Card Priestess Masami – Review by ReviewAnon

By: ReviewAnon (name given by the readers)
Originally posted: 30.01.2016
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PREMISE

You are the embodiment of the Priestess Tarot, as the story primarily follows the actions of what remains of this deck of ill-explained Cards and their final actions in the world of humans. You were only recently born, ignorant and unaware of what you are, as well as what is going on around you, with a multitude of unknown forces already in motion as they try to pull you into machinations that started a long time ago. This the Final Act, and you are the last actor to enter the stage... But your role is anything but small.

As the Priestess begins to grow accustomed to being alive, she encounters a variety of actors in the cast ranging from fellow Tarot such as the Empress, Magician, and Tower, to relatively normal people whose story had already ended long before yours began. You slowly begin to piece together the tale of the Tarot spanning across the ages, the truth behind the monsters of the past, and in the process, take a pivotal role in what is to come as you embrace the typical tenets of a Magical Girl's creed: Family, Friendship, and Love Above All.

That said, the quest is also swamped in slice of life shenanigans and cute kids doing cute things. Even most serious scenes are framed through the vision of the not-so-serious demeanour of a young girl, and the writing tries pointedly to stay faithful to its genre's roots. This is a magical girl story played straight, with no real 'edge' or dark subversions.

Well... None that aren't typically found in the mahou shoujo genre in the first place, anyway.

As some may recognize from the focus on cards, this quest does seem to be heavily inspired by Card Captor Sakura.

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REVIEW pt1

Mechanics.
d20, Best of Three. Nothing unusual here, and it's worth noting that rolls aren't even really made much. It's a narrative chosen by the players. There is a routine swapping of view points to other members of the cast, and it can be a little jarring at some points, but isn't too unusual.

Plot.
The plot in this is one continuous story from start to finish. Everything that happens feeds into the next event and regularly referencing past events that occurred in the setting before the quest began. While the main character is Itsukuma 'The Priestess' Masami, the cast is anything but small as it rapidly grows to encompass not only the MC, but her adoptive mother Itsukuma 'The Empress' Izumi, her father, the magical heroes of a story told generations ago, and those hero's children who have mostly become student council members now (but are also magical). The QM does a wonderful job of transitioning from one thing to another, and once the quest really got going, it was a very nostalgic feeling to read through it. It very much became a magical girl series with a lot of sorta tragic backstories that were addressed with liberal application of friendship, and harnessing the power of family to punch your way into a brighter future by accepting everyone around you.

There's an ongoing theme of 'family' in this quest, and what makes a family. If you're not human, can you really have a family? If someone isn't related to you by blood, can you honestly call them your family? None of this is really given any thought by the MC who cheerfully decides that "yes, of course you can", and then proceeds to Nanoha* her way through anyone who disagrees. However... Well, I'll talk about this more in personal thoughts later.

*[spoiler]Nanoha: To forcibly Befriend someone with superior firepower.[/spoiler]

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REVIEW pt2

Writing.
'Magical Girl' is a wide genre, and Card Priestess touches on most of the iterations. There's the "Dark magical girl with tragic past" flavour, there's the "Reluctant magical girl with a responsibility" version, there's the MC as a simple-minded Friendship Cannon version, there's the retired and experienced Magical Girl-Who-Is-Now-A-Woman version, there's the "I used to be a magical girl but now I'm a batshit insane asshole of a woman" version, and you've also got the typical jerkass, yet somehow charming, magical boy trope, their father who grew up to become oddly responsible and cool,  and the goofy kid who has too much confidence in himself but will put his life on the line for you. In short, it runs the entire gamut, with broad strokes of mahou.

However, let's be entirely honest and say the quest is cringe inducing and terrible until about thread 50, where it seems to really hit its stride.. Let's look at why, and then how it got better afterwards.

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REVIEW pt3

1. The Ugly
Up until thread 30, we see a miracle in that this thread has any fans at all. The QM doesn't seem to actually understand how to display non-happy emotions in any way that isn't crying. We cry at everything, everyone cries at everything. There is so much crying going on that even the players begin to become suspicious that our magical power is crying. If, at any point, something happens, people are already making bets that it will end with us crying somehow. To make matters worse, crying is also how the QM shows overly happy emotions. It's a wonder this world isn't flooded in the salty tears of the cast already. There is more salt from the tears of this cast than all of the anti-quest population of /tg/, anti-yuri shitposters, dadaragon shitposters, and Triggerman shitposters all rolled into one torrential hurricane of tears.

The MC develops hilariously quickly and doesn't seem to even have a consistent personality. They go from being terrified and not knowing anything to immediately just deciding this person they didn't trust a few minutes ago is now "mommy dearest" and will actively cry for mommy. They go from being passive and crying all the time, scared of hurting something, to just abruptly stating they're going to kill something. Not hurt, not stop, but kill. And, to their credit, they immediately transform into mahou-asskicker and brutally kick its shit in, and don't even feel bad about it later... They also immediately go back to crying.

The playerbase took it in stride, and while it was perhaps a running joke of sorts while it was running, binging it through the archive is exhausting to read through. I don't know if anyone can weigh in on if it was less exasperating reading it leave, but I guarantee anyone who picks this quest up will struggle for at least 30 threads, because this is ALSO the "Monster of the Week" section where pretty much nothing of importance happens as we're introduced to the cast.

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REVIEW pt4

2. The Bad
Let's talk about the cast. The cast is fucking huge. You've got your mom and dad, this shadowy guy who works with your dad, this monster guy who is oddly nice, and your MC. Cool. You've also got the entirety of the student council, all thrown at you at once, which includes: A plucky boy, a quiet serious girl, the 'best friend', a fortune telling girl, and probably someone else I'm forgetting. There's also the token roguishly charming delinquent kid who... uh. Rarely gets any screen time. Then you have their parents, who are the mahou cast of a story we piece together as the quest goes on, and this adds in a single dad, a mom/dad duo, and a single mom. Later on you get a small expansion-pack to your cast in the form of your cards and a mansion of monsters.

This cast is goddamn huge, and they're all dumped on you almost at once. You then get to watch the QM try to give them establishing character moments and slowly develop all of them at once, and it's honestly a bit overwhelming to read. I can't imagine how miserable the QM was trying to write all of that simultaneously.

By thread 40, the crying has started to dry up to an acceptable degree (It's mahou shoujo, there will be crying) and has been replaced by hugs. It's taken nearly 40 threads, but the QM has finally managed to establish their cast and begun to lock down the MC's personality. Relations are slowly being built up, and the quest is actually starting to resemble a story instead of a narrativistic train wreck pretending to be a magical girl anime in its filler arc. It's time for the real story to start, and oh man.

The Story Fucking Starts.

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REVIEW pt5

3. The Good
Around thread 50 (out of 112 currently!), the quest pulls itself together and stops kidding around. Almost like a turning point in the plot, the writing improves immensely, and a coherent story really begins to show. Masami punching out the shadowy guy with a declaration of her being Justice almost seems metaphorical for the QM kicking out the unnecessary flailing and getting down to business to [spoiler]defeat the huns[/spoiler] write a solid story. No more do we experience such things as _Emphasis writing!_ and crying at every given time, or completely ridiculous personality shifts. It's seriously impressive how everyone in the entire cast just seems to... Lock into place and behave like fairly well written characters so quickly. The sheer turn around is almost a whiplash in itself, as you start to wonder if someone outright replaced the QM.

I wish this quest had been this good... like 45 threads ago. From 50 on, the ride is amazing as what you could term the 'second season' of an otherwise completely uninteresting series suddenly pulls out all the stops. The cast you had awkwardly gotten to know intensifies in their relations, and you're pulled deeper into the web of what happened years ago, as well as Masami's own decisions on how she'll save her mother and oppose an antagonist who seems to be working towards his own good intentioned projects. While crying - and hugs! - still happen, they're much more... Understandable now. It's more believable when someone cries, and typically tends to fit the scene rather than completely toss it aside like it used to. Humorously, even the characters seem to lampshade how much they used to cry all the time as the story goes on towards what is simultaneously a more serious overarching plot, and more touching family shenanigans as cute kids do cute things.

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REVIEW pt6

I won't go so far as to say the writing becomes amazing, but the improvement is outstanding. The QM still seems to be stuck on using lots of capital letters to emphasize a point, and while I sympathize with them due to lack of text formatting options, it's never acceptable to make an entire habit out of writing in capital letters. That kind of thing is meant to be jarring to the reader, and if you do it constantly then it's just another annoying quirk.

However, on the improvement: Characters are written consistently and the quest gains this very... How to put it? There's a distinct flavour to the writing that keeps the feeling of tragedy and seriousness of anything going on well away from the playerbase. It keeps the quest fun and light hearted, even when the scenario otherwise probably shouldn't be, and the quest never once forgets that it's set in a genre where believing in friendship hard enough will eventually make things turn out okay.

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PERSONAL THOUGHTS pt1

It's a magical girl quest without subversions, pity the first half of the quest is chokingly bad. While the last half MORE than makes up for it, I feel anyone trying to archive this would find a glaringly massive stumbling block in getting over the first 'season' of Card Priestess. For those who do manage that, however, the second season is an incredible ride that left me nostalgic about picking up mahou shoujo series when I was younger.

No one one on /tg/ is a professional writer, and the time constraints in posting can be brutal, but it was heartening to actually see a QM improve like they did, and it made the second half of the quest so much better for it. I'd be interested in seeing what kind of quest they put up after Card Priestess, just to see if they can carry that improvement over, and perhaps continue to get better. While it's too late to really jump into Card Priestess, as the final arc seems to be nearing its end, I'll definitely be following the rest of this quest to its end.

They do fall into some kind of annoying pitfalls still. Everytime the MC takes their eyes off someone, it seems like they get kidnapped or taken hostage, but it's still enjoyable overall. I was personally a little disappointed in how... I guess non-emphasized the Tarot interpretations were, though.

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PERSONAL THOUGHTS pt2

The Empress and Tower both correspond rather adroitly to their Tarots - One indicating a very nurturing figure, often feminine in nature; The other representing a sudden and tumultuous change that can't be avoided. The Priestess, and her sister the Magician are typically considered balances of each other, where the Priestess is the softer, more inactive feminine side, and the Magician is the more active, masculine balance built on action and belief. In practice, our Priestess character is the most stubborn and belief filled character in the entire quest and will charge headfirst into everything, while her 'sister' Magician is much more feminine, and often prefers to take a relaxed and hands-off, subtle approach to things. After that... What Tarot? I thought they were going to be a major focus, but then... They weren't, really.

Also I'm not sure I've ever seen this much blatant hypocrisy in an MC since... Ever. Time and time again she'll preach friendship and family, that even if you're a Card, it doesn't mean you're a monster - you can still have a family. She will typically only do this to other humanoid Cards, even if the monstrous Card in question is polite and courteous. Often she'll just be outright rude to non-humanoid Cards WHILE she is trying to preach family values and inclusion to a humanoid Card. Several times she outright kidnaps people and tells them they're wrong about how they think of family, and will forcibly keep them apprehended until they agree with her. She straight up kills monstrous Cards without a second thought or doubt, and constantly refuses to accept Tower as her father despite, again, preaching family.

Tower even points out that monstrous Cards are family as well, and shows her that monstrous Cards are violently discriminated against in the current world. Her response is to, evidently, just not care about this. She all but shrugs it off with what may as well amount to "well they shouldn't be monsters then".

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PERSONAL THOUGHTS pt3

In the very beginning of the quest, right after she's born and knows nothing, Empress whisks her away from the building she's born in and takes her home to live a normal life. That's sweet. Later on in the story, a Card's persona is 'reborn' after the MC brutally murdered it and stole its heart for most of the quest until she finally managed to get it to become 'reborn' as a human figure instead of a monstrous one. Tower promptly finds it not long after being born and takes it back to his house. Does this seem familiar? Because this is exactly what Empress did at the start - Yet Empress, and the entire cast, promptly become very outraged about how he's crossed a line by kidnapping the newly (re)born Card.

A human woman actively attempts to kidnap her own daughter and force her through time-lapse training in order to force a responsibility onto her daughter selfishly and prepare her to kill her own friends. This woman is later just accepted as 'oh she meant well, it's okay!'. Meanwhile, Tower's stated goal for most of the quest has been to make a place in the world for his family - All the Cards, even the monstrous ones - And has off and on worked to protect various members of the cast from someone else's bullshit... And he is an unforgivable asshole.

This isn't even getting into the parts where she'll encounter Cards who are actually perfectly happy with their life, and even make the conscious decision that they kind of prefer this way of life to the one she's preaching. Her response to this is literally to tell them they're wrong, and then either kill them, kidnap them until they agree, or in the more recent cases, imprison their god damn soul in an imaginary world of solitary confinement until they are forcibly converted.

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PERSONAL THOUGHTS pt4

Tower's not a saint, but he makes very valid points. Everyone still blames him for everything, actively bashes him, his own daughter hates him and refuses to accept him as family (despite preaching family and inclusion, evidently this is only for humanoid Cards? Except that one token guy who isn't), the one who is technically like an estranged 'wife' hates him and outright rejects him at every turn, they go so far as to play a mother-daughter torture team on him to make him tell them how to stop a thing, when he's already very compliantly told them he can't stop it, and why. He even explained why it was going badly, and warned them that what they were doing would make it worse. They didn't listen. They promptly blamed him for being an asshole and knowing it would happen, despite him having no idea they could even do the aforementioned soul-imprisonment thing.

None of this is even remotely acknowledged, and is often written off as being perfectly fine because he's not a person. He's a monster. You know, like the rest of the Cards. Like the MC, and her mother, and her sister. Like all the monstrous formed Cards who acted hospitable and were also completely shit on until they magically stopped being monstrous - Who they were didn't change. Just what they looked like. - and were suddenly accepted as part of the 'family'. Even when they pointedly didn't want to be part of it.

I'm not sure if the QM realizes it (it's occasionally lampshaded by the cast), or the player base realizes it, but objectively speaking, the main cast is WORSE than the antagonist in nearly every way, and everything they're pissed at him for trying to do - Up to and causing a threat to the human world so Cards can live in peace, they've SUCCEEDED in doing back to him.

[spoiler]This includes actively trying to destroy the only place Cards with monstrous forms could actually live in the human world without being attacked constantly.[/spoiler]

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CLOSING

I'll be following this to it's end. Due to the barrier at the first half of the quest, it's not something I'd causally recommend to anyone, but it was none the less an enjoyable read after that mark was passed.

I wish the first half of the quest didn't exist, and I honestly wouldn't fault anyone if they just skipped straight to thread 50 or so and read on from there. It might be a little confusing, and much less satisfying to see the shadow guy get punched by Justice, but I feel I'd prefer that than having to sit through the first half just to get there. If the entire thread had been as well put together as the last half of it, I would have no issue saying this was one of the more interesting quests on the board... As it is, the first half is terrible. There's no getting around that, and ignoring it does no one any good. A quest can, and generally does, struggle a little in the early stages as the QM gets into the groove of their story, but 30-50 threads of struggle? Not acceptable.

I am however proud of the QM for the level of improvement they managed, and I hope that it carries over into their next venture. I believe Card Priestess may have been their first quest, and the shakiness shows, but by the end of it I think it's safe to say that they're shaping up into becoming a decent QM/Writer.

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My personal advice for them is:

1. Work on cast introduction. If you drop too many people at once, it's difficult to form an attachment to any of them, and even more difficult to do them justice as a writer. I feel like you struggled with this from time to time, but be patient and let them come in naturally. Pace yourself a little, your story will benefit from it and your players will appreciate it.

2. CAPITAL LETTERS ARE NOT THE ONLY WAY TO EMPHASIZE THINGS. Writing emotions can be difficult, and its easy to take a shortcut like that when you want to create a jarring effect, but it's obnoxious to read and many people will consider it juvenile. Work on transmitting emotion better through implication and body language. Conservatively use '!' and '...' or the like, and combine them with slightly more toned down reactions to accomplish a similar, of not far more potent, conveyance of emotion and activity.

From the way you shaped up in the latter half of Card Priestess, I've got little doubt that you can improve even more. Don't settle with what you have, keep looking at your writing and try new things, your next project will be even better.