Current Event: TBA | Ask Box: CLOSED [This blog is Blmatsu-free] Mobile Links: Event I - Ask the Heroes | Event II - Ask the Villains | Event III - Ask the Civilians | Event IV - Ask the Losers (Heroes) | Event V - Ask the Villains | Event VI - Ask the Civilians | Event VII - Ask the Heroes/Villains |
Sadly not. I made a post a while back saying that I won't be active on this blog anymore. I opened it up to questions for a little while to let people ask about any unresolved plot threads they were curious about, but officially I'm not posting here anymore. Sorry! That said, you're welcome to enjoy what's already here.
Do you have any other WIPs/oneshots youâd be willing to share from this series (if thereâs anymore and only if you want to!! )?? That nenchuu was A+ contentâ¨
I have a couple? I hate to say it, but Iâm pretty bad when it comes to writing down my ideas blame it on my adhd, so while I have a couple dozen of docs worth of heromatsu stuff, most of it is pretty disjointed and wouldnât really be worth sharing. A lot of them are just bullet points of important plot points, bare-bones scenes laid out as a sequence of events, entire dialogues where the script isnât labeled by which character is talking, etc.Â
That said, I do have a couple things I could share! Theyâre all unfinished and kinda messy, but if yâall want to read them I guess I might as well post âem.
Probably the most coherent one, hereâs a piece from the very end of the story, post-Atsushi defeat, between Oso and Totty: link
A scene between Osomatsu and Homura, who I never really figured out what to do with as a character (tw for suicide reference): link
A long doc with some stuff between Kara and his love interest, Hayakori (I think a lot of the what was written here ended up changing later on): link
A much, much shorter doc between Kara and Haya that was written later, with better dialogue: link
A couple of docs about Akumatsu and Kamimatsu. Originally Aku was going to be Kamiâs nephew, but as I started getting more into writing them I decided to write out Akuâs mom and make him a foster kid instead. Iâm going to link the second momless doc first (link) and the original doc second (link), because both versions would lead to the same ending but only the original doc actually has that ending written in it.
I really wish I had more good nenchuu stuff to share, but I never wrote as much of them as I really should have. ;;v;; I also have a couple of drawings I donât think I ever posted, so Iâll put those under the cut:
Concept sketches of Oso and Karaâs mentor heroes and sidekick costumes:
Karaâs mentor hero is Lady Blaze (I know thatâs already the name of a real world DC comics character, and I donât care. Itâs a cool name and Iâm using it anyway).
Ichimatsuâs sidekick costume, which helped inform the look of his revised villain costume:
A bunch of alt-color versions of Atsushiâs suit from Event 6 (this was definitely a good use of my time):
And finally a bunch of random drawings I have of Akumatsu and Kamimatsu.
I really was excited to get to their story when I was working on it (Kami was gonna be such a dad), but once school started and I didnât have time to look at it everyday, I started to feel so burnt out on this whole thing. Sorry I couldnât finish this for you guys. :â)c
To end on a lighter note, hereâs a fun little doodle I did of the Yowais while working on Fightingâs design:
Hey there hedgey, man this blog was a wild ride. I've been meaning to ask since it never really been properly answered, so how did Ichi and Choro become villains?
Haha, thanks! I had a lot of fun making all of this, and Iâm glad that so many people enjoyed it. I think looking at it retrospectively will help me be a better writer going forwards.Â
Choro and Ichi became villains as a result of them both having beef with the League of Heroes- Choro because they wouldnât let him be a hero, and Ichi because being a hero kinda fucked him up psychologically and theyâre the ones who are recruiting children for law enforcement purposes. If that sounds like a flimsy justification for villainhood... itâs because it is. :â) I chose to make Choro and Ichi the villains before I decided why they became villains in the first place. In all honesty, they probably would have worked better as vigilantes, or at least some kind of anti-hero. I always had a hard time writing them as bad guys when the characters as I had written them just didnât feel like criminals.Â
This is what I mean when I say that this will help me be a better writer. There are a lot of things Iâd do differently with a story like this now. I guess this is why most stories are written in drafts. đ
I've been meaning to ask what was going on with Ichi during his time as a hero and why he faked his death. Did something happen?
Ichimatsu never really wanted to be a superhero. Once he found out that he had powers he was shunted onto the sidekick track by his parents, and was pressured into staying on it for financial reasons. I donât know that I ever explicitly mentioned it before, but Ichimatsu has really bad anxiety. He doesnât like being around lots of people (especially strangers), he doesnât like confrontation, and he doesnât work well under pressure. His mentor hero wasnât particularly accomodating either, often trying to push him to be more independent, if only to get him off of her back. Even as a sidekick he felt like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, being tasked with protecting the public at great personal risk to himself. He was friends with Choromatsu at this point, but neither of them had any real power over the situaion and to some degree Choro was kind of jealous that Ichi even had the opportunity to be a proper hero. It wasnât like Ichiâs parents were evil monsters or anything either. They loved him and thought they were doing what was best for him. But they also had their own not entirely selfish incentives for keeping him on the hero track, and allowed that to take precedence over Ichi telling them that he wanted to stop.
Then, one day, Ichi got his way out. There was an accident that killed two people, including his mentor hero, and almost killed him. It freaked him out so much that he panicked and fled the scene, later to be reported as dead, despite the lack of a body. He was too afraid to come forward after that, and stuck to living out his life in secret, aided by Choromatsu.
If anyone is interested, I actually wrote a little bit between the two of them in a google doc that you can read here. I know these response posts have been getting kind of long, and despite the lack of polish I think itâd be easier to just post this than it would be to rewrite the whole thing here. :P
So how would Sushiboy wreak havoc in the last part? Would it be like that machine in the Incredibles or a robot army?
He would have used some sort of machine, which is why he needed help from Choromatsu. When I decided that Atsushi could have superpowers, it was going to be that he could like, neutralize other peopleâs powers? And he wanted to find a way to manufacture his own power, to take away everyone elseâs powers... I did put a lot of work into Atsushi, possibly more than any other character, but ultimately there are a lot of things about him that just kinda donât work the way I wrote him? Like I said before, giving Atsushi powers does smooth some things out logically, but in hindsight I donât think it works for him thematically. đ
Will Todomatsu be blamed for the things Atsushi did? I'm not certain if he posted being in a relationship with him but I can't help but think Atsushi used Todomatsu's hero ramblings for information. It would suck if he got accused of being an accomplice...
Todomatsuâs ending is definitely the least happy. He always kind of knew that there were things Atsushi wasnât telling him, but also understood that they were things Atsushi wasnât comfortable telling him and felt that it wasnât his place to press him. He would never have suspected that his boyfriend was capable of something like this.Â
Totty was also pretty open about their relationship (gotta build that personal brand), so yeah, on top of dealing with the emotional fallout of finding out that his boyfriend was an actual god damned super villain, he also gets to deal with a torrent of hate online from people who refuse to believe that there was no way he could have known. That was part of the reason why his relationship to Oso was going to be so important. Oso knows that Totty isnât a bad person, and at a time when it feels like his life is crumbling to pieces around him, he needs someone to remind him that it wasnât his fault.
(I posted this a looong time ago, but this is a little doodle of them sad-hugging it out u_u)
Forgive me if this was answered before or if it's not relevant, if not feel free to ignore this, but why was Choro in a wheelchair? Was he born like this or did something happen to him?
Choromatsu was born with a spinal condition and is paralyzed from the waist down. I did address it once, a long time ago, but I never really went into specifics. I didnât want his whole character to revolve around his disability, and I didnât want it to seem like I was fetishizing it by playing it up as part of his â¨tragic backstory.⨠That said, I feel like I could have done a little more research before jumping into that aspect of his character. I donât have any firsthand experience with that kind of disability, and I did try to educate myself about what I thought were the important parts, but I still feel like I could have done better.Â
Iâm not sure if you ever answered/mentioned something like this before or not but were Todomatsu and Jyushimatsu going to end up gaining superpowers too? And if they did, how did that impact the storyline? (And if they didnât, did either of them try to become vigilantes a la Robin or Batman style?)
Neither of them were ever going to gain powers. I kinda feel like it would have watered down the story somewhat if every major character ended up getting powers. Part of the reason I split the matsus up like this is because I thought it would be interesting if some of them didnât have powers, and what kind of conflicts could arise between the three pairs.Â
While neither of them ever become heroes, they do both end up allied with them by the end of the story. Totty becomes very close with Oso in both his comic clerk and hero personas, and Jyushi befriends a couple of villains, most notably Ichimatsu. All of the major characters end up on the same side by the end, with varying degrees of closeness between them.Â
So would there ever be a reveal for Sushiboy? I wonder how Totty will react to that.
Yes! He reacts... badly! :â)
By the time Atsushi and Todomatsu even meet, Atsushi is at a point where heâs willing to do whatever it takes to make see the end of superpowers through to the end. This leads him to some pretty dark places, all of which he sees as justified in the name of protecting public safety. Totty doesnât start of knowing any of this. He knows about Atsushiâs dad and respects that he has hangups about superhero stuff, but he doesnât really âgetâ Atsushiâs, at least not as well as he thinks he does. When he learns about even a few of the bad things Atsushi is currently doing in secret, his first response is to alert the authorities. Unfortunately, Atsushi is there to stop him. No matter how much he loves Totty he refuses to let anyone get in the way of his plans.Â
This is him! Not my character, but a friendâs OC who came into the story very early in its development and ended up becoming a pretty major character. He and Kara were going to have a whole arc where they started off as rival crime fighters, Kara working within the law and Haya working outside of it, but after fighting together/saving each other a few times Kara realizes that theyâre both ultimately fighting for the same cause and that they should focus on fighting evil instead of each other. Haya is surprised by Karaâs willingness to reconsider his point of view, and gains a new respect for him. After this they become tentative allies, then friends, and eventually lovers.Â
...in secret, of course. As a law-abiding Superhero⢠Karamatsu isnât supposed to formally associate with vigilantes, let alone fraternize with them. From the Leagueâs point of view the vigilantes are rogue elements, almost on the same level as villains. Whether or not any given hero will call them out on this is another thing (Osomatsu has more of a live and let live approach to the whole thing, as long as they donât get in his way), but Karamatsu has made a reputation for himself as a very by-the-books hero, and some degree sees âfollowing the lawâ and âdoing the right thingâ as one in the same. Likewise, the vigilantes arenât too keen on League heroes either. They each have their own reasons for working outside of the law. For some itâs a matter of ideals and principles, and for others itâs more personal, but all of them hold some grudge against either the League or heroes as a whole. Though Haya and Kara manage to put aside their differences for each other, neither one of them can initially drop their preconceptions about the other side- and neither side is willing to accept their relationship once it becomes public. Karamatsu actually loses his job as a League hero over it, and ends up joining the vigilantes
Did anything happen in the storyline where all the matsus ended up working together/ final battle/ identities revealed kind of stuff?
Towards the end, yes! They were all going to team up to fight Atsushi. I never really had a clear vision in my head of what that final showdown would look like though. Most of the middle-to-late story was pretty undeveloped, at least in terms of how it would culminate to that point. Aside from Atsushi kidnapping Choromatsu, of course.Â
I was planning to write Ichimatsu teaming up with Jyushimatsu and(?) the heroes, but in terms of identity reveals the only ones I had planned were between Karamatsu and his love interest, the vigilante leader (aka Hayakori, the OC of my pal @ihatemakingartâ). I actually had a lot of fun with their dynamic. Playing around with original character designs for the vigilante crew was cool, although I feel like I could have done more to make them a little more interesting. I think my desire to write this as a more grounded story kept me from pursuing any superpowers that were really âout there,â which was a mistake. If I ever do an original superhero thing, Iâll try to keep that in mind...
So... about Sushiboy being the real villain.. so how is he one? Is he like Lex Luthor or something?
Sort of? Iâll admit Iâm not super familiar with the DC comics, but they are both sciencey rich guys with a resentment towards superheroes. đ
Atsushiâs thing is that he hates people with superpowers because he thinks they cause more harm than good, and specifically hates the League of Heroes for enabling them and leading society as a whole to rely on them for protection. His father was killed in a superhero-related accident, along with two other people, including the hero who tried to save him. He sees heroes as a danger both to themselves and to others. It isnât really his goal to see them all killed or anything though. He wants to try and find a way to âshut offâ all superpowers, and he uses his inherited wealth to hire scientists to help him research and pursue his goal.Â
Choromatsu was actually going to be one of those scientists later in the story. He and Ichimatsu get caught by the heroes after a fight, and Atsushi ârescuesâ him so that he can help with his science research after his old head researcher gets wise to Atsushiâs plan and runs off before anyone gets hurt retires.
I also played around with the idea of Atsushi finding out that he also has superpowers? It did streamline the plot in some ways, but tbh Iâm not sure that it really made him a stronger character đ
So um... I donât really see myself coming back to this ask blog. :â) Sorry to disappoint yâall. I started working on Aku/Kamimatsusâ plotlines and realized that I was 1) way more interested in working on that than I was on any other part of the story and had no desire to go back to it, and 2) running an ask blog to a level of quality Iâm satisfied with while also being a full-time art student is kinda more than I want to have on my plate right now. This was something I started because I was having a lot of fun doing it, but now that my inspiration has died out I donât want to leave anyone waiting on this blog to come back.
But since I had a decent amount of the story planned out in advance, I thought I could at least tell you guys that Karamatsu hooks up with the hot mysterious vigilante, Atsushi is the real villain, and Ichimatsu faked his own death to get away from his family. The ask box is open, so you guys are welcome to send any questions you have/had about this blog, but Iâm not going to be answering in-character questions the way I was before.Â
Ask Heromatsu @ask-heromatsu - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
pixelskylines
kaledo-art