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dmxrated...even cheating death and bringing each other back to life when one of us got killed. Not that getting killed was awesome, of course."
(-Mondo, during Mondo and Rokuna's BIG Date.)
Before I get started, let's take two things into account here:
1)Unlike in the anime, cartoon physics will not apply to Monster Collection Chronicles. Yeah, that was exactly how Eccentro and Batch survived so many things that would normally kill someone, as well as how Mondo survived Rockna's lightning bolts each time he hit up on (or in some cases, simply mentioned) other girls, but such would not be the case in MCC.
2)Considering that, even minus cartoon physics, Mondo and Rockna are somewhat stronger, faster, and more agile than the average human being (and this will also apply to the other Knights in my ficseries), it should be no surprise that they'd also be able to take more damage than a normal human, but even then, there would be a limit to just how much they'd be able to withstand.
3)Keep in mind that whereas such a trick would probably not work as to threaten a single person's life, Mondo and Rockna didn't have the necessary magic to resurrect someone when Redda held an imposter Rockna at swordpoint while demanding the Monster Items.
4)Here is the entry that describes the new abilities and who first unlocks each of them. Needless to say, Healing is the one that will be discussed the most here.
-----
Okay, let me start with the fact that while anyone that dies in most anime dies permanently (with some exceptions), any playable characters in an RPG that get killed can just be resurrected with an item or spell, as long as said death is not plot-related. (In novelizations, such non-plot-related deaths usually never happen.)
But anyway, just yesterday, I (re-)read this Earthbound one-shot titled And After, which I actually first read last December. The point behind it is that main character Ness (and his friends) in fact did get killed in too many ways to count during their adventure, and this had really left him traumatized beyond belief. That includes during the early parts of the game, when he has no allies to take care of him. Guess how he lives to fight another day?
Well anyway, if that fic is anything to go by, then I suppose that it could be possible to enable anyone in Monster Collection Chronicles to bring each other back from the dead, even if the means of death was being vaporized, eaten alive, trapped in a void, or blown into a million gory pieces. Of course, there would have to be limitations to this, so as to avoid God Mode Sue:
When healing is first learned, all it's capable of is healing flesh wounds. Usually, the energy needed to do this (or other things listed in the entry) can only be recovered by either getting a good night's rest (for a full recovery), consuming some kind of item or another (amount recovered may vary), or finishing an enemy with an Aerial Strike (finisher and all comrades gain a partial recovery after the fight). As the Knights continue to fight during the fic, they become stronger, can heal more severe injuries, and heal more times a day. However, do take into account that the Knights use the same energy for doing things such as transformations, speed- and strength boosts, etc., which makes said energy easier to deplete.
Another limitation is that resurrection must take place within 24 hours of death, and must take place either where the body is located or brought, or if there is no body to treat, where the person in question was killed.
Furthermore, only Professor McKnight or anyone directly under his command are able to use these powers. If everyone on a given mission dies or otherwise finds themselves in too much of an emergency, McKnight will summon them back wherever he is. He's the only person who can restore someone to life without being wherever they died.
With a limit mentioned on how much special energy any of the Knights can carry at a time, if people were getting killed left and right in any given place, it wouldn't be possible for them to restore everyone to life. If anyone they knew happened to be among those that died, they would definitely give them treatment first, before treating anyone else. However, it would still be wise to first deal with whoever is doing the killing, since many useful techniques in battle require the same energy that healing requires.
Limitations aside, while it's a good thing that the Knights could manage each other and their friends this way, the idea of being killed so many times is quite traumatic, needless to say. There will probably be scenes in which each of the Knights involuntarily reminisces on how many ways they died throughout at least the first fic. This would go to show that each of them would likely be ever closer to losing their will to continue fighting. (If this were a game, the Game Over screen would have McKnight speaking to the last person to die in a given battle after having resurrected him or her. He or she is then asked whether they have the will to try again; a yes answer would have him or her strike a pose of determination and say something dramatic; a no answer would have him or her break down, possibly burst into tears, and beg for the whole thing to stop.)
Even with the ability to restore life, there are situations in which the Knights have only one chance to successfully avert disaster. If everyone dies or has to retreat in any mission at all, that essentially means Mission: Failed. If it's a time-sensitive one, still alive or not, there will be no second chance, and the results could be especially dire.
Finally, what would likely be the most notable instances of Killed Off For Real would take place before the second fic's final battle, and then as the end of said battle itself. After all twelve Knights enter the Nickelodeon Base, Takeshi kills Rockna's parents and McKnight from within the Giygaslayer before confronting the Knights inside the base. Whether the NYC outbreak has already started or not has yet to be decided. However, since McKnight was their only way out of the base, that pretty much means they are now trapped inside, and as the battle ends, they will all perish inside the base as Derek destroys it from inside. This will then lead to the events in the third fic, which takes place 100 years into the future when the Knights are reborn.
(-Mondo, during Mondo and Rokuna's BIG Date.)
Before I get started, let's take two things into account here:
1)Unlike in the anime, cartoon physics will not apply to Monster Collection Chronicles. Yeah, that was exactly how Eccentro and Batch survived so many things that would normally kill someone, as well as how Mondo survived Rockna's lightning bolts each time he hit up on (or in some cases, simply mentioned) other girls, but such would not be the case in MCC.
2)Considering that, even minus cartoon physics, Mondo and Rockna are somewhat stronger, faster, and more agile than the average human being (and this will also apply to the other Knights in my ficseries), it should be no surprise that they'd also be able to take more damage than a normal human, but even then, there would be a limit to just how much they'd be able to withstand.
3)Keep in mind that whereas such a trick would probably not work as to threaten a single person's life, Mondo and Rockna didn't have the necessary magic to resurrect someone when Redda held an imposter Rockna at swordpoint while demanding the Monster Items.
4)Here is the entry that describes the new abilities and who first unlocks each of them. Needless to say, Healing is the one that will be discussed the most here.
-----
Okay, let me start with the fact that while anyone that dies in most anime dies permanently (with some exceptions), any playable characters in an RPG that get killed can just be resurrected with an item or spell, as long as said death is not plot-related. (In novelizations, such non-plot-related deaths usually never happen.)
But anyway, just yesterday, I (re-)read this Earthbound one-shot titled And After, which I actually first read last December. The point behind it is that main character Ness (and his friends) in fact did get killed in too many ways to count during their adventure, and this had really left him traumatized beyond belief. That includes during the early parts of the game, when he has no allies to take care of him. Guess how he lives to fight another day?
Well anyway, if that fic is anything to go by, then I suppose that it could be possible to enable anyone in Monster Collection Chronicles to bring each other back from the dead, even if the means of death was being vaporized, eaten alive, trapped in a void, or blown into a million gory pieces. Of course, there would have to be limitations to this, so as to avoid God Mode Sue:
When healing is first learned, all it's capable of is healing flesh wounds. Usually, the energy needed to do this (or other things listed in the entry) can only be recovered by either getting a good night's rest (for a full recovery), consuming some kind of item or another (amount recovered may vary), or finishing an enemy with an Aerial Strike (finisher and all comrades gain a partial recovery after the fight). As the Knights continue to fight during the fic, they become stronger, can heal more severe injuries, and heal more times a day. However, do take into account that the Knights use the same energy for doing things such as transformations, speed- and strength boosts, etc., which makes said energy easier to deplete.
Another limitation is that resurrection must take place within 24 hours of death, and must take place either where the body is located or brought, or if there is no body to treat, where the person in question was killed.
Furthermore, only Professor McKnight or anyone directly under his command are able to use these powers. If everyone on a given mission dies or otherwise finds themselves in too much of an emergency, McKnight will summon them back wherever he is. He's the only person who can restore someone to life without being wherever they died.
With a limit mentioned on how much special energy any of the Knights can carry at a time, if people were getting killed left and right in any given place, it wouldn't be possible for them to restore everyone to life. If anyone they knew happened to be among those that died, they would definitely give them treatment first, before treating anyone else. However, it would still be wise to first deal with whoever is doing the killing, since many useful techniques in battle require the same energy that healing requires.
Limitations aside, while it's a good thing that the Knights could manage each other and their friends this way, the idea of being killed so many times is quite traumatic, needless to say. There will probably be scenes in which each of the Knights involuntarily reminisces on how many ways they died throughout at least the first fic. This would go to show that each of them would likely be ever closer to losing their will to continue fighting. (If this were a game, the Game Over screen would have McKnight speaking to the last person to die in a given battle after having resurrected him or her. He or she is then asked whether they have the will to try again; a yes answer would have him or her strike a pose of determination and say something dramatic; a no answer would have him or her break down, possibly burst into tears, and beg for the whole thing to stop.)
Even with the ability to restore life, there are situations in which the Knights have only one chance to successfully avert disaster. If everyone dies or has to retreat in any mission at all, that essentially means Mission: Failed. If it's a time-sensitive one, still alive or not, there will be no second chance, and the results could be especially dire.
Finally, what would likely be the most notable instances of Killed Off For Real would take place before the second fic's final battle, and then as the end of said battle itself. After all twelve Knights enter the Nickelodeon Base, Takeshi kills Rockna's parents and McKnight from within the Giygaslayer before confronting the Knights inside the base. Whether the NYC outbreak has already started or not has yet to be decided. However, since McKnight was their only way out of the base, that pretty much means they are now trapped inside, and as the battle ends, they will all perish inside the base as Derek destroys it from inside. This will then lead to the events in the third fic, which takes place 100 years into the future when the Knights are reborn.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-14 04:17 pm (UTC)1)Unlike in the anime, cartoon physics will not apply to Monster Collection Chronicles. Yeah, that was exactly how Eccentro and Batch survived so many things that would normally kill someone, as well as how Mondo survived Rockna's lightning bolts each time he hit up on (or in some cases, simply mentioned) other girls, but such would not be the case in MCC.
If something canon is just going to disappear because you don't feel like including it, then at least bother to give a proper explanation for its sudden absence.
3)Keep in mind that whereas such a trick would probably not work as to threaten a single person's life, Mondo and Rockna didn't have the necessary magic to resurrect someone when Redda held an imposter Rockna at swordpoint while demanding the Monster Items.
What? What trick? Resurrect whom? Nobody had died at that point.
There will probably be scenes in which each of the Knights involuntarily reminisces on how many ways they died throughout at least the first fic.
This sounds horrible. You have twelve of these people, and you wanna give each of them angst sessions, and on top of that on more than one trauma point? You know why Shinji is one of the most hated anime characters ever? Not to mentioned how unrealistic it is to have all of them to have the same type of trauma effect. There's way more to it than crying and flashbacks.
Then there's the part where, if you knew what you were doing, you would have given an example of trauma coping of one or two of the characters, or none. Instead, there's this, which I really hope is not intentional satire :
(If this were a game, the Game Over screen would have McKnight speaking to the last person to die in a given battle after having resurrected him or her. He or she is then asked whether they have the will to try again; a yes answer would have him or her strike a pose of determination and say something dramatic; a no answer would have him or her break down, possibly burst into tears, and beg for the whole thing to stop.)
You're not making a video game. You're going to write a story, you're going to have to drop the "how would this look as a video game" approach. This sort of thing may work for an RPG (or not, cause the responses are both narmy), but if this is how to start imagining a coping scene you're not gonna get much further beyond "laughable".
It's logical to show them traumatized by the multiple deaths, but the way you speak about it gives the impression that you haven't got a clue how to handle that sort of character development. Do you ever read about the stories of traumatized people? How they cope with it? Trauma doesn't work like a series of yes-no questions, it is complex and multi-layered and shines through in people's lives in a myriad ways.
They way they interact with people, for one thing (type of trauma will interact with their personality here in epic levels). Some never managed to cry. Some talk too much about it, others don't talk at all. Some turned into driven people (if I work hard enough, it can avoid it), some become obsessive in trying not to think about it (throw themselves onto work), some measure whatever they do by this one event (it happened that one time, it will happen again and this situation looks too much like it), some are in denial (like abused spouses, placing on a mask), and so on.
Yet the only thing you mention is involuntary flashbacks, approaching the loss of willpower and a talk with the doctor, and you're discussing twelve characters as if they are one person. Then that whole black humor analogy throw in. Look, you keep saying there will be character development in your fic series, but I don't see you actually trying to learn anything about how to do that. So I'm just gonna say it again : start reading.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-14 04:18 pm (UTC)For a start, I'd probably keep Rockna's assaults on Mondo. If any scenes are to take place at the Castle of Eternity, I would likely have the sessions that Count C and co. endured in the anime. The facial stuff *could* happen with the less serious characters, but most of it probably wouldn't be important enough to describe. Most important point, though, is the darker and edgier nature of the ficseries than the anime.
Mostly, the cartoon physics would be averted during battles. I think what it is with them is that since they never go by any rules, either side in a battle could get a cheap win with them (or do something along those lines).
In any case, you did seem to have applied them to Soul's Window without affecting anything important. Am I right?
What? What trick? Resurrect whom? Nobody had died at that point.
Redda holding "Rokuna" hostage. Even though no one had died yet, Rokuna was at risk of dying.
which I really hope is not intentional satire
Considering the negative connotations that the word "satire" carries, I didn't really expect it to be that so much as a parody. Don't mean to be offensive with it.
You're not making a video game.
Well, yeah, I actually do know that. Even though I lack the skills to make one or the willpower to learn how, it's still fun to imagine what anything I think of would look like in game form.
Anyway, sorry I haven't taken your advice on reading actual books the first time around. I actually have been meaning to do that, so are there any books in particular you might suggest I start with?
no subject
Date: 2019-07-14 04:20 pm (UTC)Considering the negative connotations that the word "satire" carries, I didn't really expect it to be that so much as a parody. Don't mean to be offensive with it.
It was kind of difficult to see the intent here. Well, it works like this : satire is parody. Specifically, parody of real life. In context of discussing trauma, the humorous exaggeration of the two stereotypical victim responses as a RP style choice could come across as making fun of it, as if they have a choice in how they cope. In another context, it might come across as a regular parody.
Well, yeah, I actually do know that. Even though I lack the skills to make one or the willpower to learn how, it's still fun to imagine what anything I think of would look like in game form.
That wasn't an implication that you should stop imagining, it, or that I think you don't realize that. What I mean is that you approach the fic a la RPG creation. That's why you've got a list of attacks worked out, but still haven't done much with characterization and integrating it into the plot. From a story writer's pov, the former list is trivial, while the latter is vital since the plot flow tends to rely on decisions of the characters.
so are there any books in particular you might suggest I start with?
Well, what have you read already, and any preferences between speculative fiction and more realistic fiction?
For starting, in any case I might recommend Agatha Christie's mystery novels. They're good for practicing an eye in regards to putting together pieces of characterization and unpronounced details. Plus, there's a good chance a local library has some of it.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-14 04:20 pm (UTC)Anyway, sure, I could give those books a try. Mom and I are going to the library this morning, and I'll be sure to look them up. Thanks.
Unrelated, I did fix up a some spelling errors here and there in the RP just several days ago. I'll look forward to reading whatever grammatical errors you'll point out upon proofreading it, before I host it on ff.net and Anime GTS World.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-14 04:21 pm (UTC)I'll prolly do that this afternoon/night.