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Description
One of my patented "remedial floodfill" coloring jobs to get an idea for how the version of Maisy from "Wardoll: The Last Goddess" would look. Notably, she wears a regular pair of shorts and a fabric top (although how it interacts with the armored chest piece is one remaining nod to artistic license; Boag called it "an actual tank top," LOL) as opposed to a "superhero" uniform, since this story isn't really one of those in the traditional sense. Hell, the way it seems to be developing, it's more of a 70s super-robot manga disguised as a modern post-apocalyptic road trip...another of this model's design elements actually plays into that, even. Those clasps on her biceps, thighs, and neck aren't merely decorative, they're actually modular connection points which allow her to swap between different weapons and, she and her human companion hope, different bodies; that's why I left them a single color, to try and downplay their appearance since they're, essentially, structural weak points. Part of the overarching plot is Maisy and her human companion traveling to the remains of the lab sites that developed the various Machine Goddesses to try and salvage new weapons and equipment and, hopefully, find either another intact Goddess or, at the very least, a proper body for Maisy as opposed to the undersized and underpowered prototype body she has.

Another design element that plays into the story are the blue crystals on her head and belly button; the latter one is the actual chunk of Tritonite that gives her life and power. I'm trying to think of how to actually rationalize why it's external, although it's not really a weak point since the crystal is harder and denser than any of the components around it; any force strong enough to actually crack it would probably reduce the rest of Maisy to metal fragments in the process. I'm thinking there might be an "energy collection" element necessitating the external mounting, since the crystal on her head is a solar collector made of artificially-made "secondary" Tritonite used to power her brain in case her head is separated from her body for whatever reason. The headband and antennae it's mounted on are a removable unit that plugs into ports on her temple and cover her ears, providing a backup power source and a radio-control capability so she can direct her body from a limited range if detached; it also provides additional power for her ocular Photon Beams, again primarily when the head is removed from the core reactor in her body.

All this super-robot science underlines one of the elements that I'm struggling with in this story, though, namely the technology of the post-Gorgon Invasion Earth. I'm drawing heavily from influences in my past, particularly the "post-apocalyptic" sci-fi of the late 20th century, like David Brin's "The Postman" (the original novel, not the Costner film) or "Genesis Climber Mospeda" (better known in the U.S. as the third chapter of "ROBOTECH"), as well as more modern takes like "Walking Dead"; I even described "The Last Goddess" to my son as "Final Fantasy meets the Walking Dead" at one point this week. The problem is, in a setting like this, wouldn't it make much more logical sense to simply strip Maisy for parts? Even a Tritonte reactor as small as hers could probably power a small city, or at least a hospital, almost indefinitely...and, while we're at it, the Gorgons EMP-ed all human technology into oblivion before invading, but it's been 20 years since. How much of what kind of tech would have been salvaged in that time span? Would some form of electricity, like through solar panels or windmills or even old-fashioned waterfall turbines, be functional again? What about nuclear reactors, for that matter...would the Gorgon invasion have done something to prevent those from being brought back online in 20 years?

By the same token, I also have to remember a bit of advice I read somewhere recently: world-building is the biggest time sink in any writing process. To some extent it is vital, but it's also a trap that far too many writers get sucked into, spending all their time developing the worlds their stories take place on instead of, y'know, ACTUALLY WRITING THE MOTHERFUCKING STORIES. Hell, I know of at least two highly talented would be writers on Skype who have spent the past three, four years showing me backstories and plot ideas and all sorts of details about their worlds...and who have never written ANYTHING from the stories themselves, eventually getting bored and wandering off to start the world-building for ANOTHER project.

Hell, I'm just as guilty of it as them. Just look at this gallery, after all.

There are some elements I need to answer before I start this project, but, I suppose, it's far better to just say "Fuck it" and write a flawed story than to spend so much time working out the details that the piece is never made in the first place.

Description
One of my patented "remedial floodfill" coloring jobs to get an idea for how the version of Maisy from "Wardoll: The Last Goddess" would look. Notably, she wears a regular pair of shorts and a fabric top (although how it interacts with the armored chest piece is one remaining nod to artistic license; Boag called it "an actual tank top," LOL) as opposed to a "superhero" uniform, since this story isn't really one of those in the traditional sense. Hell, the way it seems to be developing, it's more of a 70s super-robot manga disguised as a modern post-apocalyptic road trip...another of this model's design elements actually plays into that, even. Those clasps on her biceps, thighs, and neck aren't merely decorative, they're actually modular connection points which allow her to swap between different weapons and, she and her human companion hope, different bodies; that's why I left them a single color, to try and downplay their appearance since they're, essentially, structural weak points. Part of the overarching plot is Maisy and her human companion traveling to the remains of the lab sites that developed the various Machine Goddesses to try and salvage new weapons and equipment and, hopefully, find either another intact Goddess or, at the very least, a proper body for Maisy as opposed to the undersized and underpowered prototype body she has.

Another design element that plays into the story are the blue crystals on her head and belly button; the latter one is the actual chunk of Tritonite that gives her life and power. I'm trying to think of how to actually rationalize why it's external, although it's not really a weak point since the crystal is harder and denser than any of the components around it; any force strong enough to actually crack it would probably reduce the rest of Maisy to metal fragments in the process. I'm thinking there might be an "energy collection" element necessitating the external mounting, since the crystal on her head is a solar collector made of artificially-made "secondary" Tritonite used to power her brain in case her head is separated from her body for whatever reason. The headband and antennae it's mounted on are a removable unit that plugs into ports on her temple and cover her ears, providing a backup power source and a radio-control capability so she can direct her body from a limited range if detached; it also provides additional power for her ocular Photon Beams, again primarily when the head is removed from the core reactor in her body.

All this super-robot science underlines one of the elements that I'm struggling with in this story, though, namely the technology of the post-Gorgon Invasion Earth. I'm drawing heavily from influences in my past, particularly the "post-apocalyptic" sci-fi of the late 20th century, like David Brin's "The Postman" (the original novel, not the Costner film) or "Genesis Climber Mospeda" (better known in the U.S. as the third chapter of "ROBOTECH"), as well as more modern takes like "Walking Dead"; I even described "The Last Goddess" to my son as "Final Fantasy meets the Walking Dead" at one point this week. The problem is, in a setting like this, wouldn't it make much more logical sense to simply strip Maisy for parts? Even a Tritonte reactor as small as hers could probably power a small city, or at least a hospital, almost indefinitely...and, while we're at it, the Gorgons EMP-ed all human technology into oblivion before invading, but it's been 20 years since. How much of what kind of tech would have been salvaged in that time span? Would some form of electricity, like through solar panels or windmills or even old-fashioned waterfall turbines, be functional again? What about nuclear reactors, for that matter...would the Gorgon invasion have done something to prevent those from being brought back online in 20 years?

By the same token, I also have to remember a bit of advice I read somewhere recently: world-building is the biggest time sink in any writing process. To some extent it is vital, but it's also a trap that far too many writers get sucked into, spending all their time developing the worlds their stories take place on instead of, y'know, ACTUALLY WRITING THE MOTHERFUCKING STORIES. Hell, I know of at least two highly talented would be writers on Skype who have spent the past three, four years showing me backstories and plot ideas and all sorts of details about their worlds...and who have never written ANYTHING from the stories themselves, eventually getting bored and wandering off to start the world-building for ANOTHER project.

Hell, I'm just as guilty of it as them. Just look at this gallery, after all.

There are some elements I need to answer before I start this project, but, I suppose, it's far better to just say "Fuck it" and write a flawed story than to spend so much time working out the details that the piece is never made in the first place.