*Sings the Steven Universe "Giant Woman" song*

Ok, so I really got into Encanto - Who knew a movie about Gifted Kid Syndrome would resonate with me??? - and specifically Luisa’s song about having extra ability turned against you by overscheduling and the requirement to be at your best 24/7! Anyway, Luisa’s power is strength, so she’s a big girl, which got me thinking about how the internet has a thing for the Crushinators. They’re awesome, and we need more out there to provide their lesbian awakening services!

Oh yeah, I’ve got a “giant woman” in Momentum! Kaori! A very minor character! The type who never was considered for a last name in story planning! And who wouldn’t have been remembered without a very specific prompt! But that is how I got here.

Obviously, I had not given a thought to how she’d translate to the Precociousverse style. Challenge accepted. My brain has been really fried this week, as I haven’t yet recovered from missing so many PT appointments during the holidays, and it gave me a safe project instead of constant sketchbook failure. Mess her up? “I’m still figuring the design out!” Plus, there’s maybe one time she’d ever be mentioned again - and there’s another character who may be better at that job anyway!

There is no reason for Kaori to be supersize. (Around 7’ if you count big hair - cuz OF COURSE big hair too!) I don’t remember what aspect came first, but I got attached to a scene in the Momentum prequel, Constellations, where a too-young Charlotte was applying to the mage academy. See, you’re not supposed to enter the Academy until 15. Charlotte was 12, but a pile of raw power that needed to get off the streets before she accidentally tossed another lake. So we have a timid, traumatized, LITTLE girl (yes, Charlotte inspired Precocious’ Yvette), walking through a door and ending up in the hallway that serves as Kaori’s office. Kaori’s desk is sized for her, and she’s far enough down the hall that you mind assumed perspective. Then you close in, and she stands up, and COGNITIVE DISSONANCE! It’s how she gets her kicks, I guess. Blame teen me for the idea.

I had no idea what animal form to give Kaori. What you see here is a go at Charlotte’s scene using the generic canid form I draw for Kaori, which is MEANT to be a wolf. I didn’t do a good job, but I also just wanted to hash something in quickly to get the idea down. This whole Kaori experiment is done on impulse by default. I was too brain locked to work, so if a stray idea gets through, ACT ON IT, even if something this far away from what I should be doing. (That’d be Precocious.)

In addition, I attempted Tiger Kaori, Caracal Kaori, and Saint Bernard Kaori. You can tell by the one selected the top image with one I settled on. The bonus ones below are products of the impulse autopilot move described above. I had a friend over, and I drew more tries while talking to him, cuz he was a good anchor for focus. I got three sketches done before I finally derailed. After that, no amount of effort could get a sketch out of me, cuz that is my current curse. (This friend is used to me sketching through our convos. If I’m feeling generous, I’ll set him up with a video game, so we can BOTH do something with our hands while talking.)

Yes, this “mom outfit” sketch makes her look normal size. It was a reaction to a sketch I am not showing, cuz it came out awkward, so I went safe on the next try. How much anthro art is direct at Saint Bernard ladies that is meant to be cute and not playing into certain bulky, jowly fetish stuff? The fun part of anthro is you can take animals and remove the gross aspects! Dainty, precious horse girls are COMMON, and good for them! Let the cartoon animal people be cute! Accuracy in furry is a nightmare for many reasons! Anyway, I went to a certain scary furry archive site that can be searched via tags, and I declare Kaori to be the second cutest Saint Bernard lady ever drawn in furry. (There was a saint cleric design I admired. Damn it.)

And here’s a bonus wolf attempt, playing with markings (that match the wolf I used for reference). The intent was to repeat the Charlotte scene, but with the intimidated one being a Your Character Here figure. But I botched the spacing, and it was absolutely not worth the time to scan and edit.

That’s it for sketches. Time to unload the stuff sitting in my brain vault on her, to see what I’ve retained:

Kaori’s job at the Academy (it’s the top magic school, hence the privilege to be THE Academy) is to analyze the type of mage new students are, along with their rough potential. This is done by isolating the student in a shielded room, having them lay down, and placing a sheet of connected stones on their back. Each stone is tuned to a certain type of magic, and it’ll glow if the student has that connection. Kaori can do it because the stones don’t react to her. Publicly, the story is she’s a non-mage, who ended up there because why not have outliers stick together? But it’s a fantasy story, of course, so there’s more! Kaori is a null mage, which is a trait atop regular powers that means magic detectors, readers, resonators, etc. don’t affect her.

She’s really there in the evaluator role to flag the SPECIAL students to be recruited by the elite mages, who exist outside of society, some of which hit demigod-esque status. (Phoebe comes from a religious family that worships the Battle Judge, who is the strongest of the elite mages - tho a mythologized version. Which got awkward when the Battle Judge publicly joined the war on the opposing side, in Epic Final Battle style.) Kaori diverts the overpowered ones, like Charlotte, out of the public eye, and also selects mages with extra useful skill combinations - like nulls! (If they can do magic and the sheet doesn’t respond, ta-da!) To be clear, there aren’t a ton of elites out there. They are rare. But if they work out, their aging is slowed, so they do form an underground society eventually - and those useful skillset moderate-level mages are useful go-betweens! (One example: Charlotte’s childhood friend, Frazier, was such a low level mage he didn’t know he was one, but got recruited to the elite network to help stabilize her, if needed. And elites can upgrade you! Frazier is now… adequate!)

These days, elites want mages to serve society-helping roles, using their powers to help and grow society as a whole. (While also not pushing the tech mage angle, so society doesn’t rapidly modernize, and continues to need magic.) Thanks to periodic dark ages, aka a history of overpowered mages abusing their powers in the past, mages with unbalancing power go to the shadows, only to be used when a janitor with a BIG mop is needed. There’s a reason the top one is called Battle Judge. (Her predecessor was The Mediator, and you can guess his idealism didn’t hold.)

Oh, what the heck, if you’ve read my fantasy flailing to this point, you deserve a treat. I made this post in multiple drafts, and a lot of what should be in the above paragraphs is below. So clarification (and some repetition) is coming. To apologize for sloppiness, here’s the clunkier sketch I said I wasn’t gonna share. *shrug* It’s Kaori holding the sheet of resonant stones. I started trying to draw her Saint Bernard design from the front, cuz that sketch captured something I liked, including the silly barrel necklace that has no place with Kaori the character. But then I decided to put her on the job, with a name tag! And inexplicable barrel! (I shouldn’t say that. Nate walks around with the equivalent of a Saint Bernard barrel around her neck, after all.) Hey, no part of this post claimed I was anything beyond one step above non-functional! And this is showing alllll the holes in my ancient and unrefined ideas! Admire the depths and the flailing I endure to share something - anything!

Back to the story. Kaori appears briefly in Momentum at the end of “book” three and start of book four, when the Momentum team - with fate-unlocked magic powers emerging - reach the Academy. Kaori serves as the contact for the elite mages, directing the Momentites to a special meeting about big destiny fate junk - cuz it's the end of a book, and stuff needs to go down! Kaori doesn’t do much there - just have her hallway perspective fun, and doing a few readings (the jig is up on your self-editing, Aaron and Rhenna), before sending the crew to meet with the now-elite mage Charlotte. 

And here is where an “oops, I haven’t checked on this side character since the 90’s” problem rises. Kaori MUST be at the end of her run as a public figure, as the two Charlotte scenes are ~25 years apart. The elites can slow aging, and many nulls they recruit get the treatment so they can maximize their well-placed public lives. But eventually you’ve been in public too long, and you’ve gotta let aging happen normally or retire. It makes sense to say Kaori moved public when there was a bloom of notably-strong young mages - at least four elite-potentials before Charlotte showed up, and a couple dozen high-end or super useful mages - when it usually averages to one “elite” a generation, to make sure she caught and removed them early. Surprise, the bloom was a warning sign of an upcoming big fantasy war thing! The one that ended 16 years in Momentum’s past, because I’m not much of a fantasy guy, and I’d rather play with the consequences on a smaller scale! (I know all these story details because my brain never forgets. I treat fantasy stuff as a safe throwaway place to burn off creative energy when needed, cuz any decent creative has the power to write mediocre fantasy for themselves. It’s a low-floor genre, tho I imagine transcendent fantisy is particularly hard considering the ocean of mediocre indulgence and delusion. Now factor in my crazy brain. Every bad story I’ve had is still in there, and I could spend hours walking you through plot and characters even if I’d be better off NOT remembering the whole deal. I would prefer to use that vault space for more useful things!)

Ahem. Point is, Kaori has decide to retire or publicly age - knowing she’ll be stuck that age when she does go back underground and has her aging super-slowed, and she’s where she can do that silly “woman claims she’s 39 forever” thing! (She’d claim to be late 40s in Momentum, while looking a decade younger. In actuality, she’s probably around 60.) So, hey, Kaori is free for a spinoff event, post-Momentum! Maybe she can team with the journalist who’s technically a main character all through book three, but was never even named, because focusing on her would force me to nail down the plot! Remember how my brain retains so much of this junk? Aside from the bookend plots, which are still hella loose, it’s meant to be all scratch paper for me. If I think of a story of the week, I *intentionally* don’t save it, so I can rewrite it later if I feel like taking on the topic again. Sorry, journalist!

For completion’s sake, baby me decided Kaori had ice powers, which would appear in one scene total, just because I *have* to show her using magic once, or the null designation means nothing. Kaori’s too recognizable, and a domino mask will not cut it when every other working mage knows you. (I say this because baby me WROTE that scene, then later made it Momentum canon that Cara and Charlotte got ID’d despite their disguises. So, nope, back to the office, Kaori.) I think Meret gets some ice power by the Academy visit, and Phoebe’s power unlocks with the null ability, so Kaori can bond with our two MOST main characters if she wants. I honestly never fleshed out the end of book three story, I just know the aftermath: Rhenna FINALLY gets booted off the team, with a huge memory wipe from Phoebe’s amnesia stone, Kaori takes her in, catches her up, and starts to integrate Rhenna into the elite network. Then Rhenna runs into a certain journalist who’s been tracking the Momentum crew - and had specifically been tracing Rhenna’s path - trying to piece together what their deal is, setting up Rhenna to do some EXTREMELY stupid things in book four!

So that is how a catchy song about gifted kids led to Precocizing a randomly tall minor character, and me challenging myself to pull every obscure 25yo idea out of my vault, just to see how insane I am.