Prologue — Meme Characters
A meme character.
In internet communities, this refers to a character you end up knowing naturally, even if you've never touched the game or manga they come from.
Some concrete examples, shall we?
A skeleton who makes you endure a horrific time. A black swan who dreams of becoming a ddtayo master. A soccer team and the Beast of Doom Omen who show up without fail whenever a community turns into a funeral parlor — those would be the classics.
Grand Mage Saga.
The Chapter 6 boss character of the mobile game known by the abbreviation "GMS."
Alpinia, famous for the emoticons "Alpanya?" and "Alpanga.", was one of these meme characters.
Alpinia Arbanka, alpinia albanka.
The name alone was already meme material in spades, but it didn't end there.
As you could tell from the word "Mage" sitting right there in the game's title, the world of GMS revolved around magic.
The main story itself was about the protagonist recruiting mages to rebuild a fallen magic tower.
Most of the playable cast were mages, magic knights, and other magic-related classes. Naturally, their attacks and buffs were almost all tied to magic, and the players didn't particularly care.
Not until a new chapter opened and they ran into Alpinia, that is.
Basic passive trait: Magic Immunity.
When attacking a target under any magic-related buff effect, high chance to instantly kill them.
Right before the update, the game director had given an interview promising to "normalize the stagnant existing meta."
At the time, everyone just shrugged and moved on. But when the patch actually dropped — well, what do you know. It was an update that turned every existing character into scraps of toilet paper.
If the word "magic" so much as appeared in a skill description, it got blown up — tank, dealer, healer, didn't matter. In practice, she was a boss designed to force players to pull for the new physical-damage character released alongside the update.
"They made this thing expecting us to CLEAR it?!"
"Strategy variety, my ass. The only strategy here is selling the new character."
"So when's the difficulty adjustment coming?"
The game company's answer to the players' outcry, summarized in one word, was as follows.
"Alpanga."
The community exploded, droves of players deleted the game, and a billboard truck got delivered to the company's address.
As it happened, Alpinia's ability was literally to blow things up, so for a while the template of Alpinia destroying something and then saying "Alpanga" was all the rage.
"Born to be a shit-stirrer."
"Cobalt Seaweed-Head of Destruction."
"Please stop spamming the Alpanga emote and just TELL US. So what the hell is her name, seriously?"
These memes spread far and wide across multiple communities, to the point that even people who'd never played GMS knew about Alpinia.
I was one of them.
Never played GMS, but I knew the Alpinia emote like the back of my hand.
Anyway, why am I suddenly bringing all this up?
"So, you blew up the entire building?"
"It was the best option available."
Why? Because, well — I've become that very Alpinia, that's why.