Sega Hard Times

 Sitting against the brick wall exterior of her elementary school, a young blonde girl sits alone on the blacktop ground like she does every recess. Pushing her all too big glasses up as they constantly make a break for sliding right offer her nose, she leans over her large book as if to hide its contents from the sky above, her rapturous attention to its pages and pictures meaning she paid little mind to the soft sounds of footsteps approaching her.

"Why are you always reading that big book?" a high-pitched bubbly voice asks the young girl.

Startled by the attention, the blonde sits up and clutches the open tome to her chest, realizing only a second later that the classmate in front of her seemed genuinely curious rather than someone here to tease.

"Um, well, I really like it," she starts, the other girl leaning to try and hear the quieter one. "It's full of stuff about the Sega Mega Drive, like all the games and stuff you can do in them."

"Video games?" The girl asks, standing back and making the blonde girl flinch with the tone of the question. "That's boy stuff," she says dismissively before looking back at the other kids at play. "Don't you wanna go play freeze tag... or foursquare?"

The blonde girl shakes her head, her glasses bouncing as she did. "I'm not good at those games..." she says, noticing the other girl continuing to stare as if the answer wasn't enough. "B-but... maybe you want to look at my book? It's got a lot of cool things in it... like there's a Barbie game for the Genesis," she says, flipping through pages to try and reach it.

"Barbie Super Model, you get to play as Barbie as she goes to different places for fashion shows. You get to choose different outfits for her, and makeup, and you get to practice how she'll perform when she's-"

"Oh, I don't care about that." The other girl says, somewhat aware of how harsh her words were with her apologetic expression. "I was just trying to be nice talking to you." The words were from an innocent place, the girl too young to understand how they cut, and believing she had done something good in even speaking to the quiet girl in the glasses, she begins to run off to join her friends who were watching from afar.

"Wait!" the blonde girl yells as she gets to her feet, thrusting the book in the air with its pages wide open. "The book says Barbie Super Model is the perfect game for your demographic!" she calls out, only to hear the laughs of the other girl's friends and snapping the book shut in shame. The one who spoke to her stares a while longer, a little torn as she sees the blonde girl's sad expression, but soon she slips into the fold of the other kids, forgetting the conversation even happened as the blonde girl is left to retreat back into the book...

That day after school, the blonde girl's parents weren't surprised by how quiet she was. A few questions were hazarded during the car ride, but her nose was stuck in the book as she refused to answer any of them. When they reached home, she was the first one in the door, pushing it open and running off to the T.V. where the Sega Mega Drive was set up. With practiced precision she set the system up, having things running before she moves to a shelf and pulls a dolly down from it, looking at the ragged toy before setting it down carefully next to the player two controller.

The blonde girl settles onto a cushion as Barbie Super Model starts up on the screen, but suddenly the quiet young child begins to speak. "The first level of Barbie Super Model is a driving one, so you gotta be careful you don't hit the other cars. There's some bags in the road that you want to hit so you can do the makeup and dressup games, but you don't got to do them. Only the catwalk part is important and you don't even have to win at that." The silence hangs for a second as the child plays, sniffling before she intentionally veers Barbie's car into traffic.

"Oh no, you hit someone! Don't worry, you only lost one heart, and there's some hearts laying around you can get to heal up. They're pink and got a B on them, I can help you get them." The child's parents peek around the corner into the playroom, recognizing the setup and not saying a word to her.

"I really thought more kids her age would have been interested in coming over to play that thing," the father says, rubbing the back of his hair with a sigh.

"Her cousin loves it, but you can't predict what kids will like," the mother says reassuringly, grabbing her husband by the arm to lead him away. "I'm sure some day she'll find someone she can relate to. She's just got to come out of that shell."

"The next level is a beach one where you roller skate..." the young girl continues, oblivious that her parents had even been there. With her book open to the side to tell her what to say, she'd make her fun tonight, and with the memory of the girl at recess going away, her mood soon improves and her night at least ends with her smiling.

=========================

The third day in a row she had to stay home from school, and the young sickly girl didn't even feel up to groaning today. Her Game Gear's batteries had died again, and with its screen dim and dark, all she could really focus on was the slow crawl of the sun through the shutters. She wanted to put her pillow over her eyes, but that would mean removing one of the pillows from the pile she was resting on. Her head felt like a big stone that hurt to lift and even more to set down, so she squints at the encroaching light and grumbles, the noise alerting her parents in the adjacent room she's awake.

"You feeling better yet today, honey?" her mom says, looking like she hadn't left her bed willingly herself.

The sickly girl just made more rumbling noises, her dad poking his head in and looking around the room, "Did I leave the lawnmower running?" The joke got a small laugh from his daughter, the sickly girl willing to turn her head enough to look at her parents now as they enter the room properly.

"Another day home, huh?" the mom says, trying to mask her exasperation as she begins to pull out a set of medical equipment to see how her daughter was doing. The sickly girl used to flinch at the sight of them, but you get used to something you have to see every day.

"You sure you don't want to give home school a crack?" the father asks.

"You guys aren't home enough for it," the child mumbles.

"We'll be home tonight. I'll grab some of my old college textbooks then and we'll get you started on Calculus!" The girl didn't quite get the joke, but she still laughs, just happy to have the energy in the room. As she limply allows her mother to get the readings on her temperature and other things she still didn't understand, she knew the time was running out.

"I have to work a late shift tonight honey," the mother sighs, starting to rake fingers through her messy hair as she was aware she wouldn't have long to tidy up. "So your father's going to have to make dinner."

"Yuck," the child said, sticking out her tongue specifically to get a rise out of her dad.

"You two just don't appreciate my black bean stew!"

"They were brown when you started making them," the mother adds with a small laugh, the two weary but playful enough as they stand and begin moving away from the child.

"Don't..." she says, trying to say something more but feeling bleary as she tries to move to grab her parents.

Her mother grabs the hand only to put it back onto the bed, noticing the Game Gear to the side and moving to grab some batteries as she spoke. "You know we want to stay, but you've got an appointment Thursday and Saturday and we both had to take a day off for those."

"I don't care." the child says grumpily, trying not to tear up. "I don't want to be alone."

Her mother seemed exasperated by the request, looking at the clock and eager to get moving, but the girl's father crouches beside the bed, taking the Game Gear and starting to put the batteries in that the mother had just left on the bed. "Well, I can't be there for you kiddo, but maybe I can make your day a little more fun..." he says, fishing into his pocket and producing a small cartridge he popped into the system.

The sickly girl's eyes light up as the screen shows the words for Super Columns. "There's another one?" she asks, energy creeping into her own voice for the first time as she grabs the Game Gear hungrily and looks down at its glowing screen.

"And this one's Super! You'll have to tell me what they changed to make it so special!"

As the child was already digging into the game with a bright expression on her face, the mother grabs the father's shoulder and leans in for a whisper. "What are we gonna do now for her birthday?"

He pats her hand with a small smile, "I'll pick up some stuff for some Fettucine Alfredo. That should be special enough." Standing, the two parents move to the door. 

"We'll see you later, honey," the mom calls out, but the sickly child was already a world away, one where her body didn't hurt, one where her room wasn't so dark and dingy, and one where it didn't matter she was alone. Right now there was an evil merchant to deal with, and rather than being the girl in bed who could barely move, she was the only one whose power to match jewels could save Phoenicia.

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A young preteen girl sits in the corner of the orphanage, looking at the board games spread out in front of her that no one had taken her up on playing. To be fair, she knew why this time: they were all too excited. It was a hustle and bustle she had grown used to, so she sits back in her chair, arms crossed, grumping at the ceiling light as if it was responsible.

Suddenly, a smaller girl, looking much like her down to the black pigtails, runs into the room. "Hey come on already! There's some new parents here to look at us!"

"Well they won't be picking me!" the preteen says, trying to look angry instead of upset in front of her little sister.

"Yeah, they can't pick you if you aren't there!" the little girl shouts, grabbing her sister's hand and trying to lead her out, but the preteen girl... after being pulled out of her seat and stumbling a bit, manages to stand her ground.

"But they won't pick me! People don't want grown up kids."

"You're not grown up," the little girl says, "You act like you're younger than me!"

The preteen girl sticks out her tongue at her sister before quickly sucking it back in, realizing she was being immature. "It doesn't matter how old I really am! I'm too tall so I look like I'm grown up! Everybody just wants cute babies or the kids who are cute but not in diapers so they can skip that nasty step. A girl my age is too much work!"

The little girl seemed to be giving in, "Okay... well, if you're staying up here, I'm staying too."

"No no no! You gotta go! Go find a new mommy and daddy!" the preteen urges, pushing her little sister out, "You're still adorable and fun! Don't end up like your old maid sister!"

The little girl tries to resist, but now she was the one being pushed around with ease. Once her older sister had her by the staircase though, she turns back and looks at her. "Okay sis... but I'm gonna go make them want me and then tell 'em I got an awesome sister they should get too!"

The preteen girl laughs, putting her hands on her hips and amused by the spunk in her sister. "I don't think people go for buy one get one deals at an orphanage, but you're cute enough they might! Now get before they leave!" she says, pushing her sister along before turning back to the playroom and immediately sinking back, the truth heavy on her. There was no way they'd be able to stay together, but it would be months before her little sister did get adopted. Today, the preteen would just get to wallow in the general issue of being too old for adoption.

Heading over to the T.V., she briefly considers watching something on it... but the Sega Saturn in front of it calls to her instead. Few kids touched it, meaning she got in a lot of time with it, and so she pops in a Virtua Fighter disc and begins to play, trying to pretend she couldn't hear the excited voices downstairs... until pretending wasn't enough and she turns the volume up.

The extra sound demanded attention though. As the girl began to play, picking Wolf because hubba hubba that polygonal barrel chest, she nearly leaps out of her skin as someone comes up next to her. "What are you playing?"

The young boy who asked jumps back in surprise at well, but after a second of realizing she wasn't in the room alone, the preteen looks back at the screen and clears her throat, "It's Virtua Fighter. You just kinda press buttons and hope you beat up the other guy," she explains poorly, but rather accurately to her experience.

"Your guy looks like a wrestler!" the young boy says, sitting down to look at the screen as Wolf was getting beaten up by the AI. The preteen looks between the real boy and the men on the screen and picks up her controller, starting to mash her buttons to fight back.

"He's really strong though. Sometimes he does some really cool moves!" she calls out, and a few seconds later... she lost the round, but she would eventually get to show him some awesome moves that got him to gasp and cheer. While the preteen girl certainly could have thought of a few better ways for the day to end, she had to admit, just having someone pay attention was a nice way to spend the night.

===========================

"Hey FATLIP," a pink-haired girl shouts.

"Hey DUMMY," a scrappy young boy calls out. The girl was dressed in a white dress that she seemed to be resisting as she run, the edges torn already as she runs to the grass lot beside the gated community. The boy was dressed in a muddy jacket that matched his own splotchy face, but to close the gap in their conditions, the pink-haired girl quickly tackles him to the dirt, the two rolling in the grass and staining clothes and dirtying skin as they scuffle.

By the time they stopped fighting, they were panting, scratched, and smiling like they had just seen the presents under a Christmas tree. "You found me!" the girl calls out.

"There's not a whole bunch of cages full of rich brats!" the boy laughs, getting a punch to his now sore shoulder for it.

"I don't want to be in there with all those boring penguins!" the girl says, crossing her arms. "Everyone's dressed so boring and don't do anything fun. They just sit and TALK."

"Yuck!" the boy says, sticking out his tongue. "Well, guess what? Tubby found a bunch of possums near the tracks! We're gonna see if we can feed 'em a bunch of garbage!"

"Do they eat garbage?"

"I dunno! I didn't even know what possums were til I asked my ma!"

Before any further discussion could be made about possums though, there was a shrill scream. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT BOY!?" A middle aged lady dressed in a bright blue dress and adorned in far too many bracelets reaches down and grabs the pink-haired girl's hand.

"FUCK! SHE FOLLOWED ME!"

"Don't you say those words, young lady!" the girl's stepmom cried. "And you, what are you doing out here?"

"She's my friend! I'm not going away just because you took her to your stupid rich people neighborhood!" the boy says, but the stepmom's harsh look was more powerful than his youthful rebeliousness.

"You're lucky I don't know your parents' phone number, Phillip," the stepmom bites back.

"We don't got a phone no more," the boy replies as just a matter of fact, earning a look of revulsion from the stepmom.

"Lemme go! I don't wanna go back!" the pink-haired girl yells, trying to yank her arm free, but she was far too young to overpower her stepmother, and soon she was dragged in through the front gates and off towards her new home.

"Why must you hang out with riffraff like Phillip still? You can make much better friends now," the stepmom says, her voice calmer and more exasperated now that she wasn't trying to scare off the young boy.

The pink-haired girl crosses her arms, "I don't want to play pianos and ride horses like a boring schoolboy. I wanna go back and play baseball with the boys! And hang out with my mom!"

 

"Your mother wasn't even feeding you right! You have to realize that she wasn't fit to take care of you."

"But she loved me..." the pink-haired girl grumbles, looking away so her welling tears weren't as obvious.

"Your father loves you too, and you have a better life here! You don't need to hang out with the other kids here, but at least try to find something that doesn't leave you so... ragged." The stepmom opens the door to their house, releasing her stepdaughter now that the door was closed behind them. "Why don't you go play that Dreamcast your father got you?"

"I don't want to play with that baby toilet!"

"It's not a toilet," her father calls from the kitchen, "The disc goes in that spot so you can play the games!"

The pink-haired girl shouts back to the other room, "I don't care, I'm gonna go sit on that baby toilet and-"

"Language!" the stepmom shrieks.

"I got a whole bunch of language for you!" the girl yells, running off to her room and sitting down in front of the T.V. She looks at the Dreamcast in front of it and the games piled next to it, wanting to just break it apart, but before she can get started, her dad steps into the room. 

Pleadingly, he moves to the pile of games and starts holding them out in front of her, "I know this new life is hard to get used to, but I think you'd really like some of these games if you tried them! This Soul Calibur one... it's got swords and stuff in it."

"...Swords?"

"Yes! Not wooden ones either," the dad says, starting to remove its shrink wrap so he can put it in the system. The pink-haired girl watches the starting screen, enraptured as characters wielding real weapons prepared for battle. She didn't notice when her stepmom entered the room, but the two parents watch as the young girl starts her first battle, flinching and moving about wildly as she tries to make her character attack by putting her whole body into button presses.

Looking at the screen, the stepmom puts a hand to her chin as she thinks. "Maybe your friends would like this game too?"

The pink-haired girl's eyes light up as she turns to look at her stepmom. "Are you saying they can actually come over? Aren't they too gross?"

"They can come over only if you all promise NOT to be gross and just play your video games."

"Oh man! I'm gonna kill Fatlip in this! He always sucked at sword fights!" the girl giggles in glee, turning back to herself losing and quickly trying to figure out what was going wrong. It wasn't going to be a smooth playdate system, but soon, the family would grow used to the visits and not have to worry about the pink-haired girl running off to get dirty and play in dangerous places. She had found something new to feed her rugged urges, and she revels in the action on screen as she slowly feels out how to be the killing machine she knew she could be in-game.

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A video tape rewinds to a scene that was growing increasingly familiar to the two people in the room. In the world on-screen, cameras flash and people cheer as a young slender teen steps up, dusting her legs in chalk and dressed in a tight leotard. Her face was blank and serious, eyes focused on the lane in front of her as her elderly coach could be seen on the edge having all the nerves you might expect of someone competing in the Olympics.

She was the picture of calm though, not because she was professional, but because her mind was elsewhere. It could be seen in her eyes that her focus was one something inside her head rather than the act in front of her, but with practiced movement that seemed almost automatic, she runs forward, hitting the spring board and leaping up onto the vaulting table. Launching herself up into the air, she twirls around in corkscrews as she seemed to almost defy the amount of hangtime you'd expect from a human body, rolling over until her feet hit the mat before her, pushing her body up so as to stick the landing. Her arms raise up in the air, but her empty expression did not match the energy of the gesture, the crowd cheering and the judges rating her highly but her spirit seeming to be miles away...

"You know, you can try and like what you do..." the old man says as he pauses the tape.

The slender teen sits at her sound deck, not even watching the tape this time and only indulging her grandfather by having only one ear covered by her headphones. The Master System before her was hooked up to her computer, the girl playing with knobs to alter the sound of the backing track from Out Run that she had just ripped. Even though her eyes were focused on the soundwaves on screen and her attention was on the changing pitch, she was able to pull herself out of her devoted attention to look back and reply, "Not really."

"I'm just saying..." the old man trails off, "If you had looked more passionate, less rigid, I bet you would have done better than bronze."

"I don't need to do better than bronze," the slender teen says, trying to tune him out and turn back to her work. "I want to be doing this. I already made good on my promise to grandma."

"Grandma wanted you to win," the old man says, realizing his words were harsh when the slender girl tenses and stops her work. "I mean... she asked you to do your best... and make her proud. She'd be so proud if you could get the gold!"

"I'm sure she's proud of my bronze..." the slender girl trails off, lowering her headphones over her ears and turning the music up much louder than even she liked. She just wanted her grandfather to go after digging at her insecurity, she just wanted to enter her zone and be alone with what she was creating, what the Master System allowed her to do with her sounds and music...

"You're good, really good, and we both know you could do better if you put your heart into it instead of... whatever you're doing there. You've probably only got on more summer of competition in you before you outgrow Vaulting... can't you just try and make it the one you win?"

"Grandma might not make it that far..." the slender girl says, hanging her head. "Just... let me work here. I'll compete. I'll practice. I'll do what I have to."

Her grandfather looks at her for what felt like ages of silence, but soon he nods, grunting as he gets to his feet and turns off the T.V. "Alright. Don't stay up too late with this then. You can injure yourself if you vault while tired."

As her grandfather left the room and the burden of her promise to her grandmother left with it, the slender girl plunged back into her work, back into a world that made no demands of her, where she could be alone to explore and feel out how she wanted things to be. She was in control here, rather than being controlled by her obligations to others.

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For some of them it was tens of years later, for some, only a few.  Children and teens who had grown into adults over time, had moved on from the troubles of youth, had become adults in control of their own life. Five girls, five histories with Sega, their source of escape and joy and many other positive moments in life when they were needed.

Once they were a blonde girl, a sickly child, a preteen, a pink-haired girl, and a slender teen. Now, they were Mega Drive, Game Gear, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Master System. Now, they were smiling as they sat in a room together. Mega Drive was reading that book from so long ago, but when she piped up with interesting trivia she found within, the girls responded. Game Gear relaxed, head clear and spirits high, as she had finished the treats DeMonde had provided for the Hard Girl get-together and was now content to just watch the others play. Saturn was playing the system she was named for, struggling to compete with Dreamcast but still happy that everyone was gathered around to watch her play. Dreamcast was relishing in the chance to beat up her friend in the game, taunting her and laughing as she connects in the best way she knows how. And Master System, not obligated to spend any time with them if she so wished, stood on the edge, interjecting when she pleased and free to sit back and relax with her music if she wanted.

There was no special occasion. No work-related impetus for this meeting. These girls just wanted to be together today. Many years ago, Center-Sensei had learned of their histories, of their strong emotional ties to Sega, and while his heart wasn't in the right place due to his state of mind then, he had united five girls who all had their hearts in the company for one reason or another. Today though, even if the  game system hadn't been there, the girls would have been happy for more reasons than they realized.

SK8R GURLZ and BULLIT BOIS: 2020 Plot Retrospective on Galactic Roller Derby, Blasto Plot 2, Crocomire Stuff, and Cirnoil

 The first year without Fite Yer' Mates to constantly demand my attention was one where I really let my creativity fly, and I am very happy for it! Some people leave a setting with stories left untold and while I could probably concoct more for the sci-fi city in the sky, I had a good chunk of ideas that I am still surprised I got done the way I did!

 

Salvagerplot is so big that it will need its own blog covering it, but my 2020 activity was so big that the other plots need their elbow room too! I'll probably mostly go into cut content and perhaps the mindset of certain choices but I don't want to make these blogposts too absurdly long so let's cut right into looking at... well the title of this post implies Roller Derby first but Crocomire has less to cover so lets do his stuff first!

 

CROCOMIRE STUFF

 

Crocomire and Stoke, first and foremost, were an attempt by me to avoid the typical "goofy guy balanced by the cynical foil" that does lead to a lot of fun interactions but I feel like I've done it a lot! Crocomire having a more supportive Stoke actually lead to a pretty fun father-son dynamic in the end and Stoke trying to overcome his analytical mindset to support Crocomire after realizing how the Space Pirates manipulated the giant alien made using them pretty fun. They also had a pretty good balance in one could be serious and one silly but I feel at times their concept, Stoke being focused on revival and Crocomire not having the drive to seek out danger, lead to them being a little hard to slip into some plots fluidly. I probably wouldn't have done them at all without the mutation angle, and a lot of the  role of Doctor Stoke and all that just came from the fact that Crocomire somehow ambulates as a skeleton in Super Metroid after his death. 

 

The encounter with Samus was an inevitability even if it did require calling on Chao to bring her back, and before we knew Ridley would be seen again he seemed down for orchestrating it in one way or another. I think it was originally tied to her dropping by for Brawl viewing? But, him wanting a make up match with Samus was always the plan, but it wasn't going to be in 100 Fites at first! Crocomire vs. Samus was going to be a sort of side event with just me and Chao, and I was pretty much going to heavily lean to wards making the outcome have Samus win. Certain aspects of how this might happen would change. Samus would have her powers so Crocomire might ask Stoke for a mutation injection, but Stoke would think Crocomire didn't truly want the unfair advantage and give him something that doesn't provide much of a boost like some harmless creature or even just something unrelated to the DNA injections. Crocomire losing would damage his ego some (even thought now in RP he's just like YAYYYY I FOUGHT SAMUS rather than caring about the results) or he might have felt betrayed by Stoke using the false injection or even just cried because he felt like he let people down or something akin to this. Running off into the city on his own, he'd soon hear a voice that was incredibly familiar...

 

See, slipping Crocomire's amicable and silly personality into the Space Pirates required a reasonable explanation, and a history of emotional abuse and manipulation developed around that. It made sense that they'd push Crocomire around and use fairly simple tactics of pretending to be his friend to get what they want since he's not too bright, but since Samus and later the Kobbers took down the group, you're sort of denied Crocomire actually coming to terms with the abuse and learning to better protect himself emotionally and only develop healthy relationships. That's where the reappearance of an old face was set to happen, and while it ended up being Dark Star Ridley in actual RP, the original plan was...

 I kept dancing around directly saying what my plan for a Ridley cameo was this year since I feel like it could be used in the future, but I'll just let the cat out of the bag since I can't see having a huge excuse for doing it down the line. Nintendo Land features all sorts of theme park versions of Nintendo characters, and in its Metroid section it has a puppet of Ridley to fight. Puppet Ridley here would be in a shadowy alley and start using the same tricks the real one did to start working Crocomire over to his side, buttering him up even though it was all just to get what the owner of the puppet wanted out of the giant alien. Puppet Ridley would actually manipulate Crocomire over a few weeks, us getting little check-ins on Crocomire being hesitant about it, exactly how Puppet Ridley was manipulating him, and soon either Stoke would grow too concerned about this or Crocomire would receive the instruction to bring Stoke and Samus over for a visit.

See, Crocomire was a pawn being used by...

BIG TIME BRANNIGAN! Aka a random alien character I found on the Metroid wiki. A rather cool alien creature who is basically just the top half of some humanoid thing, he was in a Metroid comic as a sort of rival bounty hunter to Samus I believe and the premise was he had worked with the Space Pirates, knew about Crocomire, and exploited that knowledge so Brannigan could get a shot at killing Samus and taking in Stoke. Or just killing Samus. Or later, when the Salvagers became big, I was considering that he could be a Salvager who wanted to capture Stoke while also wanting revenge on Samus in the process as a two-for-one.

The fight would start and we might either be tricked into thinking its really Ridley as we fight in the dark or just realize its a puppet from the start when we see the strings or systems controlling it, but after it was ousted as a false Ridley, we'd get to fight it and Brannigan together or just Brannigan for a wrap-up to the event. Crocomire would be able to more easily see the manipulation for what it is without the history of Ridley's shadow over it and learn more about healthy friendships now that he was aware of the problems inherent in his old ones, and that would be that! I think Dark Star Ridley did work better because it had more self-actualization built into it as a concept, and its been said before that Gooper felt bad about Crocomire being mistreated and considered having Ridley not be so bad as a way of extending something nice to Crocomire. I got the mindset but the honey and vinegar approach is a big problem with these kind of friendships and being actually good all along would set Crocomire back quite a bit! There's more complexity to real life emotional manipulation and such that I don't think should be tackled with a friendly alien who is practically just a big happy kid, but this was basically my "doing a plot about emotional exploitation without being immensely uncomfortable" approach and I think scrapping the old version removed some unnecessary melodrama and lead to something cleaner for this personal arc.

The only other things really worth mentioning was a scrapped scene where Crocomire and Claire would discuss 100 Fites and Crocomire would be begging her to tell him if he wins while Claire keeps trying to explain her power limitations to him, Stoke potentially mixing in DNA from things like Pokemon since looking up Metroid enemies with interesting powers who don't break the No Really Evil Guys rule was starting to feel limiting near the end, and Stoke just getting a true coda to the Dawn talk would have been nice but she was gone too long for it I feel. I think in a year with less goofy characters Crocomire might have been more prominent, but with Cirnos, Shimmer, Roller Derby girls, and so on, it was a little crowded.

CIRNOIL

 

Moving onto other Dark Matter matters, we have the one character Gooper allowed for us to have as a Dark Matter alternate! Going into 2020 I didn't really have any good ideas for what to do on Cirno Day, I think I might have had a few vague ideas about things it could be like something new involving Eternity, but as we all know now it became Cirnoil Day!

Before Cirnoil was conceived though, I started off a bit unsure what I wanted to do with my Dark Matter character. I felt Shimmer or Cirno had to be the pick since they were the characters who had been around the longest and felt like having a dark alternate felt the most natural, so the first idea I had was a Dark Matter Shimmer who was basically crazy. The concept was that when Dark Matter attacked and started taking over and possessing all of her friends, DMverse Shimmer would realize that her attempts to fight back weren't going to work out, and what's more, she had to fight against her friends. The only way to be with them would be to give in to Dark Matter, and since Dark Matter would assure she could still be with her friends even in this Dark Matter world, she would work on convincing others to join with the idea they were all joining a collective where they would be safe with each other forever instead of potentially losing each other.

Dark Matter Shimmer, either during the attack that converted her or some time after, would have been greviously wounded in battle and had to reconstruct a fair bit of her body with her light powers in a pinch. I was thinking it would almost be a split, the idea almost being a Dark Matter Utsuho just vaporized a chunk of her with ease, but I'm not sure I'd be able to justify that with like, the fact some of her brain would just be straight up gone if half her head was incinerated. I still wanted the striking image of Shimmer with a body carved up so pink light portions replaced flesh and all, but I also felt lazy and didn't muster the energy to draw it before new ideas started percolating.

However, if we had gotten Dark Matter Shimmer, the premise of her attack method would be trying to endanger Shimmer's friends to try and make her a willing convert. One night when Shimmer would be out with Voyd and the Pink Neon Pulverizers she would be attacked by DM Shimmer, and at some point in the fight DM Shimmer would have everyone but Shimmer being crushed by like, pink light tentacles. DM Shimmer would reveal how she survived and all that, but she would start taunting Shimmer and pointing out that her powers could do so much more if she was willing to let loose and get cruel. Shimmer would be pushed hard and grab the light that made up the missing parts of DM Shimmer to get her to release the others, but she wouldn't be able to actually tear the alternate Shimmer apart, meaning we'd later have the Kobbers learn of this and we'd somehow face DM Shimmer in a different battle. I almost wondered if I should throw DM Shimmer into a different DArk MAtter event because I only had the night time conflict setting it up planned, but later on the idea for Cirnoil came to me and it was a lot less dark and didn't tempt Shimmer's morals or anything potentially upsetting.

Cirnoil I'm pretty sure came to me while I was trying to sleep and of course made it harder to sleep as the ideas flowed. We've joked about there being a fire Cirno before and an idea for nine cirnos with different elements popping up somehow has been an idea for a Cirno Day even though it was nothing beyond the basic skeleton of the concept. Cirnoil, though, was my immediate idea to do something interesting with an alternate Cirno that wasn't just "oh its fire instead of ice." In fact, the oil came before I even considered fire powers on top of them, because the idea of an alternate evil Cirno dripping black gunk to really show her corruption was the idea that seized me. I was pretty sure somewhere online there would be a black clothes Cirno image that I could use so I immediately started thinking of what her deal would be, but the black Cirno image was harder to find than expected. She almost had a different outfit based on random black clothes Cirnos I found before I found the unhinged black ice art I altered for my purposes. Mainly, I want her to have the same blue hair because it changing colors didn't feel natural to me, but Chao's suggested black streaks worked nicely I feel to set her apart visually even though some of the intent of bringing her in at all was to give Cirno a second Cirno so they can be a terrible twosome of almost identical girls.

Naturally though, Cirnoil would have different tendencies. I have wavered a lot on what Gensokyo would be like in Dark Matter verse since it would be super relevant for Cirnoil's character history, but the Cirno is a better fit than probably any other Gensokyan for never needing to address it because not only was it established that base Cirno was awful at remembering people (part of her development was shedding the need for nicknames to remember!) but she was also sort of disliked by most Gensokyan natives because of her attitude. I bet if we did try and flesh out the fate of Dark Star Gensokyo there would be a lot of pointless discussion about minor details and all, so instead Cirnoil gets to dodge most of the questions about it while also getting to experience a different development path, sort of fast-tracking it since she has regular Cirno to explain things in a way she comprehends.

Cirnoil's fire powers were mainly added to her oil/tar stuff just to spice them up since I don't think sticky gunk would be fun forever. In the original version of her event we would have naturally fought her primarily, but with Handy's Pizza becoming a thing, it soon become the core of her and Cirno's friendship. Originally I believe the idea was Cirno or someone else would come across Cirnoil in the Undercity, I think Eternity might have even found her on her own and Cirnoil's main goal would be to capture Eternity for Dark Matter. Cirnoil would have been doing something like picking on the Gulpin population, but instead I went for Cirnoil being a lot of talk on being evil and mostly causing problems with her unintentional effects caused by not having a good hold of her powers. Handy's Pizza was soon becoming the obvious home for the battle though and adding in a Handy fight felt like a good way to sort of seal off his loose end albeit not wrap up since he was just possessed, but as the actual event showed, there was a lot of talking as part of the battle and keeping Cirnoil evil and aggressive during too much of it probably wouldn't have worked out. Handy was pegged to be more in complete control by Dark Matter to make up for that, but Rexy's loose end was perfect for adding a bigger action component after the people who could listen to reason were talked out of their ways. I remember it was meant to cap off the small Pizza Ball arc that emerged where Handy's Pizza would have been doing a grand unveiling of the Pizza Ball as the big attraction, and I also remember almost having kids there and protecting them would have been an element of the event. I also would have done a lot more with the Chuck E. Cheese sort of machines and such as attacks but I'm not sure of any specifics beyond the ones I did slip in.

I'm still not too sure about the Cirnoil name. It's a fine pun but I always wonder if there's something better out there, and like she said, she doesn't want to be Cirno Two or something since she doesn't want to be lesser than our Cirno, especially since she's still got a lot of the ego in her that Cirno's slowly overcome. Cirnoil will probably be the more negative and meaner of the two going into 2021 without being like, overly either one of those. It's more she lost everything back in Heart Star and is having trouble adjusting as well as not having the slower, more natural development of Cirno so she'll fall back into her old ways more easily. Overall I think she was a decent get from Dark Matter, I just think planning a huge plot on top of my smaller stuff left me wondering how to work it in. Just like Curse I kinda need time to adjust my mindset to these collabs I think but then I really start rolling into them once I've got the time to sit down and think... or in Cirnoil's case lay down and not sleep :V

GALACTIC ROLLER DERBY LEAGUE

 

As I've mentioned before in the past, I like to make sure Shimmer has something to do each year as long as she's going to be sticking around. Being a mentor to Voyd was her 2019 deal, and pretty early on into 2019 I already came up with where to go next. Don't remember how Roller Derby found its way to my radar but it was a natural fit for something fun and loose she could get involved with, and as I realized that leaving Voyd behind would be hard for Shimmer, I decided to increase her ties to Olympia to have her potentially finding a new home being one of her angles this year. It was meant to get more focus with things like DM Shimmer and other small posts I didn't make in a year too busy for a lot of normal post making, but it came up in her ending and we'll definitely see her adjusting to leaving Voyd and the team behind in 2021.

Galactic Roller Derby had a pretty simple idea to it, that being I'd just come up with some general team archetypes and see if I could find some cool alien designs to fill these teams. Alien ladies was obvious, and there are a bunch of fun androids and rock ladies on the internet to draw from, but one team that didn't make the final cut was a team of plant ladies. I always wanted to make sure the girls could conceivably fit into roller skates (or in Crushinator's case, had an equivalent) so that lead to many nifty designs not making the cut, and flying/hovering was right out except as limited abilities so that took out a few more. I definitely was a bit too content to just hope I'd bumble across cute or appropriate designs. Knowyourmeme has a lot of cute monster girl images I could have drawn from but the alien section was surprisingly weak and I wanted them to be definitively alien for Girl-actic rather than just a monster girl getting upgraded. I also thought Knowyourmeme would have more good robot lady designs but it seemed to dry up some after I committed to the concept, and naturally Roller Derby, suddenly there's tons over there. A Deviantart trawl got most of the other ladies I needed to fill in the teams with but Girl-actic was definitely the hardest since finding non-fetish bait or ones with compelling designs was tougher. I do think characters like Sandra were a bit of a "couldn't find nothing better" but I enjoyed a lot of the girls! I feel like I could RP characters like Mason, Sue, Crushinator, Smoothie, and more as actual characters rather than just amicable rivals.

Before we move on, I'll share some of the designs for potential GRDL girls that I rejected for one reason or another.

A good frame of reference for how old the plot idea was is that Chao posted this lady as background color during the club event of Blastoplot 1 and she was already in the files as an alien for Roller Derby plot. I didn't start planning abilities for most of the girls until closer to the actual event, but the tentacle helmet was an obvious pick for some sort of obstructive power.

One of the first characters lined up for Galactic Roller Derby and yet one of the easiest to cut was The Girl from the Green Dimension. My father was watching a lot of Lost in Space and I found their kinda bad alien design appealing as it played in the background during doggy daycare, so I looked into their aliens and found this chick. While usually I'm a bit more selective in alien designs because I like the chance to be off the wall and otherworldly, Galactic Roller Derby was already going to trend towards having more humanoid figures to fit the sport, and the idea of one really shit alien design in the bunch tickled me at first. Most of Girl-actic ended up very cute and young and Green Girl here didn't fit the new team look. Her name is apparently Athena and I don't think she has any interesting powers in the show and I would have cooked up something had I used her no doubt, but I am sure I would have regretted keeping her even though Girl-actic was definitely the most troublesome team to find good members for. Py'Thun, the one with the two headtails, still feels like someone better could have been in her place... maybe that jellyfish alien just above? :V

Android ladies definitely feel like they had some of the loosest possible designs to draw from as shown with Crushinator, and I almost wonder if Honey here would have been a better pick than Figure No.8 simply because honey guns is more compelling and a more obvious roller skating obstacle than someone with blade legs that go really fast, but I think Circuit Sisters might have been lacking a clear core leader without the more serious choice I went with. I think her lack of distinct feminine features also meant I was a little hesitant to use her.

Nebvvie is this girl's name in my files and I don't remember much about her. She had multiple pieces of art I do recall, I think she had a net in some and that might have come into play, but this a very basic alien girl design and was really just kept around in case no alien lady designs cropped up in time to replace her. I do not regret losing Nebvvie at all compared to Honey and I almost forgot to include her here, and while it's not a bad design, it certainly feels like the GRDL girls needed immediately readable concepts or intriguing shapes to their design to make them stand out in a plot that threw a bunch of characters at you over and over.

No name here for this lady, but the strange sort of tractor beam spine was what really drew me to this design. I called her Split Woman and her power was fairly easy to imagine: her top half could detach and fly around on its own to pester and interfere with others while the legs still moved around and did the skating. I think with a bit of a more compelling design she could have still made the cut and she is pretty cute and could fit the team's aesthetic, but I guess I didn't click with her enough to use her.

Starshine from ROM: Space Knight here was included back when I expected there to be more cute, weird pulls in the team line-ups. I was actually hoping to find more aliens from Futurama than I did, but for the Circuit Sisters, Starshine being a reference to a comic no one but maybe Cornwind would recognize meant she wasn't really working as a cameo, and the whole Spaceknight mythos eventually made me just decide to scrap her since Circuit Sisters was definitely the team that least needed more options to pick from.

Before Cybelle, there was Tuva Van Void. Some show called Alien News Desk has this robo-lady and you can find a lot of different expressions for her with a quick google, so being presenter felt like a decent job for such a lady. Never saw the show, but lesserknownwaifus on tumblr was also one of those sources for cute space ladies I put too much faith in. Honestly don't know how many girls I was even able to pull from it in the end, but Tuva here was one that cropped up there. She probably wouldn't have been as fun as Cybelle, still a bit wacky but maybe with some biting commentary on top of it.

Some cute Metabot chick I only labelled Brass Bot. No idea if I had any ideas for her, she was probably just character art I stored in the event that I might need another good robot lady.

Cece here, not sure where I came up for the name, is a pretty cute alien design I probably could get into in the right context, but for Roller Derby she felt rather generic. Much of what makes her appealing as a basic design doesn't carry over to readable powers or standing out from the team, and I know I would have struggled to justify that rule-breaking hoverboard in some manner. I feel like I could get a character out of this lady but not as part of a packed sports ensemble.

Mole here was part of a simple idea to diversify the body types of Circuit Sisters more since they were the most flexible bunch in design. Finding someone who was clearly female as an alien or rock monster was a bit harder than robots who sometimes just felt a bit lady-like due to paint jobs or facial features (I even considered maybe making human-sized gundams!) and this idea of a large lady on the team was what later become Crushinator. Mole, as you can see, has a mole face on her chest and then a tiny head, but I'm not sure how digging could manifest in a roller rink. Crushinator definitely crushed Mole's chances of appearing.

Our last rejected lady is labelled Reboot. I think this is by the same person as Mason and I was really hoping that artist would have given me more usable designs, but this nerdy robot certainly could have found her way into Circuit Sisters or Red Dwarf Destroyers since she has a sort of mean air to her. Again, the crowded android team lead to her not making the cut, especially since nothing speaks to me powerwise save maybe something with those antennae.

There were no doubt more reject roller skaters that I didn't save or only briefly looked at, these are just the ones who had images saved as a statement of intent.

The Red Dwarf Destroyers were always pegged to be the rivals ever since I came up with the idea of Sonata getting her back broken to force her to sit out. I needed reasons this team would come to the Kobbers so losing Entrapta and Sonata felt like a reasonable way for them to recruit ringers, but the funny thing about the Red Dwarf Destroyers was I came up with the name before I realized how perfectly its acronym lined up with Roller Disco Devils. In fact, starting off, I was considering them just to be Rival Sports Team and Bolstus just didn't know her own strength, but Bolstus was also imagined more closer to the pink goo rock golem Bulbit (so named for the Pink Slime type of meat BLBT, or Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, since her goo reminded me of it). So early Bolstus could have been just rougher than realized, but soon she became the core of giving us a clear villain for the plot but one who wasn't like, going to kill anyone.

Boltus being a bad lady let many other things fall into place. Shyne was some random tumblr radar image I thought was really cool, and I considered her being Glo's ex, who was also a tumblr radar image I thought was cool, although I had to edit out her tongue for making her look goofy. Glo might have actually been the start of Roller Derby since I remember the idea of Glo being sort of a more serious Shimmer, someone Shimmer wanted to befriend but couldn't, and Glo might have been a bit of a jerk, basically replacing that old idea of having the one person Shimmer couldn't befriend. Glo being a rude girl was definitely changed, but she was a shoo-in for Roller Derby because she matched the Pink Neon Pulverizer idea of everyone being Shimmer-esque. Shyne wasn't kept as her ex though, maybe they still are, but Glo's character really wasn't touched on compared to other PNP members. The Glo we got worked as an exotic dancer with her light rings to get money to fund her rather unpopular interpretative dance work, but it was her passion so she kept at it despite little interest.

QT-2 was from lesserknownwaifus and apparently a disguise for the main villain in the show, but she worked as a good way of making Bolstus's hold on the team more believable. Pairy (who I think is a fakemon) has an ego to stroke to make her a bit easy to manipulate, but QT-2 and Bolstus bullying the other two felt like a way of making the actual bad guy angle work, and QT-2 having her head reprogrammed absolved her while also adding some interesting android-only ideas to the plot. I think I said QT-2's original power was basically Split Woman's repurposed but I don't recall anymore and it would require chatzy digging for the truth. RDD's team design was basically one member representing each of the other teams, an android, alien, rock lady, and then humans for the PNP, but then we had Lady Bud Knight.

I'll touch on Bud Knights in general here. The end of year joke about Shimmer and Voyd protecting Olympia from Bud Knight trying to force drink exclusivity on the bar was part of my old MO of coming up with a joke and immediately coming up with its importance before posting it. Bud Knight was always destined to lead into Bud Knight Platinum appearing later to avenge him, but Bud Knight appearing for the jail plot was not planned until way later but also gave us the fight we were "denied". He was always meant to be a set up for the more interesting and cool design of Bud Knight Platinum, whose mascot commercials immediately made me want to include him in RP in some capacity. The whole idea of him avenging the original knight played well with ideas percolating about Sir Nicholas's power stoking people to act, but Entrapta's unusual ties to the group was the bigger one. I didn't know much about Entrapta besides her design at first, and when Spy posted this long thing on his tumblr that seemed to portray her as anxiety-riddled nerd so I seized that characterization... even though the show clips I saw later made her out to be eccentric but it was already too late after the plans I had for her. I do think her friendship rift was maybe too real a problem for us to handle in RP without people having the time or devotion to really concoct a way of potentially fixing it, but I think we got a decent enough outcome despite the character drama being a bit hard to navigate for people. 

Lady Bud Knight was some cosplayer I came across while seeing if there was another Bud Knight to potentially draw from, but she ended up the perfect way of integrating the Roller Disco Devils. I had very few plans for the Bud Knight Platinum fight before I hit on him just weaponizing other advertising campaigns the company had, and for Roller Derby, Lady Bud Knight was going to be lacking until I came up with giving her the angle of roping in the Disco Devils. The anniversary year was pretty much the reason they appeared and enhanced the enemy team, and since they're low-danger guys who are from Hell I feel less bad whenever I whip them out for battling again. I realized as soon as the idea came though I had to include them because no plot deserved them more, but I also didn't them too dangerous or serious a threat which they thankfully never feel like they've become. They're a goofy season 1 enemy and I'm not sure I'll ever use them again after this seemingly logical final bow, but they added some spice to the final battle and made Lady Bud Knight joining the team work more from Bolstus's perspective and gave us one more clear villain to take care of.

The round robin style to the plot was to avoid it dragging, and a regular tournament structure did mean we couldn't potentially lose. I was soft and gave us the Girl-actic win in the end, and I think maybe if the alien team was more compelling I could have let us lose. Maybe if Circuit Sisters was close instead I would have allowed the one loss, but the angle of having to outscore the Destroyers by a higher margin was a cool idea for the finale but not necessary once the Devils came into the picture I feel. Small fact too: originally the Red Dwarf Destroyer were Demolishers instead, but it didn't have the same ring. I also stick by saying Pink Neon Pulverizers has the better bounce to it, Neon Pink Pulverizers just doesn't ring the same to me! I think Neon might be too weak a word to lead with in my estimation and thus putting it central leads to a rise-fall-rise word layout... but anyway, the reason the plant team was scrapped was primarily so that the plot wasn't too big. Facing each team was necessary and a five event plot felt a bit too big even though I ended up sharing the sentiment I wish it could have kept going and the girls could have stuck around doing more. They did get some post-plot play definitely, not as much as planned due to DM Shimmer's removal, but I really did get attached to a lot of these ladies.

On the Pink Neon Pulverizers, they were all sort of Shimmer knock-offs in concept and many were characters who appealed to me almost exclusively because I saw a lot of what I liked in Shimmer in them. Characters like Honey Lemon in Big Hero 6 stood out to me because of their similarities, and so she was an early pick for the team along with Koala Princess who I mainly just knew for her design. Sonata came easy when I played her source game, Glo's whole thing was already that she was going to be a sort of serious Shimmer back when she was a more negative character concept, Dreamcast I always worried would be too much like Shimmer if I kept her personality from the Hard Girls show, and Entrapta I think was just sort of surface level Shimmery-ness. But, each of the main girls was meant to be a Shimmer with different aspects turned up. Honey Lemon was Smart Shimmer, and I kind of wish I remembered the different aspects of her little chemballs better (and she was almost at the Imposter event in Salvagerplot but that felt like too many characters so she only sort of mentions her presence later). Koala Princess was Stupid Shimmer and surprisingly fun even though "stupid" mostly manifested as her being incredibly out of touch and sheltered due to her being so rich and pampered. Glo was Serious Shimmer and thus the right fit for a team captain who could keep things under control and deliver things plainly in an eccentric cast. Dreamcast being Sega Shimmer was just to keep the SS theme but her concept was being the more violent of the group, and then we have Sonata, who is more of a normalized Shimmer with a similar power but her SS was always to be Salvager Sonata.

Sonata probably has the deepest history of the PNP team because of how much it tied to Salvagerplot. Originally she was 100% a willing Salvager and would reveal that once she had things in place. She was actually going to team up with other members of the Lovely Heroines cast, but while Parsec the gizmo girl was potentially interesting enough design and concept wise for RP, the other ladies weren't the best. One was basically Supergirl and another Storm and their designs weren't great and often too fetishy for my tastes as real RP characters. The idea would be Sonata would team up with these other superheroines for the attack though, and she even mentions the superheroine friends in RP... but it is part of her cover to hide that she was an Undercity resident and poorer than her friend group in the final form things took. She became too likeable a character with her cheering fan gimmick I feel and pretty quickly the idea she became a Salvager by choice was scrapped, and Sir Nicholas's powerset became a good idea of how to still get her Entrapta character drama into the plot. Bud Knight Platinum was added to ensure a battle and we got rolling from there...

But originally, the superheroine fight would have been interrupted anyway, and that's why we need to talk about a different rejected character that Maya ended up replacing. Georgette was a character I kept putting off drawing and thus likely ensured her rejection, but her concept was she was an african-american singer who had a brief period of popularity in the era of Motown female singing groups like the Supremes and even takes her name inspiration from The Marvelettes who had both a Georgeannea and Georgia but not a Georgette. The idea was that Georgette was a big singer for a brief flash in those days, but fell out quickly and did nothing of note until her death in around 1995. While a great singer, she actually was also carrying on an incredible power inside her, the ability to shape music into powerful energy forms. Her daughter left her life before Georgette could pass the ability on properly, but Georgette came back as a ghost and was looking for her granddaughter to carry on the legacy. Sonata was to be that granddaughter but Georgette would only realize it during the combat event because Sonata had at least manifested the basics of the power (being sound manipulation).

Georgette's own powers were a lot more varied and weird than just sonic manipulation, and she would have been another character whose basic attacks would be a lot of work in the same way the Sega Hard Girls prove to be. Sheep linked this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfECJrXkfrk and I had it stuck in my head and kept watching it, so eventually it came to me that a character who could turn song lyrics into attacks could be pretty cool. From the song Don't Pull Your Love specifically we have things like "cry for 100 years" and "drowning in my tears" could manifest as a big water flood formed by the sound, and "gonna leave, gonna take that big white bird" would manifest a literal big white bird for an attack. It's a power with mileage and who knows, maybe I'll use it one day, but Georgette felt like she depended on Sonata too much and the power was high maintenance in a year with high maintenance powers so when Maya's concept slammed into me close to RP's start I made the swap and don't really regret it.

Other little details: Voyd's small confidence arc here wasn't planned in advance, it just that her being there lead to very specific denials so others could shine and that ultimately makes a very good concept for her doing the big play in the end for maximum sports movie. I did want it to be sort of sports movie trope-y (hence the "save the league" angle) but also not exclusively that, but with Jenny joining the plot as well it was too perfect to pass up. I definitely figured out what went wrong with explaining Roller Derby rules, mainly it was explained in-character during the practice event rather than shown as a series of concise bullet points when it was actually relevant in the competition event. I did legit consider having the team somehow transition into another sport, but I think the Sega Hardcade plot will cover the same sort of tone and non-combat concept when it shows up in 2021 early season while feeling very different in terms of how characters interact with it. Pairy's name is from Poison/Fairy, the types the Fakemon was given. Cassini of Girl-actic is named for the astronomer who discovered a lot of stuff about Saturn like the ring division that is now named for him. Kristel was the first rock girl and I plumbed Invader Zim for designs but also came up with only her. And... that might be all I can think to say! Let's move on to our last plot then!

BLASTOPLOT 2

 

AKA I almost did Death of Blasto again! The point where he would have died is a lot more clear since I basically kept it in and removed the death, but in general, 2020 ended up showing us more of Blasto without ever drawing too much attention to it. He wasn't as active in regular events but when he did stuff it showed more than his movie-style devotion to justice, from finally being willing to hand away guns at the end of the year to showing that he valued many things more than just busting perps. He has a code for not using melee weapons, he wouldn't sell people out for even the best gun, and he'd willingly die if it meant protecting others, although trusting Einst to be true to his word was of course rather naive but at the same time Einst probably would have left well enough alone since the personal slight was taken care of and he wouldn't have to deal with Kobbers anymore. Regardless, the idea was to show more of the person behind the jellyfish alien before he was set to retire in a similar way to how Blastoplot 1 helped us get to know Niftu a bit better. I of course couldn't go through with killing Blasto, and while sometimes I feel a decision may make work better as a writing decision, I'm writing for a group of friends so I'd rather them be happy then sit on a stump and insist I have to have this ending that might make me feel like I wrote something marginally better than what I went with :P

That is a positive statement by the by! I don't feel bad at all with the final form of the plot, and Blasto surviving still had the intended meaning. He was ready and willing to die if that was what it took and was willing to swallow his pride for it, he survived by luck in the end. I almost called this plot The Death of Blasto so its best I didn't, but at the same time I'd totally do some sort of fakeout despite the name if i felt like it.

 

Anyway, talking about the general structure of the plot. In the same way the first plot had people named for Black Hole adjacent ideas and people, I wanted to do the same for this but whip out the big names. Calling someone Einstein or Hawking would be far too on the nose though, so the names were carved up and distributed. Einst as the main villain, Awki getting the middle of Hawking's names, and Hening picking up the pieces. Cerulean Star was from a Blasto comic and I thought mostly it was cute to allude to that comic, but it was originally going to be that Blasto had a romance with her that he didn't remember at all and Slasho had a romance with her that he only valued as a way of spiting his brother, but it added a weird layer to the whole affair so I didn't end up committing to it. Instead she just became the more competent and capable speaker for the first event!

However, the way things would kick off underwent many shifts. I thought at first roping in the Lodge would be nifty since Slasho was teased early on by being a high ranking member, so I almost had Niftu and Miyu meet up at a fancy eatery to discuss it. This is where the idea of the Totameians emerged from, partially for Niftu to flaunt his sometimes underutilized expert knowledge of Xenolinguistics and culture and partially just because I liked the idea of the society that bit its food to show its quality and trust in the ingredients. I concocted a bit more about the world for Niftu to potentially bring up like their relationship with food quality and splinter groups who relish the risk of eating the potentially dangerous base ingredients of their world, but in the end they became color for the policemen's ball instead. I considered drawing them and they went through many shapes before the sort of pelican-centaur came to life, I'm not sure I would have drawn that form, and drawing them would show intent of using them elsewhere. I did wonder if I should make more use of them then just a quirky chef and waiter race, and I tried to make them work as basic enemies for the ball attack, but it never clicked. Z'xarv was going to be more involved in this old version of the event too as he had been tracking Slasho specifically.

Another idea for enemies at the ball would be Hening and a group of similar dandelion aliens serving as the waiters and revealing they were in on the attack. It would probably leave too many people in inescapable positions to have waits pull guns out on them and that doesn't work with the intended Suicide by Cop approach they were hoping to have Blasto experience and shamed by, but mostly I just knew people liked the dandelion waiter I came up with for the Chili's scene with Cirno and wanted to make him more important. He was locked in as important when he became part of the hook for the next year, but rather than being more bodies than necessary for a dangerous fight, I just had Hening be the connection to Einst we needed to uncover through the prison event. I did waver on how Hening communicated and briefly considered sign language before I realized that wouldn't work with my animal control idea for Giggle, but the text hologram sort of gets the idea of being silent but able to speak with others.

TE pills and the related "black hole" weapons were all about getting the black holes into the plot without just retreading the use of them by the diva aliens from last year. Having people get sucked in again wasn't that cool, so I came up with the idea of the matter crunch weapon, and while there was no drug to drive the undercity mad, I thought having a weapon that was both incredibly power but reasonable to recover from worked well as a new big threat. It did come with the caveat I couldn't do direct hits without permakilling people, but the BH pistol worked well for low scale damage that still hit really hard. I did waver on what to do with Einst's ship and its upgraded matter crunch powers like a self destruct or have its weapon available for taking or whatever, but like usual I think I settled on the best result.

Blasto meeting with Slasho was almost a different thing entirely, Blasto turning up to an obvious ambush, blasting all of his attackers (likely other disgraced hunters or Black Hole thugs) and then speaking with Slasho until Cerulean catches him off guard somehow. One idea was that Blasto wouldn't be under the control of the asari's biotic power but instead there would be this sort of yellowish parasite creature similar in concept to the exocells from Cold Fear. It would go inside bodies and sort of puppet them and Blasto would have one in him making his seeming betrayal happen, and the prison event would have Awki be the host creature that controls the small parasites from afar. He was originally going to be a sort of muscular yellow creature in a prison jumpsuit and the prison event would involve him controlling people with more of the parasites rather than finding willing people to work alongside him, but then I came up with the idea of it being a guard and I felt that made more sense for how someone on the inside was able to get away with their manipulation and working as an invisible relay for Einst's work in Olympia. Turning Awki into a slug thing was meant to be to make him more unassuming and I know people probably won't remember the actual villain of the event well in the future and I don't mind! It was more about the fun of revisiting villains and I knew from the get-go I wanted Brad to crop back up, and Gooper and I even joked he and Pink might be an awful couple during the event before Pink was made actually likeable. I do think the villain selection would have been greater if we could have somehow justified even older villains being around and I do feel a little bad about the setup denying appearances by characters like Lord Dominator, but I also didn't want any controversy or quibbles about if a character should be dropping by. The fun of the event was revisiting villains we'd likely never hear from again and some got their chance to shine like Mustacho who I really wanted to show had internalized Meiling's attempt to teach him to be a better guy.

I did probably drag my feet a bit on getting my villain group going partly because I didn't remember my arrests vs. deaths pretty well. Other ideas included having the fight go down in the cafeteria instead of the yard, but I think that's about it for different ideas that were almost used there.

Einst's battle was pretty much assured since the teaser at the end of Blastoplot 1. I really wanted to sell this idea that Einst was fucking enormous, and I'm glad his text broke because it really did nail in how loud he is too. Some early concepts were outright ridiculous, like a small spaceship turning out to be Einst or even an asteroid being eaten by him, but he was in a chair during the teaser so I decided not to be TOO absurd. I still wanted him absolutely ginormous because the first concept for the fight was we'd meet him and get ready for the fight and he'd scoop us up and eat us. And that did happen! It was far more abrupt originally and I think I was going to play up the "well you're boned" angle more, but fighting our way out of Einst was always the idea, but originally it would have been pushing through multiple layers of the body rather than one enormous chamber. I always sort of maggot look for him where he was just one long fat grub to justify how he had all the stuff inside him added to kill his victims, but he would have looked too much like a big face or gate without the Jabba the Hutt posing. I almost gave him a mustache before i realized hair didn't make much sense for his creature type and instead made his nostrils look like a thin italian mustache, and he's sharply dressed because I continue to commit to the idea that aliens probably wouldn't be totally naked all the time if they interacted with other cultures. Drawing his teeth I think was the hardest part because I had to make them work within the concept of sealing people in while being a weapon in themselves. Originally there would have been no part with fighting regular crooks on the spaceship and I think that's what I meant about being a much more abrupt I EAT YOU scene. I do like we got the action movie ending of the organization ruined by the leader being killed but also the more realistic idea of the Space Police and Lodge sweeping up the gang's remnants now that their power structure is broken and much of their strength lost.

Bubin is perhaps the last character to talk about. I knew I wanted to kick things off with him returning to elcor form, and the Policemen's Ball was a good day to do it. However, originally, rather than just being back to normal there, his return to being able to speak would lead to him telling everyone that he had knowledge of Black Hole he's been wanting to tell them for a year! If I lampshaded it enough maybe I could get away with that angle but it felt like he'd make some effort to communicate it while Hot Foot if it was important, so instead he just got to be a huge alien instead. In the original idea for Blasto in RP, Bubin would have been there as his partner to be the dry counter, but I felt my cast was getting packed and I wanted to focus on the police chief/vigilante cop angle more. Bubin did get his role though and after his restoration he got be partners with Blasto a few times, the back turret proving to be a bit more flexible than I originally anticipated even though I didn't use Bubin much to really explore it. I think Bubin's voice quirk of saying the sentence's emotion could have worn me down since I already sometimes struggle to write Blasto's convoluted wording and one-liners at times, but Bubin played his role well enough. Oh, and I guess I'll say I had been considering Giggle for an Inch romantic interest since seeing Toy Story 4 and the animal control angle helped it manifest, but since Inch's joke about the Policemen's Ball donations being what inspired Bree's interest and then the general idea of incorporating it into Blastoplot at all, I decided to rope in Inch being really into the ball so he could get a date with his new honey. They might not interact too much in the coming year save moments set up for casual relaxing, but hopefully Giggle and Hening get a good amount of play.

And... that might be it, for these plots at least! Salvager blogpost will probably be a beast so I don't know if I might take some means of cutting it down into something more manageable, but this should be most of the behind the scenes for unrelated material! See you whenever I can muster the energy for another big blogpost!