Literature / Steve Buhvillens Intriguing Group

Steve Buhvillen's Intriguing Group is a web story by Great Pikmin Fan, his second published story (not counting rewrites or remakes), first released through its entire first "volume" on December of 2017.

It is set in an alterate world where superpowers and "strange" creatures are the norm. Unfortunately, this world has spent a great deal of history being ruled over by the oppressive Buhvillen family, and this starts off when the latest two leaders have been assassined before they could drop a bomb on one of the few remaining metropolises below, Brimcity. The assassin, Shineina Unfel, then notices that the Buhvillen family leaders had just had a child — and feels guilted in to rescuing him, taking him away from a life of evil and raising him in the Southern Forest where she came from. Unfortunately for her, Shineina is killed by the heir to the Buhvillen throne, the newborn's older brother Timmy, AKA the Blood King. The Blood King then steps forth and rebrands the Buhvillen name under his preferred term, BLOODSHOT, and decides to raise the child himself.

Unfortunately for the child, the title Steve, Timmy is a terrible parent. He's horribly abusive and tries to make him out to be the next Buhvillen bearer of the throne since Timmy himself has no luck finding a wife to get a proper heir/heiress. Steve, however, is not convinced to take the path of villainy. On his thirteenth birthday — the moment when any Buhvillen is either sent out to make their first conquer or killed refusing/failing to do so, Steve refuses to go about it at all. As punishment, he is sent off Buhvillen City, the Blood King intending for him to fall to his death. Yet Steve is saved by the Unfel family, who let him live in the Southern Forest. Steve spends thirty years learning to be a Treemaster, a commander of winds and plants, all to try to reclaim his own name and turn around generations of Buhvillen tyranny. In addition to his older brother figure by adoption, Jim Unfel, acting as a mentor and sidekick, Steve is also joined by five other fighters: a quiet memeber of a lava-dwelling race known as Magmeletons who has a problem with tradition named Diane Mohdez, an arrogant scientist and part of the aquatic Welt race with a pet giant monster named Poixer Avaage, a loud human good with working on vehicles and mecha named Hammithan Descendo, a... bizarre and energetic vampire named Nosfo the Dark, and an alien warrior known as a Lectmaggia called Quazzax Cut 616-Beta. Together, most of them eventually form the Intriguing Group, a team of heroes who want to try to stand against Timmy "The Blood King" Buhvillen's reign and maybe, finally, put an end to the Buhvillen dynasty rule.

All of the main seven characters except for Jim are taken from a loose earlier badfic joke idea by the author, the idea of six characters he was planned to use as Running Gags being part of a group known as "Sages." Intriguing Group has several nods to these badfics, down to its title having the same acronym used in the SBIG Series.

Major unmarked spoilers are below. In particular, nothing of "Volume 1" is marked.

This Story has examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Timmy/the Blood King is this and a Big Brother Bully to Steve. Being the latter's legal guardian (insofar as Buhvillen City even has a legal system) and an adult when he was just a child, Timmy raised him until his teen years. But horribly, putting his life in danger and generally being a terrible role model. Once Steve became a teenager, that's when the two became Cain and Abel outright, starting with Timmy trying to kill him for failing to promise to conquer a town and with Steve vowing to take Timmy down to make the world a better place.
• Aerith and Bob: The main character is Steve, his adopted brother is Jim, and his allies include Diane with the Big Bad being named Timothy. Then there's just about everyone else, such as Poixer, Hammithan, Nosfo, and Quazzax.
• The Baby of the Bunch:
  • At 18 "and 3/4ths," Hammithan is the youngest member of the Intriguing Group. This is downplayed as he's not treated differently from his age or anything.
  • Tanker is the youngest member that ages like a human^note Revealica and Evol-Fish might be younger, but they're both respectively a wolf and a fish, so they age differently. The story treats both of them as adults, but not Tanker and the only underaged officer of BLOODSHOT, being fourteen. Her lack of age is a Running Gag, as she always brings it up and brags about how she's an "adult in some cultures." Nobody takes her seriously except the Blood King.
• Berserk Button: Smoking in Poixer's house is one of them for him. When Tanker breaks in to his home and threatens him, what really pisses him off is the fact that she was smoking while in there.
• Big Bad: The Blood King, the current Buhvillen leader, the cause of much of the problems in Steve's life. As the head of BLOODSHOT, taking him out is the final goal of the story.
• Blow You Away: Treemasters are capable of using wind powers. Jim uses these more than Steve, who generally prefers to fight with the plant powers, although both of them use both abilities.
• Cain and Abel: Steve and the Blood King. The latter is the former's older brother who raised him for the first thirteen years of his life, but he sees him as a weak-willed goody-two-shoes failure and tried to kill him for that. Steve survived and grew up to try to take down the Blood King, not out of revenge but because he feels as though it's for the greater good of the world, and it's pretty hard to prove him wrong.
• Color-Coded Characters: Both the Intriguing Group and BLOODSHOT's members have a dominant color to them. In the case of the Intriguing Group, it's their hair color. For the Officers, it's more varied and they use darker shades.
  • The Intriguing Group:
    • Steve: Green.
    • Diane: Red.
    • Poixer: Blue.
    • Hammithan: Yellow.
    • Nosfo: Magenta.
    • Quazzax: Cyan.
  • BLOODSHOT Officers:
    • Darkhorse: Maroon.
    • Xunter: Brown.
    • Coward's Mask: Olive.
    • Tanker: Dark chartreuse.
    • Kenith: Dark green.
    • Hacksa: Jade.
    • Evol-Fish: Teal.
    • Revealica: Cerulean.
    • Darkerhorse: Navy blue.
    • Mudvin: Indigo.
    • Witchita: Purple.
    • There is an unknown twelfth officer with tyrian pink.
    • The Blood King: An even darker red than Darkhorse's; "blood red."
• Combining Mecha: Hammithan's motorcycles. By default, they're motorcycles that he can remote control, but they can all combine together to form a mech for him.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Justified. Before entering the Below Crater, anyone who isn't a Magmeleton or otherwise has natural immunity to being around magma has to equip themselves with a spell that keeps them from burning in the sheer heat. All the times the main characters are around magma (except Diane, who is naturally just immune to it), they have a protective spell around them enabling that to be possible.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Any fight involving Diane as of the beginning of Volume 3. Her strength is enough to oneshot gigantic robots and tanks, and most of the people she fights barely survive that. Her longest "battle" was against Hammithan in the "Tournament Arc." She's the reason why it's not a real Tournament Arc, as everybody else quit when they saw how strong she was. Hammithan spends most of the fight trying to not be knocked out instead of actually battling her.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Vampires in this world are not inherantly evil beings despite being technically undead and using spooky shadow magic. Nosfo is friendly and a valuable ally to Steve. His also-vampirized aunt Villtennia is still "on she side of the good guys," but she's a massive asshole.
• Decoy Protagonist: While Steve really is the de-facto hero and Quazzax is a permanent member of the main group, Jim is built up as a "power trio" with the pair and functions as such throughout Volume 1 and the beginning of Volume 2... until he's killed off at the beginning of Volume 2 by Tanker. Turns out the actual rest of the "main gang" are Diane, Poixer, Hammithan, and Nosfo, who were written as though they would just be quirky side-friends of Steve's without much relevance to the story. In the final chapter of the volume, all four of them turn out to be even bigger badasses than Steve and Quazzax.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the second and final of Great Pikmin Fan's stories to not have his usual Production Foreshadowing. There is nothing in the chapters published before Ordinarily United hinting towards the latter story, while Ordinarily United itself would have Carlson reading an Unviewable Panties of Ishiko-Chan light novel, Ishiko would have a cameo of a Roy-like character, Joy Roy would have Joy making her debut in -Roy right before her own story and Hexadecisland merch mentioned in Joy|, and Hexadecisland would have a washed up comic of Living Twice.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Poixer is the member of the Intriguing Group that the others get along with the least. He's a stuck up Insufferable Genius and generally a cold-ass to most of them. He sticks around from Necessity (he's paying Steve rent after all) and Proximity (he lives in the same immediate "community"/"neighborhood" as the other members of the group).
  • The BLOODSHOT officers are barely "friends" to begin with, but even among them, they dislike Tanker and Mudvin. Tanker for being Ax-Crazy to the point of aiming a gun at her own co-workers (and it's implied that those threats weren't empty, but they still refuse to take her seriously), and Mudvin just for being annoying and creepy. Even between the two of them, Tanker utterly loathes Mudvin. He knows this, and he likes teasing her.
• Fun with Acronyms: The title has the same acronym as "So Bad, It's Good," as the story is a nod to a badfic series that is trying to invoke the trope that uses the trope's name.
• Garden Garment: The default fashion of anybody living in the Southern Forest is made from leaves. Treemasters in particular, once they have earned it, "upgrade" to an "outfit" that simply consists of three leaves around their waist/groin area and nothing else. Even the women.
• Green Thumb: Treemasters can manipulate plants. Their bodies can also turn in to plant-like material.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Averted for the most part. As of Volume 3 Chapter 1, every hero except Nosfo and Quazzax has been shown or stated to have worked hard to get where they were: being a Treemaster takes thirty years, so Steve and Jim had a training program that generally lasted that long; Diane trained a lot to become as powerful as she was, including spending some time in the sun to really absorb its heat; Poixer spent a lot of effort training Clear; and Hammithan has no powers, so it's a given that all of his skills are purely from studying the ins and outs of motorcycles, mecha, and motorcycles that can transform in to mecha, as all of his tools were built by him himself.
• Hotter and Sexier: Compared to both the Fictionpress story of Great Pikmin Fan's immediately before it, 361 Striking Degrees, and the inspirations of all the main characters, it's a set up in terms of fanservice and general all-around nudity. Hank Hill's counterpart, while still not conventionally attractive, is still a not-bad looking man who wanders around only wearing leaves. The very modest and prudish Sheldon Cooper is given a counterpart, Poixer, who only wears a tight wetsuit most of the time. Alucard's counterpart, Nosfo, wears nothing but shadow wisps. Quazzax, while not sexualized, still goes around topless; she is inspired by Rose Quartz, who does not. Even Hammithan and Diane are already based on fanservice-y/parody fanservice characters (Kamina and Brenda respectively), and they take it up to eleven: Hammithan is a walking pantless scene, while Diane ditches the school uniform but a barely-there loincloth and nothing else.
• Ironic Name:
  • "Buhvillen" is a corruption of "bad villain." Steve Buhvillen is a well-meaning, good natured guy who wants to stop his brother not out of enraged revenge, but because he knows it's what will make the world a better place immediately.
  • Diane Mohdez. Mohdez sounds like "modest," and once she loses the training top she wears the least amount of clothing by default out of the main characters, just barely beating out Steve's.
  • Poixer Avaage, "Avaage" being a corruption of "average." He's above average in terms of intelligence. Far above, with Diane being his only competetor.
• Killed Off for Real: Anybody who dies in the story's present in general. It is possible to be brought back to life, but it's difficult to do so, and this will not be happening with anybody that dies in the present of the story.
• Large Ham:
  • Hammithan loves to get loud and shouty for just about everything he does. It's quite telling that his inspiration is Kamina.
  • DARKHORSE SKELTAUR, DESTROYER OF LIGHT. Almost everything he yells is bolded and in all caps. Even his quotation marks are bolded. His brother is the exact same way.
• Magma Man: Magmeletons are a whole race of fire-shooting people who like living by magma deep underground. They're generally divided between stuffy, sexist traditionalists and brash warriors that like fighting almost naked.
• Making a Splash: Welts can use water powers, Poixer included, and he is an expert at it.
• Mirror Boss: Mudvin functions as one. His main gimmick is that he can copy the powers of whoever he fights, and this often results in him throwing the same things at them that they would throw at other people. His biggest limitation to this is that he is only capable of copying five people at once, although he seems to have no limit as to how much of a given person he can copy.
• Ms. Fanservice: Diane provides much of the female-centered fanservice in the story. While Stripperiffic outfits are the norm in this world, she's one of the only characters where the story actually calls attention to it, and it has a Running Gag of her getting in to situations where other people see her naked yet at most just think she should put something on. She is also one of the only characters that gets any emphasis on her body figure at all.
• One-Hit Kill: Most things and even people hit by Diane's punches tend to die right away. If they don't, it's usually because she's holding back.
• Pædo Hunt: In addition to his brutal, invasive, militant dictatorship, the Big Bad Blood King is also heavily implied to have peadophilic feelings towards Tanker, having bias towards her and calling her "adorkable." While the Blood King looks like he's around her age, he is actually around eighty and simply had a procedure done to make himself look like a tween for some reason.
• Patchwork Map: Brimcity is surrounded by a forest to the south, an ocean to the north, a desert to the west, and snowy mountains to the east. It is also directly above a magma-filled giant cavern system that is inaccurately called a crater. This is justified in that the setting is implied to have been tweaked by magic, in particular the Southern Forest.
• Playing with Fire: Fire powers are an ability of Magmeletons. Diane is one such user of fire powers, but her strength and speed are both so powerful that she doesn't really need to use fire outside of situations that would specifically call for it.
• Power Copying: Mudvin can somehow flawlessly copy the abilities of up to five different people at once, even if they come from bizarre or supernatural sources. He acts as the story's Mirror Boss once he copies the Intriguing Groups' powers, with his key weakness being that he can only hold five ablities at a time, and that he's fighting a group of six.
• Power Stereotype Flip:
  • Diane has fire powers but she's the most level-headed and quiet of the main group.
  • Poixer has water powers but he's very stuck-up and neurotic.
  • Nosfo has powers over darkness but he's cheery, upbeat, and generally the most positive of the Intriguing Group.
• Punny Name:
  • Poixer Avaage is a play on "Poindexter" and "Average," respectively. The former fixs Poixer's associated stereotype well; the latter is an Ironic Name.
  • Hammithan is very hammy.
  • Nosfo is a reference to Nosferatu.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The adopted "Unfel brothers," with Jim being the more open, positive, and slightly more careless and brash Red Oni to Steve's more reserved, quiet, and calm Blue Oni.
• Sacrificial Lion: Jim Unfel. The entire first volume builds him up as a main character along with Steve and Quazzax (who actually are main characters), but he's killed off at the very beginning of Volume 2 by Tanker. Fan confirms that he was originally made up just to make Tanker that much more repulsive, and the rest of the early story was built around that and framing him as way more than canon fodder.
• Shock and Awe: Boltuhs have electric-based powers. Hammithan, being a human adopted to a Boltuh family, does not have these powers, but he replicates them with his mecha.
• Starter Villain: Darkhorse is the first BLOODSHOT officer that the heroes wind up confronting. He's a straightforward "brute force him" fight, and the combined efforts of Steve, Jim, and Quazzax take him down easily without much need for development on any of their parts. He's mainly there to be a first villain for the heroes to knock out early (complete with having a very similar brother to "serve as him" just so that BLOODSHOT would not completely lose a "unique" villain in the first arc) and to put Steve back on the Blood King's radar after he had been ignoring him for thirty years.
• Stripperiffic: Most of the main leads and plenty of side characters dress like this.
  • Diane wears nothing but a frontal-only loincloth held up by a barely-visible string, and a matching "bikini top" that's really more of a training weight.
  • Hammithan wears a long white shirt that barely covers his genitals. And absolutely nothing else. One outburst from him implied that this got him in trouble exactly once.
• Take That!:
  • Tanker mostly exists because Fan hates Token Mini-Moe characters, so he went out of his way to make a "cutely young-looking teen character" as horrible and unlikeable as he possibly could, to the point of her being the only officer as of Volume 3 Chapter 1 to successfully kill a major character.
  • Mudvin mostly exists because Fan hates Lucky. Once you get past the cultish resurrection magic and his ability to copy powers, you'll find a man with a lot of Lucky's "quirks," specifically toned up to make him obnoxious. There's a good reason why none of the other BLOODSHOT officers like him.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Tanker, at the age of fourteen, cusses like a sailor, smokes, and has an obsession with violence.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: There are more female examples than male examples. Every Treemaster "wears" only three leaves around their waist, and the major named members of this have an even gender split: Sienna, Shineina, Jim, and Steve. The scales are tipped with Diane and Quazzax also defaulting to going around topless when they're not in Brimcity, just about the only major location where toplessness is considered indecent. Hammithan inverts this: he's a walking pantless scene, wearing nothing but a giant white shirt that still hides his penis, but barely. Volume 3 Chapter 1 confirms that he has nothing underneath it.

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