#red.reply

soooooooo character by character breakdowns:

kasey:

the protagonist and my special little girl, Kasey is a 14 year old girl with incredible yet unpredictable powers who dreams of being a great hero! She's peppy and athletic and super excitable, though due to her reclusive upbringing she's not super socially in-tune. her heroic persona is Wildcard, her gimmick is playing cards, and her powers include teleportation, enhanced speed and senses, limited flight, glow-in-the-dark freckles, and a large variety of seemingly random abilities.

hutch:

kaseys dad and ajas wife, Hutch is a pretty chronically normalguy. when they were younger they dreamed of being a famous musician, but these days theyre just trying to be a supportive parent, which apparently includes dressing up in funny costumes and fighting evildoers these days, and thats fine. they're kind of an anxious guy whose happiest when theyre working on something with their hands, wether thats cooking, playing music, or working on their old pickup truck. idk their hero name yet but their costume is going to be cowboy themed and theyre going to essentially be the bard of the group. no natural powers, except their hair, which gets pinker when theyre in a good mood.

victor:

resident mad scientist working as a tech guy for kirby (aforementioned rich old man that runs the team), victor likes to work on magitech and fancies himself probably the greatest wizard to ever live, ever. spends most of his time in his workshop building gear for the team and working on one of his dozens of pet projects. He's a shit communicator and arrogant as all hell, is prickly and generally bad at interacting with others, though hes genuinely very intelligent, well-intentioned, and often very high-energy when it comes to his work. And don't tell anybody this, but he's also technically undead, and on a sensitive parole with the "gods" due to his tendency to get fucky with the natural order of things. he's essentially working on borrowed time, with a lot of dubious machinery just barely keeping his body from completely rotting away. His greatest accomplishment, though, will always be aja.

aja:

my best friend and the most important girl in the world ^^^^ kaseys mom and the second most enthusiastic about this whole superhero thing. not alive nor dead but a special third thing. a tendency to get overwhelmed by her emotions has led her to be a pretty reclusive, quiet person. a little mopey and pretentious, she likes literature, photograohy, and sorting her cassette collection. she's also the most efficient in a fight, as shes kind of been using martial arts and that kind of stuff as a sort of therapy for most of her life, she likes the feeling of being in tune with her body and the amount of self-control that comes with it. she adores her wife and daughter, and has a bit of a contentious relationship with victor - though she wants to be closer with him, the gap between them caused by their past feels a bit insurmountable for them both.

as for the villains, mainly we have

arkangel:

arkangel was, a very very long time ago, a human alchemist and magican studying the Grand Cosmos, the realm of what are believed to be the gods. When plague struck and, despite her prayers, killed her young daughter, she swore to tear her way into the cosmos and bring her daughter back to the world of the living. That mission has not gone so well, and centuries upon centuries later Arkangel has lost the plot a bit, her magics able to preserve her body at the expense of her mind and soul, and in-between cartoonishly evil shenanigans she's orchestrating a plot to bring down the cosmos entirely. Despite her tendency towards nonsense and general gullibility, Arkangel is a sharp and often cruel woman who holds those in her employ under high standards with little regard for the opinions of anyone except herself.

nina:

known primarily by her villain name Prophet, nishkanona prorok is a teenage demon, having used a pact with Arkangel to escape hell and a doting, yet overprotective father to live out her edgy teenage punk years smashing shit and swinging cool swords around. eager to prove her abilities, Nina was involved one of arkangels many attempts to destroy the world, this one in particular involving drawing on an ancient and mysterious power known as the Comet to open a gateway to the cosmos and release the Judge, a massive cosmopolitan beast said to be the only thing capable of destroying an entire realm. the process failed, and the intense strain of using her body as the gateway injured her significantly. Her desperation to prove herself, combined with Arkangels refusal to accept failure, have refused to let the injury heal and given Nina a pretty major dent in her pride coming into her second season as a competitor.

morningstar/luci:

the luc1-4 project is an experimental copycat AI designed to mimic an opponents strategy and siphon their powers through the nodes on its palms, and was used as Arkangel's primary footsoldier and representative before Nina's arrival left it obsolete, and it remained in storage, only acknowledged for training excercises or occassional maitenence. That is, until Nina abandons Arkangel, and Morningstar is needed once more. but years of sitting in the dark have left it resentful and beginning to question its true purpose in this world.

THOSE ARE ALL THE MAJOR CHARACTERS I HAVE DEVELOPED RN...theres a few more late-game villains and supporting cast members i want to flesh out and some worldbuilding stuff i want to explore more.

AS FOR THE PLOT. well. its all a bit vague but i have the general structure so lets lay it out!

starting out in the status quo with K/A/H going about their daily lives in the quaint small texas town they live in when kasey gets a letter in the mail inviting her to professional league of heroics and villany (note: im gonna try and come up with a catchier name but im bad at names) tryouts in New york city in response to her video audition (i think it would b cute to have the opening pages be her video audition but idk). ANYWAYS obviously they go and they do tryouts, and kaseys nervous but she does okay, but every time she needs to use one of her powers on command she just cant quite get them to cooperate and most of the teams there write her off as not pro potential. except for this weird old man, stanley kirby, who is trying to scrape together a hero team with his legacy money. see, his granddad managed an incredibly famous and successful team, but when he died kirbys father didnt see the business as worth the cost and shut it all down, and kirby wants to revive that legacy. problem is, hes never done anything successfully on his own in his life and nobody has faith in him. but he has money, and he offers to take kasey on if her family comes along to round out the team because literally nobody else wants to work with him. They agree, and when theyre touring the facility discover that victor, ajas estranged father, actually works for kirby, as kirby throws money at any project victor wants in exchange for v developing any inane comic book tech project kirby sets his heart on. aja lies and tells kasey victor is her brother, mostly because she isnt sure how to explain the. complicated history between them. more on that later. anyways, kirby cajoles victor into agreeing to be on the team because you need a 4-person team to be eligible for the maximum amount of events possible. so theyre all working together yippieeeee.

a few months pass and they do qualifiers, a team-based event that decides the rank you start the season in, and due to shoddy teamwork and general inexperience team kirby comes dead last. thats okay, theyll figure it out! the first event of the season is the opening tournament, one-on-one hero v villain brackets to show the audience and judges what youre made of. see, heroism and villany are judged on a combination of skill and style. theres gotta be balance between being a good fighter and a good performer, flashy combos, witty banter, and showstopping signature moves are the kind of thing people come here for (think fighting game-esque). victor goes in the first round and completely wipes his opponent, knocking them out of the ring in two seconds flat by cutting them off in the middle of an opening monologue. despite winning and winning efficiently, victor gets a shit score because there was absolutely no spirit or performance at all, and the guy he beat actually gets a better score just for his flashy entrance. aja and hutch also do some battles and teach us some more about how the game works, but the other important one is Kaseys opener, because she's pitted against Prophet(nina), who turns out to be a deathly efficient fighter with perfectly practiced form and a Silent Sentinel vibe that bounces pretty well against Wildcard (k)s chaotic, bubbly energy. It's a good fight, and in the end kasey barely wins, something that is INCREDIBLY frustrating for nina, and the first spark of their rivalry.

a few more events happen that set up the range of the games, establish some supporting cast, ect, kasey starts coming into her own with her powers, theres a b-plot about her school life, aja and victor have some family baggage and drama ect. but the major conflict of this season is arkangel. remember when i mentioned she wanted to use the Comet, an ancient well of mysterious cosmic power, to summon the Judge, an ancient destructive cosmic beast? yeah she hasnt given up on that, but shes needing to change her strategy. see, the comet is mysterious and everybody has a different theory about how it works, but its known that it doesnt give its power to just anybody. according to legends, it only grants itself to someone of pure heart in moments of pure need, and according to some magicians it needs something of equal power to pull its energy out. arkangel tries a few different things to pull out the energy she needs and i havent quite ironed out all the details of that stuff yet have mercy but. Somehow, She Figures It Out and summons the judge and it starts wrecking shop and there is a big awesomesauce chaotic battle. nina runs away, just fully ditchihg arkangel, and in a moment where it looks like shes about to lose, arkangel stabs aja and causes some of her hero gear to backfire and . well she is dead. this causes 2 things - 1, kasey summons the full power of the comet and just completely annihilates the judge, reducing it to an egg (its a wishing star type deal, power bends to the users truest desire and kaseys desire was to stop it from hurting anyone, which leaves it in a harmless form. she doesnt want to kill anything :( ) 2, victor freaks out. remember how hes on parole with the death gaurdians? yeah well one of these spirits is his "warden", basically this creepy ghost thing only he can see that follows him around and criticizes his life choices and makes sure hes not, yknow, damaging the fabric of reality or whatever. well AAs whole thing is that she wants 2 tear reality to shreds, so victor makes a deal that the warden will lend him its power and in exchange he'll let them arrest her, and this works out, he goes full necromancer and wipes the floor with her in seconds. its awesome. she gets arrested and dragged to spirit jail by a bunch of creepy ghosts.

after that is the next major "season". in this bit we learn a lot more about the grand cosmos and the things that live there. theyre not strictly gods, just beings of a different realm with higher concentrates of magical energy, letting them get even bigger and even crazier than stuff on the earthly realm can, and a few of the residents (which im debating on a catchy name for, cosmopolitan or cosmonaut both sound fun to me) decided to use their power to kind of sheperd the mortal realm. some are predators that eat souls, others try to maintain balance, others try to keep up the divide between the worlds, some want to tear it all down. but the section our heroes are involved with fancy themselves universe cops basically, arbiters of justice to souls who defy the natural order of life and death including, yknow, people artificially inflating their lifespans through magicks and whatnot. this is all organized by a being called the pale lady [or aomething idk] who operates this big cosmic courtroom, which is where arkangels "trial" is held to kick off the season.

i say "trial", but the question isnt really if if shes done anything wrong, its more of a character thing, like, people she knew in life who were affected by her actions weighing in on if they think she was right or wrong. this is where she explains her sad backstory, and the big conflict here is with victor. arkangel wanted to tear the system down for the sake of her daughter, and, well. his pet project, the thing hes spent most of his time working on for centuries? it isnt too different from what shes doing. a little less violent, yeah, but fundementally... well. the trial continues on and our heroes return to earth with arkangel officially condemned to sit around in heavenly prison, presumably forever.

aja is still dead. this is a bummer. bringing people back from the dead is hard, its simply not done, but if anyone could do it its victor. he explains, though, that souls are just collections of energy and that after death, souls dont really "go" anywhere, they just disperse back into the environment. this process takes some time, but because aja was kind of a patchwork project and was never technically fully alive, he has no idea if her soul could exist without her body at all, let alone if it would last, or if using the same process he used to bring her to life would actually bring her back or if it would just create a new soul in its place. so hes sort of. stuck. and his special project? well, thats not ready yet. its so, so close, but he just doesnt have the power he needs.

he wouldnt, at least. but after the trial the warden offers to make him a deal. if he agrees to hunt bounties for the pale lady and act in service when hes needed, the wardens power is granted to him to use as he'd like. much more freedom, more power, a cool new form with like a crazy scythe hand that im super excited about and will eventually draw someday. he agrees.

victor uses his power to finish his project, which he swears will fix all of this. see, hes been working on a time machine.

time travel isnt really a thing you can just DO, yknow, time doesnt really work like that, its not a tangible thing you can touch and trace and go backwards and forwards in. so its not really technically time travel. its a much more elaborate form of a type of technology he'd been tinkering with earlier in the comic, a sort of holodeck-style simulation that creates simulations based on the users memories and desires. so basically he creates this dream universe for himself, and uses it to go back to a little while before he'd brought aja to life, waaay back when.

see, the first time victor did this, he was only 19. he knew what he was doing, but he didnt know what he was doing. he was going to create life, a spark, a new soul. but you cant create something out of nothing, and the process of bringing aja to life fully killed him. upon his death, in that brief period before souls fade away, he begged the pale lady to give him more time, just to go back and see his creation, make sure she was safe. and she agreed, but when he woke up, it was far too late. six months had already passed and aja was long gone. he assumed she was dead, until a few years later she turned up on his doorstep begging him to help her. see, shes horribly lonely, completely outcast in a world she doesnt understand by people who dont know any better except to be afraid of her. she wants a little sister, someone to take care of and nurture and be with.

from this point on, the story is never quite clear. neither of them like to talk about it, and the most we see as an audience is brief flashbacks, sillouhettes and vague implications. but it ended with two people dead, aja down an arm and victor an eye, and both with blood on their hands.

victor holds a lot of guilt for everything that happened, and hes never really been able to get over it. he only ever really sees aja as this kind of... not mistake, really, he just had all these wonderful plans for her and for the life he wanted to give her and it all just. fell apart. because he wasnt prepared. he knows he couldve done, and shouldve done better, and hes going to prove it, hes going to do everything right and shes going to be so so happy this time.

but its not really real. he can kind of convince himself it is, for a little while, and he can live out this perfect life with his daughter and husband and everything is exactly how it was supposed to be. but its not right, its not her, its not his family. hes not fixing anything by doing this, hes just wallowing in his guilt and shame and abandoning the real, actual aja, his actual kid who needs him to be there. thats kind of always been his blind spot. he loves her, but his guilt keeps him from forming a real relationship with her because he can only think about how he hurt her even when shes basically begging him to come be a part of her life.

he snaps out of it and comes back, to find that, whoops, he miscalculated something and its actually been almost four months that hes been gone, literally just dissapeared into thin air one day leaving hutch alone with a dead wife and a bunch of spellbooks they could never in a million zillion years hope to understand, trying to figure out how to cope. bit of a dick move. they talk it out. they bond. eventually they do bring aja back, and as a little bonus shes actually really, fully alive this time. thats that haircut with the white streak in it, thats Alive Aja. she also gets more special powers now that shes alive and can actually use her magics(ill explain this fr one day but for now i digress)

OH slight digression at some point around this area - probably after or as a b-plot during victors stuff, the judge egg transforms again into bucket, my adorable little octopus girl who i love with all my heart i dont have a picture on hand but just trust me shes so cute and swag.

after this bit the next season of the game picks up and we start to get back to kasey, and nina. kaseys been having a hell of a time through those last four months, with crazier new powers from the comet, crazy teenage angst and relationship drama, and crazy weird dreams. crazy.

nina, on the other hand, has been totally fucked. see at some point in season1, during one of the games, she allied with this other villain, a low-level grunt called Bruiser. its a battle royale type game competing for a magic prize that gives the winner a wish yadda yadda and after becoming friends with bruiser and winning she stabs him in the back to take the prize, but feeling guilty uses her wish to make sure hes okay. hes kind of been watching out for her since, as he just kind of happened to live around the same area of the arizona desert that arkangels base is at, and hes kind of a big brother figure for nina. so when she ditches arkangel, she turns to him, knowing she cant really go home. he lets her crash on the couch in his shitty trailer, and does his best as a loser 30something who doesnt get paid enough to make sure shes mostly taken care of. and he lets her team up with him in games so she can still compete, because, despite her injury getting worse and worse, shes still determined to prove she can do this.

over the course of the games, nina and kaseys relationship gets kind of explored in some cool fun ways and they get to start to be actual friends in-between ninas "i hate you i have to be better than you fuck you" complex, and this climaxes in a big battle where nina slips kasey a fusion ring (something used for an event in s1 because its swag) and they fuse to take down like a big evil robot. its an awesome fight, but. during the battle with arkangel nina had left before kasey channeled the comet, so this is when she really realizes just what kasey had done. and it pisses her the fuck off. the one thing nina couldnt do and kasey is whipping it out like its nothing? why? why her? nobody wanted it more than nina did. nobody worked harder or needed it more. so why didnt she deserve it? what makes kasey so special? its not fair. so she punches her in the face, hard, and truly and honestly tells her how much she fucking hates her. eventually after some more Events they have a heart-to-heart about it and nina opens up about everything, about her injury and how badly she fucked up, and mostly about the fact that shes been lying about... everything.

see, ninas been telling people shes this ancient demon princess with royal hell powers, but shes actually just. some kid. her dad is like the chairman of the city council in their circle of hell or something, and shes just his daughter. she lied to sound cool. hes overprotective of her, because when she was born he was told she was particularly fragile, and so he kept her away from a lot of the things she wanted to do, making her a bit of an outcast and when his overprotectiveness turned away from just "dont participate in bloodsport" to the kind of music she listened to or clothes she wore, she decided to just get out. she made a pact with arkangel that if AA could convince her dad to let her go to earth for a "boarding school", she'd be her servant and blah blah blah. eventually it worked and ninas been keeping up the lie for the past like, three years now or however long its been. but the thing about demonic pacts is that theyre not just like, a pinky promise, theyre super dense legalese and theres a lot of consequences for breaking them, and nina is being chased down by hellhounds trying to get her arrested for breaking her pact with AA, so she has to come clean to her dad. this results in a fun little adventure down to hell for K and nina and also, nina and her dad work things out. he tells her hes just worried about her she tells him she feels like he doesnt believe in her or support her, her arc about proving herself kind of culminates in being able to accept her limits and that "pushing past" is only ever going to hurt her, you have to take care of yourself if you want to keep doing the things you love longterm, blah blah art burnout sports injuries ecetera. eventually they decide she can keep doing the villain thing, but she has to do it like, fucking safely and stuff. frm this point forward shes an ambulatory wheelchair user because i think it would be fun and awesome

theres some endgame stuff but its all a bit fuzzy! AA is busted out of space prison by an even eviler villain who wants to destroy even more stuff (so much to the point that even arkangel who was totally onboard with "destroy the great cosmos" kind of goes "hey we cant really destroy the earth i have to live there" and "wow this guy is a freak"), luci gets to be a villain and have her little arc too, kaseys aforementioned crazy dreams and crazy comet powers build up to something, but like, this is all pretty rough.

theres a lot more details.like the actual games themselves and some of the filler stuff, sidecast, some cool episode concepts, some of the more interpersonal sideplots especially a lot of the ones with hutch and all the kasey normal teen bplot which i adore but dont fit in neatly to a more concise linear summary and are also again a bit fuzzy. ANYWAYS.

also one last thing nina is a skateboarder and if kasey was playing a normal sport and not This Bullshit i think she would be either a baseball player or a track runner. also aja gets a motorcycle and she loves it to death.

He'd definetly been expecting Tailgate to be his smooshy-wooshy self, and he was, always sitting himself in Whirl's lap or holding his claws or giving him those little nuzzles that definetly don't count as kisses but are basically the best the two of them could muster with the complete lack of mouths between them.

But Cyclonus? For someone so tough and all im-a-dignified-ancient-warrior-whose-too-good-for-these-shenanigans-blarrrrrgh-ey , he really did turn out to be a massive sap. It was like he physically needed to be holding someone at all times or he'd die. It didn't matter where they were, Whirl was now getting approximately 200% more affection than he'd ever gotten before. Not that he was complaining.

Whirl didn't really drink anymore, part of the whole 'healthy coping mechanisms' thing he was trying out, which officially made him the Sober Friend at Swerve's karaoke nights. Which, ugh, boring. Healthy coping mechanisms were decidedly lame. Luckily, Tailgate and Cyclonus were also lame, and total lightweights. Which usually meant karaoke night lasted for about 2 songs before the two would get suitably distracted by being their stupid adorable overly affectionate selves.

Which is exactly where Whirl found himself tonight, Tailgate in his lap nuzzling not-kisses into his stomach and Cyclonus with his arm wrapped around Whirl, laying his head on Whirl's shoulder listening to the music and drifting off like the old man he was, occassionaly pressing something closer to an actual kiss onto Whirl's shoulder plating.

ghost - do they believe in ghosts?

SO the way spirits work in this setting is kind of a collection of magical energy which persists in a body, and then is dispersed back into the environment after death. this means that reanimating a body does NOT return or preserve the original soul, as the "soul" is no longer tangible and the energy is already gone. kind of like the... trying to pull a specific wave back after its broken back into the ocean. it no longer exists in an independent form. there have been experiments to contain souls after death, and certain extraplanar beings are believed to have manipulative abilities with regards to souls/"spirit energy", but nothing concrete or provable. all recorded ghost encounters have turned out to be either a)unrelated magical creatures which are semicorporeal in nature and not the traditional understanding of a "ghost" b)psuedoscientific spiritual & religious experiences, often used theraputically to process grief (or if youre cynical, to scam the grieving)

all that said. yes.

(additionally she is a very paranoid and superstitious person in general, often against her will + better judgement, but you kind of lose control of those sorts of things after a thousand years or so.)

collision - what emotion do they have trouble dealing with?

grief, fear, loss. her entire purpose is a product of running from grief and building walls out of fear.

birthday cake - when is their birthday? do they celebrate?

she barely remembers anymore, its been so long. sometime in the winter, maybe?

moon - what is their greatest wish? how far are they willing to go for it?

she talks a big game about gods and justice and utopias, but ultimately? she just wants her daughter back. and she will burn whatever she has to burn to get to her.

see-no-evil - what side of themselves do they hide from others?

contrary to a "show no weakness" supervillain, arkangel is kind of a "show only weaknesses" type, not afraid to let her natural eccentricities and immortality-induced-madness contribute to the spectacle of the games if it means her moves behind the scenes remain unexamined. sometimes she gets a little caught up in her own performance, but behind it is a focused, determined architect.

earth - will they give up the world for someone they love? is the decision easy for them?

without a doubt. though, its questionable if she truly loves anyone anymore, or if she is just sacrificing the world more in the name of an idea of a person, blurry shapes where a face once was.

scissors - how easily do they let go of people?

without a second thought. if you arent arkangel, you're expendable. people are tools to get what you need.

green heart - what things make them feel comforted?