Doing a Long Introspection: 2024 RP in review

 Let's not waste much time and dive right in! Here's a look behind some things that were meant for RP and didn't make it or reflections on the stuff I did do!

 

SPOT AND DR. CRYGOR

 

 Let's start with one plot that was completely scrapped! For my 2024 characters I had originally planned to RP a character called Spot, who would be an anthropomorphic fat seal! He would have been a spotted seal I believe, I think I considered other species, Baikal Seal comes to mind, before I settled on the species that lead naturally to the simple name. Spot would have been a young, well-meaning guy, and the only mark we ever have in RP itself that he was considered is that there was a brief mention that seal sanctuary was displaced by Tehom's attack. That seal sanctuary would have been run by Spot! I believe Spot was meant to wear heavy winter clothing, probably waist up, and I even considered drawing him myself. He would have had a wool hat too.

As for how he participated in RP, I considered the whole seal sanctuary displacement thing tying into the fact he'd be traveling with a lot of seals! Mainly, he would have been given a laser remote, based on an idea from my old childhood monster collection series Monster Collector, and it could store things inside for transport mainly. I kept trying to not have it be a Poke Ball or have some limit, but I don't remember ever being happy with it since I didn't want it to be able to just store actual people or whatever. The seals from the sanctuary wouldn't all be stored in there, Spot would have moved most of them to a smaller sanctuary, but he would bring with him a few others from time to time. Mainly, seals from other works of fiction. As a result, he almost would be a Pokemon Trainer. He would definitely have a Spheal and Seel, but moving on from there, the only other fictional seal I remember considering was the Baloon-Meister from Kirby:

I didn't want any of them having human level intelligence, which made including seals from other fiction tougher.

As for Spot's relevance, I believe it was a smaller plot in mind for him. I think the PlayStation girls were locked in for 2024 for a long time so the old idea was probably three plots of varying size but none too big, but Spot's plot would have included the Crygor family! I do remember the teaser I had planned, we'd see Spot working on settling his seal buddies down, and we'd learn he had a wealthy benefactor who helped rehouse some of the seals, and it would turn out to be... MR. WALRUS?! For newer users, that was a name I used back when I ended up killing a different RP's bar topic and I almost had him be the main villain of a plot involving characters from users who never really joined RP on the zoofights forum called Those Left Behind. Mr. Walrus was a conniving sort with meta things behind him, but here, Mr. Walrus was going to be more of a part of the plot than some mastermind. He'd be gathering people like himself and Spot, other anthropomorphic animals, and the teaser would have him mention that he was eager to meet Dr. Crygor in some ominous way Spot wouldn't pick up on.

The swerve down the line though would be that the Crygor Mr. Walrus hates isn't out Crygor, but Dr. Crygor's son who would inherently share the same name. In 2024, Crygor's brief reappearance got us some more backstory, mainly that Crygor's son also had the "Crygor Curse" where people get so wrapped up in science it dominates their life. In Crygor Jr.'s case, it was a desire to become an animal, specifically, a horse. He and his wife both became horses and ran off together, leaving little Penny behind... basically to die. If Dr. Crygor hadn't come across the lab in time, she would have! But he found her and realized what happened, swearing he would support the girl with all her heart and never let her know she wasn't appreciated by her birth parents as they chased their scientific delusion.

The Spot plot, probably better called Crygor Plot, would have involved Crygor Jr.'s "prototypes", animals who had been evolved to near-human or humans turned towards animals, albeit not fully. Spot would have been an actual seal who got boosted up by the mad science, and I think Mr. Walrus was too actually. I don't know if there would have been a confrontation with Crygor Jr., I keep imagining him as a centaur even though I know it's wrong, since the horse conversion was a success. Nothing came together well enough to motivate me to keep building in this space, save of course Penny would end up learning the unfortunate truth about her parents and her rampant positivity would finally receive its first crack. I'm actually happy to not have pursued this, I like the Crygor trio as the forces of happy positivity. They're not totally uncomplicated, but I don't think I need to give them such complexity. I will say though, scrapping this plot did mean I didn't really feel like bringing back the Crygors in 2024, so sadly the plot took them down with it.

 

 NETZACH, SEFIROT, AND QLIPPOTH

 

Netzach is the Sefirot of Victory, and I believe I intended for him to have a faceclaim similar to Mycen from Fire Emblem there. I think he was the closest I came to a faceclaim, I also remember considering a redheaded mustachioed look, but I think this was the closest I ever came to committing to a look for him. Notably, ever Qlippoth has an opposing Sefirot, although I had to basically designate them myself since it's just stated to be true rather than explained deeper. We know Tehom's was Malkuth, but despite killing Esh, we didn't meet his accompanying Sefirot. Netzach here was Esh's counterpart, for fire is a force of destruction that is always doomed to peter out while victory often puts a halt to destruction and while you can lose later down the line, once a victory is assured it is affixed and immutable. Esh wanted to defeat Netzach but never could, I believe that comes up in RP as Esh always losing in his endeavors since he wasn't allowed to taste victory since it opposed his existence, but Netzach instead had grown weary of victory. His power all but assured his victory when he entered battle, making him essentially invulnerable once he has put a mind to a task, but his own disheartened nature means nothing motivates him enough to seize such victory.

However, Netzach was going to be moved from his lethargy by the manipulation of the Qlippoth known as Bohu, the Void. We actually "met" Bohu's twin of sorts, his sister Tohu the Formless, who was able to witness and explain Esh's death. Tohu, funnily enough, was meant to be a Qlippoth who wasn't all bad. She would be the one to approach the Kobbers in hopes of saving/stopping her broth, Bohu being consumed by the Void who is his essence. I believe the Void had a sort of unending hunger so he could keep sapping the "invincible" Victory's power without harming either, but Bohu would have also assumed a deceptive human form making him look like a sickly young boy. Netzach would be so worn down from his own woes and the constant draining he'd be a good puppet, and Bohu's hunger would lead to Netzach leading essentially a war effort. I think I even considered him declaring war on Glasetera in the name of some other small nation, but I don't think we need real war in RP considering real life right now.

I know details kept getting shifted around, but I don't think I was getting to any concrete ideas of what this plot could even shape up to be besides a confrontation with Netzach/Bohu. I think that frustration that I couldn't conceive of any plans lead to me deciding not to immediately shift into more Sefirot/Qlippoth plot stuff, but I don't think I've given up on them entirely yet. They're actually good for some brainstorming, their concepts sometimes sending me down a road that later morphs into a different idea even if I don't use them. However, with this not clicking and no strong teaser in mind, I started to near the end of the 2023 RP season unsure of what my plans were exactly for the next year, especially since what I had wasn't particularly exciting me. That is, ultimately, what motivated me to toss it all out and pursue instead other burbling ideas within my mind. That would be how we got DALI, and I'll discuss more about the concepting for that in its own section, but I think it was around October when the shift was committed to and the shift in direction lead to such a torrent of fun new ideas I knew I had made the right decision and committed to it fully. I am partially explaining this plot to full on discard these concepts here, so that if we do meet Netzach or Bohu one day I can take them in new more interesting directions.

PLAYSTATION GIRLS

Remember this guy? Kevin Butler, a guy who appeared in a lot of PlayStation commercials and even briefly in RP when he was revealed to be the guy who created Knack at the Patch and the one who considered axing him before we saved Knack by making Knack 3. It won't surprise you to hear he was initially planned to have a huge hand in the PlayStation plot, would it? Especially since we went back to the Patch and everything!

So, in early planning, the whole situation surrounding PS1/Ophelia was quite different. There were a lot of different angles planned for exactly how All-Star Power was going to be harnessed and why, and initially Kevin Butler here was going to be like the supervisor of the PlayStation girls who is working with Ophelia to try and develop AP into something more powerful than ever before. However, it was always planned for the AP development to backfire, but initially, Kevin Butler would be completely obliterated by the rampant AP and his consciousness would be in it, trying to work with Ophelia so they could realize the energy's true potential. The AP backfiring and messing up Ophelia's mind meant that couldn't happen until Ophelia resumed full control though, and originally the whole mind fracturing One underwent tied not to AP problems but her own desire to be smarter. She wanted to be perfect in mind, able to know more than a brain could hold, so she made the disks that attach to her head's cyborg implants so if she wanted to be smart, she could put on the focused information discs, and if she wanted to be social, she would put those on. Once she put on the black ones, those containing the trapped Ophelia consciousness one day (by mistake or manipulation), that would be how Ophelia and Butler could work together to enact their plan. Ultimately it split the focus and I think giving a big focused baddie worked better, but the original plan was that after Ophelia's essence was destroyed, One would still have her cyborg implants and discs that hold different memories and information. Draco solved that with the Twin Statue so now she's a normal girl with a complete mind though, so for a while I was a little adrift on what she would be like after since I planned the disc swapping as a quirk so she was kind of a ditzy genius type!

I have thought of a nice idea for her going forward, but also, it was always the plan to backseat some PlayStation girls this year so I didn't hit on the Sintendo Sisters issue where their first year they didn't do much because I hadn't accounted for them too well. We'll get a cleaner rollout so they have their needed room to grow, although I think PSP might have grown too fast! I don't regret it, good stuff from having her development frontloaded, and Fiona and Vivian were unmitigated successes. Knack was never meant to be "back", so to speak, his role more as a piece of the plot to give Vita a way to escape and something more important than just her game console so that it would make sense why the other girls were brainwashed into retrieving her. I did the brainwashing partly to avoid having another game girl group hostile towards us and turned, not wanting to be a repeat of the Nintendo girls joining us exactly. We got a more villainous group but only because of one bad egg. Most of the PlayStation girls faceclaim their most common console-tan counterpart, not wanting to make people sad they can't find more images of them like with Switch! PS5 is the only fringe case since hers wasn't as commonly agreed upon, but it does seem like her look won out too.

I don't think any fights changed all that much, even as certain details and reveals were moved around like us learning about Ophelia's issues before the big finale itself rather than during. I did consider having Gregg the Grim Reaper reappear, although that's DALI related actually. He would have swung around Whalestrand chasing rumors that Knack was around, but before he could do anything for PlayStation or independently depending on the angle I chose, he would have been snatched up by DALI instead. This was back when DALI was more antagonistic, and mainly Ember would have taken down Gregg as part of an effort to wipe out psychopomps who didn't back down willingly. Phantomon would have been slated for a similar confrontation, and I actually asked Cornwind's permission to potentially use Death from Sandman, aka the one who appeared way back in Season 1 during the Rafflesia stuff, and she might have been tied to that. I even considered still using Death as just someone a DALI member talked to, a perspective from a psychopomp that was kinder and maybe shifted the mindset of someone like Ember when needed.

I do know I intended for Vita's scene adopting Scruffy the Meowth to come a touch sooner, I had thought her giving Margit her real name was pretty much confirming the ship but Draco kept it going and I'm glad he did since it give his finale a nice extra element. However, I had planned for them to get Scruffy before those final few battles of the year. Of course, adopting the Meowth wasn't planned from the start. Vivian sees some of her self in how Galarian Meowth looks and generally likes little scuzzy gremlin things, so I just had her latch onto one during the charity event that ended up being a big factor in how her future shaped up. Her "ubwah" catchphrase was really just from the planning phase of the blogpost introducing the PlayStation girls, I thought of the scene where Fiona is overly friendly and then thought of how PS3 could be accidentally lewd, and I realized I had a running joke that could be fun to pursue. Especially since early Vita thought both everyone and no one was attracted to her. I'm sure it was noticed, but over the course of the year she stopped doing things she thought she had to in order to be liked. She stopped trying to make herself into something else, abandoning the gratuitous Japanese and lying brags because people made her actually comfortable in her own skin.

Fiona wasn't supposed to be so important this year, but I jumped on sending her to the sauna as a joke and it evolved from there. Very happy for it though. Did control myself and not let Three get out of hand though, generally this year there were too many characters to give everyone proper attention, so no it felt important to show some restraint!

OTHER THINGS BEFORE DALI

So they don't get crowded out by the big stuff, just some other details about this year's RP and characters!

Sinful and Prosperity mainly came back in case Chao did a plot with Shirley. I wanted them there for Kogasa's stuff at least nominally, but if Shirely got a plot Sinful would have to attend and Prosperity coming along would give another good fit for the plot potentially. I did like having the new look for her, but I didn't see a reason to force her on adventures.

 

Nintendo Girls were basically waiting out the Whalestrand clock. They would help when relevant, I'm glad Gabi got to help the Prismrivers, but both had been pretty well wrapped up and mostly just had skin in the game. They were relevant to PlayStation stuff because Gabi could be a way to convert the equipment away from the AP as a power source and I did think maybe they should have done more when present at those events, but it's hard to balance your own characters, especially since the Sony Sisters also had a lot of talking since clearing the brainwashing was an important element and thus demanded more of my mental attention. Gabi will probably be on call as the tech girl for game girls for a bit, and I'm not sure we're entirely done with Nintendo systems...

Miyoi, I do think I could have posted more of her, but I did like some of her newer connections made this year! I did wonder if she should have maybe helped with Jackson's rescue before realizing she would have been too outmatched there. I mean, she fought Tiamat and Clovenix but like, there's still a different type of power at play. I just like the idea Miyoi steps up for those dear to her, but we also got Jawbreaker becoming dear to Jackson! When Brine first had Jackson hug Jawbreaker I wasn't sure if there was any deeper intent, but it ultimately worked very well for Jawbreaker's arc of accepting herself to have someone who would be interested in her after becoming a skeleton. They make a good deal of sense together too, tech nerd likes the tech girl! I did like that Miyoi actually got to use her flavor bullets for something memorable in the confetti cake cubes for Jackson and Lee, it was an idea I thought would get more play but I guess we don't often care about the food and drink side of baRP really. Miyoi definitely became the kind of character where I couldn't "tell her" to do things. Like, I couldn't make her act out of character or do things that didn't feel right. I think that's a nice result of having a well-realized character, even if it means sometimes you almost feel like your character is resisting you when you have an idea :V Still, it also makes it easier to like the character yourself! It's less "there's my lovely character Miyoi" and more "Miyoi is lovely" in my head because of it.

So happy with the Ginny stuff! I know many people wanted to support Ginny, like Cornwind giving her thief training, and Zeldoten was watching her for a while, but the point of Ginny wasn't that she could ever be this amazing master thief. I think meeting Zeldoten could have lead to her trying to impress her too much, and training would just lead to more frustrating failures. It was never about getting good, it was about being comfortable as she is, happy to be Ginny. Zadanost was what gave that too her, and while some people weren't sure it was going to be explicitly romantic, I did pretty much already commit to that idea pretty quickly and then when Zadanost was holding her hand so much in RP I was glad to see Brine was receptive. The two were just perfect for each other, neither had to change who they were, a lot of their issues just came from rubbing up against society wrong. Ginny had a problem with herself because others had a problem with her. I think if she met Zeldoten now she'd be a bit starstruck, but she'd thank her for giving her an example to follow to where she got, even though Ginny doesn't want to be like Zeldoten anymore. She doesn't HAVE to be anything now, she has someone who loves her fully and because of who she is. She needed external validation, she'd never have the talent or ability to be an amazing thief or fighter. She's still impatient and blunt, she's still lacking in most any skill, but she doesn't need to be exceptional because Zadanost and the Coven and others all treat her well rather than demanding she have some sort of tangible value. I could go on and on about Ginny, I am so happy with the path Zadanost helped her go down, theirs is a story of being true to yourself and supportive of what a person is rather than forcing them to be something they're not. Ginny didn't leave her bubble much but I think she got a perfect sendoff year, including not getting a dramatic moment in the Blood Bowl finale. I know that would have been probably traditionally satisfying in a narrative way, and she did do well that day, but the whole point is she can't fit into those molds and instead she was happy despite that and felt part of something where she wasn't being judged!

Claire was also backseated since she had done a lot with Clownpiece last year, although the ongoing proposal joke was fun. Mainly she was there to support Kogasa at key moments. Yuuma I think got crowded out by the abundance of characters and not having anything in particular she needed to work on, meaning her attendance wasn't really going to progress anything when so many other characters needed to keep going forward. I do think it worked out well in the end, Yuuma's wrap-up pretty much said all that needed said on why I think it's good she found a different way than Kobberdom. Firebrow was basically not meant to appear save for cameos, and I didn't want to touch on what Henrik, Jahnu, or other fishmen were up to since they're probably just living normal happy lives as they lose their fishiness. There's probably a timer on their lives now too without that conditional immortality though. Very glad SK still had a watery plot to go on, not sure if I'll show the Cerulean Voice helping with oceanic events often, maybe if there's more kaijuy "out at sea' things I could, but having it follow up on its promise to assist Kobbers by taking on another god felt like it making good on its promise at the end of last year's events.

DALI

Hoo boy. So far everything in this blogpost has been written in just one day, but I worry this section might change that! I'll try to not drag this out, but this was basically my big 2024 thing, and I am very happy with it! It's daunting to go into details, but I think DALI performed the difficult balancing act I've been kind of working towards across the years. Weaselplot obviously was too silly despite it focusing on basically racism towards anthropomorphic weasels so its subject matter didn't stick, and Brume stuff was fun but also lead to RPers sometimes being anti-Brume even though I did generally enjoy having this other species in the city lead to some tensions like they would realistically. Of course, when DALI was first conceived, it wasn't necessarily going to lean so hard into the angle that these guys were in the right, but that's because at first, as the teaser suggested, I was leaning a lot more "well-intentioned extremists" than a real rights movement.

See, initially when DALI said they were going to tear down the gates of heaven, it was practically literal. They were going to essentially be anti-afterlife terrorists. They would want acceptance on Earth, but they viewed afterlives fully as prisons and after we got to know them a bit we'd see them take things too far and the plot would be kind of a balance of facing people we'd have to talk to reason or those who wouldn't back down. In fact, the whole reason Ryuk was added after I got the requisite permissions was to give DALI a nice way to prevent some undead purge or whatever. They'd have such a powerful weapon with the Death Note, but Zed (who originally I intended to call Zipacna mostly but the shorter name clicked with people better) would have this tool on hand if we, in turn, went too far against them. Ember was the real leader of the more extreme stuff, I don't even know how everyone might have landed should I have committed to it. I do know most characters had "boss battle" versions, like Jawbreaker and Xenopatra would have been fought together but Xenopatra was more into the extreme side while Jawbreaker would be easier to talk down. Some stuff was saved from this, we'll get to it, but this is where we'd have those psychopomp comfrontations mentioned earlier in the blog, Gregg's capture possibly even starting the turning point where DALI went from good to bad.

DALI did start shifting away from its more adversarial angle almost immediately though, especially as I didn't want another plot where people could say that the racists have a point or whatever. At the same time, I didn't want to get too close to reality, many talking points and elements were scrapped despite looking promising because they actually mirrored real rights movements or events too closely. To avoid things being uncomfortable I won't give specific examples, I think I'd need to jog my memory for them anyway since I was pretty insistent on cutting the thread quickly, but I did have to tell some collaborators not to directly compare to the undead rights push to real situations like the Civil Rights movement. Obviously there was inspiration from all sorts of movements and the like, but I didn't want to cheapen the true fights by making them too easily solved in RP, and in RP we also didn't exactly get like, a "racism is over" movement either. Instead there were progress and all but we know it's a fight that's still got more ahead, but we made big pushes and I did provide some more straightforward bigots to satisfying squash to make some of the fact we can't tangibly seize undead acceptance fully more palatable.

I suppose lets tackle some of the characters one by one and then work towards events, since otherwise I think I'll be all over the place. Zed, aka Zipacna, was picked because he wasn't a big deal death god. I wasn't actually sure if RP would be fine with me using big names, it's the same reason Jarilo was the main villainous god rather than a more notable one, although I did worry people might google Zipacna and find him unlikeable because his mythical self is one big jerk who kills hundreds of young men. I made him larger than most characters partly because I liked the idea of gods being larger than life, but Zed does have a brother named Cabrakan as depicted in this picture.

I do wish I could have got a cool caiman skull for Zed, although New Death from Adventure Time did help a lot with me deciding to give Zed such a bro attitude. New Death isn't a bro in that show, but he looks like he could be, and I think that helped guide the character to his less serious elements even early on. Coming up with the idea of fracturing the skull helped make the serpentine look work, and it actually probably doomed Vucub, his father, since it made a nice connective part back to Xibalba. I did think some people might have thought Zed or his dad were more important in the Xibalba hierarchy, and while I did emphasize they weren't when we finally dropped by, I also just generally enjoyed portraying the place in a fairly accurate way that also worked perfectly for turning a death god into a death right's activist.

Zed's pillar power was immediately conceived of based on his myth. I didn't want him too powerful, I didn't give him "mountain god" powers, but using his size to his advantage just seemed more fun anyway, and I added the scythe heads to make it a more interesting weapon than just a long wood beam. If it helps you contextualize how quick DALI changed to something more positive, I never really even thought of a possible fight for Zed before it shifted too much to get us there despite him nominally being the final boss if we had gone that route!

Maybe I should talk about Kogasa before we get too deep. Kogasa's been searching for a solution for a while, I considered having Zozo reveal Kogasa's true nature before that job passed to Vooma just because it took so long! I also kept trying to grasp onto something that works for her and she became kind of muddled, and I used that to my advantage. I legit would forget about her weather powers, but I used that to represent her fractured mind. A lot of elements where considered from the start, mainly that Kogasa needed fractions of other souls to make herself and that Fuan/the umbrella was the only true part of her. Many other elements changed around, and I was glad for Min-Min because it helped Kogasa keep developing without too many devoted moments elsewhere so she could be a dayplot essentially. Initially, Kogasa being more meta aware was just part of the push of me making her almost more like me. A quipster, a silly goose, and while at first I think her jokes were more like noticing narrative trends, it eventually became pretty explicit and I leaned more into it. I know it's not good to go too far with meta awareness or jokes, it gets tiresome to read and breaks the verisimilitude of our universe, but I tried to portray it as something for people to be concerned about. The moment where Claire outright confronts it was planned for a while, because usually in-universe its shrugged off, but a perfect way to show it was an actual problem here was to move out of the humor of being self-aware and bringing it back into the fiction.

I think the Kogasa event was going to be a lot more about the danger Fuan presented at first, like, legitimately planned for Fuan to become huge and attack the city kind of stuff. He already has gotten very large before, but the plan initially was Fuan would eat some people and they'd meet Kogasa inside him, where she was having her breakdown. Instead we got the more ethereal twist without such a big threatening event outside. I had been considering how to represent Kogasa for that for a while, the image I drew for the event was something I finally settled on not too far in advance, mostly because I wasn't sure how much of Kogasa should be left. I know we technically never fixed Kogasa, she still needs surprises, but as she said herself, she's in a better headspace now and putting together nice surprises still works. I did at least have a lot of the Kogasa/Fuan stuff planned enough to lay hints last year, we got the teaser after all. I didn't expect her to dump Franklin though until the Yumei stuff really took off. I appreciate Pitohui thinking both girls need time to figure things out, but I personally believe they'll get together when they're fully-functioning ;P

I think I'll cover Ember next, mostly because she'll really let me dive into some scrapped events. Mainly, she was kind of planned to be the antagonist by hook or crook for quite a while! We actually almost had more mind control this year, but I'm getting ahead of myself! So, in Ember's backstory, we here about a boy who stood her up and she burned to death when she fell asleep waiting for him at a theater. Well, in RP, we woulda met that guy!

This is Johnny 13 from Danny Phantom, but he would have mostly been a faceclaim here. We might have known him better as... DIOGENES!

Yes, originally, Diogenes was not just a pseudo-intellectual using the Gravedigger movement for personal gain, he was also Ember's ex! Mainly, he was a serial "abuser" who got what he wanted from people and then left them to rot, but he got away with it by changing his identity a bunch. Seeing Ember touring the world singing about him though made him realize he had to step things up if he wanted to keep mistreating people for his own benefit, but exactly how kept shifting. At first, we'd see Diogenes "die" in an event like the Slimefoot attack or when Tom Jumbo was turned into a giant monster whale, and then after we'd see this guy show up and talk to Ember. I couldn't decide if he was undead or not, leaned towards not, but he would have gotten an earful from Ember but revealed he wanted to make things better by helping out DALI. However, his help would mostly be helping to get people onto Ember's side for the more extreme stuff, like raiding underworlds. Initially it would have caused a schism, Zed staying with the nicer sorts and Ember leading people like Xenopatra to start tearing up hells with no regard for the safety of others. In fact, this guy would specifically lead them towards breaking people out of Sheol near the end of the plot, aka... the afterlife where Esh the Qlippoth was now serving as a tender of souls. Esh would help him open the gates and unleash a great deal of evil souls into the world, although I did consider whether Esh would try to escape or just appreciate the carnage.

I had intended for the final event of the plot to be the raid on Sheol to stop this, maybe a two-part event, and day one would focus on Sheol's gates being thrown open so we could face... dead Kobber villains! Yup, so many times I considered posting in RP Discussion or PMing Gooper or something to potentially see if this idea would fly or would have interest. I even considered pretty deep into the year whether this might be salvaged, but when Gooper had many of his dead villains appear for his plot event, I think that was the final nail in the coffin. I had even considered Xibalba somehow housing former villains, but I didn't want to steal Gooper's spotlight and generally keeping Sheol around after this version of Diogenes had long been rejected didn't feel right anyway. It is why I said I needed more events than I used during one of the check-ins, I was still considering if Sheol had a purpose without this old angle.

Diogenes was almost kept alive even without the more personal connections, just to give us a more consistent villain across the plot, but I decided he was better off getting squashed early. However, when things changed away from him being Ember's infamous ex, the event in the Land of the Livid Dead would instead involve Diogenes getting Ember's guitar and using it to control undead DALI members to make them boss fights. I believe Xenopatra, Ufa, Vooma, and Ember were all slated for this version of events, although some would share the spotlight with guys like Ryuk and Diogenes or each other. I think the Undead Fite being so late in the year helped to turn me away from any vestige of this old version of the old plot making it in, but like the Sheol stuff, it was less me still planning to do it and more me seeing if there was any scraps to salvage.

In the end, that mostly left Ember the DALI money bank and second in command, although I do wonder if she felt appropriately like the secondary leader. I did make her little arc for the year end up being basically her cooling away from the planned bad version of her though, so it even makes sense why DALI could have that more extreme teaser only for us to land here. As some people know, she was a rejected character from 2012 who would have been JRM's ex, DALI perhaps lighting a fire early within me because I had so many undead characters I liked from fiction I could bring in. Her, Phantasma, and Perona were sort of instant locks since I had considered them in RP in some form, not always very serious before then, but so much fell into place once I entertained the idea.

Oh, and yeah, DALI was taken from Dracula: Dead and Loving It, a movie I have never seen. I was trying to think of a name, remembered that movie name, and couldn't shake it since it encapsulated their broad approach so well. It's not about just undead acceptance, its about pride, its about death being good whether you're on Earth or in an afterlife!

Jawbreaker actually kinda fits into that well too despite not being undead. I had come across Jawbreaker from Fortnite and liked the nerdy goth look, enough to remember her but not really think much else beyond "she cute". However, I did want the idea of a living ally for DALI and it worked well with Xenopatra in the teaser (Xenopatra being a custom character I made in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt who I just liked the look off because I like punk aesthetics I guess!). Jawbreaker's drones are named after DnD things because she's a nerd, but as I started to plan more stuff that did make it in like the Gravediggers, she was destined to die. I don't remember how far back, but it was pretty far back, the scene with the Death Note temptation planned pretty far in advance since there had to be something to deliver on the Ryuk teaser despite the major shift in tone. I do wish I had made her an OC who just faceclaimed Jawbreaker, but I do like the pun of someone named for a bone becoming a skeleton. The fact she did want a nice afterlife didn't come up too much, but the fact she became a skeleton instead of something "cool" was meant to help with the arc of seeing someone come to terms with and be supported during her transition.

The whole thing about her body being kept alive by Vooma was basically me hedging my bets. I didn't want people to be too sad about Jawbreaker's situation and didn't want it to be impossible to revert if they absolutely wanted her alive again, especially considering her death was her being killed by Gravediggers. I didn't want things to be too much of a bummer when dealing with a heavy subject, but people seemed on board for the planned arc! I did consider having Zozo drop by, DALI would be her thing and she could give assistance on the Jawbreaker situation. She would have had a chat with Jawbreaker that would be one of the things that helped her forward. Zozo was mainly in town to check on her daughter (Isabelle) though to make it more believable why she was suddenly around. I am happy with the skeleton version of Jawbreaker I found, I like that the eyeholes evoke glasses that aren't there.

Phantasma I had feared would not do much, and she kinda didn't but she still did more than I initially worried she wouldn't! The Boo Brothers being back was to tie into the DALI introduction solely, I just thought it made more sense the Kobbers happened to meet DALI through an event of mutual interest instead of them coming to the Kobbers. It helped to let DALI to be active before but not like, dumb for not coming to the Kobbers sooner. They were working elsewhere, got in contact with the Kobbers and realized they were on their side, and then evolved from there. Most of the first event with the Shriek Sisters and all was meant to stay there, little things like the Shriek Sisters hosting the Brawl just something that felt right but I had no intention of RPing them fully. I had considered the Boo Brothers being present for Kogasa's breakdown, having a moment where they realize they should not be ghost hunters because it causes harm and doesn't do much good for them either. Generally, writing them again I felt the slapstick wasn't as fun to write as before, so I didn't force them. Phantasma though was perfect for giving Kogasa someone to speak to who wasn't unburdened by old things like Claire who would be too supportive or know too much about her. Phantasma's backstory was partially formed before the event in the backrooms, mainly that she had never really lived because she spent life being the good girl in school but died young and unfulfilled, and I just added more to it to fit the scene better. She'll be coming with us to Argo almost because I don't want Perona's new branch to be too small and only new blood like Litr and Sese!

Perona! I have a lot of love for her, but I was also afraid to express it. Why? Because she was slated to continue on DALI into the next setting from pretty early on! I didn't want her to hog the spotlight in the same year others would only get their single year of appearance. I think that meant she kind of got too little focus, but the Jarilo stuff did bring her back into view. I will say, at the time of writing the Spirit Girl blogpost, I had not fully committed to that god that the cult worshipped would be Jarilo. Like I said, I didn't want to use big gods (turns out that's not really an issue, people were fine with Hel!) but I also wasn't sure if Jarilo was my pick, so things are kept vague and broad there. I do wish I had put the hints there sooner, instead Jarilo isn't mentioned explicitly until the attack on The Stand! The blogpost definitely made Perona for me though. Before then she was just going to be a fun bratty member, but adding depth to her really made me attached. I did try to not explicitly point out too often that the ghostlings are the other kids who the cult killed for being unholy, but there you go! However, I did make the ghostlings unreasonably hard to kill to avoid having anyone have permadead orphan on their hand (although I did panic a touch when Gooper's Destoroyah stuff almost absorbed one!). There's more to learn about Perona, but I think trying to balance things did mean it sometimes lead to a struggle to make her relevant in the plot about the bad guy who made her life so awful. She has no One Piece ties in RP, again more a case of me taking a power and look and OCing the rest out.

Gianni D'Angelo, when I encountered him in Vampire:The Masquerade: Coteries of New York, I was charmed. In game he actually mutters to himself a lot, narrating his life like a detective novel, and that kind of transitioned into RP of him just muttering his cynical observations or reasonable but negative wisdom. I think DALI did need someone to balance out the general levels of positivity, and he could introduce doubt in moments where things seemed to be going too well. He could be wiser than Zed, he filled an important role, and I actually wasn't sure I ever wanted him to fight. In RP, his attacks are slightly based on the abilities Nosferatus use in the battle royale Bloodhunt, but I made them grosser because I felt like him being too cool wasn't appropriate. He's not really agile or even motivated, but his powers fit his approach like invisibility and the bat familiars. Xenopatra is actually a mixed vampire purely so I could pull powers from two different clans, Toreador and Ventrue. Ventrue gives her her shackles and Flesh of Marble we saw a lot of, but Toreador actually got less play than I thought since their stuff is mostly about emotional manipulation and generally she didn't fight many battles where that felt like it mattered. While it was mostly to increase her toolkit, I think it also helped break her away from that vampire world. Both her and Gianni are tied to an event in Prague based on the Bloodhunt game. Bloodhunt happens in modern times but I decided a vampire purge there made sense in our RP world, and Prague is actually associated pretty often with vampires so it was a fine choice that would also make someone like Gianni suspicious. There's not too many deeper details that feel like they need sharing, both were just around for something horrible that colored their world views, hence why Xenopatra was always lumped in with Ember's more extreme streak in reject stuff.

Sir Daniel Fortescue... another case where I probably misspelled the name once and then it was too late to change it. But I'm sure you're wondering about his permadeath! Now, D'Angelo did almost die as well. I considered him like, dying and riding a psychopomp to Xibalba so he could be tracked there or set things up for the others, and while I was working out how Mima would help us get there instead that was a back-up plan I considered. D'Angelo only got near-death though and he was partly spared even a temporary death to avoid really piling on after we had two deaths (Mima was potentially permanent at the time, I let Harpy choose the path forward for her but was ready to accept both!). Sir Daniel though, well, he was in an odd spot. I knew a sacrifice at the Hall of Heroes event would be perfect for him. After all, the Hall comes from his game! I even had some versions of the event where the heroes he meets in-game were who we faced instead. However, one thing that definitely made Sir Daniel easy to pick for permadeath... was his talking gimmick. It's hard to figure out how he should mumble! More seriously, knowing his fate, I did try to avoid making him too major a focus. He had his moments to prove his heroism before then though, like the black market day he was a coward and bullish and all, but in the heat of a moment he always protected others or did his best to help. I am a little sad his last fight before death was against Lovely Frederika where it felt like he just couldn't do anything right, but also I like that Draco picked him for the robot rights event since that showed a bit more of his good side. Sir Daniel is imperfect and probably would never overcome some parts of that, but he did do heroic things and he meant a lot to people like Perona. His battle methods mostly came from taking every weapon in MediEvil 1 and letting him use them, and that cup he smashes to harm Jarilo is based on a chalice you use near the game's end to empower skeletons to fight bad guy skeletons. No clue if anyone ever suspected Daniel of working with Jarilo truly, but I figured it was partially believable since he was such a grump interested in his own legacy over most else.

I did have a potential revival plan if, again, people pretty much demanded he gets to live again. The name for the neigborhood DALI was building in place of Marshall Cemetery was a late pick, but Fortescue Heights would probably always be dedicated to Sir Daniel in some way, and mainly, we'd have a moment reflecting on his heroism and then we'd look back at the Hall of Heroes and see his soul manifest there to live out a happy afterlife. Instead, he is well and truly gone, but he knew the risk in what he did and cared too much for Zed, Perona, and DALI to let anything else matter in that moment.

Ufa was a character made backwards in some ways. I came up with the idea of the impossible burger but for human meat since obviously solving the undead craving for flesh should be a DALI priority. I also wanted a mummy in DALI because I love mummies and it was criminal we didn't have one. I did almost make the cook in DALI a zombie at first, I think memories of minor character Gaston Boucher from TimeSplitters might have sent me that way, but I found no art that really clicked for me, especially now that google search is an AI cesspool. I did play a game called Dungeon Munchies that had Simmer, the necromancer cook...

The character design in that game is very good and cute, and while I was tempted to have her be DALI's chef, partly I didn't like that her name was closer to Simmer and also I felt I wanted the mummy and I wanted more male DALI members. I searched mummy cook art for a while, and it's hard to search when people use "mummy" as the British word for mom so mom chefs came up a lot. The image I settled on for Ufa is from a card game called Shadowverse, and while there was a standard white mummy chef, his "Evolved" form with the blue wrappings was more visually interesting. I didn't commit too hard to specific details on Ufa's Egyptian life, but I did consider him serving under the prince Nefermaat and being buried in the tomb that houses that art of a duck species we only know of through the art in that tomb. He wasn't a slave, but he was raised to cook. I did decide to almost make him cajun in the way he talks, mostly because I wanted him to have the kind of easygoing attitude you might find from fictional cajun chefs. I wasn't sure he'd do much, I was even considering him getting roughed up worse in the attack that lead to Jawbreaker's death, but him being tied to Chao's plot basically gave him a whole long plot to do most his stuff in so I didn't feel the need to feature him elsewhere. Spice Magic was the kind of thing I regret because I had to keep learning about spices to concoct magics on the fly and ended up leaning on a few instead to make it easier on myself. Oh yeah, Simmer was almost Ufa's assistant cook after her initial rejection, and in the confrontation with Diogenes/Johhny 13 that would start the later half of the plot where we storm underworlds, it was considered that Ryuk would prove the villains are serious by writing Simmer's name to kill her permanently. As a result, she probably wouldn't have been too developed, more another face in the DALI org and a sacrificial lamb for some stakes that sell Ryuk's threat level.

Let's talk Pizza Vampire before he gets forgotten! Funnily enough, the whole stuff with Personal Pan Helsing was planned pretty far in advance, like, since Mark's debut, but it was about finding the right spot for it. Personal Pan Helsing is named for Personal Pan Pizzas from Pizza Hut, but Pizza Church did exist before Pan Helsing as explained in last year's blog some. Pan Helsing is fully original (although when Max Gilardi, the guy who drew Pizza Vampire, was streaming Pizza Tower this year, he did joke the Pizza Vampire was killed by "Pizza Van Helsing".). I did consider Pan Helsing being more villainous, but he was never actually a vampire hunter or anything, another expectation fakeout. I think it was more about the pizza at first, but it worked perfectly for the DALI stuff so it got folded in, and when Chao revealed OCGA, I very early asked him about including Pan Helsing. Pan Helsing is meant to show that some people can be won over away from bigotry and that some people hold such views not necessarily because they're bad, hence why Pan Helsing was, albeit very serious, still a force for good after he was converted away from his prejudices. I had considered Pete coming out as a vampire before Pizzapalooza and that would lead to Pan Helsing make such a direct attack, but since people liked Mark, I also tried to emphasize that Mark never thought any worse about Pete. He didn't realize quite what was going on and in some ways was also just pressed under Pan Helsing, the kind of person who doesn't speak up despite not agreeing with something bad being said. We see Mark doing little nice things for Pete even during the event to try and show him gradually finding his voice despite his "boss" being around. Franchises don't work as strict hierarchies though! Anyway, I was sure Pete would get good use this year since Sey likes him and thus I'm happy to provide him for her plots, but I'm not sure if anything else was really planned besides the big coming out and Pan Helsing event. 

Bellringer stuff, originally I had worried others might not want to do it or latch on much, so it wasn't originally only Uysnskow for my group. Before I got my Hall of Heroes lineup in order, I had considered James Bond, Uysnskow, and Karin (the bomb girl from Salvagers plot/Fossil Hunters) being Bellringer's test cases if people approved the idea. I know I wanted to give Uysnskow a second chance, in fact, Bellringer was originally conceived of INDEPENDENT of DALI! I had been trying to bring that alruthine back for a while, but had to make it something with stakes and not a cheap revive. The Bellringer's conditional revives existed already before DALI was even thought up, Uysnskow would have to overcome her bone lust to be allowed to live. I did consider having her be more ghostly, but with others not always emphasizing the undead side of their Bellrung characters, I decided to make her more solid. As seen with Mima though, I think it's just Bellringer reviving people in different ways, so Alocyn can also be undead still in whatever way suits here. Anyway, Karin might have been possible to redeem, but James Bond might have even failed his contract, not really able to integrate into the modern world with his old school sensibilities. It would depend on if he worked or not, but I was ready for that route should he not click. Uysnskow was considered to continue onto Argo to work on her bell, but she has pretty much all she wants in Whalestrand right now. She probably needs a "last temptation" moment to free herself of the bell contract, but at the same time, it doesn't weigh on her mind much. I do wish I had done more with her, part of a potential Argo return would be just to spend more time with her, but Bellringer in general didn't need everyone to have dramatic moments. Very happy with those we got and not bothered with those that didn't go much of anywhere, I think that makes Bellringer's experiment more interesting. I feel like a lot of Bellringer stuff speaks for itself, the bell's nature ties into the limits I made so people didn't revive bad villains, but I also wanted to give people the space to explore ideas rather than setting goal posts.

Also, yes Phantomon was meant to do more in old versions of the plot. He would have helped get us moving and get us around for the afterlife invasion things. He didn't seem invested enough for that to work too well in the final version of DALI though, so, he still evades having a second go in RP. Might just have to admit 2012 was his only year of true relevance and not carry that torch!

Vooma was originally a means to an end of sorts, helping Kogasa along and giving us someone useful in DALI who could tap into specific undead subjects. I played Rayman Origins in March so the turnaround wasn't that long, but like I said, she slotted into Zozo's role for Kogasa and the Land of the Livid Dead gave us another, what I considered, "safe" underworld to plunder. I was, again, in the planning phases a bit worried about doing anything too big, I'm glad I got over it with underworlds at least so we could go to Xibalba, but it also made for places more interesting than pits of torture, right? The Livid Dead were just the standard enemies in Rayman Origins really, but in their source material they don't really have purpose or explanation because of how oddly the game handles its story. Instead, I just decided to make their over the top appearance mean something, pretty much everything about the Land of the Livid Dead besides its look being my own invention. The name helped lean me towards the idea these are souls that are more emotion than mind, but in Rayman Origins you do see old ladies in the Land of the Livid Dead. These were kind of the "attendants" Vooma mentions in a way, although they would have been more varied in RP. I also didn't on-screen their deaths partly for shock factor, partly because we had a lot of deaths in the works for the plot already! I knew in including Vooma I wanted to include the fact that, when you first meet her in Rayman Origins, she's a giant monster, the Big Mama. Vooma's design I just like, although the name Voodoo Mama felt a bit weird so I shortened it while not making it too normal so it could match her strangeness. I considered making her stranger, but I think my reference art used made me want to play her cool headed, and that very quickly made me realize how to make her work with the Land of the Livid Dead. If she lets her emotions control her, she becomes a pure emotion spirit.

 

I think having someone Zed converted to the cause also helped broaden the group's history. I was scared of a lot of concrete details on how long Zed's been at this. I know it's fiction, but sometimes a character might amass a lot of power or resources despite only being so old. Like, even with time travel or whatever, you still would age, but they still get so much done it's unbelievable! With Zed, it was almost the opposite. He's been around so long that I didn't want him to have too little done. One reason I never specified how many scythe heads are in the column was to avoid making him look too active, and its mentioned he got some of the scythes by force to paper over if it still feels like too many. We know he's been active since 2011 putting together DALI since Spirit Girl mentions the Kobbers just starting out around the time he saved Perona, but I think it also makes some good sense that a movement has quite a few slow years as the ball needs to get rolling and attract the big names like Ember who eventually helped it really gain traction. I had expected Vooma to fail in helping with the Hel situation to help further make her sudden switch to her old emotional ways work, but I think the fact she was already so weary from doing so much didn't mean actually succeeding hurt the event. Very happy where she left off, Paddy was such a great and natural add to the Land of the Livid Dead and Vooma letting her in works for splitting that workload that made her crack under pressure. Was hesitant to make Vooma fight since I didn't want to commit to powers too much or have Vooma experience moments where she should have become Big Mama sooner. I think I even considered her shifting into that form if protecting Hel became a fight against the gods, hence why we got a small tease where Vooma lets Elli see that Vooma the nymph is just the form she's assumed since Zed calmed her down long ago.

DALI: THE EVENTS

Just gonna break things up a bit since the section is so long!

Let's start with old Tom Jumbo. I wager he's probably an evolution of that idea I mentioned for Weaselplot in its blog, the idea of a stand-up comic who kept insulting the Kobbers on stage. Having the media against the Kobbers in some way, although here it's more targeted. It's not a specific intended evolution, but I did like the idea of a media baddie and of course, while I tried to avoid very specific mentions to real life stuff, there were definitely analogues and Tom Jumbo was definitely meant to be a Fox News type. He is based on Tom Jumbo-Grumbo from Bojack Horseman, the name shortened to make it a little less ridiculous, although I think one point in RP it was implied he had the hyphenated name once but got rid of it after a divorce.

Jumbo definitely required a steady hand to manage, as I feel it could be very easy to make him too annoying and then people wouldn't be able to wait for the comeuppance or they'd just get outright fatigued. There were times I considered him reacting to an event and elected not to just to avoid oversaturation. It was also a balancing act of trying to make him clearly problematic without crossing into things like direct calls for violence that could get him shutdown. There was a point in a Draco post where it was mentioned one way to stop him would be letting his T.V. license expire which actually influenced the eventual full-death of the televised version of The Stand. I'm sure the t.v. station attack might have lead that way but considering Jumbo's fate I knew he would need a platform and online just felt natural.

Also, why pick Jumbo specifically? Yes he has bluster, and even on Bojack he represents the Fox News style of talking head, but the real clincher was that he was a whale. Very early on I knew I wanted his stuff to eventually lead to a battle with a giant whale so that the Whale part of the Whalestrand name would have an appropriate giant whale fight to match! In fact, the name of his show, The Stand, is meant to invoke the "strand" part of Whalestrand's name, so it's a Whale's Stand. It helps the name has that short of bold defiance common to conservative media. Naturally, trying to write conservative characters put me in their mindspace a bit, not so much agreeing with them but trying to understand them, and I think that ultimately helped a bit with Jumbo's fate and especially his epilogue. He'll never be someone you totally agree with, but he disagrees more in the way we'd want to disagree: on things like fiscal policy or how things should be approached rather than hating specific people.

Tom Jumbo was a very interesting villain because there was a point where I decided he wasn't a guy to be defeated in the traditional sense. I still wanted my big whale battle, but I was thinking the real battle would have to be the one for minds and hearts, and Jumbo represented that bullheaded prejudice better than anyone. Like I've said a few times, this isn't a problem you can punch away, you have to convert people and normalize undead accpetance. How exactly this would unfold of course was something that would change between my own plans and how people contributed with their own ideas and in-character arguments.

Some things that were planned though was Jumbo getting shot at the T.V. station would lead to him being anti-Gravedigger, mainly because negative consequences finally finding him and his outrage pointing towards the source. It would help with dissolving them some, but as we saw, he hadn't completely shifted mindsets yet. The specifics of the T.V. station attack changed a lot, mainly because I wasn't sure exactly how to set up the violent twist. The attack on Jawbreaker was set and the Ryuk angle locked in pretty early, although exactly how she reacted to him changed. Ryuk was a bit adrift when DALI looked like it would have no violent angle itself, mind control or otherwise, so the Jawbreaker scene was conceived to give him something to do and a moment where we were meant to wonder more if she'd actually use the Death Note. It was a bit tough juggling Jawbreaker's side thing with the main event though, splitting attention like that often leads to me forgetting things.

As for the event trigger, I wasn't sure how to send Perona in. I remember futzing over a lot of minutiae, like how Jumbo would speak up in a way that would get him shot, or how Perona might trigger the attack on her. There is the fact she is sort of the instigator here but of course the Gravediggers escalated beyond reasonable cause, but there was also the idea that Perona would attack first perhaps and the event even had the original idea that Perona's powers may go haywire and we'd have to contend with the ghostlings blocking our progress, basically Perona's "boss battle" after things shifted around so much. Jumbo not being available for arrest was key though, another reason I had to watch his language closely and another reason he was made pretty cooperative with authorities and anti-Gravedigger after the event.

Funnily enough, Garlic Man was a super late addition to things. Originally, similar to the attack on Kogasa, mostly I just planned for the attack on Jawbreaker to emphasize the anonymity of the attackers. These were regular folk being awful, although I did waver a lot on Gravedigger iconography. A lot of Gravedigger looks on google, costumes and the like, are ghoulish or practically zombies, and that didn't fit the fact these guys were meant to be anti-undead. I worried about the name too, it not being strong enough, and if the shovel symbol made sense. At the same time, I felt like I also didn't care about making the violent bigots look better or have better iconography :V 1Life, the capsules with holy water and such in them, was initially introduced as a perfect supplement to the common conservative media trope of them selling a grift alongside their scare tactics, although calling them capsules did lead to some misunderstandings. I mean it like pill capsules, but I believe it was probably flexible enough that bigger ones were sold because why wouldn't they take easy money if people wanted a bigger order of the anti-undead items?

Garlic Man is from the cartoon Little Dracula that I've never seen, but he was mostly added to give a clearer face to the attack on Jawbreaker. Originally the T.V. Station attack would lack a figurehead character for us to take down, the event perhaps too general an attack on Gravediggers in general, especially once Perona's supposed rampage was revealed to be her freaking out from her injuries ended up getting cut. I did wonder if maybe he was too goofy in concept, but I also think that of course a movement like this in the ZFRPverse wouldn't just have a bunch of unpowered underequipped humans. There would be more eccentric guys like this attached to the movement, and that helped move it over the line. It also helped that in our universe we've probably brushed up against types like this before, so bringing it into DALI would make sense. I did feel somewhat uncomfortable whenever we had events like Cornwind's "kill all the zombies" or "kill all the vampires" that are awkward alongside a plot about acceptance and understanding, hence why I ended up sitting out of vampire stuff. DALI might make such things awkward in the future too, but we've also fought human gangs before, I think it's just about properly portraying them unless you do want me coming in and raising the questions of why this slaughter is okay.

Anyway, figuring out how to escalate to the Jawbreaker attack and the T.V. station attack was a question for a while, but Gooper dropped an option right in my lap. With Hell Inc. I did consider for a while some collaboration, even to the point I wondered if storming Hell would work for the afterlife segment of DALI events and maybe we could even move the former villains reappearing would work there instead. I held my tongue though and never proposed the idea to Goops, but I do like the way things went. Not only was Verosika a good early convert to help show forgiveness needs to be offered to people in the wrong or they'll only sink lower, but the attack on the concert would of course light a fire in a group that was in need of that push. However, while that worked perfectly for my event, some coordination went awry elsewhere!

Cornwind and I had planned for Bob Barcas to come in and cultivate anti-Gravedigger segment to the point there was almost a purge, the Kobbers having to prevent normal citizenry from hunting down Gravediggers and doing mob justice or something to that effect. The debate was in part set-up for that (It was hard to balance my usual careful way of writing Jumbo with the need for him to slip-up in a debate :V) and Cornwind scheduled an event pretty close to after my stuff. The Rp Schedule posts hinted at what was coming up for Goop and me, and I thought we had everything in place for a pretty clean succession of the Concert Attack, T.V. Station Attack, then the Anti-Gravedigger Attack. However, I must have taken it for granted too much that Cornwind was seeing what I was putting down, I think I even sent a PM that I wouldn't be able to attend the upcoming event but would provide what I could, but I never explicitly mentioned that I thought the event coming up was the Barcas thing. Instead it was the Virility attack on worm lady, and when such discussions about the necessity of the event came up, that definitely colored my opinion even more because Cornwind sacrificed his only window for the event we had planned. I had to keep my plot moving and start dissolving the Gravediggers myself, but I do accept the blame that there should have been a point I straight up said to Cornwind what I thought his event was going to be so we could coordinate properly instead of me assuming everything was on track.

Slimefoot is a character from Magic: The Gathering, although again I mostly just took the name and look. He's been in my future folder for years because I liked the art of him, an imposing mushroom man, but in Magic he's a friendly and beloved character and I just ruined that! I almost changed his name to make him more OC so people who might like him wouldn't be bothered, I considered Bolete which is actually based on a fungus character I considered but rejected back in Olympia. Bolete, full name Bay Bolete, is a multidimensional mushroom who looked like it couldn't move but would sprout up different places because it was actually moving through the different dimensions. Not like, alternate ones, but like how we're three-dimensional, it was actually like, seven dimensional, so it could move its roots in a space we couldn't see. Bay Bolete would even communicate oddly, in that you just suddenly knew things since you couldn't comprehend its multidimensional nature properly. But I imagined like, the narrative would say something like "Jill realizes that Bay Bolete is having a tough day and would appreciate a drink." or things like that. The name transference to Slimefoot would have been the only connection to this old scrapped character, but Slimefoot being in RP at all actually came about because of the Pope stuff.

Would you believe the Pope stuff was included specifically because of the mushroom stuff? And the real reason we got the Pope at all in RP really tied to... this.

This is a sharpener I got back in high school. I think the mushroom cap is meant to be an eraser based on texture but the bottom has a hole for sharpening and you can pop it open to get rid of the shavings. I think I got it as a gift from some school gift exchange, and I decided to give the thing a name because that tag makes it look like the sharpener has a face. The name I chose? Pope. I guess because I thought the mushroom is a bit similar to a miter? I didn't always have logic for such names, I had a pink eraser with a fanged face I drew on it that I named The Midwife, although I don't think that will appear in RP. 

So, I have this sharpener in my past named Pope, and I have Slimefoot in my future folder, and I have this plot where I realize Slimefoot may be able to do something because of fungi's connection to decay and death. A big thing I expected resistance to DALI for was it being unnatural, how things need to die to help living things continue on, and if they were more villainous I bet disrupting that process would be more explicit. In RP instead DALI's stance is mostly that if undead are happening they must be natural too, and they're not saying everyone needs to be undead or anything, just that people deserve the choice and protections if they do. Anyway, as Slimefoot was starting to find some mental purchase, I remembered old Pope there, and things slotted together in a surge of inspiration. I did of course wonder for a bit if the Pope would be kosher to include in RP, he's a major figure with strong religious ties, and I know some people are iffy on anything tied to major religions in RP. However, I also decided early not to use a real pope and come up with my own, and more importantly, when I was trying to think of a visual reference, I kept thinking of the Pope from Family Guy. It was just a safe neutral look too, not clearly any one Pope, and I figured it was already going to be a bit goofy and audacious to include the Pope at all, and leaning more into it would help to avoid it feeling preachy or uneasy or whatever.

Pope Vincent I, the name was chosen specifically tie him to a saint with some "undead" stuff tied to him. I also made sure Pope Vincent could scrub the in-universe Catholic church some. I didn't want to specifically come out and say too much, but he was mentioned as a pope who started taking the measures we'd want to see in the real church to fix some of its controversies. Of course, being raised Catholic and having a religious studies degree, I also wanted to treat him fairly in his portrayal. I do enjoy writing him funnily enough, I think the priestly sort of style of talking is rather pleasant, although I did worry about the balance here because it would be realistic for him to mention the Lord often but also I didn't want it to be so religious it becomes unbearable! Real tightrope walk. But yes, his inclusion was mostly so I could make the pope a mushroom to match a sharpener I once owned, but I did start getting worried when Chao introduced a godly mushroom, and when Parasector appeared I really couldn't believe it just kept happening. I did consider asking if Slimefoot could have a direct connection to the god mushroom, like they were the same species or since fungi are weird perhaps even like, almost the same guy but split off from each other. However, Slimefoot isn't inherently holy or anything, the Pope was just a target he could control. Funny how I thought I'd have to do any legwork with like, explaining some less damaging version of Cordyceps or whatever to avoid people worrying about the mental damages being irreversible. 

I did know I wanted to include the Popemobile early on and the Swiss Guard came about because of me wavering on how protected the Pope would be. I did briefly consider if Ryuk might just drop them all by writing their names but also I like their ridiculous outfits and I figured having them around wouldn't hurt. One thing about the fight, I do recall older versions of the Pope rescue would culminate in a confrontation between Jumbo and Zed. Jumbo's motivations shifted a lot based on interactions and stuff and in RP he helped alert us to the issue, but in older versions he was present and Zed realized he might have had info on the Pope mind control and confronts him. This would look like the point where Jumbo would be arrested, but I remember like, Zed pursuing him up scaffolding or something near the river, and Jumbo in his panic starts to fall, but it looks like Zed pushed him into the river and for a bit the controversy would be it looked like DALI killed their number 1 critic. In RP instead Jumbo was already against Slimefoot and Diogenes so Slimefoot pettily sends Jumbo in the river, and while I felt bad telling the few rescuers I couldn't let them rescue him, I did need to set up the coming stuff with Jumbo turning into a monster whale. Slimefoot, I do think I should have used him more before his event, but again, balancing having active bigots around is a hard thing and I think with how well things turned out I won't regret things that might have rocked the boat.

Now, Slimefoot almost wasn't set to truly be defeated on Pope day! Well, more like, a small cutting or some such would be retained by Diogenes, or maybe Slimefoot kept a part of himself, and he'd infect Jumbo next. Looking for revenge, Slimefoot would start mutating Jumbo, and originally the giant whale form was more mushroom beast than whale, it just happened to be shaped like a whale. It was also a much bigger kaiju who would attack Whalestrand proper, we'd be fighting a stranded whale on land either way. At the end I remember it would be something like getting Jumbo out of the mushrooms would either destabilize it or Zed would say we have to prove we're better by freeing Jumbo, although I still imagined a pretty hostile Jumbo at that point. Like he'd pop out and be like "now what?" angrily, asking if they were going to kill him. He was pretty much always destined to not be in proper faculties after going monster mode however it happened, but I think it was wiser to give us the Slimefoot win purely and focus on the final event being more about taking out Diogenes and giving us our first in-character hints about Jarilo.

Diogenes is meant to represent the pseudo-intellectual side of bigotry, the kind of guy who sounds like he knows what he is talking about so it convinces people who don't think critically about things said with confidence and "evidence". Mainly, Diogenes is an analogue for Sargon of Akkad, a conservative Youtuber with all the standard bad opinions you'd expect, but I actually thought he was kind of a Shapiro type who veils his criticism in intelligence since he did name himself after a historical figure and all. However, it turns out I gave Sargon too much credit. I started listening to him some (in videos critiquing him mainly :V) and I was surprised how whiny and weak his "arguments" were. Like, it was teenage level stuff, scoffing and using very weak logic to react to headlines. Very much not the pseudo-intellectual I thought he'd be, but Diogenes was still portrayed to be properly cunning if mostly just to give us a good main villain for part two (and as mentioned, I thought his cunning could have made him the main plot baddy in old drafts!).

Diogenes's name actually comes from how I thought Sargon got his name: he probably just looked things up on Wikipedia until he found someone appropriate. I looked up Gravediggers on Wikipedia and a historical record of one named Diogenes came up, so I thought that worked perfectly as a sort of pretentious psuedonym for our villain. The reference image I used, Oberon Sexton from Batman, did have a cool name I was tempted by, but mainly I liked that he was a Gravedigger that looked imposing and confident without the usual undead slant. Found the look when trying to find general gravedigger costumes for the rabble. The idea was that he probably reinvented himself a few times until he found the look and identity that clicked, Diogenes being the grifter type as well so it was always more about how things benefit him. That's even why he latched onto Jarilo specifically, Jarilo a waning god that would be easy to string along for boons until Diogenes felt he was too in control and learned what powers he was messing with.

Diogenes was definitely not meant to be powerful himself though, hence why I ended up having him channel Jarilo energy to do anything. I also wanted to start making some of the Spirit Girl connections more apparent since I hadn't come out and say it despite many hints at that point. I think if Diogenes didn't look so cool I might not have been tempted to make him more of a mastermind in the earlier drafts where he was even more important.

Jarilo was picked, again, because I was leaning on death gods that weren't major players, but also because he's a pretty unique case. He's a Slavic god but one that might not even have been worshipped until "Wikipedia pagans" discovered him. See, the story behind him is likely that a Christian missionary misinterpreted Jarilo festivals, celebrations of spring where the word Jarilo was likely just a celebration of youth. A golden haired young man was a familiar image there to represent it, and scholars who didn't speak the language extrapolated that the guy must be Jarilo. However, there are some elements like his connection to others in the pantheon that make it a little less clear since he is supposedly married to a real one, I wager it would involve like actual boots to ground research to sort out his authenticity, but in the internet age people put together webpages with all the gods and such so his modern myth has covered things up as well-meaning people spread the myth of this god who may never have been worshipped authentically. Anyway, Jarilo was perfect since he wasn't important enough for us to know if he was even authentic, and at the same time that leaned into his diminished position as well. I considered leaning more into Slavic afterlife stuff but eventually decided his corner of it is sort of separate from the rest of it due to his strange nature.

I was a bit iffy about him being Faith powered, I had divorced Zed from such things after all and Xibalba doesn't do that faith stuff in my interpretation of it. However, it worked well for selling his position as a waning god, and his rebirth cycle being interrupted by not having enough life was a good motivator to get him moving. So basically, since he couldn't earn any followers thanks to his selfish ways, he would just consume people's souls to sustain himself, but godliness requires more than just a few spirits to munch on now and again, especially for a guy so egotistical. I did like the reference images I found, the normal golden-haired one someone's interpretation of Jarilo while his withered version is actually I think meant to be a zombie version of Zeus. I definitely did write him with the bullheaded mythical style most associated with Greek gods, I figured we needed a villain that represented afterlife establishment's ego even if he was set up to be an acceptable god to thwart.

Ryuk had been retooled a few times as you might imagine, but I did wonder how he should be removed from the table. I know in the Sheol two-parter he might have helped head Day 1 and be wiped out then, but I also wondered about having him really "fight" at all. The Death Note destruction was the main part of facing him, but since he did fight some in the Brawl he entered, I decided to let him stand a bit of his own in the Hall of Heroes event. Mainly, the set up of Hall of Heroes was to avoid him having to carry a fight too long. I've mentioned elsewhere, but picking the roster for Hall of Heroes was difficult. I considered Davy Crockett because he's a sort of memetic badass who seemed to be a bit progressive for his time, but his old theme song even mentions him conquering the Creek Indians... I wanted to link hero themes by then too so I knew I couldn't include him. Mostly I wanted to link hero themes because the Zorro's back theme has been stuck in my head for years! So catchy! It also made Bond's reappearance more dramatic, although funnily enough I do think he was sort of underplayed since he never realized who the Kobbers were :V I did consider a moment in the Xibalba raid where the Hall of Heroes guys would appear to provide backup, but I think we had enough Kobbers handling things. I did go all fictional with the heroes in the end to avoid how problematic real people are. I mean, basically anyone born before 2019 probably was problematic in some way at some point even if they got better, so better to use fictional guys who don't have to have such baggage. Mulan was someone I wavered on, mostly because I didn't want to use her Disney version but also didn't have any female heroes otherwise since historical and recognizable female heroes aren't too common. Robin Hood was an instant lock before anyone else really, James was often more a matter if that's how I wanted his little comeback. I don't regret doing it, but I think he could have made a bigger splash, perhaps if the events weren't so packed tight with things going on. I am happy with how I made the "fake fight" thing work though, the heroes were obviously setting us up to help so it wasn't like other fake fight moments where people's hearts aren't in it.

I made the Hall of Heroes a sort of Scarlet Devil Mansion type to help absolve any of the heroes there of being the ones who keep out potentially worth people like Sir Daniel. It also helped with designing defenses. People seems pretty worried about traps and such which is why Jarilo went in first and obliterated them mostly, but it also helped wear down Zed some so the two could go toe-to-toe a bit more. In older plans, Sir Daniel would die and then Jarilo would kidnap Zed full stop after rendering him unconscious. The whole "soul connection" thing that lets a spirit find its afterlife was a pretty elegant solution to why people like Zed can't just knock on the door of every heaven and hell to try and fix things, even if the idea was mostly conceived so we could have proper delays on Jarilo getting to the Hall and why we weren't just waiting there for him when we realized his intentions. Naturally, Zed not being a full kidnapping was something dialed back to prevent too many bummers, and with Mima dying on the same plot it was definitely wise not to make it feel like such an absolute loss. Letting Ryuk die there and lose the Death Note was definitely necessary to avoid that day being too heavy! Ryuk explained his ethos well so I don't think I need to, but basically he would have stuck with DALI if they were underdogs but they kept winning so he sought the more interesting conflicts of going against them. I didn't want him to be too hands-on, like how he kept leading Diogenes on instead of giving him the Death Note, it was always going to be about how strong the enemy needed to be and making it so we could take out whoever we needed to or be stopped from acting when necessary. Big moment for that was the Land of Livid Dead stuff, where I knew Ember needed a reason not to attack. Oh yeah, Ufa's name? Egyptian for flour. It was also very short so a good Sword of Damocles. At the same time, I was pretty proud I came up with the explanation that the Death Note doesn't work on other death gods. Ryuk totally would love to see the chaos of DALI without Zed, I tried not to have the Death Note be toothless though. Hence why when Mima said go on, do it, he did it. I try to be accomodating and push us towards victory, but I also can't strain believability too much, and Ryuk found the whole thing very amusing.

So, in older versions of the plot, Xibalba was actually almost a post-script event. Like, Zed would realize after all that afterlife stuff with Ember, he should have done more, made good on promises, and go back and help the souls he once tried to lead out of Xibalba. Even in the adjusted version where there was no Ember manipulation or betrayal, I think I considered Jarilo going out earlier and then we go to Xibalba. Xibalba does carry on my efforts not to destabilize things in a major way, we didn't completely fix that afterlife or anything. We did however save most of the souls worth saving or who want saving I'd say. I avoided specific numbers specifically so that I wouldn't have to address certain elements, and I wager one day when DALI's power is even greater, they could give fully reforming Xibalba another go. It was definitely a matter of keeping DALI's successes meaningful but within a reasonable scope. It would feel strange if they were always unconditionally winning or whatever, some victories shouldn't be complete or come with high prices. A movement is gradual by its very nature! I am ruminating on the idea of a Mayan soul joining Argo's DALI, but the character concept is shifting a bit so I didn't commit to one in a teaser. 

Xibalba was almost a two day event, Vucub and Jarilo split or possibly even just being day two in themselves. I really wanted to show the strange cruelties of the place, the different awful rivers, those rooms of fears, and I thought it would be hard cramming them in until I decided to make manipulating the area basically one of Vucub's powers. Vucub means seven so maybe it make more sense to call him Caquix for short, since Vucub Caquix means Seven Macaw, but Vucub is the easier one for us to attach our minds to so I used that. Anyway, finding good art of this obscure god was hard, but I did like that I found a withered man version as well as an imposing bird form. Much better than all the AI art that tries to make him a rather buff but unimaginative bird-headed man. I was definitely big on showing these sort of decrepit gods, just felt thematic. I did consider Zed's brother, that earlier pictured Cabrakan, showing up, he's an earthquake god too so he could have manipulated the world some instead of his dead. Instead I kept focus, although I did really want to include the thing where the gods of Xibalba will make people speak to mannequins of them to fool people into wasting time pleading to noone. I don't remember specifics of how the Kobbers would do that, instead we got Jarilo doing so but realizing what was up since he can sense life and using it more to convince Vucub. I was a bit wary on how he could convince Vucub, but Chaac being RP canon was a nice in and some fun connection. Another reason I was wary of touching big pantheons was possibly interfering with people's use of characters from the same one. Chaac, if he came back, probably didn't even know Vucub realistically, that's like knowing one of the lieutenants in an army you're not even part of.

I think the casual events of DALI were important too! The block party to get a lot of the nice fun stuff out early, but the beach clean-up became a nice day too. Beach clean-up was partially based on me doing the Basura Bash, a river clean-up back in San Antonio, and just thinking that's the kind of unambiguously good thing a group would do. Did research to make sure beach clean-ups are the kind of thing organized in such a way. I do always worry about such things, like, I don't want to take a day away but also don't want it to be a damp squib where it's just mentioned but no one really bit and said their guys went.

 

Oh yeah, I've mentioned elsewhere but Zed's head being able to move without its body was something invented late to allow his body to be the soul connection to Xibalba without taking our DALI leader away for too many bummers in a row. Zed can't do the skeleton thing of controlling individual parts though I'd say, he was probably broken by Potemkin by having vital things severed that meant he had no control of his form anymore. 

 

And... that may be it. My mind's not turning up too much else I need to mention at present. I did technically write this all in one day in the end! Just ignore that I wrote one part, slept, then wrote everything after DALI events after waking up! Please ask any questions or give your own thoughts on how things were executed, I bet there's things I've forgotten and need my memory jogged! Thanks for reading!