True, and I had been considering doing something to her to keep her out of the game, death works too. -------------- On the BTVS stuff. My mind, it is a rolling. I'm gonna put together some ideas and post em' up later. I think I can work them in, in such a way that it's actually good for the story.
Hmmm...... going with that idea I get what you are saying Goblin. Not truly the Council from BtVS but an expy set up to try and form cooperation with the remaining "Old Families" of Magic Users who did not go down with the MA. They might band together out of desperation once the MA falls in order to prevent people from viewing them as the same as the MA. Supporting the Alliance would go a long ways to getting people off their backs. With Usagi I don't think we should kill her. That would cause all kinds of ripples, especially with Chibi Usa. Putting her into a coma because a lucky MA Enforcer hit her from behind while she was fighting might work. Going with what we have come up with to limit the Senshi's power's she might have been pushing herself to the brink and this attack hit her before she could release the energies for the attack. This seriously wounds her, she is not crippled, but taken out of the picture on the battlefield for awhile. This could work with the old idea of her being the public "face" of the Alliance as she still wants to help out even if she can't fight. Eventually she will heal, but since it was her own powers running wild it will take years before her body reaches the point she can safely use her full power, much less the Silver Crystal.
I had the distince impression that Persona is only in there because most of Act I is written around gamlain's fic and not the other way around. Yes, you've claimed the same "privilege but not responsiblity" before and it was as laughable as it is now. It stopped mattering in your opinion only. I'm impressed. I think that was the first time you've actually looked at my replies for anything but yelling fodder. I do tend to try to be constructive every time, just nobody acts on it. Browbeating you guys with "Start documenting and coordinating via wiki" is something of value, even if nobody does it. In the past, I was one of the few guys who tried to form a coherent timeline, include lists of series. I even made a fucking map of Act I in an effort to wade through the series bloat. What did your predecessors do with it? Drone it out with AWESOME. Pardon me for not being willing to give you more than snarking pointers. Aye, that is a problem. Enabling childish temper tantrums is not an appropriate response to prevent further childish temper tantrums. Wait a second. This is a serious question without snark and it is a tremendously important one. The Mages Association was brought in as an antagonist faction of Prism Illya. Three or four of us developed their BFP counterparts into a sort-of Harry Potter-like organisation with originally benevolent intentions but centuries of institutional inertia, which we thought fit the setting more (they were not considered to be full-arc antagonists then). What exactly is the Mages Association you describe? It's not the one we made up, obviously. Is it the one from Prism Illya? Or is it the one from the whole Nasuverse? Wasn't that supposed to happen at the end of Arc I? Why is nobody writing that down somewhere? Way I figure it, Usagi gets magically snipered after reviving/cleansing some magical girls just post-Paradox war. By now, the MA (or just the one super-ninja-wizard guy) realizes that they're facing an endlessly resurrecting horde of magical girls unless they can take the resurrectee out. Killing her would apparently take more mojo, so most of their other targets get their shields up in time (or are outright removed from the target list), so further casualities are minimal.
Pretty much. My plans are to take the good parts of fanon and canon BTVS mix them together, convert them into MGness(which is turning out to be a cakewalk actually) and then have them do their thing. I intend to put the bulk of the Council low tier, D- to B+. With only Willow and Dawn being higher. Dawn will be D most of the time, with the reality hacks on occasion. Though her hacks are more "I port our army through your barrier because I'm that awesome. Now I'ma be unconscious, someone catch me." Then the hacks our others can pull. And Willow will be really powerful but in a different way then the rest. No giant death beams, just consistent low level "She did WHAT!"s. The rest of them will be the "grunts" of the Alliance. Low powered but numerous and well trained. They will only play any real role in arc two as far as main plot goes. Though Dawn will be useful whenever portals are needed, and Willow will make an excellent "Crap our main players are down... TRUMP CARD TO STALL FOR TIME!" This sounds good to me. ----------- As for the MGA forming I think the Council is a prefect stepping stone to a full alliance. It's already set up, it's somewhat modern, it's decently sized, it's got good leaders and it's there to support the girls. When it sides with the forming MGA it can temporarily take over organization while the groups of MGs come together and smooth things out. Eventually forming the structure of the Alliance. It's the only such group I can see helping the MGA form, without overtaking it.
OK. It's only XXXHolic and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles whose plots absolutely requires resurrections to be impossible anyway, as far as I know. (And MKR being connected to anything else is a retcon from RC and Holic...)
Well you could have the MA capture Saturn and have her lay waste to the clock tower reconstruction would delay them considerably
That map is very good. That's it we need someone to start updating and organizing the wiki. and we need it NOW. Anyone have organizational skills? I too would like to know the answer to this. Nope. Arc one is the MG realize they have support and they do short term alliance. Arc two is they actually connect and get things done for the long term. And why is nobody writing it? Because we are stupid and fail at organization. And that's ALL our faults. We really should get more organized. That makes sense too. But we need to decide what works better, killing her, or simply injuring her so badly she is mission killed for the next Arc or two.
if she's just injured, they can heal her relatively quickly. Killing her off for the second half of the second arc is a good idea
Killing her eliminates her availability as a character for the rest of the project. Even a reincarnation of her with all of Usagi's memories wouldn't be exactly the same person. I would prefer that she be wounded critically or poisoned in a way that cannot be healed immediately and requires that she be placed in stasis for several years. That way she'd still be the same person when she wakes up again but in the meantime she'd be dead for all intents and purposes. That means Chibi-Usa growing up without her mother, that means the Senshi being led by Venus until she wakes up again, and so on.
... exhales. Oh, wow. That is a wonderfully blatant case of enabling. Darth Artemis, in such cases, needs to get over himself, and realise that as long as this is a round-robin, rather than his personal pet project, then, unless he wants to officially take up a position of formal responsibility, he does not have exclusive veto over anything. "Being able to shout loudly" does not a good project make; I will refer you all to the BTRR for examples to the contrary. ... And, here is my advice, based on the necessities of actual writing, and which I have co-developed with Aleph (who is a similarly compulsive worldbuilder - some elements of this are from an essay I helped her write); 1) Plot and setting. This is a big one for the BFP, and I'm going to be blunt here. You need a knife taken to a lot of stuff. Too many things have been thrown in, too quickly, and there has not been the necessary consideration of whether things could have existed before the breach of the Masquerade, existing at the same time. Sit down, make sure the metaphysics work together in a way that respects all sides (and this is vitally important. It makes no sense for the Incubators to be making Puella Magi in a universe where entropy can be beaten more easily. So they won't; to claim otherwise is to show a lack of respect towards one of your settings). Any impulse towards AWESOME needs to be ruthlessly suppressed. A sub-element of this? People with a large-scale reset button, like Usagi, either need to be bound so they can't ever use it, or removed from the picture. People, like Homura, with a smaller scale one need reasons why they have not done so earlier, and they also need to be specifically exempt from the "it's not dangerous" thing. Anyone who can undo death, ironically, needs to be killable, or it removes the risk. And as part of the AWESOME suppression, you need an overarcing, detailed plan. Some kind of social contract that allows you to say "no, that doesn't fit", or "ah, yes, that works well with <pre-arranged plot point>. You need a timeline, an order, something that stops events from being too crammed together. To quote Aleph; 2) Antagonists. Considering that I am the one saying it, I no doubt expect that some people will immediately ignore what I am about to say. I have a largely-undeserved reputation for being "grimdark", and this will tie into it. And what I have to say is simply this; "Don't have your villains cash checks they can't pay." What do I mean by that? Simple. An antagonist who, for plot reasons, will never succeed even slightly (because they're aiming for something inimical to what the setting can permit) is not an antagonist. They are a stuffed doll for the characters to punch. Therefore, any and all antagonists must be able to succeed at their goals, and in-story, they should receive successes to their low level, and a limited number of mid-level goals. If the antagonist group cannot be allowed to succeed at any of them, you have ranked them too high for the setting, and you should change their objective. In a tightly scripted, limited cast setting, you can get away with things you can't here. Here? If you refuse to kill any of the major characters, do not have the objective of any major antagonist be "kill the main characters". To do otherwise is bad writing, and strips all dramatic tension from things. If you refuse to kill characters, then your antagonists must have goals which do not involve killing characters. It's quite simple. Your enemies must be able to win to some degree, or else they are nothing more than walking, talking punching bags. And that's another thing, and I would like to make things very, very clear. Never, ever assume that your major antagonists are fools. Take the Mages Association. What would I do if I were in charge? Well, for one, you can locate the hometowns of individual magical girls to a single city, due to how confined they are. You can restrict the candidate pool down to the girls in the right age range. Already, you have a degree of knowledge of who their civilian identities are, and that's from simple deductive logic. Compare physical features of known magical girls to the candidate pool, but you are also aware of the existence of magical disguises, so keep an open mind. If you have the capacity to detect magic, these criteria can be refined further. And once you have a candidate, you watch them. You find out their associates, and you wait until you have a positive ID. You see if you can get their parents fired, or their house repossessed, or them taken into social services if they are one of those "living alone at an implausible age" sorts. Put them in stress, tire them out, wait for them to slip, and give you a positive ID. And then you take them down when they're not transformed, if you can using magic to make them faint and taking them away in an ambulance, where you can disappear them. If you can't, you kill them when they're just another human. What you do not do is stride out and fight them when they're transformed. Because you're an old, experienced, corrupted institution, who know that you have to keep this under wraps and big flashy fights with people who are ruining magic is a) not in your interests, and b) liable to lose you valuable agents. If you are not willing to have this sort of thing happen, do not use an enemy who will and should attempt to do it. Your choice of using the Mages Association indicated that, narratively, you wanted to have them face a human opponent who fought like humans do, rather than a Dark Kingdom. Live up to that, and accept the consequences, or chose another opponent. Or make them into people who will not try to kill the magical girls. Make them ones who will co-opt them. They will give them funding, and they will move charitable aid to their neighbourhoods, and all they need to do is work with the Association, keep things quiet, and tell them where other magical girls are so they can make the same offer. They're newcomers, after all. They just need to settle down. Have them be people who would not kill the magical girls; have them be ones who would tame them... ... and have that "taming" hard to argue against. Because if you take their aid, people get helped right now, while... what are you getting by being public? Are you just doing it to feed your ego? Well, that doesn't help people, much. Wouldn't you say that that's rather selfish? Aleph again; Well, that's my advice. Take it or leave it, but don't ignore it.
Dan didn't you read what I wrote before? She could be hit while charging an attack and her own energies ravage her body, making it unsafe for her to use any amount of power for quite some time. Killing Usagi off would piss off a lot of people and cause people to drop the story all together when we get it posted. I think knocking her out of the game for a bit and forcing her to recover would be better. If it is her own energies damaging her any attempt to heal her might risk removing her ability to perform high level magic in the future. Considering what the Silver Crystal can do she would have to reluctantly accept not being able to fight and work on recovering. The Silver Plot Device is not something any sane being would risk sacrificing the use of in story. If she has to be laid up unable to do anything significant with her magic for upwards of five years, Usagi would take that option, knowing full well that the Silver Crystal might be needed in the future. This way she could still function as "emotional support" for the rest of the team as well. People mentioned that we shouldn't give Shirou powers in order to show people that even if you can't help fight you can still do things. Usagi unable to perform magic for awhile could serve a similar purpose, showing the younger members of the Alliance that even if you can't help physically you can still support your comrades and be their when they need someone to talk to.
We won't know until we see the arc in action. Given that the Association is a different sort of antagonist from the usual Forces of Evil and gives us a chance to explore simple human evils in a magical girl setting however, I'm inclined to think that the answer is yes for the time being.
There is another possible alternative to death that could be used to thin the list a bit. The bit about "enforcers following in Magus Killer's footsteps" sparked it. Some of the enforcers could try to find a way to damage a target's linker core/magical muscles. The character nearly dies in the attack, but after they heal the magic damage shows up when they try to transform (maybe they do transform but it exhausts them?). Or a poison that powers itself off of the person's magical core, which can keep someone strong in the ICU until they find a cure (no pun intended). Crippling a character can provide much of the same emotional impact as a death. If permanent damage is a problem, the core could heal over time, but slowly. Think magic physical therapy. Adjust as needed, or junk the whole idea if it doesn't work in the system. Come to think of it, they did this with Nanoha already. Imitation and flattery I guess. And just to leave off, the project as a whole keeps improving every time I check the thread. From a lurker, keep up the good work! EDIT: dangit, ninja'd. Another reason I stay out of this, I take too long writing this stuff.
I don't fucking know what the hell is going on in this project anymore. On one side I can see and acknowledge the logic behind the arguments for character deaths, or at least incapacitated, and some of the reasoning. On that other, I'm of the party that says 'yeah no, not happening'.
None of this even matters, because this whole debate will eventually get derailed by someone chiming in with something else to bitch about. Which leads to a lot of people forgetting about anything that was discussed as they move on to other things. Which will in turn lead to everyone having contradicting views on the storyline, because one guy remembers one thing and another remembers something completely different. It's happened several times already.
Gee, if only BFP had some place to centrally store such information, like a site with pages that everyone could edit. Succinctly put!
You make some strong points. And did it without the antagonistic nature some people here seem to refuse to avoid. While I would like to see the MA fighting the MGA it seems like they don't fit. And we do need to hammer out our vision and major plot points much better then we have. We need a creative director. Or possibly we could make Desu, DA, and myself co directors. We did found the BF. I'm just afraid picking anyone, or any group of us will alienate the rest and what good we have done will be undone. ------------- On another note my BTVS stuff is coming along well. So...yay.
I don't see how that's a problem. Nothing is set in stone until we get to the point where this stuff is actually being written, which isn't for a while even at best estimates. Remember how many times our plans for Madoka Magica changed over the course of the past year? What we do need to be worrying about is what happens in the immediate future of the fic, especially the time directly between the Factory arc and the Sailor Nothing arc, because that's what Desu is cooking up as we speak (right, Desu?). We have the debriefing of the raiding party, we have the factory counterattack on the Harlaown household, and we have... what else? Maybe a few other reaction snippets. I don't think we ever got one for Sammy, did we? She just kinda jumped in feet first.
Forget for a while about all the readers who'll get pissed if you kill off Usagi, because they're not all that important. Instead, you should be thinking of what happens to the remaining Senshi. The Inners were Usagi's bodyguard. They've just failed *again*. The Outers were ruthless to start with, and now the person who taught them to hold back is gone. And the one girl who'll be affected the worst is the public face of the Alliance - Sailor Venus. They're not little girls anymore, who might go catatonic from the shock and stay out of the way for a while. No, they're adults - late twenties or early thirties. They won't get scared, they'll get very, very angry. Eight people with planetary mana taps, who've just lost the one person who's held most of their lives together. Now, think about how the rest of the world reacts to *their* reaction. Because it will be messy, and loud, and very very hard to look at without recoiling in horror. Suddenly magical girls aren't cute anymore, they're potential monsters. Congrats, you've just completely alienated the rest of the world from the MGA... Was that what you guys were wanting? (In other words, if you don't want Usagi in the fic, don't put her in there in the first place.)
so, the Usagi and Senshi from the beginning of the series are different from the ones of later seasons, Darth?
...Okay, from now on, whenever I see anything that isn't an AngryDesu story/chapter/scene post or a Gamlain "It's that time again!", I'm just gonna keep holding down the "Down" button. I came here to read the story posts, not the arguments. (goes back to lurking)
Well, yeah. The way Sailor Moon reincarnation works even with the memories the new Usagi wouldn't be the same person, just like Usagi wasn't exactly like Serenity. This is before you factor in changes to her surroundings and development even if we do the Saturn thing of her de-aging to an infant and then flash-growing into a teenager over the ensuing years.
It's already too late. No one has a complete picture of what's in and what's out anymore. It would just start an argument about what gets put on the wiki. Even that list of canon snippets isn't completely accurate. I agree with that. In fact, you should just focus everything on Act 1 and leave the fucking insane Act 2 brainstorming for when you've finished that.
