You know what’s worse than talking about someone
else’s created monster girls? Talking
about your own monster girls. So let’s
double-down on the sacrilege and get through this together. I’m sure it won’t be…
Wait. I
feel like I’ve done this before, albeit under slightly-different contexts. Like, does this feel familiar to anyone?
Eh. Doesn’t
matter. As long as I don’t link to
earlier posts, no one will ever judge me.
Now let’s dive into a post practically destined to include giant breasts.
Because if you’re going to hell, you might as well dive head-first.
I’ve mentioned it before anecdotally (and directly
in long-buried posts), but for posterity’s sake I’ll go ahead and pull back the
veil once again. It’s a long way away,
but I sincerely hope that someday, I get the chance to write about one of the
premiere characters in my metaphorical stable -- in this case, the one I’ve
touted time and time again as a “Godzilla-sized single mom”. Execution barrier aside, I think the
potential is there; it’s pretty common for characters to go small and explore a
newly-massive world, but the reverse is rarely explored, isn’t it? Especially not with the main, POV
character. I think it’s time to change
that, even if it’s just for a little bit.
To that end, I’ve got Julia on my side. I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently,
because in my quest to revamp and evolve my characters -- or Xrd them, as I
prefer to call it -- she’s the one who’s both received the most changes and needs the most changes…likely because
even after years of brainstorming, she’s still much farther from completion
from some of my other guys. I guess you
can think of her as a challenge, more so than anyone else. And seeing as how she’s my character from my
brain, you’d think I could figure something out in a flash. I can’t.
So I guess cracking her open is as much a matter of pride as it is
telling a good story. Even if it means
one revision after another, after another, after another.
So here’s what I’ve been mulling over recently. Julia’s story starts off with her in a bad
place -- as in, she’s the slave of a pair of warlords. As such, she’s forced into being their
“enforcer”; she has to fight on their behalf, and help their army raze their
way through enemy territories on behalf of the warlords’ father, the king (and
the cruelest man the world’s ever known).
The first wrinkle in all of this is that even if Julia’s a slave, she’s
taking it in stride…which is to say, she’s taking advantage of the kinder of
the two warlords to gain his trust, work her way into the king’s inner circle
of comrades, gain a material advantage, and ultimately exact her revenge.
The second wrinkle
is that Julia is -- or was -- a married woman.
She’s had a rough life, but her luck started to turn around once she
found her soul mate…who just happened to be a shipwreck survivor, a failed
artist, a penniless drifter, and a dopey idiot rolled into one. But she loved him, and he loved her back --
and then everything got wrecked by the king’s forces because manifest destiny
or some ol’ bullshit. Julia got
enslaved, her hubby got killed, and now she’s biding her time until she can
wreak havoc. Incidentally, she ends up
getting her chance pretty early -- because the inciting incident of the story
is that Julia heads to a hidden sanctuary with the warlords and shoves them
aside so she can willingly gain power from a cursed little girl, with said
power being a curse in its own right that steadily makes her grow to kaiju
sizes and beyond.
That is a lot of information to digest. Here, let’s take a quick break.
Okay.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand we’re back.
My intent with the current “build” of Julia is to
escalate slowly by having her scale up over the course of the story. Putting in terms of tiers, she’ll go to King
Kong-tier, then fifty-foot-woman-tier, then mecha-tier, then kaiju-tier, and so
on…which would imply that anything past that point would be when it hits the
fan, but hey. That’s the plan. She’s the good guy of the story, but she’s
also the biggest (ha) threat her world has to deal with -- to the point where
you could call her an anti-hero, while one of the warlords is an
anti-villain. That’s kind of to be
expected when the latter is legitimately trying to make the world a better
place, while the former becomes a living natural disaster pretty freakin’ fast. On the
other hand, it just means Julia gets to wrestle other kaiju and mecha on her
way to the endgame -- because yep, it’s that
kind of story.
It’s worth noting, though, that Julia never really
started off as normal. At her default
size, she stood more than fifteen feet tall; for comparison’s sake, imagine the
average overpass and then realize she might have trouble passing under
one. She becomes more monstrous as the
story goes on (in more ways than pure size), but she started off as a
monster. Even for someone her size,
she’s freakishly strong, and she’s durable enough to have common weaponry
shatter against her skin. The tradeoff
is that she’s got zero magical aptitude, and is vulnerable to it as a result --
which is kind of a problem in a world where people have started tapping magic
to reliably fight monsters. Also, being
anything more than human is frowned upon in her world, so to put it flippantly,
racism is super-effective.
Not like anyone cares. She’s got big boobs, which -- as you
know -- utterly invalidates her as a character.
Thinking back, there hasn’t been a single
iteration of Julia that wasn’t busty. Ever.
That’s to be expected when her inspiration is a Soulcalibur character, but it’s in
pursuit of a character that’s different from the norm. Admittedly that comes from me one day going
“Hey, what if this character had really big boobs?” and rolling with it, but in
the time since I’ve refined and revised to create something more than just a
pair of walking bazongas. True, if my calculations
are right (hahahahaha), then the current Julia is proportionately an H-cup, at
the very least -- which means that for a fifteen-foot woman, my calculations
(AHAHAHAHAHA) would make her something like a P-cup. Petite, she is not.
At any rate, there isn’t a single aspect of
Julia’s design that isn’t purposeful.
I’ve found that even the slightest difference in sketches -- in a single
lock of hair’s placement on her head -- can make a huge difference in her
character. So yes, she’s incredibly
busty, but I’m not backing down on that.
In my mind, she’s also plus-sized; she’s got lots of rounded features, a
thick waist, wider hips, and thighs that -- while comparatively doughy, like
the rest of her -- are big enough to make Chun-li take pause. The idea is to go with the “mother goddess”
symbol and create an unforgettable silhouette, something that’ll help inform the
character in an instant. And then
expectations will be played to or defied thanks to her beastly parts -- horns,
tail, and whatever else comes her way.
And then there’s still the matter of her attire, which would take like
five more paragraphs to go into.
So let’s not go there, and get to the biggest
problem yet: what the fuck is her
personality going to be?
That’s the problem with this build -- and
subsequent ones -- that I have yet to figure out. I mean, Julia’s backstory has her going
through some nasty stuff, like prejudice and several personal tragedies (many
of which are the result of the world being cruel to the innocent). She’s got a reason to have a chip on her
shoulder…but on the other hand, it’s almost a given that she should slide into
the typical gentle giant role, isn’t it?
A key thrust of her story is that she partners up with the girl who
cursed her, and travels the world in search of an ancient, legendary library
that contains ultimate power and can
effectively rewrite reality. So I guess
that means she would have to be nice on some level, but to what extent?
There are so many questions surrounding this
character now. How has being a slave
impacted her? How has losing her
husband, the one man who would willingly smile at her, affected her? Is she willing to forgive the world that can
and has taken away her freedom? Does she
still hold love in her heart, or has the wicked king filled her with hatred? And how much of either does she show off --
or rather, which one is more apparent on a regular basis? Given that at the outset she’s only playing
one of the warlords to gain his trust -- forming a false bond that becomes a
huge part of his character arc -- doesn’t that mean she’s an inherently cruel
person who’ll toy with hearts as well as bodies to get what she wants? Knowing full well that what she wants is
revenge and ostensibly the murder of her enemies by her own two hands, itself
made possible because she jumped at the chance to gain a cursed power?
How does she feel about being huge? How does she feel about getting even
bigger? Given the body horror aspect
that comes into play, is she terrified by it, or does she accept it because
there’s more important stuff to worry about?
Is she going to tiptoe her way through the world that’s shrinking all
around her, or stomp her way from point A to point B? Will she play the pacifist and go for
non-lethal attacks against humans that try to stop her, or will she slaughter
everyone who opposes her? Does she start
to fear her newfound power? Resent it,
since it makes her both a target to be eliminated as well as someone who draws even more scorn and hatred? Embrace it, because now she can make all of
her ambitions come to pass? Or would she
simply be corrupted by it, and go from well-intentioned ex-slave to a monstrous
menace no more evolved than the kaiju she takes to power-bombing into oblivion?
Even if the plot never happened, then what kind of
person would she be? Skittish and
reclusive by default, but willing to open up to those who approach her? Confident enough to go about her day, but
unwilling to cross paths with anyone but a scant few? Bold to a fault, but left jaded and cynical
by a world that didn’t even try to give her a chance? How does she feel about herself and the way
she looks? Embarrassed by her body and
curves, or willing to accept it, or indifferent-yet-content, or even show it
off with gusto? Is she the type to go
out of her way to tend to her appearance, or does she just go with a natural
look and let it rock? Given that she's too big to go on the average shopping spree, wouldn't that automatically exclude her from wearing anything more than tattered rags? Would she be okay with that?
Is she tomboyish and willing to get down and
dirty, or feminine and harmonious with nature?
Is she graceful? Is she
brusque? What does she like to do? What does she like? What does she dislike (besides the cruelty
imposed upon her daily)? Who does she like? Is she capable of making friends? Is she capable of bridging the generational
gap and becoming a surrogate mother to a girl who’s seen just as much cruelty
as she has? Can she do that if said
girl, from her perspective, eventually becomes no bigger than a grain of sand?
How many questions was that? Thirty-seven?
Okay, thirty-seven. Great. Terrific.
Perfect. Now you know what it’s
like to have a brain like mine. It’s not exactly enviable, is what I’m
trying to say here.
You know what, though? It’s fine.
Okay, sure, it means that I’ve effectively got to start over with this
character again, only now I’m further
away from nailing her specifics than I’ve been in a while. But this is good. It means that those are all points I can and should consider for the sake of creating
a good character. Thinking about it now
means that I can flesh out Julia in the days, weeks, months, and years to
come. It sounds like a pain in the ass,
but I think it’s fun. The character’s
changing, and evolving, and (presumably) getting better with every question I
ask -- and subsequently answer. As a
wise man once said, “All
right, that’s cool.”
I’ll admit that the process I have is mine and
mine alone; I don’t expect everyone to do what I do, because it’s not the only
way to succeed (also, it has yet to be proven to succeed). On the other hand, I’d hope that the big-name
creators out there at least try or have their version of it. Characters create opportunities, and that
means that the more tools are given to a character, the more tools the story
has. I feel like I keep crying about
this over and over again, but I have to belabor this point: it’s okay to start
with basic archetypes and expected (even pandering) traits, but it’s important
to go further. Much further. And as far as I’m concerned, Everyday Life with Monster Girls just
doesn’t do that -- to the story’s detriment.
(See? I
knew I’d tie this post back to that eventually.)
It’s a shame, because the show’s concept isn’t
wrong. The potential is there, waiting
to be tapped. What’s life like for a
bunch of inhuman invitees? What
challenges do they face? And I’m not
just talking about stuff that can be used for a quick gag; if you create a
character with useful tools and traits, then I don’t think it’s too demanding
to ask for those tools and traits to be used.
It’s like asking a Zangief player to not
use throws, or a Guile player to not use
charge moves. Sure, it’s still possible
to win, but it’ll be that much harder, it’s a betrayal of what the character
can offer, and those are some SERIOUSLY good tools.
As annoying as it may be, we live in a world where
some creators can’t (or won’t) go far enough. They only need to go so far to succeed, and in
a lot of cases that lack of effort is proven as the right method. I guess ultimately I can’t help but be
thankful that they’ve seen success, but I don’t think that’s the way to do
things -- or at least, that’s not the way I
want to do things. Stories represent
endless opportunities -- and even if it’s impossible to tap all infinity of them, being willing and able
to do more than just the basics means plenty.
It gives the audience a better chance at finding a likable character,
and not just because of the way they look, or some basic archetypes, or even
their love for some other guy.
You want a likable character? Fine.
Great, even. But you’ve gotta put
in the work.
Do it for them.
Do it for her.
Speaking of work, I hope that someday my art
actually becomes…you know, good. (And I don't take all the shortcuts I can to pump the art out.) But on the plus side, I think I’m all right
when it comes to heads and faces -- everything above the neck,
essentially. Just as well, since I’m of
the opinion that if the face doesn’t look right, nothing looks right. As evidenced by the DOA games.
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