name would be, because the non-English name would be the OFFICIAL name for the vampiric martial art, with "Moving Tree" just being the translated-into-English name for said martial art.

Beyond that, I also developed another new technique.
So the knife-guard's signature technique is the impale, from which the impaler stance derives its name; it is also the signature move of the martial art as a whole. While all four of the founding masters of the style were involved in every step of the process, the knife-guard was primarily co-developed by (who else?) both Tepes Lords.

The tri-guard's signature technique is the typhoon strike; while all founding four masters were involved, it was most heavily developed by Victor Wu.

And today, I developed the Claw-guard's signature technique:
Kneading/Purring.

What it is, is basically an existing martial art move in more flowing styles/forms, a circular motion.

The back hand rotates either above or below the front hand, and the front hand rotates either below or above the front hand.

When the front hand goes below the back hand/the back hand goes above the front hand, it is called Kneading; when the front hand goes above the back hand/the back hand goes below the front hand, it is called Purring.
These names originate from how, if you slow the motion down and slightly exaggerate it, what the fingers resemble.

The motion of the hands in Kneading looks a lot like a cat kneading, when slowed down. (At full speed, it's more like a scratch.) The potion of the hands in Purring bends the wrist in such a way that one hand comes back almost to the jaw, in a position which is stereotypically associated with the position you'd see paws placed in on a cat which is purring.

Now, Kneading/Purring can be done in a continuous cycle, where you make a full circle. Backhand to front to back, rotating clockwise or counterclockwise continuously, which is considered continuous kneading/purring. However, far more common is to switch between the two: instantly do a knead/purr, and then snap back with a purr/knead. 

So I'm not quite sure I'm explaining this motion as well as I should.

Basically, know how claw guard is essentially just knife guard except with a curled hand with the fingers apart? Well, it starts with the forward-hand in front, as per the norm for the martial art, and the back-hand in the back, obviously. But the motion snaps the back hand into the front and the front hand into the back.

This can be done in a static position, but is designed to synergize well with moving between the back/defensive stance and the forward/attack stance of the impaler stance. This is also one of the best defensive moves in the arsenal of the martial art, meant to give a continuously rotating guard--in theory, making it much harder to exploit vulnerabilities in defenses.

In all other aspects of the vampiric martial art, unless the hands are involved actively in either a strike, block, or grab or some sort, they remain static. They are locked more or less in a single position, where they rest. Now! Said position happens to be a smart position, one where they can easily in a split second snap a block/strike/etc. out. But the fact remains that an opponent can, if given the chance, see potential weaknesses in the defense because the defense never changes its base position.

This isn't just a vampiric martial art thing. I know from experience in sparring for my tae kwon do that the arms in the guard? Unless they are punching or blocking, they don't tend to move. The legs? They move a plenty. But the arms have more or less a single fixed position, a single 'optimized guard position', where with minimal movement a block/strike can be made.

And I don't think it's just my school.

I think this exists in almost all martial arts. I know they're not the best example, but like. In basically any movie featuring martial arts where the fighting is choreographed in such a way that you can see the fighters have a guard in the first place. The guard doesn't move when not striking/blocking/grappling. It just sits in one position.

It also is there in game animations, too, for the most part. Sprites are animated where the knees bend, the hips bend, there is forward and backward movement where the spine more or less is moving forward and backward. You know the like, it's something you see all the time. Yet when not performing either a block or a strike or a grapple, how often are the sprites' arms actually fluidly moving?

I mean, sure, it happens, but it doesn't happen often. Maybe it's wasted effort, or maybe there's the fear that the movement creates a vulnerability, maybe there's a reason for it. But I also believe that there's a reason why not every martial art does this, why some do have the arm movement I'm more or less talking about--

After all. There are existing forms where the arms move in more or less the way I am talking about. (In fact, I know at least one form from tae kwon do which uses the basic movement I am dubbing in my martial art kneading/purring.)

So I think that, mechanically, it can work as a way to more or less serve to theoretically make it much harder to exploit gaps in defense. And, yes. The movement behind kneading/purring is such that both arms are fully capable of blocking and striking at any moment.

In fact, half the reason to use this is to launch an unexpected attack, most likely a palm strike. Because the rotation is done continuously, and because it only takes ever so slightest the modification of movement to turn the simple rotation into a strike, a blow can be delivered with no warning by using this method.

At least. In theory. I have tested the body mechanics and the idea is at least theoretically sound. It acts pretty much as the counterpart to an existing thing from fighting.

In sparring, already. Your feet aren't meant to be static. They are springy. Bouncy. They have ever so slightest the continuous movement between one another. To allow for the ability to move forward, backward, sideways, in an instant, to react to being hit, and to surprise an opponent by 'invisible movement'. A move with the feet to close distance without revealing you're closing distance, or a kick without revealing you're throwing a kick.

It's a very tae kwon do type thing, but I imagine quite common even outside of it. You move the feet continuously so that your opponent never knows what you are planning to do next, and so that you can always be ready for what your opponent does next.

Kneading/purring, as I envision it, is basically doing the same thing the legs do, except with the hands. Especially since it can rotate two different directions, attacks can come from any number of different locations/times, without warning that there is any deviation from the pattern.

And yes. If you couldn't tell. It was indeed developed primarily by Lord Darkblood, and thus, is the style Ruby adapts for use in Red Hood Rider.

That's the main thing I'll be blogging about today, but I also thought it worth mentioning a dream I had last night.
The dream was almost nested, as a dream within a dream. Almost. It was a situation where I was involved in an event and thought I was more or less on break from a different event (a different dream). In the event I was involved in, I was watching television.

On that television, there was a kids cartoon show playing. Now, I don't remember if this was a real cartoon show, a fictional cartoon show, multiple real cartoon shows meshed up, or some combination of these, but what I do remember quite clearly was, within that cartoon show, there was dialog within that I listened to and memorized. (Unfortunately, I promptly forgot what said dialog was upon awakening.)

I was immensely reassured, and told my companion in the dream: "That's exactly the type of dialog that I use in Phyrra and Cyrus!" So basically. At least inside my dream. The dialog of Phyrra and Cyrus comes across as being natural, as being standard for a kids cartoon show, being just as good if not better than the material of other shows circulating in the contemporary market.

Of course, this is a dream we are talking about.

Butstill.

In spite of that.

Upon waking up.

The reassurance remains. Because I do tend to trust my dreams a lot. Phyrra and Cyrus was born from a dream, and this dream was indirectly telling me I feel, "You are on the right track. Don't second-guess your choices in terms of the dialog and what you want the characters to be. You are making something which is of quality."

​And I want to believe in that.

...But today it'll be specifically Phyrra and Cyrus I talk about.

Extensively!

I'll start with Paladins. I expanded their spells a bit. I decided that Shield of Light was the advanced version of a lesser spell: Sunscreen. Sunscreen basically provides hardened skin, making it tougher, while also boosting resistance to the elements.

I then went on to detail Paean spells. This is what I came up with.

Sunbathe: The weaker healing spell, this spell is a touch-based spell which bathes the touched areas in radiant, vibrant life energy that accelerates healing, more or less.

Detect Life: Note that while this is a standard spell every Paean learns, Solarii can learn it...with great difficulty. For a Solarus to learn Detect Life, they first must have full mastery over their powers, and only then they can learn it...by being tutored by someone that's already a master of the technique, and even then there is a level of innate natural talent required beyond training the skill--thus, it's rare for any non-Archpaladin Solarus to possess the spell.

Detect Life is basically a limited version of spirit vision. The caster's eye sockets glow a radiant golden yellow (as in, the entirety of the eye, not just the iris), and when in this state, they can see the 'inner sun' of all those around them.

Sunfire: This is the basic attack technique of a Paean, specifically a ranged technique which while it does have some noncombat purposes is meant as a combat spell specifically. Think of it as being a fire arrow, because that's basically exactly what it is.

Soul Link: Note that Solarii CAN learn Soul Link...with GREAT difficulty, even greater than Detect Life. Soul Link is a technique which is meant specifically for Paeans, designed to work in tandem with both Detect Life and Sunfire. Because Solarii can't learn Sunfire (unless they're on the path to becoming an Archpaladin), this obviously presents a challenge for using the technique.

It's not, however, impossible for a non-Archmage Solarus to learn it. They just have to first modify the base properties of the spell and make it work with their magic. Because, again. Paladins are classified as spellbladers; they aren't full mages. They have a very specific type of magic...and only that magic type is unlocked. And furthermore, Solarii and Paeans have different (albeit similar, overlapping) magic types.

As for what it does--basically, Soul Link acts as a tether to the target(s), making it much easier to cast a spell targeting the target(s), and also allowing for incredibly-short-ranged telepathy of sorts, wherein the caster can talk to the linked individual and have their words heard regardless of situation. It is usually cast after sunfire, with sunfire acting as the anchor point and detect life having been used to pinpoint the most effective spot.

Solar Supercharge: This is a spell designed specifically to work in tandem with a Paladin; it is exclusively a Paean spell. What it does is it absorbs the Solarii's Sun Scorch, and then uses the energy from that to supercharge the Paean's next spell, to EITHER: be a single, superpowerful version of that spell, OR: multiple consecutive castings of a spell normally not capable of that feat.

It is making use of this spell that is the reason why often, one Solarus and Paean will accompany one another, partnering together. Not that even if someone were an Archpaladin they'd still need the aid of another to help them.

Solar Wind: The stronger healing technique AND the primary buffing spell. Didn't quite work out how it works or what specifically it does, but this is the bread and butter of a Paean, along with the upgrade to Sunfire.
Note that Solarii can, through modifying a combination of Sun Scorch and Shield of Light, create a buff spell which is similar albeit weaker than Solar Wind. They still can't heal though; that is a property of a Paean's techniques.

Solar Flare: This is the upgraded Sunfire technique. Didn't quite detail it, but you probably have a fair idea for what I'm going for there.

You might note there are references to an Archpaladin. What's an Archpaladin? Well, simply put.
An Archpaladin is a Paladin who is both a Solarus and a Paean. Keep in mind being just one is in of itself a life pursuit; being both not only takes your whole life but also incredible talent. The youngest recorded Archpaladin was 42 years old and was a prodigy of prodigies; most Archpaladins are in their 60s-80s when they achieve this status.

To become one, after all. You basically need to learn the magics for both a Solarus and a Paean, when the magics for one of them take a good 20 years to learn. Archpaladins are basically the strongest of the strong in terms of spellbladers, in that they are people almost full-on mages. (Mages being a lifetime pursuit in of themselves.) They are still spellbladers, because they use a specialized form of magic rather than more generic magic.

This is still akin to using both arms rather than using the entirety of the body. But if you can think of a fully-awakened Solarus as one arm and a fully-awakened Paean as the other arm, a fully-awakened Archpaladin is both arms. Both arms is less than the whole body, but is still more than the single-hand which represents the capabilities of most spellbladers.

I did some work on their armor, but before I go into the details there I'd prefer to do a little more research.

I also have Clara's appearance down to the point where once I know her eye color (I thought green, but now I'm not sure), I can draw her. I figured out her hair would be almost brown, but be just red enough where you can tell it's red, not orange, not brown. Not quite sure if that has a name, but I know what it looks like. It's kept in a ponytail, which isn't long by girl standards, with the tail end of the ponytail dropping slightly below the shoulders.

Since I already know what her armor looks like, that means I am basically ready to draw her at any time.

There's three other things not Paladin related but honestly, I'm probably either spending time with my girlfriend or going to bed so I'll talk about them later. (I don't think I'll lose the knowledge in spite of the lackluster notes.)

​So I guess that's it for the night.

Wasn't nothing, tho!

So this should give you a better idea of some of the generals behind what I am going for when it comes to Cyrus, versus Phyrra in Cyrus. To have the final image to complete the set, remember this:

So between these, you don't quite get what I'm getting for, but you get more in the general vicinity of what I'm after.

Cyrus has spiked anime hair--none of these images quite capture the anime spiked hair as I envisioned it, but the second followed by the fourth probably come the closest. This spiked anime hair is red, but not just any shade of red. The color I am going for is fairly vibrant, but not pure red, slightly diluted. Brighter red than lifeguard-red, but only just. So it's much, much brighter than crimson, but it's not as bright as possible.

His eyes are, as mentioned, a fiery combination of golden yellow and orange--none of the programs capture this look particularly well. His expression is meant to be mostly neutral, almost but not quite negative, stoic and deadpan, more or less. Serious eyes, focused. For the mouth, the first and third are best; for the eyes, fourth, second, and third (in about that order) are good.

Phyrra's expression is a big cheeky teeth-showing grin. None quite capture that as I envisioned it to be. Her eyes are big, idealistic, heroic, and yet slightly determined eyes. The fourth captures it the best but all are decent.

I decided on an official garb for Cyrus--a deep blue hoodie (think color of the fourth), covered by a cloak shown perfectly in the third. Underneath the hoodie would be a tan tank top. (You can see the blue trim of the collar for this on the fourth.) With an orange smaller tank top underneath of that.

As previously mentioned, he'd have the jeans and boots and a belt and the like more or less unchanged from before.

Phyrra's outfit is a little more complicated. The deepest layer is those chest wrappings. Covering that is a white undershirt. (You can see part of this in the fourth image.) Above that, the red T-shirt. Covering the red T-shirt, she has the brown vest thing shown in the third image above.

She also has leather elbow guards, fingerless gloves, and the shorts/boots seen above. That's about as much detail as I have thought out. Haven't made the program versions for Phyrra and Cyrus-in-Phyrra's-body yet, but with this I'd be able to more or less using additional google references throw together Cyrus and Phyrra-in-Cyrus's-body using my actual art rather than a series of programs.

I'm still not sure I'd be able to make my vision come to life because my art skills fail to live up to those of my vision, but I'd at least have the grounding where it'd more or less be possible.

I have the time to do more than just throw together quick art though, so I suppose what I'll also do is talk some more about little things in the setting. An early concept I threw around was every episode starting with 'The D*escription*'. For instance, I might have an episode title of, "The Demand", and another possible one was "The Departure". For a specific arc, I might keep this, but there was an appeal to something else.

Specifically, the idea of beginning every episode with 'The'.

And I managed to throw together at least twelve aside from the above.
The first episode, The Thaumason Siblings, for obvious reasons.
The second episode, The Wind Guardian, as it'd introduce us some more to Gora.

Ace's introductory episode, The Ranger. I did play around with other ideas. Woodsman. Sharpshooter. The like. But this, in the sense of how-Aragorn/Strider-was-a-Ranger, seemed like the best descriptor for him. Someone who is skilled in the use of ranged weaponry, that is a wilderness survival expert, not limited to just the woods though in that in any environment he is equipped to survive.

Cedrick's introductory episode, The Rival.
Another episode featuring Cedrick, The PF Plan. (I'd tell you what PF stands for, but literally 80% of the humor in the episode comes from what it is so I'd prefer to keep that knowledge secret since the moment is absolutely hilarious if you don't know about it in advance.)

Kaze's introductory episode, The Earth Guardian.
Myra's, The Fire Guardian.

Bard's, The Street Performer. I considered 'Street Urchin', and also considered 'Spirit Demon', but this seemed like the one which best encapsulated his personality/role without being too spoilerific of his plot-relevance.

Clara's, The Paladin. Could also be The Solarus, but Paladin works better overall.
Hera's, The Water Guardian.
Will's, The Adept.
Lily's, The Tailor.

Alena's, The Botanist. Could also be 'The Alchemist', but I think of her as a botanist first and an alchemist second even though her skill as an alchemist is what gives her value in the Thaukama whereas botany isn't exactly the most plot-relevant skill to possess.

These episodes would be much harder to tell as being special episodes if every episode was titled similarly. For instance, if an episode focuses around a villain, "The Damned" could be the name of the episode and that could in fact be the way to introduce a character and yet wouldn't be. That might not be the best of wording, but basically the idea is that title episodes don't give anything away, so much as they just give a general indication of important things the episode more or less introduces.

I might have other stuff to talk about buried in my notes, but the only other thing I can recall off the top of my head which is quick to talk about is a little extra on the villains.

Sloan, the first big bad, has a soft spot for animals, and this fondness is especially the case for dogs. He even ends up adopting a dog he names 'Angel' when said puppy doesn't treat him with hostility, and he does nothing to try and corrupt the dog, raising him more or less the same way any other person would train their dog.

Gunther, the second big bad, literally at the sight of a baby will go 'agoogoo' at them. Now, this does come with a caveat. He makes it clear that he can and will hurt/kill/threaten a baby if it suits his agenda to do so (e.g. leverage, shutting down a prophecy), but when it does not, he is all too happy to be giddy around babies, and gives his blessings to any family with newborns that are loyal to him.

I suppose that'll be it for today. Hope you're enjoying seeing me build Phyrra and Cyrus as much as I am enjoying building them.

Blehck. In fact, most of what I did was just rehash what I did. To whit, 

...There is one difference. As much as I liked the idea of the inverted eyes to hair idea, and as much as I liked the idea of Phyrra in Cyrus's body having sparkling blue eyes. Ultimately, I realized that when I originally envisioned Phyrra and Cyrus, I envisioned Phyrra's body as having grayish-blue eyes, and that when Phyrra was in Cyrus's body, that her eyes would be a fiery golden-orange, not quite orange but not quite amber, somewhere between the two.

This does have the effect of making the Curtains Match the Window, more or less, which I am fine with. But this is literally the only thing I did today. No further program stuff. No further details on the world. No writing things out. Nothing. I'm just doing less than I should, everywhere.

​I honestly think that I probably am depressed, but oh well. I'll do what I can.

So basically. What I want to do is a long Phyrra and Cyrus ramble. I've got more to cover on Bard, more to cover on a specific part of the story, how I do episode titles and the thirteen episode titles I want to share, and also, some rudimentary quick concept art, via the usage of programs. I'm never going to get it all done at once, but while I started all enthusiastic, I can't actually find myself following through.

​I did get this.

This is, quite obviously, made using an art program. One of my five regulars, and one of only two fullbody ones; this is one which is more suited for children (whereas the other one is more suited for adults), so it can give at least a rudimentary idea of the basic aesthetics that I'll be more or less aiming for.

Phyrra would have a scabbard, plus various knives; Cyrus would have a belt with multiple sacks attached to it. I think it is pretty obvious looking here that there is the body swap going on, and this is more or less what they'd have. Phyrra, her sword; Cyrus, a stave (though it'd be a bit longer). The clothing isn't exact, either. Phyrra is envisioned with shorts and a T-shirt; Cyrus is envisioned with longer legged pants and some kind of longer covering, although the details aren't very exact. (I opted for a jacket in this case but it easily could be, saaaaaaaaay, a gi or some similar robing instead.)

I went into tonight thinking I'd also do the other three programs for all of them among others and maybe even knock out Gora's human form, Myra's Siren form, Hera's human form, and Ace (the other characters who I know the appearance of), but I'm struggling to follow through on it in spite of me having literally just said I would.

This is at least a start though. When I have finished compiling computer-based references, I might then be able to work out a way to make actual concept art drawn by me. I actually did attempt this earlier, but failed so abysmally that I almost threw it away altogether. (Almost. I ended up putting an X through it, refusing to label it, and filing it away with my "obsolete papers kept for archival purposes" instead, which is the next best thing; for all intents and purposes, that makes it cease to exist.)

I'm hoping that with some programs to give me some general references along with the help of google (one of the main things I'd of course need is the ability to actually draw children which is a skill easily learnable but which I do not yet possess) to more or less work my way to bringing my vision of what they are like to life.

So this isn't really Phyrra and Cyrus, before/after. But it can give you a general sense of the aesthetic I am more or less aiming for, when it comes to Phyrra and Cyrus, before/after.

Well, I suppose by saying I am doing some spring cleaning of sorts. I'm moving every piece of paper which I know is 100% obsolete to an appropriate location; I am moving things which are potentially appropriate elsewhere to those locations; I am cleaning up my notes more or less.

The good news is--I am just about done with this process's first stage.

The bad news is, I've got a ton of stuff which I classified as either
-Being kept around because there was some detail different,
-Is pertinent to current things,
-Was explicitly never blogged about,
-Or--and this is the biggie--I have no memory of whether I have blogged about it or not.

If I removed that last one I'd have a good 70% less papers in the gigantic stack I have.
Still!

This has allowed me to more or less focus.

I have the recent content I haven't blogged about. The perfect RPG content (times two), the new webcomic, more about the impaler stance, and of course, the focus of why I did this, Phyrra and Cyrus notes.

I also have peripheral easy access to what I believe is the entirety of the relatively-recently-written notes on a story idea I meant to unload the details of in a gigantic ramble yet never got around to, the story which started as a Bleach knockoff but evolved to be something that is my own.

So...more or less, the question becomes...what can I blog about today, and what can I not blog about today?

I'll not be doing the gigantic ramble on the Bleach knockoff story idea yet (that one deserves a special ramble of its own), but I should be able to do the others...once I finish with the organizing of my papers. For a frame of reference, I'm pretty sure that I started dumping stuff in this area during NaNoWriMo of 2016. I am up to...well, a little past this point of last year, 3/26/2017.

Hmm...I suppose I'll start with the Rubyverse bit, about the impaler stance's vampiric martial art. What wasn't new was that there were two guards: knife guard (knife hand block is a common enough thing that I don't need to describe what it is; this is basically that), and claw guard (same basic positioning, but with fingers apart and curved).

What I developed which is new as of...well, about a week ago...is what I dubbed the tri-guard: open hand, elbows pointing up, towards target (with palm close to body). (Note that the front hand and back hand can take different guards, but are most frequently seen using the same guard.)

In normal circumstances, this would be a hilariously bad idea, because it exposes the ribcage to attack. However, I played around with the position, and found that with sharp, crisp enough techniques that are well-placed and timed, this wasn't actually an issue and was a potential asset.

In particular, the elbow up is great for up/upward outward blocks, the hand can sweep downward to do a downward block fairly easily...for either side. As in, with the right elbow pointing up, the right hand can block downward and have the deflected attack go to the right, OR go the other way and have it deflected to the left (more as a push than a sweep).

Other than the elbow itself, there isn't really much of an inward block, though the elbow itself acts as a pretty effective, close-range defense. And for an outward block, the same motion which applies for the downward block can be used. The whole thing is fairly fluid and effortless when I try it, and it pairs nicely with a particular strike pattern.

The idea behind the tri-guard is to use the triceps to snap a strike outward, where you basically just go from a bent elbow to a straight elbow. This is loosely akin to a very close-quarter jab; it isn't meant to have much power, but it's fast, allows you to grab your opponent, and sets up for the followthrough.

This followthrough has a working name of the Typhoon Strike, which is more akin to a cross: with the front hand fully extended, twist hand and reverse it around (the idea being you are grabbing onto them, drawing them in, and knocking them off-balance), and simultaneously the back hand does the inverse motion, rotating out to deliver a powerful strike. By reversing the process, this can then be combo'd, where the back-currently-in-front hand grabs and pulls, and the front-currently-in-back hand snaps from its rear position back into the position it started in.

I'm probably not describing it fairly well, but the body mechanics of it when I tried it out were at least in theory fairly sound. This stance also allows me to play more heavily around with the more crane stance aspects that I was inspired by originally, in that the triguard is built to allow for low/high blocks with a much, much greater ease than the knife/claw guards do.

Next on the list, and probably a disappointment because I've been building it up for so long as some amazing thing, is the new webcomic idea I had, called Average Joe's Bar.
The idea behind it?

Basically every being from every mythology gather in a bar to just hang out. Many of these beings even have multiple forms. For instance, capital-G God has no less than four: Big G (stereotypical old man with a beard), Momma G (an elderly plump black woman), Lil' G (a Bishonen anime boy), and Girly G (just a small girl). All angels have one for each gender (Lucy/Lucifer, Gabrielle/Gabriel, Michelle/Michael, etc.), and so on and so forth.

You have patrons like Lucifer/Satan I (Satan, in this case, being a title), God, various demons e.g. Beelzebub, The Devil/Satan II, Zeus and other Greek/Roman gods, Thor and other Norse gods, Ra and other Egyptian gods, Titans, (Demi)humans ranging from Jesus, Buddha, Hercules, Achilles, Theseus, Perseus, Moses, Noah, and the like. Basically, figures who are involved in the divine.

All of them more or less having the powers they are meant to have (or lack thereof).

...And they all meet in the titular bar, run by...
...Joe, a completely and totally, 100% ordinary human, who in theory could have regular human patrons. It's just that by some cosmic coincidence, everyone who is a patron at his bar just so happens to not be a normal human being. (He does, however, have the ability to serve godly drinks, e.g. ambrosia.)

It was envisioned as a slice-of-life story, where gods would get into antics, more or less, and crazy stuff would happen, but more or less that in spite of their drunken stupor, the gods would more or less always walk out with nothing having changed. Basically, just a setting to have fun in.

Of course, because I'd actually have to research everything I put in, and because I utterly suck at slice of life comics, it'd never come to be, even if I could pull off the art style. (I had a more chibi-like art look planned for all of these various numerous mythological figures, as to best emphasize the comedy.)

There may be more to it than that (for instance there might be a third Satan with The Devil being either Satan III and coming later or Satan II coming before, don't quite remember), but I think I hit all the important notes.

Two down, two very long ones to go.

​I'll start with the Perfect RPG. It's something I've worked less on because my inspiration has been far more focused on Phyrra and Cyrus as of late, but I've still done some work there. I worked out the beastmaster's name (you remember that she was the one to romance the dark archer, right?), and settled on Erin. This marks her as the first character I've actually named!

I also figured out an aspect of the Dark Archer's personality--in most situations, he will talk in a slightly antiquated, eloquent, verbosity-laden way, where he more or less is formal. However, whenever he is stress out, he will slip into more casual speech. Said stress is, mind you, what stresses him out. For instance, because he loves battle, even if his life is in danger he'll still be talking formally because to him that's not stressful.

However, try and get him to express emotions......

...This can be seen when the romance begins.
The following dialog is the precursor to before you can select something, to give an example:
Dark Archer: My good friend, I come to you seeking advice.
Protagonist: Sure, what are you after?
Dark Archer: I have grown rather fond of Erin over our time together, and I wish to formally initiate courtship. However, I am uncertain as to how this should be achieved.

This is when the dialog box comes up.

I also worked out a working draft for what the dialog is for choosing the hilariously stupid option of "Present Boar's Head as Proof of Manhood". Said dialog might change, but I more or less thought it'd go something like this (I wanted to show you this as a comic, but oh well):

Protagonist: I dunno, man...give her something?
Dark Archer: To what thing would you suggest?
Protagonist: Something with a personal touch would probably show sincerity!
Dark Archer: That is not a bad idea! I know just the thing......
[Fadeout to black; scene transition]
Dark Archer: Hey, Erin, look at this!
Erin: A- A...
Erin: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
*Erin faints*
Protagonist: She...she fainted!
Dark Archer: Ohcrapohcrapohcrap......
Protagonist: What do we do? Whatdowedo?
Dark Archer: I dunno, this was YOUR idea!
Protagonist: Uh...uh...let's go check her out!
Dark Archer: Check her o...DUDE SHE'S UNCONSCIOUS!
Protagonist: Yeah, that's why we need to!
Dark Archer: What the hell, man?!? I want to date her, not...
Protagonist: I MEAN CHECK UP ON HER!
Dark Archer: Oh.
Dark Archer: Uh...
Dark Archer: ...That sounds like a good idea.
[Fadeout to black]
Protagonist: Just a small bump to the head; she'll be fine once she wakes up.
Protagonist: Wonder what caused her to react that way?
Dark Archer: ...You think she liked it?
[Scene fades out]

As a reminder. Erin is an all-loving hero who absolutely adores animals. The two guys, during this route, are utterly clueless; Protagonist genuinely doesn't know why she reacted that way and the Dark Archer is genuinely hopeful that she liked it.

It still makes me laugh to this very day thinking about the scene. As in, I literally just laughed myself to tears by typing it out and thinking about it. If you're not reacting much the same way, that means I need to better demonstrate things, be it on a different medium or with better descriptors of their characters or just a rewrite of the dialog, but then again. This is MY perfect RPG, so I suppose it making me laugh is good enough.

The other thing I worked on for the perfect RPG was more or less making the first steps towards defining the relationship between the Future/Present/Past and differences in things sold.

For a start--it's (almost) impossible to make a profit off of buying things cheap in one area and selling them in a different area. With specific exceptions (said exceptions being tied to repeatable quests meant to level up the Merchant job), all goods are sold at a set price.

Goods are bought at varying prices so you can get things where the buy/sell ratio is 1:1 (as in, you can sell it for just as much as you can buy it), but also in places where the buy/sell ratio is potentially 1,000:1 (as in, you get 1/1000th of the item's cost to buy when you sell it).

The game does have a rudimentary supply/demand function, mostly tied to the repeatable quests to level up the merchant job, but still existing even outside of that. There are two basic variables at play:
"We have plenty of this good"/"We have very few to none of this good", and
"This good is something we can sell"/"This good is something which we'll never sell".
There is an in-between state for both, "We have some of this good"; "this good will sell a little bit".

And selling prices are thus set at select prices off of those criteria. None of this good + we can sell = maximum profit; Plenty of this good + something never selling = least profit; there are seven intermediary states (for nine total) of good prices.

Again, outside of specific circumstances, it's never possible to make a profit buying one place and selling another, but it's possible to get a 1:1 ratio between the two. 

Now.
That having been said.

I didn't quite get to work out the details, but I wanted to work out that there are different mechanics in play between the Future, Present, and Past when it comes to
-Buying Items (Cost/Variety/Grade)
-Buying Gear (Cost/Variety/Grade/Number of Slots)
-Upgrading Gear (Cost/Grade/Number of Slots)
-Enchanting Gear (Cost/Variety/Grade/Number of Enchantments)
-Slotting (Cost/Type/Number)
Among others.

As an example I came up with, in the Future, it'd be possible to buy products that are mass-produced and thus have a high number of slots, but come at a lower grade. Variety would be increased, but so too would cost.

I didn't get to detail the mechanics there, but I got a start on them, the idea being that the economics of the three times are not interchangeable, but still follow a general mold such that you, as Walkers, have a fairly decent progression in the quality of your gear as the game advances which is supported by the storyline.

​And now we get to the main project.

I suppose I'll start with the heroes.
I had a bit of a concern when I was going over the story in my head.

The Thaukama has 13 total members to it across the whole story. But of them, only about half of that are given the level of character depth over the course of the series that I would prefer them to have.

Phyrra and Cyrus, being the titular characters, aren't a concern. Gora, the only Guardian for the first half of the first season, is obviously not a concern because he travels with the Thaukama from the very beginning and is from the onset the closest to the siblings, so he's not a concern.

Ace, as the first human to join the Thaukama which he does fairly early on (we're talking, like, first six episodes or so), is not a concern of mine when it comes to depth. We have plenty of opportunities for him to show off his heroic badassery every step of the way.

Cedrick, given how he is introduced and how long he takes to formally join the Thaukama, is not much of a concern of mine. He is introduced before episode ten (when, exactly, hard to say) and remains a rival/antagonist until the shipwreck (his official joining point), so he has a fair amount of character focus during half the series. While he does lose some limelight after that coming into season two, he remains as one of the core fighters of the Thaukama. I'm not too concerned about him.

Kaze is not a concern, though mainly because he is deliberately designed to be the Guardian with the least amount of depth to him. This is an intentional design choice for him, to make there not be much about his character, though even given that, he has opportunities where he gets to show his character off to others.

Bard is a bit of a concern, though--during his introductory arc, he has a ton of focus. Like, he has a great deal of depth added to him during the period of those 6-8 episodes. But after that, I'm a bit concerned I don't have enough planned for him when it comes to the Thaukama's team dynamic more or less. How he interacts with others. He DOES get some focus in the latter half of the second season, though, so I'm not concerned about him that much.

Lily is not a concern of mine, because she is a co-holder for team mom with Myra, in addition to her interactions with Hera and generally her usefulness to the team, between her shops in various cities and her life experience and what she can do. She's also mostly a noncombatant in spite of being an incredibly competent fighter when she does fight, so that gives me some freedom to let her do things aside from fight.

However, there's three human members of the Thaukama and a whole Guardian (one of the core entities to the series) that I am a little bit concerned about when it comes to chances to really show them off as characters, to give them depth, personality, screen time, and levels of individuality such that you get to see them as people rather than just plot devices used to further the story.

I am deeply concerned and even troubled by the fact that Myra is someone I don't have a lot of material for. Even Kaze, the homicidal maniac, has more planned than she does. I know she is a people eater, along-side Hera. I know she is the team mom, and shares this role with Lily. But in spite of her holding the status OF team mom...I don't really have her doing much in the way of motherly things for the majority of the story, and that's an issue.

Plus, aside from that, she's the only Guardian I don't really have much in the way of battles planned. Admittedly, I don't have many for Kaze, either, and I can only think of one (really, really awesome) battle for Hera, butstill, Myra is introduced in episode 14, or thereabouts. She's with the Thaukama for 3/4ths of the series, more or less. She should have a notable impact, which I am still working on giving her.

I do have a little bit of depth planned for Will, in that his services as the son of nobles help the Thaukama out and he is the one who helps provide them with rides, but I don't have much in the way of plans for him...until the second half of the second season. This is a bit of a concern of mine, since unlike the others he doesn't have as much screen time. I do think I need to do more with him.

Alena I also am deeply concerned with--as the last member of the Thaukama introduced at a set point, I have only ten episodes to show her off and make her be seen as a deep, important character. She has a very heavy focus, but I'm not sure it's enough. I did develop a bit of a patch for this, though--I am giving her a cameo during a time contemporary to Cyrus's "are you going to have lesbisex?" line. Her introduction proper wouldn't be until later, but even this little bit would help to establish her in advance.

However, the largest concern of mine is Clara. Other than her introduction, I have...basically nothing on her. I still have basically nothing on her, but I did manage to figure out some ways to help. One way I am helping out is by introducing her earlier--she'll be in the shipwreck, and is introduced on the mainland, returning from a pilgrimage there to head back to the new world, where she does most of her adventuring.

She would be traveling with her master, and the shipwreck actually serves as a convenient method of separating her from him...allowing her to become a member of the Thaukama far more believably, and also helping to explain why she doesn't have her master with her (an issue I had before--basically, the idea was to introduce her without her master but I was having trouble with how that'd work and once her master was in the picture how it'd make sense for her to travel with the Thaukama; now I have a way of doing that).

The main thing I did to flesh her out was to develop Paladins. (Disclaimer: I want to research Paladins in D&D to see what they can do. I want to cover most "traditional" Paladin abilities, more or less, which can be justified as being based on Sun Magic. So, no, no Anti-Fear-Aura, but yes, Lay-On-Hands. See below.)

Specifically, I developed Paladins such that Paladins are subdivided into two types, depending on what they are aiming to specialize in (because, remember--they use specialized magic; they can't learn everything without becoming full mages which takes half a human lifetime).

Solarii (what Clara is in training to become) are spellbladers, who make use primarily of two main spells. Clara's lantern-spell and engulf-weapon-in-light spells are the two preliminary versions of the spells Sun Scorch and Fire Hammer (respectively).

...Yes, those names should seem oddly familiar, but I thought it appropriate. Sun Scorch, the evolution of the lantern-hand, is basically an explosion of pure sun energy, radiating out from the caster to obliterate all opponents, cast either through the hands or through a weapon.

Fire Hammer, the evolution of the engulf-weapon-in-light spell, is to create an entire weapon out of pure sun energy, controlled through heliokinesis. This heliokinetic weapon is usually utilized to rotate around the caster to attack enemies on all sides, since with every strike, a miniature sun explosion is unleashed. (This type of 'weapon rotating around the caster' spell is common enough that I think the effect comes across.) Alternatively, the concussive/explosive force generated when the weapon is 'thrown' forward can devastate a single target in front of the caster. (This is from the source material where the name originates from, but can also be thought of from another source...)

There is also a mundane application. The weapon might be made out of pure sun energy, but is still solidified--it can be grabbed. Because it is controlled by the heliokinesis of the caster, it can go however the user wills it to. When you combine these properties, what you have is that when the user grabs onto the weapon, they can, functionally, fly.

In short, this is an ability you can think of as basically being Thor wielding Mjolnir, except instead of being lightning-oriented, it is oriented around the sun. Otherwise the effects are much as you'd expect them to be, launched and returned at will, the staple attack of a Solarii. (Because Sun Scorch tends to, with repeated casting, exhaust the user, whereas Fire Hammer is cast only once and thus the only drain involved is the heliokinesis which relatively speaking is basically nothing to a trained paladin.)

They may have other spells, but these two are their signature moves, which are what make them be Solarii. They are incredibly potent, powerful abilities, difficult to master, and yet incredibly awesome once they are. Solarii paladins are generally what the masses think of as "adventuring paladins", because they have a skillset best suited for that profession--martial moves that are combat-oriented, albeit having pragmatic use outside of combat (e.g. smithing).

​Paeans are the other half of paladins, thought more of as the "healing paladins". They do have combat-oriented skills, revolving around ranged weaponry (typically missile weapons in the form of bows or the occasional crossbow), but most of what they focus on is healing/buffing based around photosynthesis. That being, they use the energy of the sun to propagate life, mending wounds at an accelerated rate and the like.

I don't have their spells detailed as well as I do Solarii spells, admittedly, but that gives you a general framework for what they do. They are more passive, but just as important.

There are some spells common to both types of paladins--the main one, Shield of Light, is exactly what it sounds like, though the form of the spell differs. For Solarii, the shield of light is a spherical barrier encompassing an area (based more around the sun scorch), usually surrounding an ally, which can be condensed (based more around the fire hammer) to form...a rather literal shield, often directly in front of the target to stop an incoming powerful attack.

For Paeans, the shield of light is a barrier encompassing an area, usually surrounding an ally, which can be condensed to form an aura surrounding the target. You know how in sci-fi a semi-common piece of tech is a personal forcefield? Sometimes so personalized that when you see the outline of it it is literally just inches above the skin and form-fitted to the body? The uncondensed is the former; the condensed is the latter.

Both techniques might have a different basis based around the particular magic unlocked in the individual to use (because, again, this is specialized magic which must be taught from an early age and which only is partially unlocking magical potential such that the caster can do a very specific set of things and nothing else), but they result in an identical effect, thus the shared name.

That's what I have for heroes.

Now let's move on to the villains!

​Back a few days ago, I managed to give them some names. The first big bad, Sloan Patrick Breaker, received the equipment which made him a threat from the third big bad. When defeated, he contacts said big bad and informs him, "The ones who defeated me are the ones you were hoping to surface. Their names are Phyrra and Cyrus."

His evil schemes are fairly small compared to others. I don't have the specifics laid out yet, though.

The second big bad, Gunther King Slayer (for the record, he is the son of two villains so that name is not what you'd call incidental), received the ability he needed for his scheme from the third big bad. When defeated, he contacts said big bad and informs him, "Phyrra and Cyrus are on their way to the New World, and if they survive the trip...they will be fully awakened."

The third big bad, Archer Cross Hill, more or less is after Phyrra and Cyrus's powers for himself.

All of those big bads, because they are tied together, have a particular theme to their names--it's ridiculously subtle though, so mad props if you can navigate my mind to the extent where you are able to pick out the common thread to all three names. (Even better would be if you discover a common trend to their three names that I hadn't intended because that'd mean there was more than just the original one!)

The fourth big bad, deliberately meant to break the trend, is named Muse Gerald Icarious. Which, in of itself, has a not-so-subtle meaning to it along similar veins to the other names. (You might note that not many of the names in Phyrra and Cyrus are particularly clever; all of them more or less are some reflection of something.)

The third big bad, Archer Cross Hill, stole some research from Muse Gerald Icarious in order to enact his final scheme (which failed, obviously), but the final big bad being the final big bad gets to use the research in its full unadulterated form. Said research being...

The Six Sins.
"Six?!? What happened to seven?!?"
Not just kidding!
You heard it right.

SIX sins.

The Six Sins are summoned spirits, directly akin to the four Guardians in function--they are cursed spirits, who reveled in their particular sin until they were forced to never embody their desire. They can never truly die; whenever they are 'killed', it simply means that they cannot be re-summoned for a minimum of 200 years. (There is of course no maximum so they could theoretically go all of eternity unsummoned, but if killed then they can't be summoned again for 200 years.)

And, yes, they are a bundled package. You summon them all together, and then are the master of all six until all six are released from the bond.

So the basic reasoning behind this is...the six sins were once human. (Which differentiates them from the Guardians, who explicitly never have been human, though did once exist without being tied to the books.) When they were caught for their crimes, they were cursed to serve a barbarian sorcerer-warlord, who made it sure that the owner of the seventh sin (pride) controlled them...starting, of course, with him. (This being eons ago in the story, his name has been lost to the history books.)

That is why there are only six of them. Because the seventh sinner is their master, the human who summons them, who must embody both pride, and yet also humbleness. They must have the ambition and drive to have grandiose goals and essentially a grandeur of godhood mindset, to have the knowledge that they can have the power to surpass all...

...And yet, because the curse also forces the sinners to be their opposites (more or less), the owner of the other six sins must be humble and wise enough to understand their own limitations and be honest about their capabilities. This unique mixture is a rather lethal one, because it involves a person who dreams big but knows exactly what steps will end up screwing them over. In other words--a genre savvy villain.

The Six Sins are...
Ivan, sinner of Gluttony. Ivan is unique among the sins for having the capacity to lie; the other sinners cannot. Ivan's sin was that he was a serial killer cannibal. At the height of his debauchery, he would eat one entire human a day, bones and all. (Literally everything in a human is at least some definition of edible with the right preparation; if you're a fat bastard, you have a big enough gut to eat much more than normal.)

His punishment, upon being cursed, was to become a mummy. (Think, half of the curse from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Specifically, a combination of their appearance and the eternal hunger/thirst.) When he touches someone, he drains them of their physical energy, as if starving them.

Olivia, sinner of Lust. Olivia is unique among the sins for having the capacity to still sin, albeit not in her sin. Her sin was that she was a serial rapist--she tortured her victims, enacting various sexual fetishes on her unwilling partners. If they died, that was no problem; she kept going, making her guilty of necrophilia. She was also indiscriminate in her victim choice--man, woman...or child. So yes, she was guilty also of pedophilia. (I realize I might not be able to get this by censors, but I'd get as much as I could through with the rest implied.)

Her punishment, upon being cursed, was to become a withered old hag. (Think the other half of the curse from Pirates of the Caribbean, unable to feel the pleasures of the flesh.) Her touch drains mana. Because she is so denied what she desires and is eternally reminded of it, she experiences envy.

Balian, sinner of Wrath. Balian is unique among the sins for having full recollection of his name. All the other sinners only remember their first name, but Balian knows his full name. Balian's sin was that he singlehandedly massacred an entire city of 10,000 civilians. When an army of 20,000 was mobilized to avenge them, he massacred the 16,000 who fought...and then, when 4,000 fled in terror...

...He hunted them down, massacring every village along the way, just on the possibility they harbored his prey. He left no survivors by the time he had finished. So yes, he was in fact a person of mass destruction. He was a spellblader, whose spells are ironically what he is more or less cursed to only be able to use (nothing more). Back in the day, he used entrapment spells such that he could help narrow escape routes such that there was nowhere to run, allowing his massacres to transpire.

...Now, he is cursed with the appearance of a pseudo-Buddhist monk (bald head, peace beads, etc.), able to create barriers (basically a kekkaishi) which are explicitly nonlethal. He cannot loophole his way into killing someone by, say, materializing a barrier inside a body, or asphyxiating someone by draining their oxygen. (Well, he can do that to the point of unconsciousness, but the barrier collapses before killing anyone.)

He is forced, absolutely forced, to be a complete and total, absolute, utter pacifist. He cannot harm anyone. At all. He can only prevent harm, and is in fact compelled to do so. He can't do nothing; he must help prevent harm, in order to never embody his wrath.

Erik, sinner of Envy, is unique among the sins in that he has no recollection of his past life--thus, he doesn't remember what sin he performed. (Mostly because I couldn't actually think of what atrocity he committed comparable to the others, butstill.)

His curse was to become a blind beggar, with the gift of healing--in other words, he is forced to only give to others and to never in turn receive anything for his service. He is basically compelled to always reverse destruction. 

Deryll, sinner of Greed. Deryll is unique among the sins for not having anything unique about him. He is a textbook cursed sinner. His sin was that he was a serial killer of noble heritage--similar to Gluttony, he murdered at least one person a day, but instead of eating them, he collected various, numerous trophies from his victims. (Which is a semi-common thing from actual serial killers.)

His curse was that he became a robot, unable to be adorned in anything. (This was the only way I could think of to make the fact that he's naked get by censors.) If he grabs onto anything, he is forced to teleport away--without the item.

He also serves as the messenger for Muse. He's the one who informs the Thaukama that Archer made use of powers of the sins and knowledge acquired from his master, and that his master is actually out for much the same goal...however, his master still regrets Archer's actions, because while Archer acted alone, it was only possible thanks to his master's research.

Furthermore, his master desires to acquire his goal through any method necessary--even peaceful ones. Conflict was thus, strictly speaking, unnecessary, and that it happened was not ideal; the violence used was excessive and entirely unrequired for the goal.

However, Deryll does relay that his master laments that, inevitably, they'll still come into conflict, because his master is villainous and the Thaukama are heroic so even though his master's goal can be met without any force, they will still end up fighting each other.

Ulysses, sinner of Sloth. Ulysses is unique among the sins for being the only sin to feel remorseful for his sins. The other sins? They still desire their sin, just are cursed to never have it. With all but Olivia apathetic about their situation, yet making it clear they absolutely would still perform their sin if they were capable of it.

...Not so much for Ulysses, who feels immense, deep regret for his actions, desiring atonement he knows he'll never get. His sin was multiple chained events--he started as an adventurer, becoming a part of their core group. Eventually, he was placed in a position where he could easily have saved them...yet he let them die, and reveled in it, enjoying the absolute betrayal of trust his companions had placed in him.

After this, he returned to his kingdom where he was a prince, and took innocents and placed them in Saw-like death-traps, such that he could just watch them slowly die as they tried to get out. At every stage, he could abort the torture-executions, but he kept them going because he enjoyed watching them suffer and die rather than sparing them.

Inevitably, his kingdom was invaded, and while he easily could have crushed the invaders...he let his people perish. He deliberately ordered his troops to more or less act in the way which was most passive and yet still suicidal. Then, fleeing from the carnage, returned to adventuring and duplicated his first feat on a second group of unsuspecting adventurers.

This betrayal of trust is emphasized as essentially having been the worst of the sins (not that hard to understand when you go Thaukama-->Nakama), and thus, his curse is also the most severe. At its most base level, his curse makes him an insomniac, incapable of sleeping and yet always eternally having the effects of sleep deprivation forced on him thanks to this.

Furthermore, he is a compulsive analyst genius.  (And yes, he does look like L from Death Note.)

The exact specifics make this even worse. He has the absolute compulsion (think like in Code Geass where Suzaku is geassed by Lelouche with the "Live!" command) where he cannot commit suicide, not even suicide by cop; he is compelled to fight to survive and to not pick fights he cannot win. If he can win a fight, he is compelled to proactively INITIATE said fight against any he deems a threat to his master; he can't let his opponents live/go free, nor can he let them kill him.

Why would he want that?

Because he is in eternal pain. He has hyper-senses. Increased vision, VERY increased hearing capable of hearing everything, increased sense of touch, taste, and smell.

Additionally, he is constantly being forced to analyze that sensory input. In short, he is a constant, never-ending, ultimate Sherlock Scan, aware of every little detail about everything in his surroundings which more or less means that he can see the life story of everything he is around more or less; there is no "off switch" to this ability, and no way to tune it out.

Worse, he has an Eidic memory. He remembers everything. Every thought he's ever had, every emotion he's ever felt, every feeling he's ever experienced. Pain from a wound he sustained hundreds of years ago still hurts as if brand new. And that above ability? You know, the scan everything one? He remembers every single second of every single scan.

Constant sensory overload, fresh every single moment. He more or less is in a constant neverending hell, and among the reasons is that he can remember with crystal clarity his sins, and what he did, the absolute betrayal of trust, the feelings he felt when doing so, and with his new abilities, being able to understand exactly how every single victim felt, through a combination of a retroactive sherlock scan (that being, knowing things he didn't know at the time through having perfect recollection and perfect intuition) and through personal experience (in that unlike when he was originally alive, he has now personally experienced the wounds he inflicted on others dozens of times so he knows exactly how they felt).

He is forced to hunt down enemies and eliminate them, knowing full good and well exactly what it feels like to be killed, and being unable to be killed himself because he's too competent to be killed and can't let himself be killed. He basically gets to always experience the absolute worst of everything.

​This is, more or less, what gave him a conscience, though. By having to actually witness what his atrocities were like, he actually genuinely is sorry for it, but knows that even were it possible for him to be released from the curse, he wouldn't deserve it.

By the way, yes, he is in fact the most deadly of the six sins. He makes it abundantly well-known that he is in fact going to massacre the Thaukama if they let their guard down for so much as a second, and the only reason that he isn't compelled to fight them is that he calculates a 60% chance he'd die when fighting every member of the Thaukama at once, violating his master's commands in the process.

I think that's about it. I am looking at the three sheets I have, scanning them for information, and I BELIEVE I got everything I had written down, so I think that's everything.

So yeah, that's what I had.