I could've made a blog entry yesterday night--that's my fault; I forgot. So no blog Monday, totally my fault.
No blog on Sunday, Saturday, or Friday?
Not so much.
There was a three-day period without internet. Three solid days.
Still recovering today.
I did have a new story idea come to me. Basically a shonen manga. The protagonist is a pre-transition in the closet transwoman who dies--as she is, very clearly, unhappy with this and dissatisfied, feeling unfulfilled in her life with a bunch of unfinished business due to not having gotten to live her life as her, she ends up in a lesser circle of Hell.
Hell, in this setting, is basically made up of a combination of those who did great atrocities causing endless suffering and are unrepentant about it, and those who cannot find happiness in death even if they have the ability to move on.
If they cannot be at peace with their demise, especially if they have negative feelings, Hell it is for them. If they ever get to be at peace, they can move on, but for as long as they cannot accept their death, for as long as they cannot resolve their issues, they are stuck in Hell.
In this sense, Hell is a little like a jail in that theoretically, anyone within can move on. If someone who has caused great harm genuinely sees the error of their ways, recognizes the pain they inflicted, is remorseful of it, then they have the chance to move on (tho they may be stuck in Hell if they're unable to find a way to get redemption).
If someone who hasn't caused great harm, but hasn't accepted their death, finds a way to accept it, they can move on.
Hell is overseen by the ultimate exemplifiers of both of these traits: demons, who're technically fallen angels; they were never human, but they did great atrocities (it's how they became fallen after all) and cannot be at peace with their situation. There's multiple types of demons, all of them immensely powerful in Hell.
Theoretically, tho, even a low-rank angel can not only go toe-to-toe with the strongest of demons (demons retain a lot of angelic power, but lost a lot of it in their fall), and yes, outrank them. Angels mostly stay out of Hell to not interfere with the process of Hell to reform individuals, but can intervene if they feel their presence is necessary for a soul that's close to moving on.
Hell, in this setting, works a lot like Earth. (Even with Earth technology!) You can't truly die, but all pain you experience is amplified. If you don't eat, you become really hungry and will eventually collapse from fatigue, and even pass out (which is not pleasant, see below). If you don't drink, you become parched with thirst and will eventually collapse from dehydration, and even pass out (which is not pleasant, see below).
If you don't sleep (you need to sleep), you become fatigued, experiencing incredibly amplified duress during this time, and eventually, your efforts to avoid sleep will fail, and you'll collapse, passing out, from exhaustion eventually.
And sleep? During the time you sleep, you don't dream. You relive aspects of your life, including seeing the feelings and thoughts of others, up to and including personally feeling your death, amplified, many times over, repeated multiple times. "Life flashing before your eyes", only much much worse.
Fatigued-induced sleep makes it much much worse. You relive it not only with even more sensations, but for a much much much longer period of time.
If you suffer a would-be fatal injury, you not only experience the full pain of your original death but of the new death, and stay that way until your wound heals.
While the unrepentant monsters are mostly kept in a different, deeper, section of Hell, by and large, the entirety of Hell is left to run amok as people see fit. Meaning that you've got to fend for yourself. You can form bonds with others, friendships, even create societies, but you can constantly be attacked by people who're warlords commanding literal armies of the Damned.
In that world where you're up against literally billions (not quite trillions; not everyone goes to Hell and quite a lot who did move on) of humans, and even against quite-often-malicious demons, you're basically subject to their whims. You follow their rules or suffer for your disobedience.
Hell does have things like landmarks, a map, and such, but due to being infinite and, largely, the same weather (there's frozen areas for frozen hells and water areas for damp hells but it's mostly fire and brimstone of various kinds), it's a pretty bleak place occupied by pretty bleak individuals that're largely hard to befriend owing to them all having various issues of their own.
And the protagonist finds herself in Hell, struggling.
But it's discovered that she has a fairly rare power for a human; the power to manifest her soul's will, and the willpower to control it. (Both are, individually, rare, but having both is even rarer.) On the one hand, this gives her magical powers that you'd expect in any shonen series, making her able to fend for herself, be able to stand up against anyone except others with this power and Demons who have a similar, but inherently innately stronger, version of the power. Meaning she, unlike most denizens of Hell, won't be repressed by the rules of those around her.
On the other hand: the power to manifest her soul's will with the willpower to control it makes her an actual threat: if she can escape to the real world, she has the strength to partially manifest on Earth. She can't come back from the dead, but she could disrupt the world as what amounts to a ghost akin to a poltergeist, a fairly big threat.
After gaining control over this power and learning of what it can give her, she becomes what's known as a "Third-Generation Succubus". First-generation Succubii are a specific type of Demon. Second-generation Succubii are descendants of those Demons (Demons' ability to procreate is limited, but not nonexistent altogether, and children of Demons are fully fertile with absolutely no restrictions), and have the same traits, just with less bounding to Hell.
Third-Generation Succubii are purely just humans. Humans, nothing demonic/angelic about them, that just so happen to have a specific type of powersets that represent nearly-identical powers to their demonic namesakes. (Inherently weaker than their Second/First-Generation counterparts tho.)
Those powers include shapeshifting, accelerated healing that lacks pain (getting hurt still hurts, but healing is done with less pain), enhanced charm (manifests as a passive influence on the emotions of others but also increases self-confidence and allows for easier smooth-talking, essentially granting the user a silver tongue), enhanced strength/speed/endurance/stamina, increased empathy (manifests as pseudo-telepathy, in being able to sense the feelings of others nearby and increased analytical abilities to guess at what this means), and pure energy manifestations of handheld objects:
Swords, bows, guns, shields, knives, etc.
Oh, and also: they have incredible lust and instantly heal from having consensual sex, and are vastly powered up from having had it, and the more often they have consensual sex, the stronger they become.
And thus her journey as a protagonist begins, where she fights and makes friends.