Well, that sounds smarter than my plan. There's also the fact that it needs a format change. I'm thinking of taking a leaf out of Kol's book.

I'll write up the meta-plot, and I think I'm going to throw out the episodic format (it's holding things back) and fix the youma issue. If that still doesn't work, I have a few older ideas I can resurrect that may allow for expy's, at least. ("World of BSSM-craft" is tempting, but that one's a wee bit hokey).