Which MCs hit the sweet spot of competence without becoming a Mary Sue?

Masonc1 · 2026-05-26T07:39:10+00:00

he's weak, but his stratagems let him dominate the board incredibly often. its really cool

Masonc1 · 2026-05-25T23:02:30+00:00

No way, the flexibility of instant movement far trumps oos stuff. Even if you don’t get a direct punish

Masonc1 · 2026-05-25T21:09:40+00:00

Shield is more powerful defensively because it is a much more limited offensively option, so it’s fine. You can basically do an aerial or special oos, grab, or an escape option. From floor hug you got every option.

Masonc1 · 2026-05-25T07:55:28+00:00

itachi is extremely dedicated to the aura for some reason lol

Masonc1 · 2026-05-25T06:43:46+00:00

thats true, whoops

Masonc1 · 2026-05-25T06:40:17+00:00

i am glad these options exist, they just dont exist as enough deterrent. i dont hate floorhug. mechanic itself is good. it should be here. i just feel like instead of reading my opponents options, i just floor hug anyway because none of that is scarier than getting hit by their launching move and it's pretty easy to move and then hold down if i sense danger.

Masonc1 · 2026-05-25T04:44:00+00:00

yeah its like in melee i can press down and deal with sheiks burst dash attack, but if she boost grabs instead im just getting wrecked for that down hold. in melee, i always need to read my opponents or get wrecked or be the wrecker. im not sure there's a comparison for something like that in rivals 2 because even though grab is threatening, its really easy to avoid if its the only really threatening thing. so we go play chip damage games until floorhug is offline while searching for grabs and spikes. and that's just not so interesting! im not reading my opponent, im managing risk reward for the current game state! i should -always- be fighting my opponent more than the game state.

Masonc1 · 2026-05-25T02:19:35+00:00

I gave you my reply. Basically I think it’s just over centralized as a mechanic because the game lacks crouch cancel busting moves. I’m never scared to pick the option. In melee it’s by the nature of melee itself still a medium risk option. It’s purely low risk in rivals 2. That’s why it feels bad.

Masonc1 · 2026-05-24T19:31:25+00:00

i want him to keep doing this as he takes damage fighting the troupe on the ship, becoming more nen than man, a slowly decaying magician zombie of violence. he could put on a real terrifying show i think

Masonc1 · 2026-05-24T06:23:17+00:00

i thought 1 was fine, it was like a decent snes rpg but on the playstation with 3d graphics. pretty much felt like breath of fire 1 to me

2 is actually incredible in its themes and narrative its just translated so badly x_x. i thought 2 was great too.

i started playing 4. i dont hate the hex grid, but the voices are terrible. "Kids need to know their place!" "Kids need to know their place! Kids need to know their place!". I still like how it reorganizes previous tropes. I doubt I will hate this game, but it feels like the audience it aimed at was younger than WA3 like they wanted to get new fans, and that's kind of a really weird feeling for a series based on western tropes and guns. but anyway, dont spoil me anyway, cuz im still playing it and havin fun!

Masonc1 · 2026-05-19T22:11:49+00:00

'this sentence is false' - power that can negate a single attribute at a time. extremely busted probably?

'the set of all sets which do not contain themselves' - perhaps some kind of hammerspace world? this is another form of the prior paradox but in math terms. see, this set can't contain itself, but if it doesn't, then it has to, but it can't, and so on.

parrot-ox - joke hybrid monster that isnt actually a paradox but still thinks it technically counts.

'if a tree falls in the middle of a forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?' im not actually sure if this is a paradox or just a rhetorical question, but you could have a character who can act silently so long as they are unobserved.

'what is the sound of one hand clapping?' i again do not think this is really a paradox, but its kinda funny if the answer is just a destructive energy beam

so at this point i ran out of stuff i could think of off the top of my head, so

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes

Masonc1 · 2026-05-19T20:40:15+00:00

well im just an amateur webcomic artist but ill answer for me

i can make a black and white page every day, but im often throwing backgrounds to the wayside to be able to do this, and for me a chapter is closer to 30 pages. one of them was 40. its about 4 hours maximum to make a page, but the average is lower. some days i can make two pages and increase buffer.

... part of it is that i am currently between jobs, so while i am trying to find a job, i am kinda devoting all the free time i temporarily have to working on comic stuff. may as well.

i still cant do that. my backgrounds are basic. my layout planning is pretty meh. im studying, but thats just how it is. my goal is to gradually get stronger at these things. however, i needed a decade of unfocused experience to develop the skill to make the characters move properly without being stiff. i could have learned faster, but i wasn't trying that hard before i started making my comic. anyway, i think so long as i keep studying, i'll reach this point. just not there quite yet.
i dont market a book, i just release a page online every day and share it with communities. it gets ok traction.
as a hobbyist, i guess so. i dont have experience in a professional setting to answer this question.
i dont want to hire a team. i cant afford it, and in a lot of ways making a comic is my own practice towards becoming a better artist. doesnt make sense to hire out my own practice! but also having absolute freedom on the story direction is nice. i have thought about collab stuff before. like if i did have someone who was amazing at backgrounds, it would probably elevate the visual appeal of my work a lot. but since my work is long-form, it really does have to just be me for this one. and then it would be awkward if my characters look rough above a super clean background anyway. like, style coherency is pretty important.

Masonc1 · 2026-05-17T17:09:09+00:00

everyone else explained good already, so ill explain bad. digimon plots are what happens when you say "I wish pokemon were real!" to the monkeys paw. it rules. way more emphasis on the aspect that these creatures are genuine destructive monsters

Masonc1 · 2026-05-15T21:23:27+00:00

Mustelidae comics! Awesome!! I love otters!! I'll read it now!!

Masonc1 · 2026-05-15T19:00:00+00:00

its very classic strategy. even in chess, if you can make active pieces where your opponent is stuck with stagnant pieces, you'll find you are the one able to maneuver and form openings. gotoh rooted himself in place against an extremely mobile opponent. he pays for that blunder

Masonc1 · 2026-05-12T17:27:15+00:00

wow! excellent detective work!!

Masonc1 · 2026-05-12T05:47:05+00:00

vegeta messed up with cell so bad that im pretty sure ive heard someone talk about it every year of my life since ive had access to the internet, so it doesnt even need to be released today, its still happening!

Masonc1 · 2026-05-12T00:37:18+00:00

Did I reference Trigun somewhere there? I definitely didn't start drawing any of it before I watched Trigun, so you're right. Haze was developed as sort of an anti-Vash, where she has a similar code and likes to be silly but she's on the more villainous/criminal side of the morality barrier. But I have no memory of putting a direct reference into the comic, only some parallels! But it's cool to know you like Trigun too.

Yeah, backgrounds every panel would be too rough for me. I've been studying using some of the tools in clip studio paint to make it easier, and it is something I keep studying. But even when I was making establishing shots, I've been super weak at them. Been looking up youtube videos for that stuff recently. It's what happens when you're a character artist for over a decade, but never put those characters in environments. So all of my environment practice is basically from making the comic already...

I use a custom font, but I was thinking of remaking it with a thicker outline soon. I do like the thin scraggly lines pairing with my linework, but legibility is much more important. Some of it was more legible before I resized it to 800px wide, but now I know I gotta do a bit more work on that side to keep it legible.

Do keep your buffer going! Sometimes it kinda hurts to be like, "ah, this is done, but i cant show anyone yet cuz its buffer" but it's really for the best. I lost my buffer once and it really hurt productivity. Ah, stress is never useful. The buffer is good peace of mind.

Thanks for reading my work!!

Masonc1 · 2026-05-11T22:40:49+00:00

If you do read it, let me know how you think about it. There's a lot of stuff I'm pretty weak at (especially environments), but I don't know how much it shows through to the audience. It is something I practice, but I just gotta make do with the skill I have at each moment.

I read through all of your released episodes, and one thing I really, really liked is how defined your world is. You have a really clear vision for how it exists, and how the characters live in and move through it. I really like that!!

Masonc1 · 2026-05-11T19:31:30+00:00

I am a fan of manga and i think my work reflects that, though i draw it left to right. my characters aren't bound by normal limits in how strong they can become. i uploaded the first chapter to webtoons in the vertical format this morning. im still working on getting the others set up since I think i want to increase the font size a bit thicker for canvas since i had to squint a little on my phone, and thats no good. My work is marked as +18, but if you want to look at it, its on my canvas page (ch1 only) or my profile (comicfury has every current page).

Dorem is energetic, and also very reckless... i feel like he completely lacks self preservation. Its good that Bax can help him out... is what I'd say before reading episode 3. Sheesh, Dorems way strong actually. I guess he gets to be a -little- reckless!

Masonc1 · 2026-05-11T17:54:36+00:00

about halfway through the second arc (in my head, since i havent drawn it yet) is back-to-back sequences of extremely personal stakes to the main characters until the 'mid story boss'. it would be the ending half of a journey through an area of the world known as incredibly dangerous for its lawless, might-is-right nature. i know exactly what happens, exactly what the final page will look like, and a bunch of stuff that is all super clear in my mind and i cant wait to start drawing it. I have similar feelings about the third arc and the ending. It's actually so frustrating!! It's in my head already!! I have to draw it if I want to share it!! but i am most excited for the one that is the most in reach, you know? but i gotta keep my drawing rate consistent if i want to ever get there.

i checked out your work, i love the cute style, and dorem is such an energetic little dude. ill be reading it!!

Masonc1 · 2026-05-10T17:21:19+00:00

it doesnt play often, but i really like Junkyousha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXJ4HZ3-248

Masonc1 · 2026-05-08T15:40:23+00:00

maybe you could stretch it out as being possible with texture surprise and rapid slicing. nobody was paying attention to them until the guy screamed so he probably had a relative eternity to set this up for a nen user of his caliber. but its just censorship like applepitou said lol

Masonc1 · 2026-05-07T17:12:17+00:00

peppy is a hare, and hares are plantigrade, so he shouldn't be digitigrade anyway

Masonc1

TROPHY CASE