Potentially fatal flaws of my series (Elemental Flesh Armored Legends)

Off Topic
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I think many of you have heard of the story I’m making.

For those who don’t, Elemental Flesh Armored Legends is a story where six random teenagers are suddenly chosen heroes. Their goal is to protect humanity against evil elemental spirits. This isn’t the only problem, but it’s the main one I only realized now.

1. Too Far Apart
Problem level: extreme

The problem is that the chosen heroes are all spread across the world. It would be very awkward for me to make the story since most of them will never meet in person for long periods of time. It’s not feasible to do so and it leaves their home country vulnerable to attacks.

I’m thinking if I should cancel EFAL (Elemental Flesh Armored Legends) altogether because of how awkward this would be. It would be just five (one of them will be murdered in their first and only living episode/appearance) different stories that are labelled under one.

2. Introduced Too Early
Problem level: medium

I wanted EFAL to be mainly character vs supernatural, however I ended up revealing a big evil organization too early in episode 2, where one of the chosen heroes was eavesdropping their family. I also ended up planning to introduce a member of that organization in episode 5. Actually, does it really matter if I would only introduce members of the organization occasionally, like 3 times per season if 1 season is around 16 episodes?

3. Crutch
Problem level: medium-high

The EFAL have an ability known as “Calling of the Past”. This is basically the avatar state. The problem with this is that it would activate in basically every fight, making the need for them to learn skills mostly useless… (Selerichi would have to learn modern science which definitely wasn’t available 600 years ago and thus no previous hero would have knowledge of it or how it could be used with life magic, but does that even matter when she died WHILE CALLING OF THE PAST WAS ACTIVE, thus deleting all the past generations’ memory and leaving the 6th one with nothing?) Even with the drawback of getting tired after each fight, does it really matter? It’s too minor in my opinion as for fighting, it’s a pure benefit with practically no drawbacks.

However, power boost removing the stakes isn’t a super big problem. Selerichi got bodied by Astijorin, the weakest elite member (rank 4) of the evil organization.

What next?
I’m thinking if I should delete and restart this series, or go on with what I have. The main reason I don’t want to delete it is how much time I’d have to spend drawing so much shit for the videos.

Elemental Flesh Armored Legends is a test run story, after all. I created this solely so I can see what’s wrong with it and use the knowledge to improve on my future stories, and potentially my future magnum opus.

4 Likes
2

remind me to read this in… 6 hours or so i need to do my english homeworks

3

just keep writing and see what happens :fire:

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Hey wmdrayal, do your English homeworks

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done, got a 8.5/9

anyway, time to read this

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random?

i thought an omniscience god or something choose the best possible candidates?

are they even aware of each others’ existence?

if yes, just let them make a idk, discord server or something ( pretty sure your story is in morden time right )

if no

well, why would it even be a problem? if anything, this could be a potential upside cause you can write multiple semi-unconnected stories at the same time, exploring different themes and such

basically a whole lot more options ( which ig can be troublesome )

rip, gone too soon yet not forgotten

mind telling me more about the general structure/idea for the story?

nah, dont see why this is bad tbh

sure ig you can say theres less suspend and whatnot, but you still have the members of said organization, so its not like everything’s gone

it’ll be fine

the last one is kinda this and that

i personally think that giving your protags an ability that make any of their efforts to improve themselves mostly useless is kinda bad idea

sure theres the “if you die while its active all memories of past gens get wiped” but like, most of the time it wouldnt be really that matter, not to mention the audience wouldnt actually see the consequence if that happens which make it feels “low stake” even tho the stake is pretty high lore-wise

another thing is

unless im missing something i feel like this is powercrepted a bit too much

im assuming TCOP grants them both knowledge the abilities and how to use it, basically some form of possession from previous gens aka pretty much jsut the avatar state, which should, in theory, makes them semi-unbeatable

ofc, Aang did got struck by Azula so ig it was an ambush or something

overall i think its fine

ofc, the decision still lie with you, if you want to scrap this and make a new one then go for it

it not like you lose everything or anything ( well, aside from the drawings and animations ig ), you still have a bunch of stuffs that can probably be carried over/refereced by your next work(s) after all

good luck, have fun

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sorta, they know the other legends exist but don’t know them (non-hero identity) in person

they’d have a discord server so yes

interesting

for the whole story, it’s about the people trying to protect the world from the spirits, and each episode might be a mini adventure about each incident or something. however, the whole growth throughout the story might be them learning new tricks (might have to make sure cotp doesnt invalidate that)

for the individual, it will be navigating through their circumstances, such as:

  • hina (wind): being a goody-two-shoes college girl
  • shira (lightning): being absurdly rebellious and skipping school often
  • kai (fire): his family wanting to kill him and the evil organization
  • aisen (water): balancing his game dev life and hero life
  • yatarou (earth): being tricked by propaganda and stuff to following a north korea style government, also working for their military
  • selerichi (life): if she was still alive, i’d make her track down a drug lord, make her help her family out of poverty (her dad died and thats why) and would also force her ass to learn biology and chemistry

(selerichi and her life mage brother tenevori are likely forced to memorize this)

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Is this taking place on Earth? If so, either of these could potentially help you:

Option 1) Change the era, mostly prior to global travel on a large scale so that your story can take place in one area. + It’d make the Elementals stronger since they sound like they could be dealt with using only fire arms lol

Option 2) Take the Fate franchises’ approach, which is to make these abilities not all that commonly known, which removes the issue of having to deal with global threats whilst being known

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I mean ig you could also try make it so that many people have abilities, and that these chosen few just have stronger more elevated powers or sum lol

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yesn’t, it’s like on earth but fictional countries or land

do you mean changing the era but grouping everyone to one spot?

abilities not commonly known? i dont get it. i dont get the dealing with global threats whilst being known part.

many people already do, but they obtained it differently. fun fact, elemental legends can’t be the strongest individual because they are locked out of the strongest possible power.

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the god chose randomly, also this is a problem. why would a god (of life) choose randoms? take note they will never choose people who are in the evil organization.

however, i thought of possible reasons why the god would choose each person:

  • hina: nice and responsible girl
  • shira: despite being absurdly rebellious, she fought spirits when she was younger
  • kai: unsure, but he doesnt like his family thats in the organization
  • aisen: idk
  • selerichi: idk
  • yatarou: idk
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well you can always take the “this world is nothing more than one in a million creations of that god and they see it nothing more than some toy” if you want, that can explain why they choose at random

then again, that wouldnt really explain why they wouldnt just choose people in the evil org then

or just slap the “the god works in myterious ways incomprehensible to the human mind” in :person_shrugging:

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i could say that there’s so many people that the god can’t afford to inspect everyone

also if theres a reason the gods don’t go full power (it’s not just one god, but five other evil ones), i could probably use mutually assured destruction as the reason

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ngl im kinda tempted to bring selerichi back (make it so she was never murdered) just so i can watch her suffer learning biology and chemistry (she failed those subjects in school and those are her worst grades)

should i bring her back just to torture her :smiling_imp:
  • yes
  • no
0 voters
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Yeah, but it’d have to probably be in a more central location so that your idea of it being globally spread could still technically occur

I mean more so that knowledge of these powers is very limited, atleast in the beginning and it becomes more known as the story goes on, maybe the evil organisation’s goal is to make it the knowledge of the elementals public, but more for nefarious reasons.

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yeah it does, however what’s preventing the heroes from just crutching on cotp all the time, a move they can’t even fully voluntarily activate? is it the risk of dying while in it?

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just do something like Chaos in AO where its random

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i still dont know what incentive is there to learning magic despite having cotp, also can you get stronger by stacking your innate strength with cotp boost?

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youre correct in that, but i still cant think of a reason as to why they’d learn their own tricks aside from the risk of death

would a new legend be as strong as an experienced legend if both have cotp active? like would your magical knowledge affect how strong you are with cotp? i doubt since i don’t think any new elemental tricks could’ve came between year 1400 and 2000 (except for life magic but i already killed selerichi off)

if EFAL was done and there was another series, which generation would you like to see? each generation is ~600 years apart
  • 4th Generation (Previous)
  • 6th Generation (Next)
0 voters
20

We have more flaws.

4. How is the world not fucked up already?
The EFALs mortal human enemy are the Elemental Spirit Worshiper cult/terrorist group. The ESW aim to wipe out humanity in hopes of getting rewarded by Splokojis, Krakojis, Orastel, Tesrai, and Vozaku. The ESW group is at least 2000 years old.

ESW members are extremely powerful. Before I go on, I have to mention the ranks:

  • Leader
  • Co-leader
  • Elite
  • Fighter
  • Helper
  • Scout

The disparity of power between an elite and fighter is extremely large because all members elite or above are blessed by at least 1 god. Being blessed by a god means they have extremely strong magic for a certain element, depending on the god. They can also create and destroy their elemental matter (Splokojis/Orastel/Tesrai only) and thus blatantly violate the law of mass conservation. Fire (Krakojis) and lightning (Vozaku) already innately do this.

They also have a spirit form, which they tap into or activate once their mortal human body dies. It’s like a second life. If they die in this spirit form, they’re gone for good.

The advantages of the spirit form are being unable to have their body directly manipulated by any elemental magic (unlike any carbon-based life form which can easily be killed by a life magic user) and being more durable. The downsides are slower regeneration and unchanging personality and memory.

Astijorin, the weakest elite was able to create around 10 million liters of water once during a fight. I’ll assume he could control at least half of it at once. Imagine how much stronger everyone else is. All elites are blessed by 1 god, co-leaders by 2, and leaders by 3 or 4. In modern times, there are:

  • 1 leader, 1 runaway ex-leader traitor
  • 3 co-leaders, 1 runaway ex-co-leader traitor
  • 8 elites, 8 runaway ex-elite traitors
  • ~1000 fighters
  • ~600 helpers
  • ~800 scouts

This is fine if it’s just modern times. How about all their opportunities in history like 1000 or 2000 years ago? In 2000 years ago, there’s likely be like 1 leader/co-leader/elite for example but 0 runaway traitors blessed by a god. Why did they miss their opportunity?

Also EFALs don’t have infinite lifespan unlike those blessed by a god. An EFAL’s lifespan would be around 200-300 years and the gap per generation (chosen starting date, not death date) is around 600 years.

EFALs are also very powerful but it’s the lifespan that makes it a big problem. Selerichi, a literal noob/beginner life legend from the 5th generation (current one in the story) with CotP was around equal power with Astijorin.

Should I remake this shit?
I don’t want to because I’ll lose all my progress, especially the drawings, which is such a pain to make. I don’t want to draw nor animate shit.

If I were to rewrite this, the most notable things I’d do is remove CotP and the ESW. EFAL was originally supposed to be about fighting spirits or entities ravaging the city, aka glorified magical first responders. Also, the legends didn’t have elements in my very first draft of them and I called this series (in my mind) Kakuja Legends but I couldn’t do that since this isn’t a Tokyo Ghoul fanfic.

Should I remake everything?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

I’m gonna retcon this and say that Naruhati (god of life, chooser of the EFALs) isn’t allowed to choose the best candidates because Splokojis, Krakojis, Orastel, Tesrai, and Vozaku made restrictions for who Naruhati could choose as legends. The gods operate on a trade-based system and don’t go all out because… Mutually Assured Destruction.