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Sunday, October 23, 2022

Yor and Eunie:

As I continue to listen to Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the third heroine of the game naturally comes to mind.  Eunie, with her busty but fit body, twin miniature wings growing out of her hair and framing her head, and that amazing Ouroboros transformed state, is about as pretty as a girl can get.  She's even competitive with her compatriots Sena and Mio.  That beauty is mostly ruined by her manly posture, gestures and tone of voice, but it never truly goes away.  And sometimes that 'manly' Eunie shows her feminine side, mostly around Taion but it's always lurking.  Delicate or no, any boy would be overjoyed to have her.  The tight fitting all-black clothes also help.

Aside from her appearance, Eunie has plenty of good qualities deserving of recognition.  She's straight out a hero who saved the world.  Strong, self-sacrificing, determined and protective.  She's constantly saving people, healing them, or persuading them to live, cheer up, get better, etc.  On the rare occasions when she can't help someone in need she feels devastated, like with Mio at the fruit tree.  You can really tell how much she cares about others.

Eunie is someone I've spent hundreds of hours with, she's a super-main-character.  That alone makes her special.  And in comparison the likes of Ayumi, who only shows up in a couple movies in the Pretty Cure franchise, is a non-entity.  I barely know Ayumi, she's barely anyone at all.  But Eunie I've watched grow up since she was a child, watched her live across multiple different lives, watched her and watched her as she grew into a better and better person.  Why was Ayumi in my fictional character hall of fame instead of Eunie when one character is so much more real and developed than the other?  A silly reason, wanting to keep Pretty Cure mothers connected to Pretty Cure children, and wanting the total Pretty Cure count to stay a nice round 50.

Both of those petty aesthetic goals are nothing compared to the overall goal of honoring the best characters in fiction.  Losing track of the main goal and being satisfied with these extraneous things will only cheapen the quality of the fictional character hall of fame, and '100 Waifus,' as a whole.

Likewise, Yui from Delicious Party Pretty Cure has nothing going for her.  Oh she's pretty, but that's it.  She's an airhead with nothing useful to say or contribute in any situation.  She's friends with an older transgender man which is just creepy.  The only reason to have her in my fictional character hall of fame is to preserve the 'streak' of all Pretty Cure protagonists being honored.  Again, a small mini-game like goal getting in the way of the main goal of just having solid good characters.  In contrast Yor from Spy x Family is genuinely respectable.  She too is pretty, maybe not as pretty as Yui but she's certainly up there.  And unlike Yui she supports the ideal of the heterosexual nuclear family.  She dresses modestly, blushes around Loid, squees over how cute her daughter Anya is, tries hard to cook tasty dinner for her husband and child, and makes you want a family of your own.

On top of all that she's super strong, assassinates evildoers for a living, and is constantly beating up criminals and terrorists who were dumb enough to cross her path or mess with her daughter.  She's a force for justice, a one-man army of the Lord of Hosts.  We've seen all we'll ever see from Yui, she never changes or develops as a person, but Yor is clearly growing and changing for the better every day.  Yor still has a long and wondrous story ahead of her that could last years or decades to tell.  By the time we know everything about Yor she'll have easily earned her position in the fictional character hall of fame.

With these two name changes '100 Waifus' gets ever-closer to perfection.  I would like for a nice girl from the new Star Ocean game to replace Lymle, but first I'd have to play the game and actually make sure the new girl is better than Lymle.  Likewise, I'd like some new Tales of Arise characters to replace some of the weaker Tales characters on my list, but first I'd have to play Tales of Arise and make sure they really are better than what I already have.  Those are the only problems with the book left, as far as I know.  If I could just correct these two things I'd be done.

I even edited the line "You're right about. . ." to "I see your point about. . ." because it sounds more natural and less absolute.  People don't want to be dictated to, they want to be reasoned with, so it's better to use more moderate language in an argument whenever possible.  I'm paying this much attention to every line in '100 Waifus,' so by now it must be perfect.

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