...But in this case, boredom is a boon to productivity, as it means that I'm forced to actually do something meaningful.
Well, no. I am quite capable of wasting my time on something meaningless--it's just that I'm not in the mood to do any of those meaningless things so productivity it is.

In this case, blogging about what should have been yesterday's blog.

Yesterday, at work, I developed a story which I would call whichever is the least used of "Lord of Minions", "Minion Lord", "Master of Minions", and "Minion Master". I say 'whichever is the least used', because, let's face it. All four of those titles have been used before somewhere, it's just a question of which is the most viable to use.

In my notes, I lean towards the former two involving it being a Lord, but for a specific reason; the Lord of Minions/Minion Lord (hereafter just referred to as the Lord) may start commanding as the master of just Minions, but eventually expands such that his domain includes subjugating humans as well, and 'Lord' sounds more like a ruler of humans than 'Master' does to me.

I'm not quite sure where to begin. I guess I'll go with how the story starts. You may be able to deduce, it is in fact a Villain Protagonist. The Minions have, recently, lost their Lord--and need a new one. They see the protagonist, and basically kidnap him to their base, where they explain that congratulations! They have selected him as their new Lord.

Though initially baffled by this, the protagonist runs with it, figuring, "Sure, why not?"

Minions, for as long as there has been recorded history, have sought after a human to be their Lord, to command them. The human theory for this is that some ancient evil overlord created the minions as a servant race--the Minion theory is actually a bit of the opposite, in that Minions developed a symbiotic relationship with their human Lord. The human Lord would have the Minions lead him to prosperity, and in return, the Lord would give the Minions both a sense of purpose and direction to continue their existence.

Minions, after all, don't just randomly pick people off the street (though that's how it's portrayed, for comedic value if nothing else). Every Lord they have ever picked has the traits of extreme Ambition, incredible Intelligence, a sense of Logistics, and a degree of Pragmatism.

Over the millennia, they have found that these traits are typically suited towards an Evil Overlord, who have them in abundance. Granted, said Evil Overlords tend to be a little bit weak on Pragmatism at times and some (particularly those heavily utilizing "We Have Reserves") are a bit low on Logistics, but said Lords tend to be the shortest-lived ones and don't cause long-term damage to the Minions' existence.

Still, since the traits are associated with Evil people to the point where it's basically synonymous, this gives them a bad reputation. The protagonist, for what it's worth, is no different than prior Lords in this regard--he is an Evil Bastard, a visionary dreaming of world conquest, incredibly cruel and sadistic to his enemies...but who is also incredibly benign to those who serve him.

Think how the Evil Overlord List, if followed precisely, is pretty much making a benevolent dictator: still an evil person who controls their country strictly, but who is fair about it and highly pragmatic. A "benign god", even. In the case of the protagonist Lord, this manifests first in his actual investment in his Minions.

Some Lords bother to have a few favorite Minions, even giving them English names. But our protagonist Lord takes that to the next level; he treats every Minion as an asset, doesn't see them as disposable at all, takes the time to learn the Minion's language both written and spoken, learns about Minion culture, calls Minions by their names in the Minion language (unless pressed for time; Minion names tend to be multiple syllables in their native tongue so he has nicknames for them that are one or two syllables to say in case of emergency), and basically treats them almost as if they were his equals.

This is how details of Minion society and biology are slowly revealed.

For instance--the Lord is always, functionally, Immortal...in the "does not age", sense at least. In spite of being human, the Lord will not age for as long as they are Lord of the Minions. The Minions have a theory that their mind link to the Lord allows them to collectively channel the smallest portion of their lifespan into the Lord. Since there are so many Minions at any given time, it doesn't shorten the Minions lifespan at all (they still live for about the same length as a human), but it does keep their Lord alive.

Of course. As is obvious. Most Lords never live long enough for that to be tested, and most Minions don't die of old age because they die long before that following the orders of their Lord. Still, over their recorded history, they've had some Lords and Minions live long enough that they know of the effect.

Minions are biologically programmed to need a leader. It is hard-coded into their genes on the fundamental level--they need someone to which they can then follow the orders of, and they have virtually no free will. Minions, mind you, are varied enough in personality to each be as quirky as any given human, but they will mostly remain on what's essentially an autopilot unless given directions by their Lord.

They can, of course, be given passive commands by their Lord, to follow a process different than their default autopilot while waiting for instructions. And Minions are not literal-minded; they can think about what a Lord's intention behind a command are and will, to the best of their ability, fulfill their Lord's desire, even if this deviates from what orders they had been given.

But at their base nature, they can't disobey nor would they want to; they live to serve their Lord and find happiness in serving their community however their Lord deems fit. (They consider their Lord to basically be the leader of their community, even knowing that most Lords--our protagonist being the exception--don't consider themselves to be a part of said community. They're quite aware most Lords just exploit them, but the Lords still give the Minions what they are wanting, so they don't complain. Well, most of the times; as previously mentioned, Minions are as quirky as humans, so some have snark to them and are quite willing to make barbs about their Lord if they think they can get away with it.)

​Minions have similar biology to humans, albeit with some notable difference.
The average Minion is about the height of a slightly-short human; they usually have yellow skin. (Both of these attributes are possible to modify; see below.) Minions are capable of eating literally anything--and their preferred meals are rocks, soil, dirt, minerals, crystals, and the like.

Minions are all hermaphrodites, and can give birth in one of two ways. They can give birth by "carrier"--basically, identical to human pregnancy albeit taking shorter (six months). One fertilizes the egg of the other, who bears it until a live birth. The egg contains 2 children always by this method. The egg saps nutrients from the parent, and the parent develops breasts (Minions do not have breasts by default), who feeds the baby Minions for a month after birth, when they switch to eating whatever.

Minions born by carrier method have a mixture of the genes of both parents.

They can also give birth by "spawn"--think somewhere between how Uruk'hai are shown being birthed in the Lord of the Rings films, and egg-laying animals like birds. One still fertilizes the egg of the other, but instead of bearing it until a live birth, the egg is extracted, and fused to a wall of rock. The egg saps nutrients from the rock, and after extraction, the baby Minions eat their egg and then continue consuming rock thereafter.

This is, by far, the more common method, for a number of reasons. One, it can bear 1-3 children rather than being set at specifically two. Two, it allows both parents to remain workers. Pregnancy means the carrier can't continue to perform all the tasks that a Minion normally would, or at least not as easily. (Keep in mind that Minions tend to be used for fairly hard labor, including being sent en masse to their deaths in combat.)

Three, it takes half the time, at only three months, for the Minions to be born. And four, most importantly of all?
It allows for the manipulation of the genes of Minions. Minions have mastered the art of biological manipulation of their genetics. Some things never change; a Minion will always have some traits of both parents, and the subservience to their commander is something so hard-coded into their genetics it literally can't be removed.

However, many things can change. The size of the minion, the basic biology of the minion, color of the minion's skin, biological adaptions like poisonous claws, webbed hands/feet, digging claws, different teeth/fangs, you name it. Our protagonist Lord makes a universal modification to the Minions such that all born after are given free will, or as close to it as is possible for Minions, and the ability to take command and the ability to not require a commander.

While the subservience to a commander trait still exists, what this means is that if a Minion born after our protagonist Lord made this change decides that they don't have any commander, they are not obliged to follow an order. Of course. By their culture, even with this freedom, Minions still voluntarily subjugate themselves, because they want a commander--he just made it so they didn't need one.

Minions reach adulthood within 3 years, and in as little as one year, can be old enough to work (think teenager), which when you combine it with the above traits, makes them rather numerous. (Can be born in as little as 3 months with triplets, have a human lifespan, and yet are an adult in a fraction of the time it takes for a human to reach adulthood.)

Minions are both coldblooded and warmblooded, in that they absorb the heat from their environment by default. This means that they aren't bothered by the heat (which makes sense, since many of them live in environments which radiate a lot of heat). However, when the heat alone of the environment is not enough to sustain them, then can burn energy to generate heat of their own.

Minions' skin is scaled, and unless they have been specifically modified otherwise, this scaled skin is basically as tough as armor. (Not that that stops them from wearing armor anyway, since sometimes they need the extra layer of protection.) This armored scaly skin can also be made even harder, obviously, albeit suffering some penalty to flexibility. (There's a tradeoff involved with all genetic modifications. If there were one perfect combo, it'd be universally used, but since no perfect biological combo exists, you have to sacrifice some traits in order to promote others.)

The average Minion's strength is about the level of a high human in strength--so a high-strength human against an average Minion is an even match; a normal human against a Minion or a high strength human against a high strength Minion places the human at a disadvantage. Minions can be weaker, of course, usually when they have traded muscles for some other purpose, and Minions can be stronger to superhuman levels, though again, I reiterate that no perfect combo exists.

As I previously mentioned, Minions are on average a little bit shorter than humans, but specialized Minions can be as tall as humans or even taller--notably, the elite combat forces of Minions are usually of the taller variety, since the increased size often offers an increased advantage in power.

There is a major difference in Minions from humans, however--they never sweat, they never urinate (their parts down there are strictly for procreation), never defecate, or any other similar body reactions. If they ever have a need to get something out of their body, it's via vomiting, but since Minions can eat anything, this is an incredible rarity.

This does have a bit of a nasty side-effect, often weaponized: toxins in Minions are not excreted by any of the mentioned methods, and thus, build up inside of the Minion. Their blood thus becomes poisonous over the course of their lives, and slightly corrosive since acids also build up. The older the Minion, the worse this effect is.

An interested fact about Minion culture is that they have five words for gender. Their default gender in English is typically assigned as Male, because they are all incredibly muscular, lack breasts, and their 'male' anatomy is more visible than their 'female' anatomy.

However, in their own language, Minions have five genders: "Fertilizes only" (male), "Only is fertilized" (female), "Both fertilizes and can be fertilized" (hermaphrodite, though they also use this for intersex individuals), "neither fertilizes or can be fertilized" (agendered), and "self-fertilizes" (reproduces without the need of a partner).

Most Minions default to the hermaphrodic pronoun, but Minions do have concepts of gender separate from concepts of biological sex. While Minions' genders match biological sex disproportionately often (that owes to some extent to their biological ability to modify genes), they can on occasion identify as a gender not matching their biological sex.

There is one final fact about Minions, too--technically speaking, they're biologically compatible with humans. They can impregnate humans, and they can be impregnated by humans. (The only difference is that the length of the pregnancy depends on the species of the parent.)

They can only use the "carrier" method of birth regardless of which parent is which race, but it's still fully possible.

Mind you--the resulting offspring is born 100% Minion regardless of who which parent is. It's just that they have human genes mixed in with their Minion genes, akin to having been modified via "spawn" method--for instance, a common trait is to have free will. They may also have their scales/skin be a more human color. Hair is more common as well. (Minions can be born with hair, but it's about 40/60 between hair/bald.)

They are still born hermaphrodites in most cases, however, they may inherit "female" traits such as breasts and a shrunken penis, or "male" traits of the opposite. (Of course, both at once is not impossible, but it's not common, either.)

Naturally, this isn't something that's known at the start of the story--Minions have heavy prejudice against them from humans, and understandably so since they're seen not unjustifiably as "servants of Evil". Our current protagonist Lord, in addition to world conquest, is mostly planning ways to leave lasting peace and prosperity, including equality between the two races.

He is evil, but he still dreams of a utopia. One still ruled by him, mind you, but a place lacking discrimination. When he starts conquering human lands, he outright orders his Minions to not discriminate against humans, in spite of how humans don't reciprocate. He welcomes humans into the fold of his growing empire by integrating them in with a policy of, more or less:
"As long as you don't defy me, you're free to do as you wish. If you actively decide to obey me, then you will be rewarded proportional to your contribution."

He accepts humans into anywhere in his chain of command, provided they treat Minions the same way he does: with respect and equality, not looking down on them, not devaluing them, not discriminating against them. And eventually when facing some evil empires (after all, the Lord is not the only one to be an Evil conqueror in the setting; it's a fairly common thing), they can even bond (albeit with much...encouragement...from our protagonist).

And you know how long it took me to cook all that up?

...Less than ten minutes.

It's such a rich idea. I did so much worldbuilding for it, and I think it's a really neat story idea!

Alas.

I, being me, will likely never make it reality.

I want to create.
Except.
My mind is racing.
All it is saying is.
I want to create I want to create I want to create I want to create IwanttocreateIwanttocreateIwanttocreate

And so on and so forth. On repeat. I know what I want to create. I have a very, very strong passion for Phyrra and Cyrus right now. I've thrown around ideas for other things, but they were thrown out because of the overwhelming urge of, "No. Phyrra and Cyrus. I want to create I want to create I want to create".

The problem is.

With my mind racing like that.

I can't focus in on what to do.
I can't hone in on what I would create.
I can't slow it down to think rationally.
I'm just being flooded with the same thoughts over and over again, and each time I have a spark of an idea on what to do, I think, "That might be good, but what do--" and then the flood gates overwhelm with I want to create I want to create I want to create.

I don't know what to do.
I want to create, but I am 100% manic right now.
No other word can describe this.

​I want to create.

Well one of the two days of it anyway, but seeing as how I have work tomorrow the birthday present gift was for the one-day pass only so I won't be going; I'll be working.

It was quite fun and pretty much what I expected it to be.

I did notice something about myself, though.

I'm having an increasingly large urge to use more and more of my left hand/arm. I don't know why, but for everything except for a few things (especially fine motor control), my left hand seems to be the one I'm finding more appealing. 

I actually have a bit of a theory. My right arm functions faster and with more dexterity, but I feel it might be less powerful. This would be backed by my preferred practice stance, and also the stance I seem to favor in sparring a good amount of the time: my right leg is forward.

As any fighter can tell you, front-side attacks are faster, with more precision, but far less speed than back-side attacks. But it's also a position which can be thought of as fighting southpaw, because when you fight, your primary hand isn't usually the blocking/jabbing hand; your primary hand is usually the one you throw crosses with, and I favor my left hand.

​It may be something to explore in the future, but we'll have to see.

Unfortunate, but expected.

Anime night, so. Watched Attack on Titan (my siblings insist we've watched it subbed and thus can watch the new episodes, but hearing the voices, I'm QUITE certain that we didn't so I don't know what the heck they were thinking but oh well), a few episodes of Tokyo Ghoul (we're at around episode 8 I believe), and then a series I can't remember the full name of (half of it is Seraph) involving vampires and demons (got to around 7 there).

​With that, I need to go to bed.

So yesterday, I ended up vastly expanding on what happened on Tuesday, meaning this ramble might be a little chaotic and disjointed, but I'll try to keep it as coherent as possible.

Basically.

On Tuesday, I had a series of multiple dreams. I've since forgotten them--all except for one. I had a dream about a more modern-aesthetic Power Rangers team. One Ranger (maybe blue?) was a morbidly obese (incredibly, INCREDIBLY fat) 10-14 year-old dark-skinned (I forget if he was Black or Hispanic, but it was one of the two) boy, and he was the ace of the team; strong, skilled, and smart, but NOT the leader, either in or out of combat.

There were two or so other initial Rangers, with a fourth and fifth antagonistic-to-the-first-group-at-first duo of Rangers. (Like I said. More modern, rather than classical, Rangers.) They were led, OUT of combat, by an elderly gentleman who was obscenely rich.

That's about all I remembered from the dream once waking up...but it was enough to send off a chain reaction in my mind, where I reminisced about a really, REALLY old idea of mine.

We're talking, I know for a fact I was younger than 15 when I had this idea, young. Since I turn 25 in 2 days, that means this idea is in the 11-15-year range, of OLD ideas. I believe the tenth season of Power Rangers was recently ended when I had this, old. (You know. The season which had the Red Ranger special, which had a Tommy Oliver clone in the form of a sixth Ranger that was highly antagonistic at first that disabled/stole animal zords from the Rangers until the Red Ranger managed to undo the brainwashing and turn him good again, with him being a wolf-themed Ranger. That season. It was the last season I watched as a child, so it left its mark on me.)

Let me look that up, in fact, since I have a computer.

...Yep. February 9, 2002 to November 16, 2002. Wild Force.

I distinctly recall, also, that I actually never got to see the conclusion of the series. I got CLOSE to the conclusion, including seeing numerous villains die/do heelfaceturns/fight with other villains/work with the Rangers either temporarily or permanently, but RIGHT near the very end of the series...
...I didn't get to see the end of the series, leaving me immensely disappointed, and as a child who was creative.

My answer to being disappointed was to write my own story using the material.

Not immediately after. I don't think I was that young, and that it was written that close. So not when I was nine years old. But close sounds about right; the 10-12 range is exactly the zone where I would have written this story idea down.

And I call it a story, but what it really was...was fanfiction.

I don't use that term lightly.

You know how I have dozens of stories which are knockoffs of things? I still call those stories, and use the term knockoff, because I developed original aspects to the stories--some of them even being prophetic! For instance, my Bleach-knockoff story was written before the Hueco Mundo arc, yet contained details about my Hollow-equivalent and Shinigami-equivalent's relationship to one another that was only revealed during/AFTER that arc (including having my story feature Hollow-equivalent characters as heroes!); my Bleach-knockoff story was written to contain a canonically-optional sequel that contains children of the main characters...

...Which had them meet in a VERY SIMILAR situation to the actual end of the Bleach manga. I wrote that ending when Aizen was still a main villain. Like. I didn't even know that there was anything after Aizen, because at the time I was writing it, there wasn't. So now if I ever were to publish the story, it would look like I DID blatantly steal ideas...

...Even though those ideas were my original creations. In other words, it'll look MORE like a knockoff than it actually was, because I developed a deep setting and lore on my own, without utilizing the details of the setting.

...BUT I DIGRESS.

MY POINT BEING.

I usually will call things knockoffs when they are knockoffs.

This wasn't me writing a knockoff, "basically Power Rangers with the serial numbers filed off".

This was me writing Power Rangers. Fanfiction, of me writing a series paying respect to the entirety of the series as I had known it to be. To my childhood of the first ten seasons, of which I'd seen a large portion of but never the entirety of. (For some strange reason, that "seen 90% of the series, but not the season finale" thing that happened for season ten for me? Also happened for many prior seasons. I got to the part where series-long villains were defeated, and said series-long villains went down destroying zords, but didn't actually reach the conclusion of the series.)

​The basic premise of this was that--due to an inherent clause of the background material--this would be an alternate universe, but would be almost identical to the known Ranger works. The story involved how an ancient, powerful civilization (implied to be Atlantis...in Mesoamerica, with strong ties to the Mayans) deciding to materialize all the evils across the universe, be them past, present, or future evils, into a single entity.

They hoped that by doing so, they could create a utopia for generations to come, as a world free of Evil would prosper--but they underestimated the strength of Evil, and in order to save the world, they had to seal the Evil entity up using the ten elements. Though they ultimately succeeded, it was not without cost; by the time Evil was sealed, their civilization laid in ruins.

Come modern day, an expedition uncovered this Evil, and accidentally broke the seal, setting it loose on the world once more to wreck havoc...but all was not lost, as the ten elements each chose a champion, from across the world (that "across the world" aspect was important; I wanted a diverse, multiracial cast, spanning the entire globe), to carry on the fight.

That's the basic backstory I came up with.

Now for what that means.

I envisioned an ambitious project, with either ten short seasons or five longer ones featuring a mid-season finale. An actual multi-year storyline, continued start to finish with the same cast and setting. As the backstory implied, there were TEN initial Rangers, rather than just five; double the number.

The ten Rangers were:
Fire
Ice
Water
Energy
Light
Darkness
Air
Earth
Metal
Rock
(Nature, you may note, is missing; he's the eleventh Ranger, joining at a later date. This cast being incredibly genre-savvy, a humorous moment arises when one of the two lead-Rangers comments, "Okay, if anyone has a recent new friend, long-lost relative, or notices a change in behavior from existing friends or family, speak up. Especially if they're wearing green."
"What's suspicious about wearing green?"
*camera pans to show off the Rangers in their civilian attire wearing colors matching their Ranger color; the lead Ranger says nothing but communicates the message nonverbally*)

Evil would have nine generals, each representing a sin. Yes, nine sins. I originally planned out all nine of them, but I forgot what the original 9th was. I developed a new 9th on Tuesday to replace the forgotten one. All the generals would have different personalities and approximate power levels, with the 9th and final being the hardest. One of said sins was incredibly sympathetic, defeated/destroyed at about the midway point in the series.

I don't remember my original sin ranking, other than the 9th was the most powerful, and 8th was the second-most powerful; of the seven sins WE know, I don't remember how I ranked them most to least. But the idea was in a ten-season series one would be defeated at each finale; in a five-season series, same idea, just also utilizing mid-season finales.

But I did work on said sins on Tuesday; it was my main project I worked on. Absolutely new, I came up with an idea that each of the sins would not, in of itself, inherently be evil, that they represent things that are not bad, but in extremes, can be bad--and thus, that their opposites (which would be themes of the season) wouldn't be direct opposites, but rather, the thing necessary in order to provide balance to the sin.

With that in mind:
The ninth sin, Knowledge, I took a little bit of an obvious biblical cue as to the source. However, Knowledge being a sin, by my definition of the sins, makes sense when you think about it. Your first inclination might be, "how can the pursuit of knowledge be evil?", but what makes it a sin is reckless and unchecked pursuit of knowledge. Pursuit of knowledge, above any and all ethical concerns.

You can think of this in some fairly obvious terms. Human experimentation is a bad thing, we can generally agree to that, yes? And yet, the results of human experimentation have yielded great advances in understanding of the human body. The problem is, that knowledge came at the price of literally being genocide. (Think, as a go-to example, the holocaust.)

Knowledge is undeniably a good thing. But pure knowledge, with nothing to put it in check, leads to a level of amorality that is, undeniably, something we'd define as evil, because there is nothing inherent in pursuing knowledge that gives us ethics; quite the opposite, ethics impair the pursuit of knowledge, thus why they're often portrayed as discarded and we have the common mad scientist trope.

So the opposite of knowledge isn't ignorance as you may expect or something to that effect; the opposite of knowledge, I defined as Wisdom. Wisdom, here, would essentially be having the sense to 'know' things that knowledge doesn't give you, in that it's having the capacity to have good judgement, to know "that's wrong" in ways knowledge doesn't allow. To take experience, and put it not so much in cold data points, but warm feelings, as it were.

​In terms of the story, Knowledge is the strongest general--and is, in fact, the first of the generals to destroy a zord beyond capacity for it to be repaired. He thus, goes down VERY late in the series. Near the end. He hurts the Rangers. He damages them, and wages psychological warfare on them by bringing up truths they don't want to hear, and the Rangers struggle to overcome this and are left rattled even after having done so.

The eighth sin, Despair, is not from Danganronpa, thankyouverymuch. Danganronpa was not even a game in JAPAN when I came up with this idea, yet alone with an American release. It's actually taking more of a cue from Fullmetal Alchemist in that I always thought Father, as a homunculus, should have an eighth sin to be named for, just like the other seven homunculi had sins they were named for.

In hindsight, Knowledge would actually be a better fit for a sin for Father, but at the time, my younger brain came up with the idea that Despair was an eighth sin, because it made sense. Despair seems to be a common, strong negative force of humanity, similar to the other seven sins, so to me it was just a logical extension, especially since it does have a direct opposite: Hope. 

Despair, in terms of the story, takes the story in a bit of a darker turn, the catalyst on which results in the exploits of Knowledge. Despair, himself, does not inflict personal damage. He doesn't destroy a zord, but what he does do, is leave the Rangers struggling in ways they have never struggled before, and even after he is defeated, the Rangers consider it a phyrric victory thanks to what they were unable to recover.

​From there, we get into the familiar seven sins. The below isn't a power ranking, as a reminder, and is just the order I happened to remember the sins in.

Pride I defined as not being evil, because sometimes, it is good to be proud. Proud of what you are, of what you have done, of your heritage, of your progeny, these things may be prideful but they are all admirable. It then should be no surprise, then, that the opposite of pride I don't consider humility, here. Because pride also leads to aspects such as honor and nobility.

The thing making pride a sin is when pride is given in excess as to blind someone to others, potentially harming them. Thus, the opposite of pride, I defined as Compassion. In that by being compassionate at all times for others, you would keep the pride in check, and be unafraid to take a blow to the pride in order to help those in need.

Wrath was a difficult one for me to justify as not being evil because it's the sin I have the hardest time understanding. Ironically, of the seven sins it is probably the one I feel third-strongest (second only to sloth, with pride as my main sin), in that I have lashed out blindly against the world, but I never really understood why. I knew the feelings of wrath, but not the underlying reasoning of wrath.

Still, I did what I could, and came up with the idea that wrath is a source of strength for humanity when humanity has been in pain. You can think of it as a strong survivalism instinct of sort, to lash out blindly, without purpose, to cope with hardship and hope that by the time the wrath has subsided, the damage dealt has left us in a position where we can continue to survive, hopefully in better positions than we were at the time we became wrathful.

The check for this blind lashing out, then, would be Understanding. Understanding the source of our suffering would allow us to root out the real problem. Attacking aggressively (a trait of wrath) is not necessarily a bad thing! But to do so without aim is reckless-at-best, destructive at worst. By understanding what's wrong and being able to deal with it at the root of the problem allows the emotions to be channeled productively, rather than destructively.

Greed is, as defined by me, more or less a focus on materialism. Materialism is not, in of itself, evil. A want for the material can be quite innocent, with beneficial traits of it including sentimentality. Attachment to objects can lead to feelings of warmth, as well as preservation of history and the creation of stories. In every day-to-day life, materialism also manifests as a want to provide not only for oneself, but also for those that one cares about.

In our world, you can't get by without materials. Most commonly, we think of wealth, of money, but even in a land without it, you need materials in order to survive. Food, shelter, water; all of these are or require materials. And craving these, especially when you are lacking in them, is not something which can ever be evil to me; that's just simple survivalism.

What makes greed be a sin is an excess of this focus on materialism. Where gathering the materials is in excess, and you gather more than you have a need for and make no productive use of the extra. Depriving others of what you didn't need in the first place, simply because you gathered it for whatever reason and don't give it back.

For me, I then defined the opposite of this materialism as Spiritualism. This is not, inherently, religious. And frankly, the dictionary definition for spiritualism sucks. (Good god, is that what people think I meant when I have used the term previously? I've used the term spiritualism a LOT because I am spiritualistic but not religious, and yet...what I mean by that is most decisively NOT what google is telling me when I search for that term.)

Okay so apparently I'm gonna need to go off on a tangent because I'm not sure how to explain this because I can't do it with google. Spiritualism as I see it is a companion opposite to materialism. By that, I mean, they are opposites, but you can and SHOULD have BOTH. Which is why it is what keeps greed in check.

So if materialism can be thought of as a focus on the material world, on the physical reality, then spiritualism is a focus on the immaterial, on the belief that there's more than the sum of the parts. You don't have to believe in an afterlife in order to be spiritual. 

Actually, that's the word I was looking for in order to get google to tell you the meaning I'm going for: 
spir·it·u·al
ˈspiriCH(o͞o)əl/
adjective
adjective: spiritual

1. 1.
   relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.
   "I'm responsible for his spiritual welfare"
   synonyms:nonmaterial, incorporeal, intangible; 
   inner, mental, psychological; 
   transcendent, ethereal, otherworldly, mystic, mystical, metaphysical; 
   rareextramundane
   "your spiritual self"
   antonyms:physical
   • (of a person) not concerned with material values or pursuits.

(Huh, didn't know weebly could do that kind of formatting.)

THAT is what I mean.

So a sense of spiritualism to me is that. To have a sense of more to life than just the material. And having this, I consider an essential counter to greed, because with a sense of spiritualism, you then have purpose for your materials. And when you have no need for the materials, you are more willing to give these materials to those who are in need of them rather than hording them for yourself. Giving to others, because of a sense that spirituality allows for a type of peace.

Lust is a sin which I also don't really understand that well, but for me, the idea of its opposite being chastity was absolutely absurd. Instead, I simply developed the idea that its opposite would be, quite simply, Love. In this case, because Lust as I understand it is a sin because it is lusting after something, namely, pleasures of the flesh.

For me, abstinence would then not be an opposite; it'd just be stupid. The opposite over a crave for something would be a genuine appreciation of that something. Love can then take any form. Of objects, of family, of a platonic friend, of a romantic partner, and even of strangers.

In this case, then, you could say it is absolutely okay to crave after things. Having cravings is not a bad thing; it is entirely human to want, and there is nothing wrong with wanting things, as this want can lead to a great many things, including motivation to drive your life in a positive direction. It is only when this craving becomes harmful that it becomes a problem, and by having genuine love for the thing you are craving, you wouldn't be able to cause that harm because if you did then that wouldn't be genuine love. (More or less, anyway. Probably not the best wording, but I feel like the basic idea comes across.)

Gluttony I more or less define as eating in excess. Obviously, eating is not a sin. We need to eat to survive. Eating a lot is not inherently bad, either. Some of us really need to load on the food. And it is perfectly healthy to eat as much as you want; it is probably unhealthy if you're not, if you're starving yourself.

So what makes eating in excess a sin, then? By letting it accumulate. Eating, but not making anything out of the consumption. So what I defined as the opposite of gluttony, is Drive. A drive to do something, strong, powerful, motivating, allows that consumption to have purpose.

Sloth, then, follows a similar purpose, but here, I define sloth as being inaction. Here, it becomes a sin when it is deliberate inaction, especially deliberate harmful inaction. Where taking action will prevent harm, and by choosing not to, harm is produced.

However, inaction is not itself a bad thing. Inaction leads to gathering of more information, to create a more reasoned opinion, allowing action when taken to be better, be more precise, be more on target. To accomplish the goal, to accomplish what you set out to do, with a greater ease, speed, and success rate.

What works as an opposite to Slothfulness then, is Decisiveness. That being, decisively deciding, "Now is the time to act". Having the ability to know when you need to act...but also when you need to not act. Someone lacking decisiveness, someone indecisive, is likely going to lead to harm by having hesitated, or alternatively, someone lacking decisiveness, someone impulsive, is likely to charge into a problem without a thought, recklessly causing havoc. (You can understand, now, why I consider this my second-greatest sin!)

Last but not least (presumably, anyway; one of the seven sins is 'least' for the purposes of the story, but heck if I know what the order was), we have Envy. Envy is honestly the sin I might have the hardest time defining. For me, I can think of it in the terms of,
"Seeing that someone else has this thing, or has done something, and a drive arising to action from this", more or less. What makes that a sin is when the action taken is destructive, is harmful, is damaging to others. But Envy is not, in of itself, evil, because seeing someone having done great and wishing to act after having done so is not evil.

After all...humans idolize other humans. What do you do when you idolize someone? You generally take direct action motivated by that someone. That's not an inherently bad thing at all! It can be a bad thing, but it can be an immense force for good, driving you to do a many great things.

So what I define as envy's opposite, is Acceptance. Acceptance works as a companion to envy on all levels. It is acknowledgement of what you can, and cannot, achieve, so you don't harm yourself trying to do the impossible. It is acknowledgement of what the differences between you and your object of envy are. It is acknowledgement of what your object of envy wants, it is acknowledgement of...

...Well, all the various circumstances. If you harm someone else out of envy, you're not accepting the circumstances; you're trying to reject them. And that's what makes the difference. Accepting, rather than rejecting, reality...but still using those feelings for productive ends. "I can't do this, I can never be that...but this is what I CAN do, that is what I CAN be", is where I am going with what I mean.

So those are the sins I developed for the story, and their accompanying themes. Each time the Rangers would clash with the generals, one of these themes would come up, in either subtle or overt ways. And over time, the narrative would be woven.

One sin, I don't remember which, was far more sympathetic; this sin ends up destroyed at the half-way point in the series.

For the curious, eventually, there would be two other Rangers joining, for 13 total.
The 12th Ranger is Heart; the 13th Ranger is Void.

​However, yesterday, I did something I was never able to do as a child:
I knew the elements of the 13 Rangers as a kid.
​But I never knew what their zords were, what their teams were (that being, the distribution of the initial ten Rangers), or even what their colors were.

I did all three yesterday.

ONE OF THE TEAMS:
Fire, the Red Ranger, would have a Dragon as his zord, and would be the leader of one team.
Earth, the Orange Ranger, I wasn't quite sure what the zord would be but I came up with Badger.
Metal, the Silver Ranger, would have a Dog zord.
Darkness, the Purple Ranger, is another one I wasn't certain of but I came up with Rat for the zord.
Water, the Blue Ranger, was an easy choice for zords, with a Shark. (Yes, I know, it's been done before, but so have most animals in terms of zords. Admit it, you know it's true.)

In the megazord, the dragon would be the body; shark, one arm; rat, one or both of the legs; wasn't sure beyond that.

THE OTHER TEAM:
Ice, the White Ranger, would have a Bear as his zord, and would be the leader of the other team.
Air, I had trouble coming up with a color but decided Pale Ranger would work. As far as zords, didn't get a specific animal but it'd be some form of Bird. (All three megazords I envisioned as having wings on their backs. Membranes for the dragon, feathers for the bird, and then a third type of wing below.)
Rock, the Brown Ranger, would have a Snake as a zord. (Yes, this is basically Onyx.)
Light, the Yellow Ranger, I had trouble with but settled on Elephant. (Mostly for the purposes of shaping the megazord.)
Energy, the Cyan Ranger, I came up with a Jellyfish zord. (I know, a creature of the sea. But literally all the animals I can think of as having a 'sting' that aren't fang/tail-based are aquatic animals. What would you use if not a stingray, electric eel, or jellyfish? Spiders/scorpions/snakes weren't viable because that's an entirely different type of sting, and NOT the type I was going for. Also see below.)

​In the megazord, the bear would be the body; the bird would be the wings; the snake would be one arm; the jellyfish, the other arm; the elephant, the legs and maybe also a shield/weapon.

Nature, the Green Ranger, would be the 11th Ranger, joining some time in the earlier half of the series relatively early-on. His zord would be a Dragonfly.

Heart, the Pink Ranger, would be either the 12th or 13th Ranger, depending on whether she joins before or after the mid-way point in the series. (I don't remember.) Regardless, her zord is a Cat.

Void, the Black Ranger, would be either the 13th or 12th Ranger, depending on when Heart joins. However, his join point is fixed; he joins immediately after the half-way point in the series. (It's not really much of a leap of logic to conclude this; yes, the sympathetic sin destroyed plays a part in the creation of the Void Ranger. But it's not in the way you would expect...)

I should mention:
A key individual, not a Ranger, but a vital cast member, is their out-of-battle leader. This guy, a young billionaire at the head of a massive corporation, was the sole survivor of the group that unearthed the Evil; he was responsible for accidentally breaking the seal. This is also a fundamental part of the backstory from the very beginning; he was always designed to function as a bit of a Big Good.

He is the one who brings the Rangers from their positions across the globe and gets them to work together as a team; he is the one who bankrolls the entire operation, and more or less is responsible for founding an entire corporation dedicated purely to the purpose of defeating the Evil he unleashed. It was remembering him that made me do all of this work, because of the similarities between him and the elderly gentleman I dreamed of.

But today, I gave him a first name which I hadn't done before. None of my characters had any names. But I gave him the first name of Adam.

Other stuff I did yesterday:
Adam's organization would equip all the Rangers with stun pistols--incapable of destroying Evil, but capable of momentarily stopping it. Similarly, each Ranger would have special daggers, which can wound beings of Evil, but not destroy them.

Each Ranger would have their own unique weapon, though. I did in fact come up with 13.
Sword
Axe
Mace
Staff
Spear
Bow
Crossbow
Rifle
Scythe
Claws
Disc
Whip
Armor (think, big boxing gloves, and an equivalent for the foot to allow for Kamen Rideresque kicks)

Obviously, Power Rangers being merchandise-driven, each Ranger would develop 2-3 additional weapons or so, and all Rangers may receive the Armor (with the original holder of the Armor simply getting superior armor, upgrading the existing armor to be MUCH better) because that's an excuse to make at least 13 new toys, but AT LEAST TO START WITH, each Ranger would have one of these weapons.

No, I didn't assign specific Rangers specific weapons; I can kinda sorta give some decent ideas for which Rangers would be candidates for which weapons based both on their element and animal (as both can contribute), but I don't see any weapons which scream one particular Ranger. (Other than Fire having the Sword, out of tradition because obviously a/the leader has the sword.)

One final thing I did yesterday: develop a Quirky Miniboss Squad.
Specifically, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. These four would be subordinates to the generals, always helping out but being comically inept. You know the type. Every Power Rangers squad had these villains, the villains who don't often fight the heroes if they fight the heroes at all, mostly work in the background, have scenes with the major villains, might have some character development, but are ultimately mostly harmless and sidekicks to the REAL threats.

That's all I made.

There's more to the story, more details I created originally that I'm not going into now (I only really described the details necessary for you to know what's new), but you get the idea of what I worked on.

And why it was way too ambitious for a ten-year-old.

So I stayed up late last night--nothing wrong with that.
I didn't set an alarm--nothing wrong with that.
I actually woke up at a reasonable hour, too--about 1ish. Now, mind you, that meant I only got about five or so hours of sleep, but I more or less went, "Uhg, it's not as much sleep as I want, but I'll just gather my thoughts for five or so minutes, get up, and prepare for the day, including the staff meeting."

...I woke up at 4:30.

You know.

Typically the time I'm already 15 minutes into having prepared to leave for said staff meeting.
And I needed to eat breakfast, and I'm typing this up, and I needed to search for confirmation of the staff meeting (found none, texted boss, and to my dismay, they told me the posted schedule was accurate; in spite of not having sent out any form of notification like they normally do, the schedule said we'd meet tonight so we're meeting tonight), and now I need to actually rush through the preparation for said staff meeting (I had planned to properly shave all my body hair and thoroughly comb my hair including removing a persistent knot in my hair which has been there for weeks and not even my special brush can remove; NOPE NOT HAPPENING) and leave.

Oh, and things other than a staff meeting?

For TODAY?

Pfft.
Yeah those aren't gonna happen.

GOODBYE LIFE.
​IT WAS NICE KNOWING YOU.

That is, when I call myself trash. Often, I am. Often, I can be excused temporarily from a task, so long as I actually follow through on it. Have that happen, no harm done. Not trashy of me, just real life ensuing.

What makes me trash is when I am excused temporarily from a task, promise to do it, and then break that promise, making another promise which could just as easily end up breaking. And doing this with multiple promises at once, such that when I choose to fulfill one, I am breaking another because I only had the time to fulfill one.

That is pretty much an accurate summation of what's happening right now, and if not trash, what would you call a person who did that? To some extent, it can be justified. Yesterday, work left me physically, mentally, and emotionally drained--and then after that, on top of it all, I had other things to do once home. (Among them, desperately-needed girlfriend time, which while eating up time, is one of the only ways to recharge me emotionally because sometimes I just need to have that interaction in order to not feel dead inside.)

It turned out to be worse than I thought; I was actually coughing (albeit very subtly) by the time I would be going to bed. Because I was pushed past my physical breaking point. Meaning, while I wanted to fulfill some unfulfilled obligations which I had promised to do...

...I couldn't. I just couldn't. Not with how I was. It'd have been utterly impossible for me to do.

...So I was planning to do it today.

Except most of today was spent sleeping (see also, needing to recover), and once I was awake, I was informed of something that was 50% me not remembering, 50% me having no way of knowing in advance. Those two might seem like they contradict, but they don't. What happened is, we knew our parents might be gone overnight. (And when our parents are gone overnight, on Saturdays, my brother comes over for an anime night.)

Until today, I had no way of knowing that in advance. I could have still planned for it in advance, though, simply by remembering it; I was in fact the one to bring up the subject on Thursday before even my sister did so I was literally the one who basically was indirectly planning for it, and yet I didn't remember this a day later on Friday.

And now it's basically midnight, with me working my same Sunday shift early Sunday morning. With a chance of family night tomorrow (though I don't think so).

At least one promise I made for Friday was a result of an earlier broken promise, too, so I am breaking a promise that was breaking a promise.

I am pretty much. Becoming the worst of the worst kind of failures. The one who has so much potential to succeed and you can see it and you see the promise of success, only to see it dashed, but you maintain hope...only for it to be dashed, but you keep on waiting, because you have belief in them...which keeps getting shattered, over and over again, until eventually you give up on them and accept that they failed to deliver.

There's no more painful way to fail than that.
Yet that's what I'm doing.
​Which is, pretty much. Trash.

Did it help?

Not one lick!

Still sick.

Sore throat, and worse, the gunk in the back of the throat makes the sore throat worse.

I did have some good though. My sister made oatmeal for me; as far as breakfasts for sore throats go, that has to top the list of good ones. I took a reasonably long, warm bath, which was quite soothing and by my understanding does help quite a bit. And in said bath, I was struck with some inspiration.

For Dawn of Order, I was thinking that each Order (Order of Harmony, Order of Magic, Order of Religion, Order of Technology) would have a unique tower you could build, with said towers being some of the best towers in the game.

The Order of Harmony can build the Death Ray, beams of pure sun energy causing continuous rapid-fire damage to a single target. This is similar to the flame tower which all races can build regardless of Order/Divide choices, but has a much further range. These beams deal a lot of damage continuously; we're talking can-kill-an-angel-in-five-seconds damage. Also, these beams don't have a melee/range/magic classification and thus can't be resisted.

The Order of Magic can build Mage Towers, which amplify the effects of spells cast within the range of the tower and extend the range of spells which have ranges. Whenever the tower is attacked, the tower unleashes a magical blast hitting every enemy unit nearby. This makes it unique in that it is a tower with no ability to protect by default, only to defend itself from being destroyed...

...However, if gold is deposited in the tower, magical energies can consume the gold deposited over time to extend this effect into offense, allowing it to unleash the magical blast to hit every enemy unit within range even if the tower isn't attacked. This is arguably the strongest tower, but because to use this ability you need to continuously funnel gold into the tower, it is also the only tower with an upkeep and thus longterm the most expensive tower.

The Order of Religion can build the Tesla Tower, shooting divine bolts which can pierce through and chain to a series of enemy units (in fact it has no maximum number of units it can chain lightning to), dealing damage to all of them. Said damage is, similar to the Death Ray, not classified as melee/range/magic.

The Order of Technology can actually build two towers. The Gatling Turret is a rapid-fire turret capable of targeting up to four enemies at once and shooting bursts of many ranged attacks to the targets. The Rail Tower shoots a single, super-high-damage attack to a single target (an attack which is not melee/range/magic), but has a fairly high cooldown.

These towers have some fairly obvious explanations. The Order of Harmony uses the power of nature--all of nature, including the power of the cosmos, in this case, the sun, to shoot death to enemies at a long distance.

The Order of Magic builds Mage Towers, which are unmanned stations that mages can channel their energy through.

The Order of Religion once had a genius theologian, Reverend Tesla, who pioneered understanding of the divine, both harvesting the power of the gods for enrichment and for retribution; the Tesla Tower is thus an unmanned station which allows for divine protection through deliverance of the heavens: lightning bolts.

The Order of Technology pioneers technology, so they are at the forefront of weapons development; it thus makes sense for them to have two towers, and for one to focus on enhancing guns to their maximum potential and the other one to be a really, really, super-advanced gun.

The player can build numerous other towers, of course. Flame tower, guard tower, bolt tower, cannon tower, blast tower (crowd control, essentially). But the five towers from the four orders are meant to each on their own be tremendously strong. For instance, the Rail Tower can one-shot an Angel. However, don't expect a bunch of these towers together to do any good--their AI can cause every tower to target the same enemy, and thus waste a bunch of damage potential.

Or when you want them to target the same enemy, they can all target a different enemy, and thus kill said enemy at a much slower speed than preferred. Balanced defenses integrate the tower of the Order you selected IN ADDITION to the normal towers, to allow for protection against any kind of assault.

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.

...Since my creative whims are being interrupted by having listened to music in order to drown my dad out. However, that having been said, I still have three very valid things to ramble on. Let's start with the most recent. A couple of days ago, on Thursday, I had a series of dreams, one after another, which were all amazing and awesome dreams filled with adventure. Mostly after I'd waken up, as part of my powernapping.

There was one which stood out above the rest.

It didn't take me very long to dub the story idea...
Phyrra and Cyrus.

Phyrra and Cyrus Thaumason (yes, that is Thompson, and yes it is just about as common a surname for the setting--it's not exactly 'Smith', and while it's not a top-ten surname, it IS a top-15 surname; incredibly common and unremarkable) are prodigal twin siblings. They are considered to be incredibly talented for their age--at 11 years old, both are already accomplished adventurers.

Phyrra is a bit of a Genki girl--she is energetic, enthusiastic, radiates an aura of brightness and happiness, is sweet, naive, and innocent. Additionally, she is incredibly polite, and fairly formal. However, she is also reckless, hotheaded, and a blood knight who loves the thrill of combat. Her specialty is bladed weapons, especially swords. She has blue hair, which is let down. She is also bisexual. (Well, at her age, more like biromantic, butstill.)

Cyrus is everything Phyrra isn't. He is calm, cool, and collected: a thinker, cautious by nature, who prefers to avoid combat when at all possible. He'll use any method to avoid conflict, be it running away or preferably negotiation. However, if a fight is inevitable, his fighting method is to be decisive--whereas Phyrra likes to have fun fighting and thus doesn't think much about winning, Cyrus when he plans a fight plans how to end it as swiftly and effortlessly as possible. He is blunt, unapologetic, rude, cynical, and a bit of a jerk, but he really knows how to use anything.

This is why his preferred weaponry is environmental weaponry. For instance, if surrounded by rocks, using a sling would be a good option; when in a forest, wooden weapons such as a spear would be ideal. When he has to default to a weapon, his choice is the universal staff, a tool versatile, yet pragmatic, and easily carried. He has protagonist-styled spiked red hair. He is demisexual. (Well, at his age, more like demiromantic, butstill.)

The duo sought after the usual things. Fame, fortune, but mostly...respect. A secondary caveat to this was them wanting to be treated as any other person would be, not discriminated against as being children. A tertiary aspect of this was them being self-aware enough that they aren't yet adults, and being frustrated that, yes, their minds still do operate as those of children, albeit incredibly gifted, mature, prodigal children. Though they have the experience and talent of adults, they know all too well their thoughts and critically emotions are those of kids, still.

In the adventure which kicks off the story, the Thaumason Siblings set out after a legendary book, the Book of Endlessness, said to be able to grant the reader(s) limitless abilities, among them age manipulation. Their idea: find the book, and use it to wish to be adults, such that they could so to speak "skip ahead". They were, of course, aware of the risks in doing so, but deemed it worth it because what would be lost from that wouldn't be something they'd miss, as far as they were concerned.

They didn't even think the book was real or if it was what it'd be able to do, but they found a fairly reliable rumor of where it would be if it were, and decided they'd try. 

By the way, this was envisioned as an anime. Western Animation would work, but it'd have to be one of those two. It doesn't really work as any other media. Not live action, not even manga that well (though it'd maybe be possible? I just think the magic would be lost without it as an animation).

So keep that in mind.

The first episode opens up with them entering the dungeon and more or less showing off their base abilities and natural personalities as they progress, filled with the special siblings banter only siblings can manage. (Seriously, I don't know how to explain sibling banter to someone who has none. It's just...something people with siblings kinda get and know and understand. They see sibling banter in fiction and they can often tell if the writer has siblings, sort of thing, in that if you know it you know what's real and what's forced.)

Eventually, they find the book, and begin to read it.

So the full effect of the book is that it unlocks the full magical potential of the reader, who takes on possession of the book as being its "owner". Magic exists in this setting, and it's the type that anyone can learn...but learning it takes years of study, such that the youngest magic users are in their 30s if they started when they were children. It is a dedicated, life-long study, akin to getting a doctorate in a field. You spend basically half your life to learn the beginnings of it, and you still even after learning it are no master.

Understandably, this makes magic users uncommon. And this isn't something where you can be a prodigy and learn it at a disproportional rate. There are magical prodigies who can use it in their 20s, but that's the prodigal level. It is the level of a genius, who not only is a genius, but also has essentially a "sixth sense" for muscle memory to learn the magic, or even eidic muscle memory for the process.

...By which. I mean. Magic is something that the entire body uses. It is something which is physically exerting, because it is using "muscles" of sorts which you have to be trained in how to use. I can say it is effectively equivalent to having a person who has used nothing but their hands their entire life, trying to learn how to use legs they've never used. They might see people walk and get the theory, they might know how it is done, but if they try to stand up, they're going to fall.

This is why even prodigies take into their 20s to get it, and most magic users are in their 30s, and magic is a bit of a rarity. Because it is not something you learn to use overnight...and even if you did. That's just for using the magic at all. You still need to, once you have learned HOW to use magic...learn individual spells. Magic isn't a do-anything power. Now, granted. Spells are near-infinite in number and have many different variants. But knowing how to use magic doesn't mean you can use magic because you also need to learn how to use specific spells.

Learning spells? That you can be a prodigy at, by studying hard and grasping them quickly and rapidly. But to learn a spell, first you must learn magic. It's impossible for people to learn a spell without first learning how to use magic, because without knowing how to use magic, the spell is just words on a page with pictures; they have no frame of reference for what it feels like, basically.

Now, granted. There are workarounds. Some people are magic-users-lite, who have unlocked partial magic casting, which they use for a very limited select set of spells applicable for the bits of magic they are using. This still takes years of training, doable in your teenaged years if a prodigy or in your 20s if you're more average. You can think of this as instead of using two arms, of using one hand (fraction of one arm which is half of two). 

However, even including those, magic's still not too terribly common. It's a thing, which exists, but which people still don't make wide usage of. The rules governing it are seen as an extension of physics--in a world which has always had magic, after all, the rules governing the universe are such that from a scientific point of view people don't differentiate between magic and not-magic. So it is considered a science, well-documented, well-recorded. People understand what it can, and can't, do.

So back to the book. The book? Basically, it instantly allows the owner to become a mage, regardless of how little they had trained their magic before. It does not grant them the knowledge on how to use said magic...but within the pages of the book are the recordings of basically every possible spell that the unlocked magic can use. (And this being limitless potential...that's basically every spell.) With the caveat...it will only show pages the owner is actually in the now capable of casting. 

...Sounds awesome, right?

...Well, the problem is...the book has a self-defense mechanism, and it's not just an easily-bypassed dungeon. In fact, it has more than one, but all of them work on the same principle. The book of endlessness has a defense mechanism which works as a double-reversal, on the principle of "being finite". Normally, when reading the book, the owner will start to find themselves aging rapidly, their time disappearing from being endless to being finite.

If that fails, the walls enclosing the space rapidly progress inward--the endless space becoming finite.

...However. The book's reversal mechanism doesn't quite take into account if two people simultaneously read it to both become the owner. Or rather...it does...and it does the only thing it can: use the reversal in...a very, very different method.

...And it is by this method that the entire rest of the story is set up, because that reversal? A reversal of spirit between the owners. Or in other words. A body swap. Phyrra gets stuck in Cyrus's body; Cyrus gets stuck in Phyrra's body. And it gets worse; they are, for the entire duration of this, now stuck permanently at eleven, never aging. (The opposite, reverse, of what they wanted.)

Yes the series would have plenty of shenanigans where Phyrra (in Cyrus's body) would need to try to pretend to be Cyrus, and vice-versa. And at times, awkwardly enough, the reverse (the two are actually in their correct bodies...but with people who only know Phyrra in Cyrus's body as Phyrra and vice-versa, them needing to try and pretend ANYWAY). You know the like. (So gender stuff would be featured a fair amount.)

...Oh, and the walls start to close in on them anyway.

Fortunately, the book is intricately linked to four other books: the book of wind, the book of earth, the book of fire, and the book of water.

Phyrra, in Cyrus's body, rushes over to the book of wind, activating it. Each book has a defense mechanism of summoning a Guardian. The Guardian's duty is to kill the owner of the book, or failing that, to serve them until such a time as the owner no longer owns the book.

Gora, a rock monster (his design is from a combination of sources, among them being that one rock monster that Kurama faced early on in YuYuHakusho), the Wind Guardian, comes forward...and gets introduced to Phyrra. Guardians, as creatures belonging to the spirit realm, can see beings in their true spiritual form, so has a unique form of double-vision where he can see the body of Cyrus but he can also see that it is actually Phyrra. Phyrra wins him over with her sheepish grin and polite manners.

...It also helps that he is not immune to being crushed in spite of being made of rock, so he starts to panic when he noticed and swiftly teaches Phyrra the 'wings of levitation' spell, which "shuts off traps", and the enclosing walls qualify, thus saving their lives.

Gora notes that they're just children, and can't find himself to do anything other than help them.

...And thus, the story begins, concluding the first episode.

This trio lasts for quite a large amount of time before other members of the Thaukama (Thaumpson + Nakama, it's the best I could come up with for their group name) join. In APPROXIMATE order:

Kaze, the Earth Guardian, is summoned when Gora is badly injured in a way the kids need the aid of the earth book in order to fix, a task that Cyrus (in Phyrra's body) undertakes. Kaze is a homicidal maniac. (His design is directly lifted from Kazekirimaru in Bleach's Zanpaktou Rebellion filler arc.) He is a killing machine who excels at slicing opponents to shreds, and unlike Gora, he is not so easily dissuaded from murdering his book's owner because of him being a child.

Phyrra does combat with him using her wind magic augmenting her blades, a fight which she does respectably well in and Kaze acknowledges her talent, yet notes that no matter her potential and no matter how prodigal she may be she is still inexperienced in the ways of the wind which he has had eons to master, so she is at a disadvantage.

After healing Gora and watching the fight for long enough, Cyrus challenges Kaze, noting that he is to be Kaze's owner, not Phyrra, and that if he is to be worthy of that, then he should be the one who earns Kaze's respect. In spite of using the element which has a disadvantage (the reason Guardians are the opposite element to the book they are guarding is twofold--to kill any would-be expert of the element, and to provide coverage to the expert of the element should they decide to subjugate themselves), Cyrus does in fact manage to prove himself.

Ace, age 16, the first non-Guardian member of the Thaukama, is an expert marksman. Give him any ranged weapon, and he can hit almost any target. He specializes in pistols, but using muskets is still viable. He is a highly competent archer even though he doesn't like to use bows, and he can make do with a crossbow even though he thinks them cumbersome. He can hit with a sling, and can throw darts and the like fairly well.

However, perhaps his most valuable asset is not his combat skills, but rather, the fact that unlike Phyrra and Cyrus, he is trained to survive out in the wild for long durations of time. He knows advanced first aid techniques, such that he is an expert medic, and is a survival expert, knowing what's edible, what's not, what's poisonous, what's not, how to prepare foods which would normally be toxic such that they are edible, where to find things, how to prepare against environmental hazards, and the like.

I haven't given him a last name yet, though he does have a loose appearance. Brown hair, fairly shaggy, wears a cowboy hat, has a trenchcoat, combat pants, and for shoes maybe combat boots. I want an aesthetic which is, overall, something that would say 'pragmatic in most environments'. (I mean obviously he'd need a different getup in a colder environment, but I want something which works reasonably well in the forest, jungle, desert, sea, and the like, while still offering high combat readiness.)

There would be other human members of the Thaukama join before this, but I haven't fleshed them out in much detail.

Myra, Fire Guardian, a Siren (with a Mermaid form and Sea Serpent form), is summoned by Cyrus (in Phyrra's body) when the siblings are entering into an area they anticipate fire magic being useful for. She is equally as lethal as Kaze, loving to eat or drown to death anyone. (None of the Guardians are pleasant individuals; the siblings having 'tamed' them is noted as being an incredibly unusual occurrence because the Guardians are explicitly MONSTERS.)

However, because she is a Siren, immensely beautiful and alluring, Cyrus is basically smitten, addressing her as...
...Mom.

Myra is taken aback, and briefly insulted by the term of endearment, because it'd imply she is seen as an older individual whereas she loves the thought of being seen for her beauty and charm.

Phyrra explains to her, also addressing her formally as Lady Myra, that while she might be looking upon children, her charms are not lost on the children. Cyrus's reaction is as it is because he sees her as absolutely gorgeous, and everything he imagined his mother would look like. Phyrra puts on her own charm so to speak and says that Myra is basically everything she'd hope to be when older, and explains that if they ended up aging in spite of Cyrus being in that body, that Cyrus wouldn't complain too terribly much about turning out that way, either, more or less.

This flattery and sweetness and all-around awe at her flusters Myra quite a bit, and while she is quite adamant she is not their mother, inevitably, she does end up being the Team Mom anyway.

At some later point, the Thaukama get stranded on an island--to get off, they need to make use of the wind and water books in tandem, so Phyrra ends up summoning...
Hera, the Water Guardian, a Phoenix/Dragon who has many of the typical traits of the latter. She loves to hoard money, she loves to eat people, she loves burning things to ashes, and demanding tribute in the form of pretty maidens (that she explicitly-as-can-be-while-still-having-it-as-implied has sex with, so yes she is a lesbian but yes she is also a rapist), but in spite of all these unpleasantries (I repeat. The Guardians are not nice people. They are MONSTERS. They enjoy killing things among other atrocities), she does have a rule--
She will give her blessing to anything which survives the fire. "Reborn through fire" is in fact still part of her design, coming from the phoenix half, and through the ashes of her flame, she will give prosperity to the individuals whom she deems worthy of continued life.

Phyrra willingly undergoes this trial, passing, and earning the fourth and final guardian as a companion.

There would be at least one more human member of the Thaukama to join after this point, a girl about the same age as the Thaumason siblings, but I haven't named her or put much design into her character. (Her presence is more plot-related.)

This took me more or less...like.
Ten minutes to think up.
Literally all that happened in the course of a powernap.

I'm not sure how many episodes there'd be. Quite a number, though. At least 24/26 (depending on whether a season would be 12 or 13), possibly double that (if you count 12/13 as the half-season and 24/26 as a complete season). I don't think it'd run longer than that, though. (In fact, 48 already seems like it might be pushing things.)

The setting is such that I could write an endless amount of material for it, and the series epilogue (I know exactly how things go from the confrontation with the final Big Bad onwards) leaves things rather open-ended both after, during, and before said epilogue in that there is the possibility of writing FAR more material than documented.

But I know what kind of material I have, what kind of material I want, what kind of story I want to tell, and about how long that story would be, and that's not as long as you'd think it'd be. I wish I could make it, but this is miles beyond my league. I don't have the ability to start to finish map out the story, yet alone, line for line the dialog happening such that every single moment is mapped out.

Even if I did have that scriptwriting skill, I don't have the art skills necessary to draw the scenes I know I'd need to.
Even if I did, I don't have the animation skills necessary to make said scenes come to life.
Even if I did, I don't have the audio editing skills (there's names for that but I'm too lazy to bother looking them up) to basically work with the sound.
Even if I did, I would need voice actors for these roles, able to consistently deliver the wide array of things I'd need them to (there is one point which requires an incredibly professional level of performance in order to nail the moment I have in mind and it WOULD be screwed up with sub-par voice acting)...and this is something I can't exactly do myself.

So I would need those voice actors, something I can't get around no matter my ability to get around those other limitations.
And they would need to be high-quality.
And they would need to be able to deliver on a schedule more or less.
...I mean.

...Those services exist.

...But they sure don't exist for free.

You quite literally get what you paid for.
So if you pay nothing, then you find almost no voice actors. The few who bite are likely low-quality, and are going to be working under their own time constraints rather than yours because they are effectively volunteering.

So EVEN IF ALL OTHER FACTORS WERE ACCOUNTED FOR.
I couldn't do this on my own.
...And all other factors aren't accounted for.
I do need the audio editing skills; this is not something I have the software for, nor the training, and I have little in the ability to learn these things and if I did I wouldn't learn them well enough to make use of them to the level they'd need to be at. The only way I get what I want is with someone who's an expert, which means again hiring someone. More money aside from the voice actors.

I do need the animation skills; this is not something I can do. Yadda yadda, more rambling, end result: hiring someone. More money. Oh and as an aside...said person would need the ability to not only closely work with me, but also the audio guy. (Who would need to work well with both the animation guy and the voice actors since the audio guy would know what was needed there.)

Just animating isn't good enough; to animate something, first I need to show what needs to be animated. This is done through a combination of scripts and art. I need help on both because I cannot master both.

I can write the overall narrative.
I can flesh out moments.
But I can't on my own make the script. I'd need writers to help me. I'd outline some things, they'd outline others, collaborating until I got a narrative and product that I was satisfied with. All the while working with artists who'd draw these images to give character reference art and scene reference art.

More money.
More collaboration, even.

...You can see where this is headed.

It's not possible for me to make, because for me to make it I'd require a fully staffed animation studio. Proper hardware, proper software, proper staffing, properly paid.

It's literally one of the best ideas I've ever had, up there with the villain song setting (which I envisioned more as a film or maybe miniseries) in how good it'd be...and yet.

It'll never come to be.

​Ah well.

I'm gonna take a break; when I return, I might ramble about the other things I need to, the perfect RPG stuff and the webcomic idea (which I actually could make because I have the skills necessary, I just never will because 98% of my ideas are never going to see the light of reality thanks to how much time/effort the 2% which do take).