High Guardian Spice is what you would get if you let a 5 year old write a story while injecting politics and toxic feminism into their minds from birth, then throwing the resulting abomination into a fire and then asking a moron to reconstruct the story from the ashes.
I will list a problem then how I will fix it, they may only be a few but together and in the grand scheme of things it breaks immersion and makes watchers question the point of these things instead of focusing on the story, adding even more stuff to distract watchers.
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Problems: New Magic, Old Magic sucks and Warriors are fucking useless.
.
What is New Magic?
Terraspheres, the way you use New Magic, are pretty much magic sticks that can do whatever you want them to do, you can point your Terraspheres at whatever and have it do anything
They can however run out of energy and this would of been the perfect limitation to New Magic but of course everyone who worked on HGS is an actual moron and this fact is completely forgotten and never brought up or used again.
How do you recharge a Terrasphere? Nobody knows.
How do you even use New Magic on a more intricate level? Nobody knows.
You just point your do-it-all stick at something and sub atomically disassemble it.
There are also these things called Spark Spells which are spells that can be created by mages and preloaded into a Terrasphere that anyone can use.
Meaning even a talentless scrub can use op magic with just a bit of money, making physical fighting even more redundant, as a warrior has no excuse to not learn magic and to make matters worse Spark Spells are actually busted, Olive used a single spell that turned everyone in a city into a stone statue, meaning you can buy a Terrasphere with skills of that magnitude.
Spark Spells are already useless because Terraspheres can do legit anything already, they never give any restraints to them and whenever a character has one they always conveniently have a spell for it, which leads me to think spells don't exist and the Terraspheres are powered on imagination.
This is further supported by the lack of incantation or anything at all, and as many have said before me, New Magic can do whatever the fuck it wants as long as it benefits the plot.
Now lets go onto Old Magic.
Its fucking useless, there is ZERO benefit to using it you have to do random rituals every once in a while to keep using it or something, I really don't remember, you have to memorize random shit and whatever else, they don't really explain how it works at all in the show, so I'm gonna rework it completely.
Now onto idiots with swords.
In HGS mages can do the most insane shit ever, they can create huge explosions fucking fly WHILE using magic with no extra cost, they have a wide arsenal and they of course have the distance advantage.
If you use magic you could just jump onto your Terrasphere and fly around while blasting your opponent and they cant do jack shit if they don't know magic, its even good for close range, in one episode a mage pulls out a sword and then uses magic to create energy swords to fight with him, effectively giving him 7 swords against the single sword the opponent had.
There are types of magic that can straight up remove a person ability to fight just by pointing your Terrasphere at them, mages also have a range advantage, they can stay a mile away from you and just blast you until you die.
And what do physical fighters have? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and what do the writers do to remedy this glaring problem you may ask?
They make every mage a fucking dumbass, in one episode-
*Spoilers*
Rosemary(The Primary Mc) fights Olive(An antagonist), Rosemary only knows how to use a sword while Olive has magic but what does Olive do the entire fight?
She swings her Terrasphere around like a bo staff instead of keeping her distance and throwing fireballs and shit at Rosemary, IN THE ENTIRE FIGHT SHE DOESNT CAST A SINGLE SPELL WHEN MAGIC IS HER ONLY WEAPON.
If she used a single spell Rosemary would of been turned into fucking snails or some shit.
Since Olive is an idiot, she loses the fight as her stick aint gonna do shit for dick unless she casts some mother fucking spells, there are many times when mages lose half their brain and don't use magic effectively just so idiots with swords can keep up.
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Solution: Nerf everything
New Magic Solutions;
Terraspheres will run out of energy and I will actually use this as a driving plot point and not forget about it, and most of the races within this fanfic(Yes I'm adding more) can only have a single Terrasphere so you can't just have 400 of them for near infinite magic.
The way I will accomplish this is simple, once you come in contact with a Terrasphere not bound to a person its yours and it only responds to you, if it gets destroyed there's a whole convoluted and expensive process to getting unlinked to the destroyed Terrasphere and getting a new one specifically made to mimic your old destroyed one.
Terraspheres will recharge on the planets mana automatically as long as they are not being used, which will explain why New Magic is frowned upon as it destroys the planet.
Something the writers of HGS didn't elaborate on.
Mages also cant just point their magic do-it-all sticks at something and do whatever they want anymore, I am taking the idea of Spark Spells and turning it into the main feature of New Magic, if you want to use magic you better pray you created the spell before hand.
I will also go into how spells are created and make it very obvious it's no easier to learn and perform than training your body and fighting, and it makes mages seem less... lucky(?)
They actually have to work for the things they can do and not just be able to pick up a Terrasphere and blow up people and stuff.
This will also add actual stakes when fighting since you don't have the solution to literally every problem without even trying.
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Old Magic Solutions;
Old magic will work differently since no one really knows how it actually works
(Yes, the show did that horrendously of a job at creating a basic magic system. Like c'mon guys. A toddler could create a more interesting and fleshed out magic system.)
Old Magic is simple, it works off a person natural mana that everyone is born with at birth. Some may have more than others, but its there no matter what(some races will have such little it pretty much doesn't exist though)
This will also explain why Old Magic drains the user, which as never elaborated on by the writers of HGS.(Wow! So shocking eh?)
The cons of this magic are that you have to micro manage your own energy, as the more you abuse Old Magic the more you abuse your own body, once you run out of your own mana it starts chipping at your life force which begins rapidly aging you until you die.
The pros of this magic? There are none, its an objectively worse way to use magic, as its more primitive and relies on runes to allow casters to manage the very little energy they have to fight and not kill themselves.
Its also a lot harder to learn. it works like a language, you have to learn how to write in runic and become fluent in it at one point or another.
I want this magic to be worse, the only thing it has going for it is that its a last resort if your Terrasphere runs out of magic mid fight, or you cannot use a Terrasphere.
This also helps the planet in the long run, so its still used in situations where it will suffice, like in every day life.
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Buffing Warriors and why some people don't(can't) New Magic;
Even after the nerfing I gave mages, its still suicide to try and fight a mage if you can't use magic. The show NEVER explains why some people just outright cant use magic(I'm sure they can, but just decide to be idiots and not use it) most stories give a reason like it being tied to bloodline or talent or something like that.
But HGS just gives us the middle finger and tells us to fuck off, so this is what I'm gonna do.
Most people are born with the inability to use New Magic meaning Terraspheres don't work for them BUT, Old Magic is still on the table.
The reason for this is because 15 year old's aren't idiots, so everyone who will have at least 2 brain cells to rub together would obviously switch to magic or at least use it along with their weapon.
Now why can't these people use Terraspheres?
Some people are just born with way too much of their own mana that does not rest in the slightest, this both makes it harder to use Old Magic, and since they have pretty much negative control over their mana, it automatically clashes with the planets mana that Terraspheres try to inject into you for you to use.
Causing a little something called Mana Sickness, which is so violently painful it stops these people from not even holding a Terrasphere.
This gives an actual reason on why blacksmiths, archers and close combatants exist in the first place, as some people can't use Terraspheres so they learn to compensate for the things they can't do, but this doesn't solve the fact Warriors are still useless.
So what am I doing?
Adding a new type of 'magic' which I am dubbing... Raw Magic. Very simple name I know, but its on purpose so it fits with New and Old Magic.
Raw Magic isn't really magic but more a process you can go through that lets you create a single spell that can do nearly anything you create it to do, but once its created you can't change it, and it hurts like a bitch to use, uses up every ounce of mana in your body, and if you don't have enough mana it will age you so much, a gust of wind will be enough to scatter the ashes that now make up your body.
So its perfect for people who can't use Terraspheres, and adds a sort of 'Ultimate' to warriors, this still doesn't fix the disparity between mages and warriors, but it matches them better, which is all I need.
Mages are supposed to be better, not miles ahead, but better to the point if two people, one a mage and the other a warrior, with the exact same amount of talent, intelligence and training fought each other, the mage will win more likely than not if the warrior isn't proficient enough in Old Magic or Raw Magic.
But as a person receives more and more training the disparity will inevitably grow, making mages actual war machines that can probably take a whole country worth of non-magic users alone, hence Raw Magic, something that can fuck up a mage of any caliber once mastered.
It will be explained how you achieve Raw Magic in the story, so stay tuned for that.
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Problems: Teleportation Magic and other overpowered magic types.
In episode 1 alone there are two instances where teleportation is used, one is when a portal is opened to another location and another is when stuff is teleported directly into a characters hands.
If you think for 5 seconds you can see how both of those would be a problem. In a normal scenario and story, teleportation magic is meant to be hard to cast being advanced magic or whatever but in the story they don't give limits or conditions for what is needed to open portals and this implies any idiot with a Terrasphere can cast this type of magic.
Literal civilians who have never gotten any training in their lives, can cast this magic with FUCKING EASE. Do you see how that's a problem?
Portals make trains, carriages, or literally anything else redundant, and yes I do know that not everyone can use magic, but magic users have been using transportation like that willy nilly when they should be able to just open a portal there.
A person could also stand outside a shop and teleport everything inside to them and throw the items through a portal to their home before fleeing through that portal and no one can do anything about it.
Boom they just stole an entire shops stock in a couple of seconds.
Fighting would be trivial when a person can just teleport another persons weapon to themselves or just yoink their heart or something, maybe even teleport a rock into their brain killing them instantly.
Or you can just open a portal right under them and toss them into a fucking volcano. This is the type of magic that fucks up world building if not countered. So many stories, of all sorts of quality fuck this up because everyone, myself included, want to add cool stuff to the world.
Like Harry Potter, Rowling for some reason thought adding fucking time travel was a good idea, and used it a single time, then forgot about it like its some mundane shit.
In a real scenario, with real people, in a world not defined by some guy in front of a computer, people would abuse the shit out of time travel.
When building a world, take shit like this into account to make the world feel more real.
Let me be VERY clear here before someone tries to be a smartass. I'm not saying having OP stuff like this is a bad thing, the problem is that its never used at all, like ever in the entire show, nor is it given boundaries.
Shown once at the very start and then forgotten about.
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Solution: Nerf Everything
I don't want to remove this type of magic completely so I will make the requirements for using it extremely hard to fulfil.
First, it can only be done through Old Magic and the runes needed is extremely difficult to create and complicated, making the cast time not useful for combat and impossible to do for less experienced Old Magic users.
Second, you can only teleport items in your direct line of sight(with exception) and if the object is being held or kept in place by a strong enough force, the magic will fail, so you can't teleport a tree since its rooted strongly into the ground.
This means if a person has a strong enough grip on a item it cant be taken, so if a person is being reckless, its their own fault when their weapon is not in their hands anymore.
This also allows shops and other places that are vulnerable to this magic to place precautions like fixing their items to whatever they are standing on and only being able to be removed by magic or something.
Third, the further you want to open a portal or teleport an item, scales with how much mana it takes from your own body. You want to open a portal to the other side of the world? Yeah that will take every ounce of mana in your body, then sap at your own life force, and turn you to dust before the portal even finishes manifesting.
This helps the overall world building, when creating stories you have to account for every single use for something as an actual civilization would figure out uses that could put everything in danger, and people would find solutions, or you just limit what things can do.
Makes the world feel more realistic.
Writing 101. Take notes people.
I will be applying such changes to all the usual overpowered magic stuff, like mental magic(mind control, mind reading, and so on), body limiting magic(body control, Debuff magic and so on), illusion/transformation magic(self explanatory)
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Problems: Everyone in the show has an IQ in the negatives, conversations are the most meaningless thing in the show, and the mc's have very basic personalities.
This is actually a good thing for me as I have trouble capturing a characters personality when I write fanfics, I'm only good at creating personalities and characters and then writing about them.
In HGS the main characters have the least defined personalities, literal side characters are more interesting then them which is actually bonkers to me, and the conversations are so meaningless and convoluted, super stiff and unnatural sounding.
Amaryllis is the best written character solely because she is the bully-noble archetype which is FUCKING EZY to write.
Like take Rosemary for example, the main character, in the first episode she is proven to be the clumsy dumbass with too much energy, she trips over literally nothing more than once and is genuinely an idiot.
Y'know, they really tried taking that whole anime trope where 'Clumsy = Cute as shit and loveable' but still failed. They didn't even try to be consistent. In the same episode she is able to balance on a thin ass piece of wood that's fucking FLYING.
Whenever her clumsiness can shine through, it actually vanishes, in moments where it can be used as a plot device the writers decide to make her all badass and shit instead of sticking to her character.
Again, Amaryllis is the only character written decently, along with some other side characters like Snapdragon(again, its crazy how they somehow put more effort into barely important characters).
This next point ties in with everyone being a moron, but in the show the dialogue feels so inhumane, and pointless, it doesn't flow how a normal conversation would go and sometimes it just puts info in our face instead of trying to make us read between the lines.
Characters are filters, if you want information to be transferred to your audience it has to go through your characters if there is no narrator, but people wont just randomly go over information just so the watcher knows everything.
For example, lets say you want the following information to make it to the audience:
-Its the year 2077
-Mia and John have been dating for 6 months.
-John is leaving for a one way trip to mars and is in a space academy, meaning he is never coming back to earth.
-John is ok about it, no bad feelings.
-Mia is sad, cus she luv him :(.
-John is at Mia's apartment to pick up his stuff to leave forever.
-
If you want to convey all of that in a single scene you cant go:
John: Hey Mia, I am here to pick up my stuff from your flat and it is the year 2077.
Mia: John we have been together for 6 months, I love you very much you cant leave.
John: I don't love you, I love my career, I am very excited for the space academy where I will go to mars forever and am never coming back to see you- ever again. Did I say I'm never coming back? Let me say it again just to make sure the audience caught that.
John: I'm never coming back.
Mia: I am very sad about this information.
John: Well goodbye, incase you didn't catch that, I'm never coming back.
-
You cant do any of that if you want your story to be rated above 2 stars. None of it at all. Sure you communicated everything you wanted to, but at what cost? Your readers IQ that's what. Mia and John are normal people who wont just randomly state the year or speak like automated robots.
Again humans are filters who work to... you guessed it, filter the information you want to give the reader, this is why information dumps work so poorly and internal monologues too, if your story is in first person it becomes even harder to give information to readers, like how are you gonna tell the readers how this specific something works when the main character already knows how it works and has no reason to go over every single intracity in their head.
That's why you have to craft dialogue around characters, not characters around dialogue.
And yes this entire chapter is an info dump but I feel its important, I am not smart enough to put ALL of this information in my story fast enough to not lose you guys, while in the first person.
The show lacks all of the important rules of writing. Like the writers for HGS could of watched a single Youtube video like I did all those years back in high school to learn how to write even decently.
Again, the best written scene in the entire show is from Snapdragon and some other forgettable character, and keep in mind Snapdragon is a very minor character who appears in like 5 out of all the episodes for 3 frames.
They chose the easiest main character to write and still somehow fucked it up.
.
Solution: Redo Everything Myself
Personalities;
I will redesign everyone's personality while keeping them true to what the writers of HGS were trying to do, Thyme will remain snarky and mean, Sage will remain an annoying, bitchy crybaby that happens to be smart and Rosemary will remain an energetic airhead(fuck that clumsy shit, its stupid), but I will totally overhaul personalities I don't see fit, but I'll try my best to make them as interesting as possible.
Everyone's Idiocy;
I'll just not make everyone be an idiot unless that's their character trope, pretty simple, characters won't ignore useful magic they have, they wont purposely put themselves in disadvantageous situation and they will fight as if their life depends on it.
(I'm looking at you Olive, you fucking idiot.)
Everyone will use what they have to their disposal if they have the required intelligence to figure it out which I will decide based on some factors, and as a result of this I will remove some shit that makes no sense being there.
In the show characters are constantly showing us things they can do, but they never do them, like how Thyme can use magic and potion tipped arrows, but she never touches them again even when they could end a fight in a instant, or how items and other useful things are shown but never touched,
if I remember correctly in one episode Sage found a book going over how to become immortal and just threw that shit away without even looking at it. You do not understand how mad I was, she is supposed to be the smartest, but she finds something useful, but throws it away before evaluating its contents at ALL.
Bitch, if I found a book that apparently details how to become immortal I will read that shit before I throw it away. That book is never brought up ever again, its used as some basic shitty comedy gag and is never used again.
Stuff like that, that actual human beings are actually smart enough to use will either be purged if its too overpowered when the characters use it, or actually utilized.
Unnatural Conversations;
I will rewrite every single conversation in the show myself, I will keep them going the same or similar ways but you wont find a one for one copy from the show unless the writers managed to make a good scene that doesn't need changing.
(The amount of even decent scenes can fit on on hand)
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Problem: The shittiest world building known to mankind.
There is so much to talk about here, so like, get strapped in I guess.
First off, there are like 3(?) races within HGS that are even looked at.
Elves, Humans and Dwarves. This would of been perfect if they were done much, much better, but they are all kinda the same, Elves are just humans with pointy ears, and Dwarves are just short humans.
Granted there are many that are shown and by many I mean like 5 extra, but they are left out so badly, like bro they show a literal giant babe and then forget about the biggest race in the show completely.
In the entire Guardian Academy, guess which race everyone is...
That's fucking right, all of them are FUCKING HUMAN.
Except obviously the main characters, Parsley is a dwarf, Thyme is a elf and that's it, nearly everyone else is a human with a few elves and dwarves sprinkled in.
Super lackluster in my opinion.
Second, the world is so fucking safe. there are like no threats. I don't even know what being a guardian is about in the show that is all about becoming a guardian.
They don't even explain the main threat of the world 'Rot' its just something that exists.
Third, the world actually just looks like normal medieval. This isn't inherently a problem on its own BUT in a world of magic and shit you would expect magic to play the same role as electricity and actually make 'Rot' less 'climate change' and more;
'This shit is actually killing and infecting people by the millions, and is an actual fucking problem that may wipe out humanity, but we are also kinda undermining the problem because the thing that is causing problems is useful, and we are corrupt bastards are not willing to find a solution that can get what we want done without fucking over the next generation'
Oh wait, that is just climate change. Didn't mean to get all political right there.
Every story on planet earth with magic always has the same basic medieval magic shit, with none of the chain reactions magic would have on a world in the first place. Like where are the magic guns powered by Terraspheres? Where are the elevators? The planes? The Ships? ANYTHING that would be invented in any world where people have any semblance of an IQ while having access to the-
PHYSICS BE GONE
That is magic.
The world wont be steam punk per se, but there will be a lot of useful technology that exists while sticking to heavy medieval.
And now onto how useless people other than mages and combatants seemingly are.
Blacksmiths, and Alchemists are just so... lackluster.
HGS tried to create a Dungeons and Dragons party with the 4 generic classes with it's 4 main characters. Archer, Mage, Warrior and Blacksmith, but that also kinda fucked over how school works.
You can tell the writers also had trouble making them interesting as in the second episode, one of the main characters who takes the role of the blacksmith has already mastered how to create good normal weapons.
So one of the main characters, is already a master at the thing she is going to school for? Are you fucking serious?
And then Sage(the mage) is also already really good at Alchemy, so that's useless I guess.
Did I mention mages can actually just create shit out of thin air? In one episode they created FUCKING FOOD and in another they conjured perfect weapons. Do you understand how much this would fuck up an economy?
A world where food can just be created out of thin air, or where goods can be created by any scrub with a readily available Terrasphere. Everything would lose its value so fucking fast HOLY SHIT.
The HGS writers should actually just create a book called 'How to fuck up your own world building, so don't follow any of the instructions we give, do the exact opposite so you don't fuck over your own story'.
So, both Alchemy and Blacksmithing are getting reworks, making them harder, and integrating them with New and Old Magic where possible to make them more interesting.
.
Solutions: Add more shit.
Races;
I am adding more of them, not one or two, nah, there will be hundreds that exist, and obviously I can't focus on every single one, but there will be a very wide variety of types of people everywhere, with each having their own pro's and cons.
As you can tell, most races are civilized and not actual monsters, which was the first mistake HGS made, and then instead of solving this mistake with Rot, they just ignored it and made some arbitrary villains while ignoring what the fuck Guardians even do for a living.
Very simple, read the story to figure them out and stuff.
World Threats and what the fuck is a Guardian;
The world is a walk in the fucking park.
Rot is a near non existent problem, and all the terrible shit that should be a part of a world with magic that's ALSO set in a time where laws should be very loose is just not there.
First.
Slavery.
Yeah its a thing, an illegal thing, but prominent enough that if you're very unlucky you can go to sleep in your home with your parents, and wake up on a slave caravan about to be auctioned off to the nearest pedophile while your mother is already being violated by the slave traders right in front of your fathers eyes before she along with you are sold off to be sex slaves while your father is shipped off to some deadly arena.
A problem everywhere, more prominent in some places, while not in others. Like in places with mostly... giants for example, in places like those slavery will be near nonexistent
They are very kind to each other, and a greedy pig of a human sure as hell aint chaining a beast of a person 500x its size.
Second.
Rot is a now actually problem.
A Huge problem caused by the fact New Magic is used everywhere on the planet for literally everything.
Its that kinda problem that's hidden from the world through mass propaganda, making it seem like way less of a problem than it really is, and just advertising it as something that Guardians take care of, which Guardians do indeed try to take care of but can't expose unless they want to be 'silenced' by the government(s).
Its pretty much climate change that causes the corruption of living matter from a lack of normal mana.
It started when the planets mana was overused, and then that begins killing things(specifically plants) and instead of the plants just withering away, some of those plants came in contact with animals and such.
And began using those as sustenance to replace the mana they don't have anymore, causing the virus 'Rot', if any of that shit touches you and you don't have any healing spells or are not willing to incinerate that limb with a fireball then you will become infected permanently, and your only goal is to kill everything within sight.
Very simple, and now actually gives Guardians a job. To fight Rot monsters so they don't fuck everyone over, and do other generic knight shit.
Simple and to the fucking point, and did I mention the show didn't establish what Rot even is? I made all that shit up, and now its canon in my story because the writers couldn't give two shits about their own show and instead decided to be 'diverse' with their crew of idiotic writers.
Like is everyone who worked there actually a '47/46' idiot? What part of 'Everyone on our team is a woman and white as a sheet' IS FUCKING DIVERSE TO YOU??? All of you are white women from Florida or some shit.
GOD.
Jesus this show makes me irrationally angry for some reason.
Anyway, I'm getting so off topic right now.
Blacksmiths and Alchemists;
Blacksmiths-
I believe there is a thing called enchanting already in HGS(I really don't know, the show is so unmemorable I forgot half the show when I watched it just yesterday and I sure as hell aint going though 4 hours of hell again).
Anyway, blacksmiths can now both just make normal weapons and enchanted weapons for guardians and they go to guardian schools to learn just that, by learning how to either inscribe runes into whatever they are making.
Alchemists-
Potion making is going to stay true to what has been shown. It can only do one thing no matter how you try to create a position, and that is shape shifting you. All alchemy is based around the idea of transmutation, with different combinations doing different things... duh.
No healing potions, mana potions or any of that, perfect combinations can do anything from turning you into a worm for a few seconds to turning you into a dragon that can fuck over a city.
Alchemy will of course be highly dangerous, and training for it is drilled into students, its the hardest thing out of all the ways to get stronger to learn, but can very well be the most rewarding.
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Those are the changes I am disclosing as of right now. I'm not really sure if there will be more, I am doing more research and mastering the craft of writing stories that don't suck ass, so I may find more stuff to add here.
I also have a co-author aka my nerd of a wife who's writing this and some of my other future stories with me. So if you see some changes that I- the perfect God of Degeneracy wouldn't do, its probably her.
[This Idiots Wife: I edit your chapters you dipshit]
Hope you enjoy the fic.
With the amount of effort I put into this bitch I should of just written a fucking novel and actually made some money from my work.