The Long Trip to Kuwahawi's Wondrous Islands

The Natural Wonders of Kuwahawi is a plot with so many previous iterations and changes that it's gonna take more than just going behind the scenes of specific events to encapsulate where this plot came from and how much it changed along the way. In fact, it is basically unrecognizable form its initial shape, but the important thing to consider here is that the evolution was built off the corpses of earlier ideas because no matter what I ended up doing of these ideas, it would have been this year's plot, and some elements are carried through to the end product, or were almost carried through, or... well, too much time spent explaining the explanations is not time spent explaining the actual substance! So, before we go behind the scenes on the actual plot we got, let's go back to the first real idea I had for a Kuwahawi plot, on that was meant to be done here rather than just any old place like Those Left Behind was.

DRAFT 1: CADUCEUS TOWER AND THE VIRUS

A while back I shared an old idea of mine about a tower of people negatively effected by medical treatments and such, with their stated goal being to prevent any further medical problems in the world and solve things before malpractice could hurt others like it had them. Their treatments had only made them worse, and Kuwahawi was going to have something crop up that called their attention.

Since 2011 I have had a plan for a virus plot, but for many reasons I haven't gone through with it. Here I almost did it, but I didn't, as you can tell pretty easily by the fact it didn't happen. Back in 2011, I found an image on Drawception of a strange old blue man with goggles who looked sort of sickly, and I wanted to make the idea of the virus being that it had twisted the guy into that appearance, although I couldn't find the image after deleting it a long time ago. Didn't do it for a multitude of reasons, one being it's hard to make it an effective threat in a setting as free as ZFRP and it's not very fun or easy to fight against. Still, didn't stop me from trying to resurrect the idea! I still wanted to use something similar to the blue-skinned man as the inspiration for the virus's effects, so the form the virus took was one that compelled people to drown themselves. It would essentially make any afflicted person start to make dry noises like they're parched, but no matter how much liquid they ingested, they still felt like they didn't have enough. Being on an island, their mind would eventually turn solely to the quest to drink and thus make them move into the ocean and drown, although we might find victims in pools and bathhubs first as they go for the on-hand source of tons of water. I imagined one scene where the virus had attached to thousands of people and the Kobbers would have to keep these people from marching into the sea to kill themselves, which could be neat in a horror movie or something.

The virus wasn't natural though. It was created by... a character I don't think I ever named. He had orange spiky hair though! And was a bit young, not kid young but sort of anime young. Very anime for some reason in my mind, and he probably wouldn't be as much if we got him in RP.  This fellow's reason for making the virus was basically population control. It wasn't about natural selection or "only the fit shall survive" or whatever, he just had a mindset where the greater number of people there are, the less opportunity there is for everyone. It comes from the sort of bleak concept that a disaster does, by causing damage and casualties, open up previously occupied jobs, free up stagnant money, make it more likely someone can obtain certain possessions due to less competition... He basically wanted humanity to be thinned down into a more meaningful species, where there were less pointless members or members who held back others through their holdings. The virus would just take hold in whoever, and while this idea came before we got the Infinity War movie, I'm sure his approach would inevitably be compared to Thanos's ethos these days. The irony here would be that soon this villain could contract the virus himself since he specifically did not develop any cure or anything to avoid his plan being foiled, but this would evolve soon into something more.. He did know there was a cure in a later iteration of the plot, but it was an odd one.

This plot would introduce an old couple to the King of Beasts as connected characters, one of them based on a design I found in a graphic novel and the other just an old lady. Old Man and Old Lady had no powers or anything, but they were actually the parents of this villain and came to Kuwahawi to try and make sure he wasn't doing bad things, although they wouldn't reveal this at first of course. The strange thing about this couple though was they had another "son". The old man was a mycologist, and in his studies he came across a fungus that had pretty much the intelligence level of a toddler. It molded itself into a somewhat lumpy humanoid shape, and it was basically a black truffle child with no obvious facial features or anything. Their excuse for being here was to introduce the little truffle to the Kobbers and hope their weirdness might bring some understanding to its existence. The real son would be incredibly angry with this surrogate son and, when designing the virus, he would make the only cure... be the truffle. That specific truffle that the kid is the only instance of. Here we have the battle of the parents possibly having to give up their good son's life to cure the bad one's problem, but they wouldn't be able to do it... and then the old woman would get the virus. Then we'd have a heartwrenching scene where the father is prepared to kill the truffle boy to save his wife and everyone and... then Kobbers? They save the day somehow?

That was one problem with the plot. I didn't think of many ways for Kobbers to interact with it. One scene I had in my mind set was one where the villain would want to talk with the Kobbers, sitting in a chair well after the Kobbers knew he was basically Kill on Sight... but he'd have a contraption his hands were hooked up to. Various shotguns are tied to each finger by string, all of them pointing down at an unconscious little girl (later changed the truffle boy when he came around in the plot concept) so that, if the Kobbers tried to hurt him or do anything to move him, the strings would pull and the kid would be obliterated. It was basically just so he could talk to the Kobbers and tell him why he did anything, but not only did I have no good thing for Kobbers to do on the plot, I had no good exit for him either. It was just another image I liked but had no use for.

To make this plot potentially less of a parade of the bleak, the villain almost got two bumbling sidekicks, those being Mr. Fish in his earliest form and Mr. Walrus, whose name we'll be seeing again later. They were comic relief through and through and would probably have a lame fight with the Kobbers, but they were the arms of this guy who didn't go out in public and were fish and walrus people for... some reason. Again, planning never got there. Caduceus Tower would also have a few characters show up, with then four characters planned to join the bar cast. This incredible cast commitment to one plot that I had no clear direction for is the biggest reason it got cancelled before evolving further, that and... well, pretty much everything about it didn't seem very good for interactive RP!

Mr. Fish would go on to get his role in Those Left Behind where he was almost a villain, but Mr. Walrus was almost the supervillain of that plot. As the ultimate callback to RP, these two were meant to tie to my pre-ZFRP days on the Star Fox Assault boards, where I posted Mr. Fish the Businessman shows in topics for no good reason and was the user Mr. Walrus because my brother got my original Gamefaqs account banned for posting with it about tank cannons looking like erections. Mr. Walrus has a history recounted in an old blog post, but he was basically a big villain on that board because he got the mods to crack down and ban off-topic posting, aka all the bar RPing over there. So, in ZFRP, he would have been behind Those Left Behind, orchestrating events with a past of eliminating communities across the universe, starting with one that sounded pretty similar to a Star Fox bar (thus explaining his animal appearance, he was from the Lylat System!).  Mr. Walrus realized he enjoyed the power of being able to dissolve friendships and bonds, and his quest to break apart groups lead him to the strangest one and his biggest potential victory: the Kobbers. His plan was to bring back old bargoers and pit them against the new, hopefully making things crumble as the name became meaningless and trust dissolved... or they just killed each other. There were long speeches planned, but he would have not been fought proper. In the Kobber Museum event, he'd appear on monitors talking to the Kobbers, laying out his history and why he was doing this to them, and when they beat the Gremlins, he'd reveal that Dylan had just finished summoning The Consumer and that Mr. Walrus was already taking off, believing he had failed. You COULD try to catch Mr. Walrus before he left Earth, but you'd leave a huge problem behind to do so. After the big finale, I knew people didn't want Mr. Walrus getting away, so if it was going poorly that he got away without a battle, Motoko Kusanagi was going to have successfully tracked him down a bit later, finding him in like, an airport or something. They'd talk all dramatically and then Motoko would kill him to wrap things up. Trimmed all this to make Those Left Behind more about nostalgic fun, but there was another idea floating around the same time as Those Left Behind for a potential 2018 plot, where Mr. Fish would have a role still and Mr. Walrus could have as well...

DRAFT 2: THE UNDERSEA ARMY

Boy, let me tell ya, I had this planned since before 2017 started and seeing Sea Witch and hearing about ideas about an undersea dwarf civilization were making me anxious I wouldn't do it... and then I didn't do it! But I really liked this idea and got deep in the planning phases.

The Undersea Army was not the name for the plot, but it encapsulates what it was as it kept changing. The original idea was fairly simple: humanoid undersea animals would wage war on Kuwahawi, the Kobbers fighting them along the way. They were essentially raiders, with their goal for attacking people on land tying back to what made them capable fighters. You see, these animals were all decked out in armor built from shipwrecks and used weapons salvaged from them, and I don't mean old timey shipwrecks. These came from World War II and later shipwrecks, meaning they'd have armored plating and cannons and such. I had so many fun ideas for armor designs for sea creatures, and each important naval position in the army was filled by someone named after a real shipwreck, since they saw that name on the armor they salvaged from the ship's sidings. I had a notecard with all the characters and roles and species, but I remember mostly Fleet Admiral Yamato as he took the most famous wreck and was a giant squid. Other characters I do remember was a religious leader who was by the admiral's side, since the undersea creatures were all worshippers of Cthulhu in my attempt to worm Point Nemo into RP, the place furthest from any dry land on Earth. There was also to be a warrant officer who was originally an otter but never got her species changed despite me deciding to change it. Original idea was just sea animals in general, with things like seahorses and pufferfish and all but mammals were included too until I decided they were a marginalized group. This undersea fish person race lived underwater for ages, but the mammals were all mutated by the Bikini Atoll to achieve similar sapience, with dolphins and seals and such horrific creatures who were more like maniacs on leashes than true soldiers.

EDIT! I found the sticky note full of ship wrecks! We have: Fleet Admiral Yamato. Admirals Barrow (with a question mark for some reason), Gilliam, and Carlisle (with the note it's radioactive). Vice Admiral Kaitawa. Rear Admiral Canberra. Captain Dona Paz who, it's noted, is a Big Deal. Commander Lexington. Lieutenant Commander Kongo. Lieutenant Callaghan. Ensign Yamakaze. Chief Warrant Officer Graf Spee, and Michel, or maybe they were the same character? Warrant Officer Goolgwai comes with the note (pufferfish) to actually give a species to it too, and then we have Warrnambool last. Tried to find ones with reasonable character names and I'm sure some had assigned roles and species, but the note doesn't say them and it's been too long to remember them.

It would operate like a military on the whole, although they were basically pretending at it instead of being an actual navy. Fights would involve things like attempting to blockade the docks or firing shots at different parts of the island to split Kobber forces. They would at first try diplomacy, a tactic that had worked on many islands, and they'd essentially want Kuwahawi to agree to constant technological tribute to better the undersea force's power. We'd meet Yamato, the priest, and warrant officer in a round table discussion before they depart and wage war on us. It was basically a megaplot considering how many characters and battles I had drawn up... and then the Snowmads happened. A wonderful plot, SK's best, but I didn't think using sea creatures was so fresh anymore and didn't want to lessen his plot by seeming to copy it. They were invaders too so... back to the drawing board!

I tried to salvage it with an idea I was even more excited about. Rather than sea creatures wearing the wrecks of battleships as armor, it became humanoid coral, and the warrant officer became ribbon coral girl so she could have twirly twintails. As you might have guessed, the warrant officer was meant to be sort of redeemable, although no matter how much you liked her, she would fight til the end for her species and cause, although she could convert after the planned finale. I looked up many coral species but this idea was starting to lose its legs, especially since it seemed like a heavy art load and being beaten to the punch lessened my interest. The Cthulhu angle is a favorite though.

You see, when we whittled down the forces of this undersea army, they were going to be forced to resort to their most desperate of options. Launching what seems like a final hurrah with many of their forces, the admiral and warrant officer would actually be heading to Point Nemo, aiming to awaken their god and have him attack the Kobbers. When we got there, we'd have the final dramatic confrontation with the two but we'd seem like we failed, Yamato heading in to the sunken city of R'lyeh to call on his god. (Callie and Marie worshipping Cthulhu also made me wonder if this was okay :V) Thing is, once he got in to the sunken city... he didn't find what he expected.

Rather than finding the slumbering elder god, he found... Chuck Thulhu. Chuch Thulhu is a human sized squid person that looks just like Cthulhu but he's got a white beard and glasses. He's basically a grandpa version of Cthulhu. Chuck would tell Yamato and everyone else that there is no Cthulhu, but it was a carefully cultivated brand invented by him to sell merchandise and licensing rights. People just saw Chuck a long time ago and misinterpreted him, and Chuck's been making bank on that mistake ever since! Yamato would be crushed and turn himself over to Kobber justice, and after everyone left Point Nemo and R'lyeh... Chuck Thulhu would go deep into its depths, where Cthulhu was slumbering peacefully, Chuck's deception to let his brother continue his sleep having worked perfectly. We'd never follow up on this probably, but it was a cute way to keep the joke and the threat if other people wanted the old god to be real.

Mr. Fish's tie to all this? He and Punfisher were originally members of this undersea humanoid aquatic race, and Mr. Fish was originally going to be a sort of scout for them, and then I think Mr. Walrus was almost the scout, and then... nothing! The plot idea shifted! The undersea army was an attempt to make the plot more relevant, but the next plot idea would be the one we finally got, the Natural Wonder of Kuwahawi!

FINAL PRODUCT: NATURAL WONDERS OF KUWAHAWI

Ultimately, the idea I settled on was as simple as "what if... a bunch of islands... but they weird?" Quite barefacedly, I used the Spectrum plot structure as a way of designing it, as that was a plot I was very happy with since it did so much for my characters, but I don't think I'll be using it again since it didn't feel as well done this time around. Giving a character a plot moment is an easy way to cinch up an arc but I'll probably be aiming for less preplanned conclusions in the coming year. The islands we got were basically designed around the cast's importance to them though, and I believe it was my plan to RP Stan, Heff, and Wooster that kicked things off with the first idea, since the Land of Milk and Honey was a Winnie the Pooh location I also remembered and wanted to integrate.

But! Let's not try to skip around too much. Instead, let's go right into the first plot relevant island and one that was almost a long plot on its own! Essentially a third plot draft that was also tossed out in the end!

KNACKPLOT: a.k.a. The Patch

There was once almost a standalone Knackplot. After bringing him in as a meme for 2017, I decided I basically had to do a Knackplot the next year, at least as a joke. The Patch was always to be the staging ground for it, the name being a joke on the fact that a patch was what Knack 2 needed to be good but it never got one, and Knack's life was in jeopardy because his game's weren't good. There's another meaning to it, but we'll get there eventually.

First, the original form of the plot was not about making Knack 3 at all! Gregg was still the grim reaper who came for Knack's career just because it would be funny to write him and I could squeak in the Project Spark reference later when the Patch became more about creation, but I basically wanted a video game grim reaper to come for video game souls! Only other one I briefly considered was the one from Grabbed by the Ghoulies. Originally though, instead of offering Knack a chance to make a good game, he would have been able to earn his life through a series of challenges to prove he's a good gaming mascot, and there comes the original idea for the plot.

Knack plot would have had Knack competing in a platforming challenge, a collectathon challenge, and a quiz! Well, that was one of the ideas, I can't remember all of them, but these were the almosts. The idea was Knack would compete with other faded video game mascots in these challenges, but Knack would be able to convince Gregg to let the Kobbers help him out "since Sonic has a bunch of friend to help him and he's still huge!" Characters we might of seen on this plot included the likes of old mascots like Boogerman, Buck Bumble, Glover, Blinx, Wild Woody, and a lot of other old guys I didn't expect anyone to ever use. These were just names, likely to maybe appear in the quiz game but nothing else solid came out of them. Some guys did get potential ideas around them though, like Aero the Acro-Bat was almost the platforming challenge competitor where the Kobbers would have to overcome a circus, and then Croc was made the platforming challenge guy instead but I didn't know enough about his games. Platforming might have been hard to write interestingly too. The collectathon part would be easier since I could just lay out various challenges to complete instead, but there was also going to be an appeal part of it and the guy we were competing with? Gex! Gex would be spouting movie and hollywood references the whole time and Gregg would give him the win, meaning Knack would have to enter the final round to try and earn his freedom or else he'd be kaput.

Partly I just wanted to play this music in the plot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4YvqotUfk0 but also I thought the quiz game could be cute, Kobbers answering questions about video games past- oh wait google exists shit what can I do. Never found out how to make a quiz game interesting and fun without prior knowledge or a way to bar cheating. The Kobbers were meant to win this round, and after that... Knack is saved! Which is... a good thing? I don't know. I couldn't really gauge if people actually cared about Knack, especially since the joke was he sucks. He did poorly in the Brawl voting which only helped sell the idea people didn't, and I wasn't sure if people would even care about the final form the plot took. But... this wasn't the end of Knackplot yet. We'd soon discover that Gregg wasn't really employed by some greater force called The Powers that Be (which is still a joke in the final plot) but instead, we'd see him in a bar, the one from Wreck-it Ralph with Tapper and all, and we'd find that the guy who got Gregg to try and reap Knack was... BUBSY!

Bubsy wanted to eliminate the competition and since he recently got his revival game, he had basically overcome Gregg's challenges too and was now sending him out to anyone else with no hope of a franchise. Bubsy would capture Knack and take him to a Bubsy 3D world where we'd fight him... but he was still not the top dog in this chain. Bubsy would be acting for a different character, one that Gregg and Bubsy would discuss at the bar but wouldn't appear until the second part of the finale event. You see, Knack wasn't just a random mascot target for the Bubster... he was someone a former Sony mascot wanted bumped off. The Patch's history was similar to what it is now, Kevin Butler and all, but the villain of the entire Knack based plot was... Sackboy! Sony's fading mascot would have had the AP in him just like he does in current canon, but it was removed to make Knack and now Sackboy's star was fading. He wanted to take the AP back to be the big star again! AP, ofcourse, being the All Star Power from Playstation All-Star Battle Royal that all the characters were fighting over, and since the final boss of that game was Sony's original mascot Polygon Man... he was to be the real REAL final villain!

Okay, let's step back a touch. Sackboy couldn't talk, but he'd explain his reasons for wanting to be a big mascot again using his Popit Menu and stickers, basically a similar exposition to the one we got in the actual plot event but with Sackboy still in the picture. Sackboy would then use the menu to pull Polygon Man out of Knack, leaving him dead basically, and then Polygon Man would be the big battle, Sackboy using his ability to create to help Polygon Man fight back the Kobbers so that Sackboy could reabsorb him after and become the big name again. Kevin Butler would come in after the fight and basically go "we don't actually give a shit about mascots what the hell are you guys doing" but we'd probably let Sackboy live and all and he'd hand the Patch over to Bottom Dollar after the plot ended.


Making the plot instead about creating Knack 3 was just an idea that flit across my mind as my faith in this form of the plot was fading. It felt a bit too much like Segaplot at times and I hadn't played games like Croc to do the research and wasn't likely too in time. Asking a bunch of nerds who like to play video games to make a video game seemed like a fun plot idea though even if I was nervous if it could work, and while I was likely to tip somewhat in the RPers favor, if we did make a shitty game on purpose or otherwise, the Game Hoard rating joke would have been accurate to that effort. People seemed to put in the effort though so I don't feel bad about being nice! I carried over as many of the old ideas as I could into the final version of the plot, if not too gracefully, although Gregg's death touch didn't come until other things developed, originally he was just a grim reaper who could shake your hand! That death touch is partly a reference to Grabbed by the Ghoulies's incarnation of the reaper where his death touch is his defining characteristic. One thing I forgot to mention: The Patch was originally envisioned as a place that materialized game characters unguided, like a piece of fiction had plopped down onto our planet. It could explain certain video game characters existing in reality if people liked, and it can still sort of if they fit with the new version of the island, but the idea basically took the Red Spectrum idea and made it bigger so I changed it to avoid being too blatant about my source of inspiration.

For some broader plot details we'll cover them near the end, but let's keep on the train of island plots and focus next on Shimmer's story!

WAYGATE ROCK

Shimmer left behind a family with a big problem hanging around their neck: sickly little Margaret. A part of explaining the absence of Shimmer's mother, Margaret was half-elf while the rest of her family was human, and that half-elfyness was making her super sick. Leaving the fate of Shimmer's mother ambiguous was fun for a while, but for a character around as long as her, you have to start addressing those mysteries eventually, even if the answer isn't very nice.

Treating Margaret was originally just an evolution of the trip to Elfland, where we could potentially learn how to help her, but Draco swoops in with the awesomeness of DeMonde and makes it a much more interesting thing then "we went a place and maybe learned how to help her idk". It might have even turned out we didn't learn how to treat her if people acted a certain way on arrival! But, Draco cinched her up really good and now she's a happy girl, and the focus instead turned to Waygate Rock, which the island's only real change from inception was making a horizontal pool portal into a standing vertical portal.

The elf city itself, well I used some elf language translator to get these names:
City of Meler

Cystaerdaelaes
Aendryror
Vodaerer
Medaesolor
Aistaesor

All of the names are basically jokes about typical snooty elves, and I definitely intended to play into that with my interpretation of High Elves.

Vodaerer means Prideful

Meler means Stuck Up

Aendryror is Egotist

Cystaerdaelaes is Homewrecker,  a name picked as he was the father of Margaret and thus the one who ruined the Carpenter family.

Originally, arrival in the elf city would be quite different and have so much more talking. We'd talk first with a council who would take the joke of saying Eww at everyone they see even further. Originally, the concubines and such of elves were almost shameful in the society, and treated like the indulgences of lesser members of it. Cystaedaelaes would get shit from other council members for his need to find a human mate and he wouldn't even be very proud of it. I didn't want this to be a combat plot since the idea is that Shimmer's mom is basically like her, unhappy with her life but choosing to be much more selfish in her choices in the end. Shimmer saw the way of good and tries to help people, Shimmom just wants to help herself. It was bound to be a sad plot and one that sort of poked at "not everything is clear cut good or bad". Like, this isn't really good, but it's also what she wants you know? If we did try to break her free against her wishes though, we'd fight a bunch of high elves! They had magic mostly, a few spears, it wasn't really a fight meant to be too great but we could have killed the elfdad and then made our way out if people really didn't like the place. Some places are just a bit shitty, and Meler is meant to be sort of like that despite its attempts to look like the bestest place ever. Shimmom was also almost a lot less empathetic, perhaps even a bit apathetic to Shimmer in general. I didn't want the taste left in people's mouths too bitter though. I have no real plans for the future of this place at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if it resurfaces somehow just to clean up old business. Could have definitely been done better and was perhaps the first part of "too different for the sake of being different" this plot faced.

These two were meant to be the lead-ins to the plot, so they're position was sort of planned from the start. Otherwise, the following islands save the final ones were a bit more fluid and based more on where a character was personally than any structure, so we'll kind of just follow up on these as they are in my notes. A small treat first though: MOST of my cast was integrated into islandplot, but I was considering giving Keahi a spot as well! I considered him being called to an island to hearken back to his volcano roots from Season 1 FYM arena fites, where he'd have to talk to a lava god or something. For a while, before that idea came to be, I even considered having Kap drop by after every fite to talk to Keahi, Kap trying to get the surfer to get in touch with his culture more. It was even possible that Keahi would meet Kap's daughter and they'd be dating by the end of the year! But I didn't do that and tried to keep him simple after it was clear that he wasn't simple so he didn't fill the bartender role too well! Almost gave Keahi lava god powers to tie to his past too, and by almost I thought "should I? ...naaaaaaaaah" ANYWAY...

THE ISLE OF EMPTY HEARTS

Tomiko's island! Tomi was a nice surprise last year and I really enjoyed writing her this year and last. She was a bit more interesting in speech last year I feel because she didn't have to carry the conversational weight as much since she was a side character, but I still liked her attitude. Her history, with the tons of brothers, a dad who just gave up on the family one day, and a mother who gave birth to Tomi in prison came well before this year started, partly because I liked the idea of her being born in a prison :V I almost did a Christmas blog looking at her past, particularly a moment where her oldest brother would give her a lecture about how you have to take from life or it will take from you, but it seemed sadness around a holiday that I didn't want to bum people out during!

We almost did see that scene still, and I did consider leaving Tomi's backstory secret longer instead of it coming up in a talk with Rachel, as the proto-Isle of Empty Hearts would have revealed it! Before all the islands were tied to the Logic Spirit, they were just kinda weird places, and the Isle wasn't really much of an island at all. It was a space travelling location that took on many forms, and the isle's secret was that it contained an odd alien fisherman who was able to remove parts of your mind and cast them into an infinitely deep pond filled with memories. It was called "Empty Hearts" because it emptied your heart of woes and such, and Tomi would have gone there after her situation with Vykarius and life hit a hard point. She'd want to rip it out of her head so she wouldn't hurt anymore, and then she'd show up back at the bar acting out of character. Maybe too happy, maybe no emotion, maybe not even really doing anything! That would lead to us heading out to the island and trying to get her memories back, diving into the pond Hercules at the end of the Disney movie style. 

How the idea was expressed changed from here. There was the idea that people would go through different memories of Tomiko's and fight through them by supporting her. There was an idea that people would literally fight traumatic memories that are represented by mutated fish (like say, someone who witnessed a traumatic murder might have the fish take on aspects of the killer), there was the idea that people would have to suppress their own harsh memories as they swam in the water. Here we'd see Tomi's past somehow though no matter how the action happened, and the fisherman? Totally impartial. He doesn't try to convince people one way or another about whether to cast their memories into the pool, he just facilitates it. He doesn't even know he's on Earth since the island changes so much beneath him, he just keeps up his role.

This idea was scrapped mostly because I couldn't come up with a best way to do this and the idea didn't make much sense with the new Logic Spirit explanation attached to it. The flowers came eventually, and it went through some expected iterations, like "it's all an illusion!" or whatever, but I thought some nature not being malicious and just having those powers was a nice change of pace. Instead, the island would be menaced by something else to make it dangerous, and I had a pretty good idea of the sea monster I wanted to feature! I found one that matched it pretty well thankfully, although the flower design was based not on any real flora but those weird mechanical arms in the Death Stranding trailers that open and shut rapidly. The pond version of this event had no answers for the Vykarius situation, leaving it sort of up to Kobbers to talk Tomi one way or another, but the flowers achieved their final nature as a way of capping things off happily. It was possible Tomi might end up with someone new during the year if people were fine with her moving on, and some interests were hinted at, but I also had a good but not cheap ending in store here with the flower if the original relationship stayed true, and for a pairing that was really satisfying to RP last year, I gotta admit I'm glad they're still together too.

Tomi's gloves were lost on this plot as well, and since it was near the end of the year it didn't hurt much. I got to do a few different things like the gun and prototype gloves to make her a bit fresh near the end, but she was a real scrappy gal this year and I just wish that didn't mean she had to sit out of so many huge battles because she didn't have much going to face them. Briefly considered bringing a brother or two into the picture for a scene of her talking through her emotions but didn't have a place. I'll miss ya you scrappy kappa.

THE TITAN'S HAND

I just couldn't keep Cirno out of RP until 2019.

And I don't regret it! Cirno was so fun to RP this year that I had to restrain myself from doing it too often. Her brash and brainless attitude could very well annoy instead of amuse through oversaturation and I'm still not convinced I achieved the right balance. Cirno is very much a character like Shimmer whose thought process can change depending on how she gets to the thought. Cornwind asked me at one point for Embla and Cirno to have a rivalry and I literally couldn't tell him if that would be what came to pass because presentation would determine how the character reacts. Instead, they're like sister types instead. Cirno won't be the braggart and liar she was this year anymore, but she will still want to be the best, just not with such single-mindedness after she saw the results! Her finally getting Scraps nee Trash to open up and be proud of who she was was a huge highlight of the year for me, and while I like the ending scene they had, I almost tried to find a way where Cirno could still live with the trio in Kuwahawi but go to Olympia!

Cirno is my favorite touhou and that's been a joke for a while, and I think the simplest way to describe why is just that I find energy and determination to be likeable traits. These are often attached to dumb characters so we get some airheads with these traits,  and while I did have her say Baka a few times, I didn't want to overload on it since gratuitous use of other languages hardly ever feels natural in fiction. I like optimism and perseverance, the character who can get down in the dumps but it won't keep them down for long. This sounds like sorta generic protagonist stuff and there are some who fit it, but I don't want them to be impenetrable walls of determination and I like to see them falter because that's when their mindset is tested. Cirno is almost an exaggeration of this in RP, wanting to be the very best of the best of the best, but I didn't want her to be a complete intolerable gloryhound, and that's partly where the angle came from that best doesn't make everyone else worse. She wants approval because she gets put down so much, but rather than moping about it, she tries to better herself, she just doesn't understand how and can blind herself to her behavior during it.

Daiyousei's relationship with Cirno in fanworks doesn't do much for me, partly because Daiyousei is kind of your typical shrinking violet. I could have very well not had Daiyousei in RP if not for the fact I could get away with making her a small fairy, something that let her be a better constant companion to Cirno and a sort of guiding character like Navi. Daiyousei was seemingly made her shrinking violet personality, but the lady beneath it was always intended to be a bit of a rude woman. She's been pushed trying to keep Cirno in line, and I liked the relationship between them being a non-mutual crush more than the typical idea since it lead to both humorous and dramatic opportunities. Daiyousei being around people other than Cirno is helping her work through some of her feelings, but a crush is not easily quashed. She'll be a little less desperate in the future at least!

Titan's Hand is a bit of an obvious attempt to push the character growth along, Cirno hitting the peak of her quest for being the best and paying the price. The trials on the island went through many ideas. At one point I considered each fingers having a trial associated with that finger's meaning in culture. For example, the thumb would involve the thumbs up gesture, and I considered it having a gladiator style situation where you need to determine who lives or dies based on info fed about hypothetical characters. Some still have their associations somewhat present, like the pointer finger having the figures in it point at the challengers, but I thought I'd rather have interesting challenges than a theme, although the theme was "make others do the work for you" as an admonishment of Cirno's approach. The Titan was made a mega-bitch, and earlier versions did have the Kobbers face off with it not by fighting, but taking Sheep's approach of making Cirno sound unappealing and not worth keeping. Having people put her down was meant to give Cirno a reality check and also contextualize that sometimes people say mean things about people without meaning them. I almost drew the Titan's design, but it wouldn't look too nice in my style I think and the gold mannequins that looked like what I wanted were never in a good pose for it. The concept of a being with no head, hands, or feet because it flung them across the stars was one I was really committed to, and had I not been than maybe this would have fit into the plot better. Right now, only the materials benefited Bottom Dollar and Kuahiwi, but older ideas had them move the whole island onto Kuahiwi and it would have some other benefit.

And older design for Titan's Hand had no trials. Instead, climbing it was the challenge, and Cirno would get to the end of it first and get teleported over and captured. It was hard to explain why no one cheated to the top though. It was almost a hiking plot too! We would have just walked around marveling at the strange sights, and originally the island would have had everything on it missing pieces, like you used a photoshop erase tool to just remove parts of their body but it would still function normally. Imagine a palm tree with just parts of its trunk entirely missing, you able to put your hand through it. Maybe we could have fought some afflicted wild life, but nothing came together here. I guess it didn't come across too well in the end, but the other parts of the Titan were cast onto other planets like the hand was on ours, and they could teleport over at will if needed. The points where limbs terminate or start had the portals that connected them across space... maybe I should have drawn it. Would maybe be clearer then!

ADORATIA

Jaws's last turn on the catwalk was this year, after people telling me quite a bit he was perfect for an island setting because he was a water animal! I mentioned before I almost had Jaws's arc this year be training up Johnny Tsunami as a protege, but that fell through, so instead he became the washed up actor with nowhere left to go. The Kobber Movie he was making wasn't meant to fail when I made it his ending in 2014, but at the same time, its success wasn't guaranteed. I decided it would fail well before Jaws rejoined RP though, because Kobber Movies would be incoherent messes if accurate, and Jaws really isn't cut for directorial work! 

The huge shark wasn't going to get back into Hollywood after that though. He's really old and his career hard to recover from, and while I did expect some people to maybe toss him some bones actingwise, I wanted the point of his arc to be about accepting your limits since Jaws has spent years upon years not doing so. His acceptance is not him giving up though, but recontextualizing skills towards another one of his passions, that being to help people who don't get a shot at the big time the chance they need. I was happy to see Gefilte make more of an impression this time around, the little sea pig a decent companion for Jaws's eccentricity. Wish I had made Jaws more eccentric though and Gefilte a bit grouchier. Much like Jaws, he acts how he think he should act, taking on the Hollywood agent persona and shifting into it because of how long he's spent in it.

Adoratia itself got its coral that reads your mind to make your wishes come true came from the old coral idea, as in I wanted to do something with coral before we left the islands. Still wish I could have made coral characters... BUT! In more experimentation, I decided to make this a plot about acting. There were almost longer, more involved scenes, as in we'd go through each one together instead of a group appearing in audition phase before the Phantom of the Opera scene put it all out there meaning wise. I also wanted this place to be less about Jaws realizing something through the experience and more working through ideas he already had, and Adoratia wasn't going to attack people when its user departs. It's on Kuahiwi now and can continue to indulge people so it's not too beat up about it. A lot of specifics changed, like how the audience would be, but originally there was a very strange take on the Adoratia concept.

Jaws would be incredibly fat, engorged on juices the coral injected in him, and he'd be delusional as he struts about the stage, acting and asking the Kobbers to act with him. They'd need to get him in the right position to yank the coral off his head to free him from its control, but they'd have to be convincing actors to get there first. How this would teach him to be a teacher instead of an actor... who knows. I think there were more iterations, but I mostly remember the Jaws is fat version and not much else. Jaws had some Tomiko problems this year in his attack style made him unfit for many fights, but at least he has a clear path off into a happy life now instead of an ambiguous end that I doubt I would have let be happy. That sounds negative, but it was sort of a bad concept from the get go deliberately.

(NOTE: I took a long break from writing this blogpost and am now just coming back to it. Apologies if from here if info is repeated or not remembered as clearly, but here we go to the next islands!)

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY

So, basically the entire reason I decided to RP Stan, Heff, and Wooster was just spontaneously remembering their existence one day and looking them up on the Winnie the Pooh wiki, only to find its one of those wikis where the editors are weird in their details. I shared in chatzy the day I was doing this the obnoxiously long lists of character traits Heff and Stan had, and by that point the two were already brewing as characters to integrate into RP. Stan: "His personality is calm, devious, snarky, treacherous, arrogant, negative, wicked, obsequious, offensive, zany, loathsome, earnest, sneaky, thoughtless, abrasive, narcissistic, wrathful, observant, obnoxious, zesty, lion-hearted, eager, sadistic, temperamental, austere, nefarious, menacing, ambitious, tough, testy, shrewd, thankless, attentive, noisy, mean, accountable, thoughtful, trustworthy and somewhat intelligent." Heff: "His personality is loud, easily scared, helpful, emotional, funny, fearful, thoughtless, hard-working, efficient, happy-go-lucky, eager, fussy, feisty, attentive, laid-back, ungenerous, malicious, persistent, hyperactive, envious, finnicky, fun-loving, hot-headed, exuberant, frolicsome, faint-hearted, annoying, loquacious, uncompromising, mean-spirited, prissy and foolish." Naturally, I trimmed these personalities down to suit my needs and not be ridiculously specific :P However, despite my nostalgia mostly angled at these two motivating this choice, Wooster was the perfect guy to bring the group together as more than two jokes who couldn't hold their own in a fight. Wooster is huge but nice, making him good for fights he could drag the other two along on but also he wouldn't totally dominate the event because he wouldn't go for the kill or anything like that. They were intended to be joke characters to be sure, but I think lately I've just been drifting away from dedicated joke characters like these three. I'm not unhappy with how they did this year, but they weren't much. 

I believe The Land of Milk and Honey was one of the first solidified destinations for this plot since it fed into the island setting pretty well. Just some place the Kobbers could go to that was strange, but the form of the Land of Milk and Honey changed a lot. Originally from an episode of Winnie the Pooh as well, the episode involved a group of pygmies, or rather, Pigmies, since they were all smaller versions of Piglett who worshipped him like a god. For a long time, this version of the land was going to follow that episode pretty closely. In the episode, the quest to the Land of M and H is a big focus, with all these kooky jungle creatures freaking out when the place is mentioned, and I almost included the weird monkey band the gang encounters during the adventure as an antagonist, but the earliest idea for the Land was the Kobbers would show up and get an extremely warm welcome from the Pigmies, fed milk and honey freely... only for it to be revealed the gifts were poisoned, the pigmies trying to protect their precious source. The Kobbers would fight with debuffs against a bunch of these tiny dudes but ultimtely the volcano full of the gold and white would erupt, forcing them to flee to avoid dying. Stan would want to stay or something but then go with everyone else. Then the idea changed to no eruption, but Stan would steal whatever made the Land of Milk and Honey work and run off with it, but he'd have to leave his brothers behind because the pigmies caught them or something. He'd ultimately realize he needs to go back and save them and character moment and yadda yadda yadda I'm sure you can imagine the events on that premise. However, what the Kobbers would be doing was always sort of minimalized, so I shifted the focus, trying to make this island about the discovery since others were about the island itself.

The Land of Milk and Honey lost its pigmies and became the Woozle/Heffalump homeland, and the reason I made the woozles/heffalumps a nearly extinct species was basically to make them a bit more sympathetic. Always trying to steal honey or scam people could have made Stan hard to tolerate, hence why their species has a sort of dependence on honey as well. It's more like a grifter trying to get an easy meal rather than just pulling one over for profit. Perhaps my trepidation of making the trio unlikeable is why they didn't get much play? Anyway, the focus soon became the trip to the island, with me needing to explain why no one has been to the Land of Milk and Honey before. So, it becomes closed off to all but natives and I put in some protectors. Backson was an immediate pick, the creature from the Winnie the Pooh movie a perfect fit for something that could fight but also something that is reasonable and friendly when need be. From there, picking other Pooh villains to shore up the rest of the crew was a bit more difficult. Pooh didn't have many antagonists! And some of the big memorable ones include things like: three stuffed animals who kind of look like thug versions of Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet; a gang of wild west horse people... and the guys I used! I was tempted to rope in these villains as well, but the batch I went with worked better. Took the Skull that was the focus of the older Pooh movie to serve as the gateway to L of M & H because OF COURSE I had to, brought in Crud and Smudge because a giant goop monster works as a good enemy, and to head it all, I took in Long John Cottontail, a character Rabbit said existed and was a ruthless pirate only for the ghost of that pirate to show up as an actual character. I gave them personalities and attacks more fitting for their roles, but this three-fight structure definitely felt cramped to try and conclude in time. People need to stay up longer for real yo.

Anyway, I had my battles, the premise of the event, just needed something to kick it off, so I decided to rope in Lumpy the Heffalump from the show. The first sign the race isn't going extinct and a cute enough character to rope in the Kobbers, I don't really know much about Lumpy since I haven't watched too much new Pooh, but he was a decent enough addition to the trio to give them a nice sendoff instead of a life of grifting. Stan is no doubt still prone to it, but he's got other things to focus on now with less of a constant worry of starvation hanging overhead. Heffalumps and woozles did give me a bit of a constant need to consider if a fictional species name is meant to be capitalized or not, as I've seen it done both ways, but I tried to keep it lower case and probably failed. Only other things here is the stretchiness of the heffalump/woozle race was done to A: relate to the trippy visuals from their song and B: so Stan could be a bit rough with his brothers and Wooster a bit clumsy without any actual pain being worried about.

THE REVERSE WHIRLPOOL

And here we are. The thing that really brought the plot together into one shape rather than these being disparate or even nonexistent events before hand. The Reverse Whirlpool exists as it is because it's a pretty simple idea for a landmark that is illogically weird but still sort of makes sense. It's like an upside down waterspout after all, fat at the base and tapering upwards until it ends inexplicably. Conceived as a match for Ezra's unusual nature, its purpose was messed with a few times until it became a portal to the broken world of the Logic Spirit, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Ezra himself combines like, three ideas I had into one character. First, we had me stumbling upon the unusual naming conventions of Puritans, where they'd append long Christian-related names to their children. A few of these I also shared in chat when I discovered this strange naming convention,
If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned, Has-descendants, Job-raked-out-of-the-ashes, and Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith being the kind of example I was working with. No character was coming to me to match the name save that Ezra is a very typical sounding Puritan name to match whatever the last name would be, but then two more ideas came to me. One is a character who says Sakes Alive! and similar phrases because those need more loving. The actually IMPORTANT one though was an image of a man holding a bow split in half and drawing the loose string to effectively fire an arrow. The image alone just felt so interesting to me I had to conceive of a character to match it, their path towards entering the Brawl and using broken weapons of fallen fiters all but assured... all BUT assured because it never happened due to Ezra's actual form and pseudo-invincibility :V The idea was a character who could use broken objects as if they were fully formed, his drawbacks being he was very broken himself and couldn't handle fixed things well. I put him in a Puritan upbringing just to rope in the silly name, although he soon became a devout Christian as part of it and became a religious character even though being religious put me off RPing characters like Angie from Danganronpa in the past! I realized also pretty quickly a literally broken man has a lot of room for angst and stuff... so I swerved. People who overcome adversities like disabilities and stuff don't have to be mopey, and sometimes they get through it through positivity and optimism. Ezra said it himself that his good attitude helps him overcome the trials of his weird situation, and it also makes sense a character like him would be deeply religious to try and justify his near impossible existence.

I considered for a while how such a character could exist logically. I like to have some reason characters work the way they do, but Ezra's power was pretty far-reaching and defied universal logic... so it became deliberately illogical. An abomination of reason. He works because he's not supposed to work. We'd need some way to reveal this though, so the Reverse Whirlpool became his goal and reason for being in Kuwahawi, but we'd still need someone to reveal the truth. Enter: The Logic Spirit.

I've considered working in more Spirits from JRM's group of universe patrolling specters, so this seemed like as good a reason as any to use one. Logic might not usually be the purview of a spirit, but like how Death has actually lumped in other traits like Life into his role, Logic is an amalgamation of old Spirit roles like Gravity and other universal rules that don't need such specialization. However, with the Zoofights universe in general playing willy nilly with logic, I figured such a spirit was going to have a really hard time. Sure, some of us try to make things make sense, and others just kind of do whatever, and while I didn't want to guilt anyone specifically with this concept, I thought it was cute to acknowledge this and the ramifications it could have on a being whose job it is to make sense of it all. It's implied it once looked like the other spirits and got twisted trying to internalize all the issues in logic into itself and its pocket domain, but its own flaws lead to those errors in reality leaking out. The design of the twisted Logic Spirit went through a lot of imagination, but for an original creation, I don't think I ever would have settled on a design of my own. So many weird ideas floated around that I can't even accurately describe without things like "arm like appendages emerge from the middle of the chest shape that serves as a sort of center of its disconnected body" and so on. It's talking I wanted to be really gimmicky though. Sentences presented in a random order, some in other languages, colors and other traits always changing. I didn't completely abandon this idea, but I really wanted something that didn't feel normal, even if that made it hard to understand. Unfortunately it got saddled with a lot of exposition which shouldn't have been done, but you have to be a little inexplicable at times to get across a character is inexplicable!

As with many things on this plot though, the substance of the event was hard to figure out. I considered the crew just going into the broken logicverse and barely able to function. I can't tell you how many times I imagined the opening scene where your senses are described with incompatible descriptors. From there, ideas like trying to navigate the broken world came up, escape the broken world, encounter broken characters for a fight, so on, but I decided to do puzzles! Logic puzzles! Where you need an answer on the spot for things designed to deliberately be illogical! Not the best concept, and certainly a case where my own mind was being used as the base rather than considering the other minds coming into things. I've got the kind of head that likes to find things that don't make sense and try to explain them, and even as I sat on this idea for trying to make the illogical Wonders into something that can exist for a long time, I kept coming up with new ways to make it work, some I had to feed to you all when things weren't going well. Again, too much experimentation on this plot, but I don't regret it. I wish I had done it better as always, but I think I needed my ambition reined in, and I could have certainly done worse to get that wake up call!

Things like the ultimate fate of Ezra were hard to consider. I didn't want him "fixed" and I didn't want him instantly dead after his event. I almost revealed that he was the son of the guy from the old JRM plot whose body was constantly moving forward and back in time to die and be born again and again, but the compatibility with the logic leaking explanation was suspect. OH YEAH! The Logic Spirit's final design came from an image from something called Compliens, which are like kooky out there designs for a Pokemon-like. Or, well, the ones I found interesting are the really strange ideas, it's got some normal stuff too. The similarity to Monster Collector, my own Poke-ripoff and the source of spirits, cinched that I wanted to use some of its designs for RP. Some still sit in the future folder, while the Logic Spirit is a lightly altered image of another one. Falaa is it's name there and I removed some features to make it less humanoid. Still not the totality of what I would want from a broken spirit, but it's simplicity is probably for the best.

Now then, let's move on to the end of all this...

KUAHIWI

But mainly... Bottom Dollar.

Bottom Dollar was originally King Dice. From Cuphead. It's why I claimed him and his minibosses shortly after the game came out, but I ultimately didn't use them. However, this whole plot has been about moving away from the original King Dice concept more and more until we got the guy we know as Bottom Dollar. King Dice was going to start off as pretty much the instigator of every island event, but with clear antagonistic aims. He would approach JRM chars at the low points in their personal arcs, and while some of the characters would be savvy and realize he shouldn't be trusted, he'd offer them just what they wanted. Tomi, for example, would be tricked into going to Vegas to supposedly land a deal, only for Dice to reveal he just wanted to talk to her and get her to her island for plot. King Dice might have even sent his minibosses to be the battles on these islands if they needed them. Why would he want them on the islands though? Well, for similar reasons to Bottom Dollar: the potential! King Dice wanted to make Kuahiwi into the perfect tourist destination, with all these amazing impossible places to visit. However, unlike Bottom Dollar, King Dice was interested in bigger profits than money. He wants people's souls, so what he'd do is make this amazing island and only charge a person's soul for admission. He'd gather up a bunch of contracts with people's souls and hold them hostage, threatening to destroy the contracts that would also destroy the souls due to a clause in them. This idea really began to take shape though when I moved away from King Dice and onto Bottom Dollar.

Bottom Dollar was conceived first as a Kobber villain they couldn't beat. Winning all the time, every foe being a guaranteed win... well, it does get a bit samey. I wanted to see a villain who won against the Kobbers but wasn't really all that harmful or had to be dealt with after winning. Bottom Dollar's old incarnation was antagonistic and his helping of Kobbers all towards that aim of getting More. He'd say the souls are More because they're worth more than money, or at least people are worth more, a couple million each to his estimates, and while many of the people who'd sign their souls to get on the island before the Kobbers realized the problem were going to be no-names, I would have had some characters like Cirno do it too, mainly because the idea was Bottom Dollar would be holding the contracts when we confronted him. He'd put them in his chest box where if you attacked him you'd likely kill all the people whose souls he owned and he could shred them in an instant if he felt threatened. The idea was all the Kobbers had to do was put aside their pride and say he beat them, after which he'd give up all claim on the souls and move on. He'd have a victory against them and the Kobbers would have a loss, and that's what he wanted. So much so, that the whole soul business... was one big bluff. A bluff he'd reveal immediately after by destroying the contracts right in front of them. Because not only did he want to beat the Kobbers, he wanted to show how he did it as just a normal individual. No superweapons, no powers, not even a fight. Without so much as touching the Kobbers he defeated them, and his leverage wasn't even legitimate. The soul contracts had no actual sway, he didn't have the power to enforce them like a demon, devil, or a King Dice could. They were paper and that's that. I imagine some people would want to kill him after that reveal V:

This idea would be retooled into what we got, where he is a good guy and he just wanted the claim of beating them and offered up incredible benefits for allowing him to say as much. I understand people's reasons for not liking the arrangement and saying no, but if that was me... hell yeah I'd take that offer. If I could help so many people with just words, you could get me to say a lot, especially when it's pretty much harmless to say "yes he beat us". So long as I'm not like, implicating people in a way that would get them hurt or worsen their lives, I'd always take the route that leads to tons of charity. BUT, that's me in real life, and I was more interested in the reactions of characters anyway. Unfortunately it got immediately tainted by real life reactions so it wasn't really the way for characters to weigh the value of pride or the importance of group identity or any of the interesting character angles I was hoping for, and it only further soured the taste in people's mouth for an already rickety plot. Holding the party after was meant to be an apology, but real life drama was weighing things down and reactions and... well, at least Cirno had fun with a new friend.

Bottom Dollar, as a character, was considerably softened from earlier drafts of course. Rather than pure More motivation, he became a bit better rounded. A lot of business characters go on the whole "drain it dry because I won't live to see the consequences" route real business baddies go for, but Bottom Dollar was meant to be the more logical businessman, the one who knows its better to lay out a huge longterm plan rather than jump around sucking money from as many sources like a capitalist vampire until the luck runs out. Opinion of him definitely went down at the end for his offer, and his unusual nature and me trying to let Kobbers do the work instead of him on adventures didn't help either, but I still wanted a more ally like character connecting the islands instead of one who'd be evil in the end. I also didn't want him to be a Kobber because that's the easy connection, and it seems like more characters should really go "hey, we know what Kobbers can do, let's be cautious but cooperative" Bottom Dollar trying to keep from getting close to them was part of avoiding any potential Kobbering that could come his way if they didn't like him. His design was more fun though, although I struggled with it. I wanted him to have no obvious head, so the jewel cam into play, and I wanted extra arms so he was always working on making money even when otherwise occupied. Making him a heavily altered being rather than something born this way was also meant to emphasize how far he's gone in his pursuit of More, a concept that seems more interesting than just "I like money, me want lots of it". Things like the elf shoes felt right, but the cape and other details... it's hard to weigh my desire to go hard on a character embodying their idea while trying to acknowledge character designs shouldn't go overboard on details and extra fluff. There's a piece of advice going around that you need to thin a character's visual design down as much as possible, this being why things in art like characters with pointless wings, devil horns, weird eyes, etc. feel like the mark of an amateur artist, because they're being added as an attempt to be interesting without substance to the design part.

ANYWAY, Bottom Dollar is not the island though! Things did go away from the idea Kuahiwi scooping up all the old islands and placing them on its back as it would do when it came to life in the original draft, but they still had their important parts transferred as Kuahiwi's new dream of being the perfect island. In a bit of silliness, I decided to look back at the origin of Kuwahawi's name and it came back to the Kuahiwi plant that we corrupted to make the name sound reasonable but original. Kuahiwi is also a word for mountain though in Hawaiian, so that's on reason the island got a big mountain on it, besides that being a good feature for an island in general, but it gave it an in-universe naming reasoning more importantly. Kuahiwi having the "real" name and Kuwahawi not was always going to be a joke, but the sister island concept lead to its inferiority complex and a decent enough reason for its explanation. It wanted to be the big shot island people loved, but it was passed over for the bigger and more suitable Kuwahawi. I didn't want Kuahiwi to be born from the same concepts of Dakota though, it almost being a dark reflection since both came to life to get more recognition. Kuahiwi was bad about it though, but it also didn't have the internalized thoughts of people guiding it. We see Kuahiwi's core when we fought it, and get ready for this explanation, because it's a doozy. The idea is that the core is the only truly living part of the entity known as Kuahiwi, a the rest is a normal island. However, the core is a special being, perhaps alien, that can extend its influence out to integrate matter as sort of an exoskeleton it has free movement control over. It didn't really live much before its entering of the island and association with it as its sort of host, but this "island parasite" can only really use its mental influence to control the things around it, not really move itself.

One reason the core was so shielded during the battle was because if a being had such a huge weak spot that could kill it easily and the means to defend it, certainly it would. Bottom Dollar playing the villain to trick the island is why the entry was left open instead of shored up when Kuahiwi made its plan to try and use the Logic Spirit to make itself perfect, but it still had to have a lot of defenses! Gregg was there to help, but we could have gone either route if need be, I just didn't want to break any further logic on an already illogical plot! The island fight, from the moment Kuahiwi was decided to exist, was always going to happen, the exact features changing as ideas came and went. Fighting the land isn't really something we do in RP because... I mean, why would you? Even when we're in hostile territory, things will send out enemies we can kill. I wanted the final boss of the plot to be an island that fought you AS AN ISLAND, not a chunk of land that spits out conveniently fightable babies. And so, we get things like the land, forests, and mountains making the attacks, but the capabilities of the core aren't so great it can just immediately get matter to squash everyone on it.

CONCLUSION

Apologies for this behind the scenes taking so long. It was a long time coming, and it's not even for one of my better plots! Writing for The Game Hoard has me really wrapped up and all, and I'm sure the time it's taken me to get around to finishing this made the quality suffer some.  The inevitable "how could I have forgot to put this" will occur soon enough no doubt. A lot of ideas fed into this plot's creation. I wanted to do a proper island plot before we left the island setting, but the form it would take was so in flux that I'm surprised it came together at all. I tried to continue to push what RP could be with new ideas for plot events, but a lot of it went over poorly. I tried to recreate the magic of Spectrum plot by trying to use plot events to further my characters, but it felt more rigid this time and less earned, and our plot connecting character wasn't as fun as Aviaticus to be sure. There was a lot I could have done better, and some of these could have been stronger on their own or if I wasn't chasing a gimmick. 

Still, I did enjoy them when they were working, and characters like Tomi are some of my favorite characters I've ever used. Her and Vykarius's relationship is one of my favorite things I've worked on in RP, Shimmer is one of my favorite characters as well, and Cirno's really fun to write. Things like Ezra and the heffalumps and woozles not making a big splash didn't feel like failures even though they made small splashes, but that might just be a new way of looking at my RP in general influencing that. I think I won't hang characters arcs on plots the same way anymore. Characters will still definitely get impacted by my plots and those of others, but they won't need to wait to have a big revelation or change because it needs to be done in a specific way. Unless like, the character's big revelation is like, fighting a specific bad guy because you know, that's got to be done that way by design. BUT, things like Cirno learning to be less boisterous won't need to wait their turn in line, they'll instead just latch onto reasonable moments. A bit more freeform stuff next year with characters and less focus on doing these "my whole cast is involved" type plots. Less focus on making sure every event has some crazy gimmick just because it worked well with Those Left Behind. Probably less plots where we go to be sad somewhere :V No guarantees on that one! I like to write all kinds of moods, but I did try to be more open about my upcoming plots without giving away the game.

I do appreciate feedback on the plot. I really don't mind getting some meaningful critique, and I'd like to not have a plot's ideas fail so much on the execution if possible in the future. It's meant to be enjoyable for you guys as participants, so if that's not happening, then it is failing. As I've said on other plots, if you're only writing a story for yourself and to have things go as you plan, then you can write it outside of RP. Interactive stories are made better for including the impact of others, and that includes just giving HAWT TIPS N TRIX to each other outside of the event's parameters.

Anyway, maybe I'm beating myself up here too much, so I'm gonna wrap things up and finally get this thing published! I would like to thank you all for participating and putting up with some of my weird ideas. I do keep wanting to bring interesting new things to RP and I might have an idea for a way to do that in 2020, but I don't want to go so far I fall off the map.

Time to start shifting focus away from the islands and to scifi city! ...You know, when this blogpost started, the title didn't mean the trip to this blogpost was long, it was referring to the long history that built up to this plot :P Perhaps it was appropriate it took this long to come out, and surely, my biography will say it definitely was.

The 411 on the Big Bar Brawl 8

Another Brawl over. 112 images, 90,000+ words plus 20,000+ pre-fite show words... at least I haven't lost my step yet! I mean, every Big Bar Brawl since probably the first one I always think "this one is worse than the others" as I make it, but at least this time I was smart enough to also think "that's what you think every year"! I don't know why that thought always comes up, probably just the effects of being in the middle of a two week project, immersed in your own jokes that have spun around in your head so many times they are no longer funny, but people always seem to like it in the end so I think a lot of that pressure has been deflating! No mid-brawlwork cry or anything, although I was getting annoyed by CKR and RD dragging their feet on images before they just burst on the scene doing 90% of their work all in one night! That gives me hope for future brawls at least...

Somewhat of a bleak and negative intro, but rest-assured, I did have a lot of fun planning this, writing this, drawing this, and of course, posting it all for you to see! A good piece of art always draws a little blood if the creator is passionate about it, and I'm out the other end chomping bacon and pretty happy with the end result. Here in this behind the scenes blogpost, we're gonna do another vital component of the Brawl: the after-brawl explanation fiesta! Most of what you've seen before can be expected, but I think the character section might meander less. Gonna try and focus on things relevant to the brawl and writing process instead of saying "dis char is a good guy". They're all good guys. You don't need me to rub it in!

Anyway, let's get to the part where I start talking about the dang thing instead of talking about talking about it!

THE EARLY BRAWL AND THE DISNEY CONNECTION
I wouldn't say much of the Big Bar Brawl 8 planning started until probably the beginning of this year. Although, that still gives a bunch of months before June and July to cook up ideas. A lot of the early Brawl planning can all trace back to a single video that I believe Spy linked me back in January...

Yup, it's our old friend Mac Tonight. It was linked for the fairly obvious reasons, Mac Tonight's history with our Brawl going back to the original, but it sent me down a rabbit hole. Defunctland is a Youtube channel that specializes in talking about old theme park attractions that are no longer around, with of course a heavy slant towards the biggest theme park mogul in the world: Disney. Now, watching all these videos of Disney rides and attractions of the past naturally wormed some of the theme park characters and mascots into my mind, but Pleasure Island was the hook. Why?

This guy. The Funmeister. Immediately, the nebulous primordial ooze forming in my brain took shape. Funmeister was, of course, originally just a cute addition, a Jukebox Jaw replacement (I don't think I mentioned it but Mr. Fish was of course upset Jukebox was pushed aside for the Disney dude). But, when you get a new face into the Brawl, everyone's waiting to see them die, and Funmeister would be a bit of a chump. No powers, no skills... just another moonman who was basically going to be played as "shit Mac Tonight". Then, of course, the web expanded.

Just how Disney was involved took shape fairly quickly, partly because I had thought up the Brawl arena either close to that time or shortly after. I've already mentioned it, but the Brawl being in an underwater bubble was a fairly simple process. I didn't think going back to Brawl Island would be a good idea, reusing an arena seems gauche, and I didn't like that Brawl and Fite Island were being combined in people's minds in the first place :V But, I wanted to keep things tropical, we already did the boat in Nevada, so I just very easily hit "we'll have the Brawl underwater." The how? A big ol' bubble. Things like Final Fantasy X's Blitzsphere come to mind, although it's basically the reverse as its an orb of water with air around it. This is just a fairly straightforward air bubble that's as big as it needs to be and has some underwater features. The coral and such was probably the strangest stuff to decide on. How much should there be? Should there be rock formations? Simplicity is good but too much is boring. If I make it too complex someone needs to draw it. The idea of the hydrophobic barrier was easy to come up with, although how it was made was a question that was still kind of up in the air for a long time even after I saw it as the perfect point for Disney to enter by contributing their Imagineers for the task. Ultimately, we got the coral shelf, some smatterings of coral and rocks, and mostly just a shifting focus in and out of the bubble to keep things fresh, as well as a few pushes to the surface for funsies.

The stands were a bit weird because of the arena's nature. I imagine the underwater ones like viewing platforms poking in, the floating stands are floating stands, but it's just sort of odd to get things around a sphere underwater. They were also mostly left out of the action and some things left to you to just imagine. How do they get in the box seats? There's a way. The pre-fite show added how fiters who don't like water enter, but for the most part, it was probably boats and specialized ramps, nothing fancy or worth really explaining! Their oddness is probably why they never came up during the battle, although Build almost kicked off one or tried to bring one down on Rennie during their fite, but I didn't feel it fit the flow of their confrontation.

Before we get back to Disney... Mr. Fish! A host is not always an important choice, I probably could have kept it JRM for 8 years and people would accept it, but it's a neat place to stick some of my lest fite-ready characters and Mr. Fish's popularity last year made him a good fit. His star is certainly fading, but putting him in charge for one Brawl was a good send-off if he fades completely in the background, although I'm not saying I'm abandoning him or anything. Joke characters have a time limit though, and Mr. Fish even got a moment during the Brawl punching the Funmeister for a kill! One weird thing, I wasn't sure if he should do the water dumping quirk he has, because for some reason I'm always thinking about these readers who barely touch RP or skim parts and skip around. It makes sense for a fishman to splash his head, but I second-guessed it for that reason!

On the Disney side, we got the Imagineers and Funmeister on lock, and how things expanded from there was a period full of ideas grown and trashed. For characters that did make the final cut, I feel like Push was the first and most solid pick. You can find wiki pages on these guys that explain them better than I do, but Push was a walk-around character from Tomorrowland at Disney Parks. Someone used a radio-controller to move it around and speak through it, but despite its talking ability being its main draw and gimmick, I for some reason liked it a lot more as a very crappy, voiceless machine, hence why it became a mouthpiece for Disney Corporate the only time it did speak. Otherwise, it was always meant to be the absolute joke Disney Invader, the pre-fite show joke of it being a mystery fiter an early lock. Pushing it over to easily kill it was its destiny. I'm pretty sure Monica would have come before any other additions, but we'll save her for pre-fite discussion.

Instead, let's talk a few dudes who didn't make it but were around during this interim time. Figment, a small purple dragon from the Imagination! pavillion and perhaps his companion the Dreamfinder, were considered for inclusion, never developed.  The Hatbox Ghost, Disney's Haunted Mansions's most famous ghost, was originally going to be the Disney character who suggested they storm the brawl as revenge for getting the cold shoulder from Mr. Fish, but was scrapped for being just a ghost and rather nameless. Right before I posted the Big Bar Brawl sign-up post, I found a tumblr called the-disney-delete that had a lot of old Disney stuff, including weird park walk-around characters like the odd golf ball themed Goofy that would have been perfect for Jeffery but was not meant to be and weird to work in late, so I just linked it as a "hint at this year's Big Bar Brawl theme" in chat as a joke BUT IT WAS AN ACTUAL HINT TOO! There were probably some other Disney Parks characters considered who didn't make the cut, but that also brings me too... Why Disney Parks characters? Why not Disney names with weight and recognizability? Well, that's not my style. Why Mac Tonight and not Ronald McDonald? It's more interesting to dig and see the things you pull out than pull on the obvious and trot it around for a bit, and those big names could always have more important rolls while these guys would just languish in obscurity if I never pulled them up for use. I did make a joke about this with Mr. Fish being offended Disney sent him such low-tier characters, he even mentions Donald Duck as an alternative at first because the Mystery Fiter is Noah but Donald Duck played Noah in Fantasia 2000, but it was even better when Gooper sent the Technical Difficulties image and it had Donald in it.

For the Disney characters left we did get, Captain EO was basically me going "we need a capable Disney character from the crop we got." Hatbox Ghost was possibly that at first, but Captain EO was a late idea that seemed a great fit. He's got weird space captain powers and his dances turned gross aliens into sexy dancers, so I made that into his power for the Brawl and used it to silly effect on the likes of Battra and The Smooze. It was a change from Music Meister and the others he was compared to, and like most Characters From Nowhere, it's great for setting up a glorious moment at a point in the Brawl I can guarantee, give some characters some KOs so I can spread the load a bit more, and put characters in action who might be on the sidelines. I was worried him being Michael Jackson might rub people the wrong way, but I was already going deeper into that with Noah so I said let's do it and hope it works! Lobster Mobster and Da Shrimp were Sheep's Secret Fiter idea (hence why Funmeister suggest them as Secret Fiters in-canon) and was the only Disney themed one I got. I wish I could have asked for more or something like that, a cute theming to the options, but I reward the on-brand character by plopping them in and ensuring that no other Disney Park character was required. It's also why they're the only Non-Disney Park characters in that group! They did end up mostly fiting by using the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, a currently running attraction that replaced a different Submarine Voyage that I also saw in a Defunctland video. They ended up mostly attacking with it because they were sudden intrusions and the bubble gun was weak, but hopefully Sheep was still happy with their contributions.

Swifty La Rue, of all the Disney guys who made it in, was the most likely to get cut. In fact, he almost lost out on being in at all, but I wondered if Disney was unlikable enough to justify killing their dudes when they stormed the Brawl. They were pretty goofy, and some people like Disney, just like me! So, I gave a face to the things you were supposed to hate. Even if you like Disney, Swifty is a jerk with the corporate mindset here to take FYM and he doesn't care if his goons get hurt doing it. He's got Monica under his control and only lets her out for when he needs her, and while Funmeister and Co. weren't the best guys, it was his push that made them go as far as they did. So, when the submarine is thrown and it lands in Disney HQ as the big FU to Disney, it's not saying "Hey, you should hate Disney", it's them rejecting that particular part of it. The Disney idea in general I even approved with Ven before that didn't matter, partly because of Chef Louis who would potentially go mad hearing about it, and it was before Last Jedi that I asked him so you've got a potential timeframe on when most of these details were ready. I was a little worried we might hear about Disney being up to something in RP before I could do it, but that's that fear that comes up any time you're sitting on a reveal or mystery.

Speaking of...

MYSTERIES AND SECRETS
The Mystery Fiter is Noah. From the Bible. An extension of my old "Noah is my waifu" joke, I was just thinking on who to put in and he rose up and I thought it would be funny if people actually remembered it. I did, of course, worry about bringing a Biblical figure into RP just to kill them, even though our group doesn't seem the type to be easily offended by that (and I've technically done it twice with Doeg and Balaam's ass and no one cared but that's not ACTUALLY comparable). Still, to makes sure I had my bases checked and got a decent combatant who wasn't just a joke, I decided to make him the Noah from Super 3-D Noah's Ark. Yes, that's the title, I don't know why it's in such a terrible order. Gooper and Chao in the standings came to call him Super Noah likely to help with making it less like he's the Biblical figure as well, and I even did that Stream of the game to specifically plant elements of this version of Noah in RP peoples' minds. That's actually why we only saw Ginny the Giraffe and Carl the Camel of the boss animals from the game, as well as mostly goats and just the occasional antelope and ostrich. While I do want to Disaster Report that game some day, that's as far as I got on Twitch, so I stuck to the recognizable elements for those who watched and explained what needed explaining.... although the abacus-minigun-slingshot still doesn't make much sense as a weapon no matter how I explain it. The goats made an oddly good combination with an unexpected entry from RainbowDash and Noah even lined up pretty well with the Secret Fiter, who was from a game I DID do a Disaster Report of!

Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs (name written out fully as a joke to continue how he introduces himself with a full spiel all the time in game) was a Secret Fiter I didn't think I'd get. Some just seem to perfect when submitted and I didn't expect it to be the choice at all until it was. A game and character we mostly know through me and the Disaster Report on the game Chao gave me. While Briggs wouldn't do too much on the grand scheme of things, he was still a goofy delight. I tried to draw him offputtingly Plasticine, tried to capture mannerisms from the game and jokes like the shrugging and all. Not sure if they land when many of them carry over from personal experience rather than things I've mentioned publicly, but he also paired well with Noah. Mr. Fish mentions he pulled some big strings, originally the idea being that God was letting Noah show up to try and be cool to appeal to people with a cooler Noah, but it's just employed now that Divine Intervention let Noah bring Briggs out of Limbo for the Brawl, Nilmates tagging along as he did so often in the game. Nilmates didn't have much he could do, although Chao mentions the inexplicable scene of Nilmates piloting a giant mech as something he could've done and I even considered it with something like Eggerchef, but that was rejected to better help Eggerman look good. Nilmates almost had more commentary lines but that would drag on since I always wrote him rambling like he did in game. Popping up on commentary and as a skeleton were part of an idea I had where Nilmates was going to keep popping up around the Brawl, interrupting or intercepting things as a general nuisance. Like, let's say Miu is tinkering on something, Nilmates pops up to pester her during it, or someone does an attack like a snipe but Nilmates rises up to talk and accidentally gets hit instead. The minimal Nilmates use made him popping up more fun hopefully, and while he was pretty useless... in Limbo of the Lost, his use is usually cutscene related or you take something off him like his arm as an inventory item.

Speaking of inventory, Briggs kept to doing stuff like that with the vs. Sam and Max fite. 63rd place meant Briggs wouldn't make too much of an impact regardless, but I wanted to get his weird puzzle-solving and inventory junk in all at once there against someone from a similar gaming world. His customized dualie inexplicably calling Barbara back in was a reference to weird game solutions though and kept Barbara from pulling an Aevar/Wids and Clippy and being out of the running as a way of preserving her for later.

For other Secret Fiters, originally, we almost only had Sheep's pop in. Then, as writing the Skeleton King using Arr to teleport between dimensions, I hit on the idea of them entering one where the Brawl had different Mystery and Secret Fiters. Originally, it was the Iron Giant as the Mystery Fiter before I swapped it for Harpy's Gaddess, the Iron Giant being a reference to a scrapped idea. Once, I considered Iron Giant as a mystery fiter, but I thought it against the spirit of the film since he didn't want to just kill... and then Ready Player One did that anyway so :V But, once I said "the Secret Fiter was Scratch and Grounder", I realized I could slip in the others quite easily. History altering and alternate universes made it easy to plop mentions of them in so I did so, even when it was a squeeze. Rap Rat almost wasn't mentioned at all because Spy didn't properly submit him by forum PM (only by chatzy PM) but I added him in before posting. Cornwind's Gin, Gooper's Rexy, Draco's Cuphead and Mugman, and Scratch/Grounder belonged to SK. Almost considered no cameos when I thought Gooper might use Rexy still or something, but it was more fun to get them all in for brief, consequence-free appearances. Who cares what alternate Gin is up to, Cornwind could still use our universe's Gin if he likes!

OTHER BRAWL STUFF
Before a more concrete topic, we can take a tour of some small fun facts and such about the Brawl. Ven's absence was certainly felt when we didn't hit a bigger number than last year for the first time, but if we float around this range, then a Big Bar Brawl Day can be assured more easily. Really hoping July 10th sticks.

Sponsorship votes! Something new I thought worth trying to help people kick up their favorite entrant. Even this year users like RainbowDash expressed worry during sign-ups that one character might pull votes from another, so Sponsorship is meant to ease that. Disney being around made it make a bit of in-universe sense I guess, although we might see it renamed or something since people seemed to have a few issues with the format. Still, I think it's a good addition to the votes and its meant to pull out at least a smattering of effort from simple voters, its there to help ensure that people vote more besides the inherent I Voted bonus, and it's weight makes it a decent way of helping a character without being too powerful. Somewhat related, I relaxed the Secret Fiter standards as bigger numbers grow less important to me than quality of entrants. Even though I think we had less Secret Fiters than most years submitted, so maybe it didn't work :V

This seems a good place to post some of the remaining Brawl art that didn't make the cut. AKA, the hall of rejects, even though it's a fairly small group this year since erasers were used mostly and even then, not many major errors ever made a piece unredeemable.

 Just realized I never explained the image I showed at the start of all of this! Well, hopefully it intrigued you to keep reading. This was never meant for the Brawl, a drawing of anything Brawl related... it was just me whipping out the first piece of paper for Brawl art and drawing something simple since it had been a long time since drawing on paper with pencil. Just getting a general feel for things. Some sort of popcorn-dustball creature is punching a living potato for the KO. Not quite Sine Pickle, especially since it wasn't too cool off since doing art was probably easier for me this year than any year. Good pacing, having podcasts to listen to (Adventure Zone gets props, as do others that had updated conveniently around that time), and knowing when to take a break and watch VODs of Sips playing Jurassic World Evolution at super speed so I didn't work too much and burn out probably made it go better than expected. I'm not proud of all my art (Gonzy killing Asuraman is probably my worst this year) but I think I did fairly good, had a lot of fun drawing characters like Jeffery, put extra effort to make sure the Ultimate Asura Buster looked good and accurate, and really... probably just found it relaxing compared to computer art. I think my tablet really needs to be good before I can say that my computer art will ever hit where my pencil art can go.

 What could this be? Why, it's the original broken body of the Eggerchef Gundam! I drew the shape and all, but having it self-destruct and then adding in Trash on top of that didn't look like it was going to work. I put an X by it to tell myself it's the bad one and draw the image you all saw in the Brawl right next to it. It probably would have been cool to draw the Eggerchef properly, but at the same time, I get committed to KO ideas and don't like swapping them out for art's sake one way or the other, especially since art is always secondary to the writing. Another aspect of that is that this year, while many others I outline the exact KOs and the images before I write, I was a bit more loosy-goosy. Some things just said "This Character KOs That Character" and I let the whims of writing get me to the end. Counting up the images at the end instead of having them all preplanned meant doling them out to the artists was inevitably slower, but I think it gave writing more room to work (but of course, we still have art errors despite this approach, primarily because even if I tell CKR the fiter is missing parts, she draws them anyway, or I might forget what's happened during the Brawl and draw them fairly clean myself!)

Sorry I don't have a wall of poorly done moon faces, but I only really had the error with Funmeister as I was feeling out his design compared to Mac's. Mostly the head was too thin to work with so this one was scrapped and I drew the image we got of Mac and Funmeister together. As for that face you see below, it was a first attempt at drawing Captain EO getting destroyed by music before I passed it off to RainbowDash. I wanted him sort of being washed away by light, but the light was music, and I didn't really know where to go from the face on. RainbowDash having actual musical notation around him made it clear what was happening even if it wasn't the flashy obliteration/disintegration I envisioned, so I'm happier with that.

That's all for scraps really, but I'll give you the lowdown on a few images that did make it into the Brawl! Gooper's Title Pic is excellent, some of the best face work I've seen from him. Oda tripped me up for a bit and I sorta forgot Viki existed so I was like "who's dis chick" but otherwise, absolutely amazing. Recognizable, some amazing detail... and that Slowbro Tail Beta Pokemon was cute. I originally suggested to Gooper the idea of putting their faces in bubbles to match the underwater idea, but there's no denying this quality. We get to see Trash look cute, love Koroku's expression, Dr. LEWD looks good, Arr's is crazy silly, love Heff's expression... won't go on forever but I really dig it! Noah's introductory art was very much me saying "THIS IS SUPER NOAH OKAY DON'T CALL BLASPHEMY PLEASE". I enjoyed drawing Barbara quite a bit when I did, although she went through a sort of Jeffery thing. First image I drew of both was kinda low detail and doesn't match their later looks as I hit on a stride that I follow for what I do. Jeffery's many poses and expressions made him one of the most fun to draw in the Brawl, even if I can't keep skeleton shape consistency and hands and feet look odd if you look close.

Surprised RainbowDash figures laser bees would shoot laser from their mouth, not their stinger, but oh honeydew! All goats from Queen Goat in all pictures had to have their tongue out. Only Drilliant Kid was exempt from this rule due to his origins. Probably should have used those tongues more in combat, but they were there for goofy pictures, and partly why Carl and Ginny were drawn (besides emphasizing their presence as Noah's sort of true combat) was to have goofy animal appearances for both Noah's animals and the goats. I gave Dominguez to CKR for his pictures, sort of hoping she might be able to grab onto him and do some Saxton Hale quality stuff (same for Aldebaran as well), but we didn't quite hit that mark. The real highlight of CKR was obviously Ophelia twerk, and it's totally my fault it became a twerk. It was mentioned in narration but I imagined the image being a more clear "exhausted by dance" look, CKR even imagining it as Ophelia dancing so much a limb popped off... and then I said some joke about twerking to death and that's how we got where we are.

Drawing Koroku's death was tricky, partly to make it clear Eye-Scream wasn't the one dying and partly to soften the potentially most brutal kill. Breaking a dog from the inside can be bad if I go into detail... so I didn't! Hope that worked. Bob stepping on Neil, done by RainbowDash, is one of those "it'll do" images. I think we've been here before so I'll probably not give stomping on people images to her anymore. Even gave it the file name "not shrek" does something or other :V Jaws image of him killing Dmitri deliberately reverses the famous pose after Gooper put the well-known one in the title card. Probably wouldn't have otherwise. Of course, my sisters liked to hide KOs all over again, although I made it more clear in a few parts like Dominguez dying where the cubes had a line show you the shape. RainbowDash really likes to make KO out of the blood... which reminds me. All deaths in FYM will now be marked with a KO, assistant, entrant, or otherwise. It used to be I was worried people thought that meant an elimination when an assistant didn't rule the entrant out of a placement, but we're over that. Tried to add the number to the KOs to indicate how many died, didn't catch and fix the Nyx image of her and Drilliant dying after making that decision though. Lastly, had to edit a part where Kap tells Jeffery it wasn't a KO on Rifa since it was an assistant, Kap instead reflecting the new rules that it wasn't an entrant elimination.

That freaking Knack 3 rant from Goops. Stupendous. Forgot to link the HERE COMES THE MONEY song like I intended to after Goops did the same in the PM.

The image of Arr killing Veronica is actually a shot of Arr's back. Since he's see through, you'd see his features from either side, just mirrored. Veronica is way too big in that picture though, but Arr is probably of nebulous size, just always fairly small. Really happy with Opossum's pose in KOpossum, even if it doesn't totally match the lines in the narration. Erased God Neptune's legs in his death picture, and in Tomi killing Phoenix, CKR initially put Tomi on a stool because I tried to emphasize their height difference and that's how she justified it. Then she did Trash destroying all of Harvest with a beam that I said was her scale issue of this Brawl, but she did a good job of perspective kill of big entry vs. smaller one with Ferrocrusher shooting Izumi with its beam. Ibuki playing the keytar was a very early idea and one I wanted as a gif to emphasize the silliness of playing the small instrument. Incidentally, the song "This Isn't Disneyland" that she sings... found it right after getting to that part in writing the Brawl. Fit well enough, dropped it in. Drawing Ettie was also fun, probably just because I drew lips and wasn't repulsed by them for once. Had my sisters draw all Myra art though... for some reason. Not intentional, just how it happened. Walter's not cutting the Blind Scorpion Nun with the chainsaw properly but CKR remembers the tail detail, them's the way of things! Really liked Agent Kaleido's look as she burns, and Arr happy about Prinnyfossil is really cute. Of course, RainbowDash had fun drawing Hanz again for the first time since BBB2, she even made sure to claim all art of him before art time and was disappointed she got so little, but she spends so long drawing that accordion head that maybe that's for the best!

Gooper's drawing of Nyx and Smooze vs. Brilliant Kid and Drilliant Kid... that's BBB8. That's one of those moments that divides the Brawl well because it's so big and absurd and just captures what I'm going for here. If this Brawl was just serious fiting it would be overbearing, if it was all jokes it wouldn't be as thrilling, but the goofiness is here and the fiting is too, making a hopefully good mix that let's things like this happen. He even included two mutator goat types that appeared in narration without me having to say so! Walter killing MAGIC is probably number 2 on my list of art I did I'm not proud of. Grumpy Eye-Scream is pretty great, as is cute Gino face if I haven't mentioned it already. Wanted to add a nose but she wouldn't have it. RainbowDash just has a way with happy smugness. The Minecraft Kill was one of my favorite conceptwise. RainbowDash's drawing of Rainbow Dash was absolutely perfect this year, got the face right and everything. Truly worthy of a "wow". Duer was a bit eh next to it though :V Not trying to be too negative towards my sister's art despite the comments. If I didn't like it I wouldn't keep it, and we've got things like CKR's Nyx in killing Kiibo having a nice look. The art is definitely improved by its variety and I wouldn't be here without them, most of it is ribbing rather than true dissatisfaction. Made Brilliant Kid in his hatless picture bald since I didn't think he looked right with hair, and I saw a video of him made recently as an old man that probably influenced those forehead lines. Before the Brawl, I never realized his hat said "PERVERT" and he does have those wrinkles in his image reference. We weren't getting a smaller microbikini on SUPER LEWD than what CKR drew in the end. I told her to make it small but my sisters both dislike drawing buxom babes and I would have got the bikini right but the look wrong. Dr. LEWD Super Lewd still looks great. Really liked how CKR drew Wane so gave her most of his. Tried to remember Ostarion's early jaw injury throughout and Build's despite him not appearing in much art. They were both actually given early injuries as a holdover of the idea of having the Brawl winner lose an arm at the start but still win, but being the Skeleton King changed that idea so I went for jaw damage that stuck around and sort of kept it with twisted arm Build (who got it twisted instead of broken so his belt wasn't useless). For Skeleton Brawlers image near the end, just drew the most interesting/recognizable ones. Considering adding something that was nominally a more normal Brawler shape, but you wouldn't be able to recognize it then unless I gave it clothes or something!

Brawler was a weird word this year. Kept alternating if it was capitalized or not. Made the odd Blog Brigade typo a few times, mixed up Ronnie and Rennie's name, weeded out the Ibuki/Izumi swaps I believe, and never spelled Globglogabgalab wrong once! Partly because you have to think about the name while writing it! Another thing: was really happy with Ostarion's victory music for being so triumphant and strong. Included "tasty" as the song the four mantises play for Brilliant Kid because... I like that song :V Youtubed "opossum lullaby" and picked a surprisingly appropriately titled song for that segment.

LISTICLES

Here's a pretty simple section. Just lists of things relevant to the Brawl in one way or another. We'll start with the one you expect and one that you might come back to look at sometime... the BBB Wishlist! Characters I want to see from each user enter the Big Bar Brawl! Of course, being on the list just means they're highly wanted, there are characters I want that won't be on it because I forgot or just didn't feel like pushing the idea after being turned down, faded relevance, etc.... but let's see what's on it!

 SPY
Joshy
HARPY
Xavier
Stella
Garnet
Hansel
Duer
Frankie
Oboro
Cindy
Kirby
IVEL
Deekin
Almaric/Knud
BRINE
Etch
Morgana
Eshe
Eva
Rory
Euryale
Kayle
Famine
Trace
Rin
Iodine
BREE
Komachi
Lord Puddington
Sakuya
Sonia
GOOPERBLOOPER
Baltan/Kauket
Sheryl
Gamble Man
Junko
Tron Bonne
DJ Candy
Patty Wagon
Huge Hermit
X Demolition
Sakura Atari
Succubus Sisters
Samhain
Beheeyem
Viola w/ a Pokemon 
RUBYCHAO
Josuke
Patchouli
JesterChao
Corporal Guy (w/Axem Blue)
Kaede
Funky Cops
Mizuki
Jake Marshall
Tom Turbine
STEELKOMODO
Daniel
Big Bobby
Chatalie
Rain
Shinobiman
Robin
Katsu
Stanley
Alex the Raptor
Wiz and Boomstick
Carol
MLG Toon Link
CORNWIND EVIL
Bluejay
Chastity
Scaeyl or perhaps Embla, one of those kiddos
DELETER
Bubs
Krieg
Scarlett
Rizzrack
DRACO
Parsee
Zakos
Moltar
Rapping Scottie Dog
Vina or Rebecca Sealander
Flu
Borodan
Doctor Demonde
Cloak/Goggles/Armor
M SHEEP 
Wrexer
Drip
Eleven Thirty

A lot of this was lazily copy-pasted over from last year with a few adds and takeaways after some very nice wish fulfillment! Still, I was probably lazier than ever with this thing and that just makes it even more likely I forgot guys, and if you say a guy I'll probably be like "oooo that's a good guy!" This is an idea list to help you more than a comprehensive list of guys.

For our next list, something new! Each post in the Brawl has a name in my notes, usually just to help segment them so it's not a long list of undivided KOs. I've mentioned the funny names in the past, but let's just put them all out there even if some don't actually line up with the posts they're describing. There's 34 Brawl posts total, and here are their names!

BRAWL STARTS
First Kills
Aboard the Ark
Interrupting Big Battles
Big Boys ByeBye
Cleaning Out Weirdos
Many Groups
Alternate Brawl
Little Guys, Old Rivalries
Big and Small
Kaiju and Et Tu
Disney Joins
A Little Cleanup
Kidding Around
Seaside
Here Comes The Smooze!
Simpler Fites
Night's Coming
Revenges
Kill the Forces of Nature
Downs and Ups
Unexpected and Expected
Cuties Killed
Hate and Bugs
Deb and Doc
#NOBIAS
Nearing the Last Part
Putting Us Towards Top 10
Final 10
Final 8?
Sorry Chao
Final Four
Final Two
Epilogue

As you can see, mostly somewhat practical, straightforward, or vague. Some likes Revenges refer to nothing, there's no revenge in that post for some reason despite the name. Must have been named when I had older plans for it or something. #NOBIAS is the post where Rachel kills two people and it's the only KOs, but that was done as a quirk of standings, trying to make our fourth place person have a good batch of kills since she got so high and a few things lining up to make it turn out that way by accident. I would have divided it better if I didn't think it was funny to totally play into my outspoken love for the character, but really, I tried not to give her too much attention while also balancing that fourth place isn't a spot a chump gets. Sorry Chao got its name for being the post that kills his favorite Sheepchar Jeffery and has his own last-standing character, Eggerman, meet his end. Another quirk of the late game this Brawl, placements making it hard to justify cutting that one up different. I will note BRAWL STARTS is the actual first post just in case you thought that was me being cute and leading into the list.

For another list, here's a highlight reel of things I searched for either on google or Youtube while doing Brawl research, with brief explanations in parenthesis if need be. Not including them all, it would be boring no doubt, but here's a few.

SEARCH LIST:
disney referee
jeff the ref (was wondering if I should swap Kap out for a disney referee at some point, didn't seem like many good options. Jeff the Ref... is from Club Penguin, the only one the disney wiki had to offer :V)
do bubbles make water colder
is it colder deeper underwater (had to confirm suspicions for Aimiko's death)
vibrating bees kill
(various searches to remember the word Czech Hedgehogs for Oda)
battra larva tusk (wondered if anyone else referred to them as such)
cinderella man
book about boxer (trying to find books for Globglogabgalab)
most powerful character in novel (a dead end, hit on Azathoth as the OHSHIT glob option)
jojo menger sponge (researching for Dominguez's death)
list of ice cream flavors (why garlic ice cream ever entered the brawl at all)
nilmates (hard to keep track of how much of a body he has)
computer innuendo
robot innuendo (when Sam and Max find robot bees, it was originally raunchier :V)
gun sports
ski sport with gun
biathlon (confirming the name for when Jeffery got a gun)
leaf blower hardware (confirming hardware for Rachel)
pokemon construction moves (Amikyu disguise maybe?)
(many kinnikuman characters from the dead Asuraman drew on)
tiger suplex
powerbomb
lariat
lariat wrestling
power bomb wrestling
kinniku driver
dragon suplex
superman punch (I don't know wrestling :V)
asura vajra entanglement
astarte persona
opossum diet
battra becomes imago
battra becomes moth
meen turns into chipmunk
disney parks finding nemo
disney parks finding nemo submarine voyage
anti-disney song (This Isn't Disneyland was found right there)
disney hq
Prier magic (what a search this apparently is. La Pucelle needs better FAQs)
summon nushi
la pucelle monster training
la pucelle monster guide (at least it had a good faq for this, but hard to find)
emperor scorpion venom
can scorpions drown (reminds me of the ol' "Can This Character Bleed?" common FYM question)
do you wear rosaries (I remembered you didn't but wondered if sometimes it was okay for BSM to do)
chiggers
chiggers jump
german candy
german candy dickmann
800 kg in pounds
goats
napalm
how is napalm used in war (wanted delivery method accurate)
mutton
goat meat (I wanted a better name for it)
now that's what I call Shrek (completely unrelated to Brawl, but it exists, go look)
imperium weapons
windmill kick
rabbit punch (not what I imagined it was at all, this is why there's so many double checks during Brawl writing!)
kamen rider build drill crusher finisher
kamen rider build vortex finish
voltech break kamen rider
kamen rider build rose
platter of brownies
scorching ray
la pucelle holy magic
ophelia chill
foam fingers
human hand gloves
bum-bo
bum-bo game
warrior fighting oni
oni blood
scan pulse metroid
fire jutsu blazing slash
rugby
rugby ball
bolter
bolter minigun
spewer game
the end is nigh game console ed mcmillen
belt sander
belt sander on metal
how dangerous belt sander
belt sander danger
belt sander as a weapon ( I wanted that KO!)
dance moves
fortnite dance moves gif
mr. moo la pucelle
la pucelle hippo
pirate launcher kamen rider build
horse body chart (relevant during Eggerman vs. Rainbow Dash, making sure horse's chest is in the right spot)
falling back head hold wrestling
ddt gif (I might finally remember what a DDT is after this!)
sam and max inventory items
sam and max lou
we didn't start the fire lyrics
we've got to move these refrigerator lyrics
hardware store lyrics (I believe I was trying to make Max emptying his inventory into a song at one point)
fibia
tibia
arm bones
using drill underwater
underwater torch cutter
vice
vice grip
skeleton in spanish
wrestling moves carry
ken burns
fruity german drink
fret guitar
mechanic scooter for under cars (my balking at the name came up in the pre-fite show!)
pet fish in bag in tank (making sure this wasn't a weird family thing)

A lot of looking up images of characters for art omitted, repeated searches, wiki crawls... hopefully you found some of this amusing or interesting, just something I can share with you guys!

Also, while not quite a list, I'll give what my hypothetical votes might have been. I felt tempted to vote moreso than most years, whether that speaks to the strength of the roster of the voting period (although there was tons of great effort this year, perhaps one of the best for it!) or what is up for debate, but the characters I might have voted for, in no particular order, would have been: Eggerman, Rachel, Dr. LEWD, Ibuki, I.M. Meen, Walter, Hanz, and for sponsorship, my girl Tomiko of course! Might not be totally accurate to what I thought at the time, but this was at least close to it I think. The first five I'm sure of.

THE PRE-FITE
Disney 411 as the Pre-Fite Show was decided before a lot of the other Disney elements for this Brawl. It taught me what 411 means back when it was on T.V. and the little jingle stuck in my head well beyond its lifespan, so when I had to figure out how to do it this year, I decided to borrow that framework since it was already about the behind the scenes of Disney stuff. I didn't remember too much about it specifically besides the jingle, format, and a female presenter, the one who I later discovered is Monica. There were other hosts but none of them grabbed me like Monica, but for anyone making Doki Doki Literature Club comparisons between Monica and Monika, you should know I would have used this young lady no matter what her name was! She's a real person so if she was Hannah or Clarissa or whatever, that would have been the girl we got to know during the pre-fite show period.

Monica's weirder traits weren't always part of her, but I feel they match this Brawl pretty nicely. With Funny taking us to different dimensions, Ophelia's history changing, MAGIC in a dream world... I was worried some people might not be able to keep track of the action or odd changes to it, especially when we had two Dominguezes on screen and such. But, with this being a sort of "WTF is going on" Brawl, the slowly emerging idea to make Monica off was cemented. I wanted her to be comedic of course, popping up at odd times with the DISNEY 411! musical sting, but it was the scene with Oda and Overview where I decided something was downright unusual about her. Blocking the shots with the 411 arrival was a fun idea I didn't want to drop, and Monica got slowly weirder from there as I planned more pre-fite show stuff. We are never told Monica is working with a camera, something that contrasts with Chester and his brief Disney 365 segment that I added partly because I happened to find the 365 segment during 411 research but also just for a change of pace from the same image slapped all over the posts, although that image repetition was part of the jokes. Monica herself, I wasn't sure if people would pick up on her weirdness if I was too subtle, so I turned a few cranks up and put in a bit more explanation of her situation than originally planned. Wasn't sure if people would like or hate her, but people wanting to fite her or see her die was never really planned. She's a presenter with no skills outside her strange movement and she never does actually touch anyone quite deliberately. Not everything should be explained about her, but she was doing this because she likes doing it, she was into the blood and murder because so are we, the viewers, and some of her statements were meant to hint more that she's essentially been let out of the cage for this and wants to stay out, rather than go back to stasis afterwards. The scene in the Brawl where we get the hint she's free is meant to wrap her up, although I won't say exactly what happened to her after. Good end at least. I did briefly consider having her slide back to do commentary just to give people a bit more time with her after freeing her, but at the same time, I wasn't sure if people would like to see her, it was a bit too pre-fite showy, and the commentary was more a last year thing and I didn't want to force it.

Disney 411 was also a decent way of connecting disconnected posts so the pre-fite show wasn't too long. Dividing them with clear numbers wasn't done like usual and it didn't seem to cause any issues, and Monica made a note where we're nearing the end, so that may free up the format in the future for more experimentation.

As for the pre-fite show itself, I feel like this year I was a lot less coy about setting things up. Not everyone got a super important moment, but we got nothing like Dovetail's pre-fite show or things like Ice Bear doing nothing. FUN FACT ABOUT ICE BEAR THOUGH. He was going to facilitate the Disney invasion! Yup. He was going to want revenge on Gino for his poor performance last year, wanting to give it another wack and leave a better impression by taking down as many people as he could. In the original draft of the Brawl while assigning KOs, Gino was originally only set to KO Ice Bear... but when Ice Bear was removed and I realized that Gino was only set to kill one guy, I made some adjustments. Really, I just felt bad Ice Bear got so buried and I thought "former brawler back for revenge" seemed a cool angle, but it didn't fit with Disney at all. I even considered have the characters acknowledge that Ice Bear was from a different company, but I went with not using him at all and having Swifty be the one who sort of inspires the Disney Invasion. This was pretty much the only chance to do it though or else it would be too far gone, but it felt a complicating factor with no ties to anything else.

Back to pre-fite in general, there's always a temptation to, after the fact, say something like "God Neptune's part of the pre-fite shows that they won't be trying to plunder!" but I think that's me justifying something that no one suspected, although clearing the air on the "God" part is kind of useful anyway with so many religious entries. But! I'll try not to do that justifying and instead point out direct actual moments of hinting! Less red herrings than usual! Pseudo-alliances out the wazoo! Let's take a look!

Rainbow Dash and Veronica would be sharing the sky in the Brawl but I didn't want to slam them together. Previous Brawl had Zargeesh and Starscream playing around up there too much. But also... the more I thought about Rainbow Dash's gimmick for this year... the less it seemed different. She's been doing the whole "brash, asserting her victory" thing for a long time, so I tried to pull that back and reverse it, RD going for big threats and all instead of heeling it up. Phoenix I also wanted to establish he wouldn't be going for proving himself fully, while Veronica I kind of left as is. Big egos are fun but for returning guys, let's spin them a bit differently. Originally, Aldebaran was going to say something and Monica would say the same thing and Aldebaran was going to wonder if Monica was ignoring him or what, but it didn't work out. Sam and Max with Koroku was more to make dog jokes, but I guess we showed Max's inventory and that Koroku needed calming or his rune got out of control.

Funny and Skeleton King is a straight up hint at their confrontation. I wanted Funny to come off as obviously scheming something and that seems to have got across, but it ended up that Funny accidentally gave what he promised but didn't get to kill the big threat that is Ostarion in the altverse. Walter I wanted to acknowledge Sacraments and Mother before Brawl so they weren't out of the blue, Dr. LEWD... was just fun :V Kaleido, I guess just a peek at her behavior and the agents in her ear.

The Call-Outs post was definitely mainly for saying "Yes, we get Tiger vs. Asuraman no matter what. Here's why they don't like each other if you haven't read up." Barbara was a bit of fun, Ettie I wanted to give a preview of her behavior and quirk and Myra her protectiveness. 365 was all about Ophelia's changes. People left a few things up for me to decide to have a bit of fun, so that mystery was a great way to make Ophelia's history changing a bit more interesting. Hanz and opossum were just kind of there admittedly, but MAGIC and Swarm got their changes, Dominguez shows he cares about them too much... originally, Meen was going to try and alter Opossum himself but get bit for it, but I liked holding off the Opossum's aggression for literally just the bugs, that way Hanz can bring him back as the hissing realistic creature he is... although I put the booze there to acknowledge some people thinking that was Opossum's weapon :V

Training! Mostly exists for explaining Duer, Labrys, and Gonzy, their discussion on embracing their negative powers. Federation Force was meant to hint more at how things would fall apart even though they were training. James's self-focused minefield tactic, Lyle and Maurice going down first and doing poorly during pair training. The formation of Game Boys and the goat team are fairly obvious explanations, although I did the streaming set-up for a break from 411 again. Was hesitant to hint at Robo-Knack but I figure it better to straight up say it's something that could happen than sit coyly on it since people might have forgot it otherwise. The start button thing also plays into me embracing people's ideas and suggestions more this Brawl instead of trying to specifically subvert them or look for other match-ups. Swarm vs. Opossum, the start button for Robo-Knack, and so much more all drawn on things people pointed out since you can only subvert so many times. Would rather give people some expected stuff that makes them happy than avoid it and leave them wanting it. A real pleaser, this Brawl was meant to be!

The post with Gods and such was probably the most reworked. Could have gone on really long if it hadn't been tooled up and tightened. Getting all the religious conflict in there for FSM vs. BSN, Priere was kinda there though, and Bob and Jim were just there so Octavious could glower at them and again, indulge a pre-Brawl idea of Jim vs. Octavious that I tried to handle intelligently instead of GRRRGRAWLHATEVAMPARS! Octavious knows it's an issue he has and tries not to let it control him, instead seeing it as a direction of attack to avoid that weighing them down later. Arr, well, I wanted to acknowledge his interdenominational joke more in the Brawl but couldn't think of a spot, so we got this part of the show instead. Dawnlings and Build were a fairly obvious show to make, made sure to establish Build could handle water for the finale, acknowledged Oda and Overview's requested rivalry. The Off the Hook concert was again, about loose alliances. Ibuki, Ryuji/Haru, Miu... all fairly obvious for not attacking each other if you read RP but I wanted to cement it, Marina would be on good terms with the team later so I made that part of it, Miu couldn't be present for this one hence the phone call to lock her in, and Toinette... poor Toinette would drop out hard so I wasn't sure what to do with her besides this.

The Inventory was not a name that stuck, partly because it was more an agreement not to mess with each other, but it was useful for my mind to have them lumped together. With so many people who can mess with electronics around, I had to explain why they worked together sometimes, ignored each other others, and had battles that weren't basically an endless scrabble for parts off each other. It almost got way too big I think, considering Miu connects with Ibuki, hence the bad phone call aspect of it. Some like Deb were there despite not having that angle because they would be a big target, and Tomiko... well, I didn't know where to put her besides with Rachel who she already had a pseudo-alliance with. Tinkering was never really in the cards for her really, but Rifa was going to be there and Rachel was a good connection to her and... you see how this spiderwebs out, right? Meeting the big boys up wasn't about alliances really, although Izumi and Trash get along so that I can remove some of the big targets from Izumi's crosshairs. Stan wanting to squish Fairy set-up, and originally, Monica would have really tried and lied to get everyone present to hate each other and give big flashy fites. Instead, she just bills them as a lot more violent then they are. Wanted to establish Nyx wouldn't be sleeping til I needed her too, although I threw in Nyx dozing during the Brawl after I realized... people wanted that!

Blob Brigade was much simpler. Expand the alliance, get some information on their tactics and powers out there... Amikyu doesn't use any of the disguises shown here to save the more interesting ones for Brawl, but I did consider initially having the Brigade deliberately try to copy Amity imitating rejected Secret Fiters in her Brawl. Amikyu disguises of the secrets could have been fun, but Kobber disguises I felt was even moreso and we still got our cameos. Also explained why Ash hadn't joined them and went with Knack instead. Not sure the Blob Brigade will even be acknowledged ever again after this Brawl, but it was a cute way to ally a group. Under the Sea we had a scene with water brawlers, again giving us a good alliance of Jaws and Puddlenaut since they'd both love the water and I didn't want them at each other's throats the whole time just like our fliers. Aimiko was good to establish her powers and mindset, reason for Brawling and all. We didn't have much info before then so I hope BookSnipe approves. Dmitri was originally going to be putting weapons or something on the ocean floor when we found them, but I decided against it and integrated his interest in the Siren music instead. And lastly we had the arena post, establishing how the arena works, the the bubble generators are breakable, getting the Disney stuff in there, sort of went over it all earlier. Kap didn't get a picture this year sadly, our last year with this ref, but I'm glad people liked his little moment during the Brawl where he just casually gets ready for the flood. Him and Jeffery interacting during Brawl and pre-Brawl was fun to write even though it was small. Also, wasn't sure how to spin Monica saying goodbye in case people didn't like her. Edits during posting time often crop up in things like that, changed it a little I recall.

All in all, very functional despite some characters getting less to do. At least there were no absolutely useless posts or anything, or big hints that had no pay-off. In the heat of the Brawl things like Arr donating to Gods don't need to be addressed really, especially since the donations were sort of dismissed. Mostly happy that Monica made it memorable, some Brawls where we have just cameras or whatever I feel the pre-fite show slips away from memory. It is more important as set-up for things we'll see in the Brawl, but it's nice to have an element that makes it stand out as well.

THE CHARACTERS
 Here's the part of the blog where I take a look at every entrant briefly and give my thoughts! Gonna try and keep it brief actually, we'll see if that holds up, but I won't skim away any interesting things I want to say. It just means I won't preoccupy myself with saying you guys are all great and have great characters, since I said that here, so let's move on and take a look at you guys and your entrants!

BY STARTING WITH ME!

JUMPROPEMAN
Selecting my characters for this Brawl was pretty easy, with only the fourth slot ever in question. I almost put in Ezra for his potential to use broken weapons in interesting ways, that being, making them work again, but his normal posts already have a lot of description and just like Lauren long ago, I wasn't too sure about how to make him die. Sure, Ezra isn't immortal, but it would take something harsh to kill him and in RP, he was generally being set up as a rather nice, amicable fellow. Didn't even have him bet at the betting corner since he might not be all that into it, despite expressing some interest in Brawling early in the year. His spot ended up going to the three I worried I couldn't get away with: STAN, HEFF, AND WOOSTER. Team entries were a bit out of control this year in general (more pairs getting equal billing instead of Entry/Assist rather than teams like Fed Force which are totally cool), but I wasn't sure about ol' Fitemaster himself doing one. Heff is basically dead weight for the team though, and none of these three really are the best fiters on their own for strength reasons or personality reasons. I almost considered goofiness like Wooster declaring Stan and Heff his weapons and them trying to pass as clubs, taping them together with the excuse they have to join since they're conjoined... I just did it in the end. Despite being from Winnie the Pooh in real life, in RP I'm trying not to acknowledge that connection, hence why Disney didn't care about them... plus, Disney probably doesn't even remember they own these characters from like, two episodes of the Pooh cartoon. Combatwise, Wooster was just a big punchy guy to go toe to toe with others, Stan there to do some mean things that needed doing. Killing Fairy was a question until I thought up Stan's angle to try and get a big caterpillar on their side. Heff was, as he should be, pretty useless ultimately, although it would have been nice to see more stretchy powers, but they placed too low for it. Didn't want Wooster in a situation where you'd feel too bad for him since he and Heff are softies, but I think fiting a kaiju kind of cleans anyone's hands of meanness. Team entrant also meant they all had to die early, so no fun lingering weirdness of something like Heff adrift without his brothers. KNACK... oh poor little Knack. No support, despite how far he came last year from trying to get everyone's love to accepting he needs to earn it. Guess he still has to! After seeing the suggestion that Ash had a start button, Knack 3 moment was locked in. Robo-Knack is definitely meant to be intimidating and stronger than other Knacks, mostly just because his design is much more ferocious, intense, and well... is better designed than regular Knack! He got more writing during the rise and fall of Knack section, and while Gooper made an amazing picture for it, the joke still had to remain that Knack got big and then he got trounced so easily. Blue Knack and Robo-Knack didn't get kill pics because they were summons, but they made for a great way to get brawlers busy before their time to really shine later on! I kind of expected to get to make some crazy combinations of Knack in the arena, but his low low placement meant we got the rushed version and no KOs. Had he made it further, maybe we could have seen something truly insane, but I'm okay with the drop off, especially since it will help his little plot! JAWS has been waiting for his day to Brawl for years, so naturally during his comeback year he'd get to have his go. Wondered if Jaws alone was okay, gave him the umbrella as a joke but almost had him bring Gefilte just because. Gefilte is really REALLY useless in a fite though, worse than Peter, so he would have just come to die. Jaws instead just has the perfect arena to go full shark, no year was better for waterbound entrants so the comeback for Jaws was done at a good time. Didn't expect him to get so high in the ranks though! He really does just have all the powers of a shark so having him do too much could get repetitive, but hopefully I spaced him well and the fact that entry to the water meant harassment from those in it always meant we'd keep getting a look at him until his fall. Almost didn't have many places for his personality to shine, but pre-fite and the Dmitri moment at least got an acceptable amount in. Umbrella kinda got tossed aside due to how much of the fiting was underwater though, didn't need a distraction or physics worries. TOMIKO was my entrant that I was hoping would go far, and she did decent. I don't know, I just like the spunky little kappa a lot, but I tried to keep her from dominating scenes she was in by keep her mouth closed save the moments it fits to speak up, like saying the expected I'M WALKING ERE joke that basically set up why Kiibo-tank was the one to kill her. I set up the gloves to be a little realistic with the fingers pressed emphasized in RP, but in fite-writing that stuff just kinda becomes "tomi activates sharskin mode" for brevity's sake. She'll get over her 34th place soon enough, but I think she got a few good fistfites in despite being incredibly limited against soooooo many opponents. Had she gone far, it might have been hard to keep her competitive with opponent's she couldn't shock, burn, scrape, or flashbang! Phoenix rivalry was just a fun bit of color after ivel emphasized Phoenix beating Nitori, I thought flipping it would be cute. Vykarius never came up because no one was really "plugged in" this year in a way where it could be relevant. 

DELETER
Our champion user! Although I had pegged perhaps an ivel win this year or our first repeat, the tractor not only gave a new user the spot, but set up a wonderful finale between the two twin brothers, one that even worked with completely removing the arena to make it a finale completely underwater! Seeing SKELETON KING get top spot, I didn't need long to think up that epilogue. Skeleton King's mix of intimidating presence and goofiness mad it easy to give him an "it's good to be the king" ending, although I did waver on how much I wanted to do there. Can't make him too powerful or play up his villainy too much, and trying to not make him a total villain since he is reformed was perhaps the thing I thought about most during the Brawl besides his jaw injury. During the finale, I almost had Skeleton King break apart a third time but come back from it, just to really make it seem like he wasn't going to win for a second, but I kept what Del outlined and even had the two fall aparts earlier to make the final confrontation more tense. Had I left even one in the chamber, than the final fite wouldn't have as high stakes as you'd expect him to come back together! It was a bit hard to sit on Skeleton Brawlers until the end though. We've had plenty of reanimation in the Brawl: year 1's zombies, year 2's zombies, we had Zook, but it has kind of faded enough that this still packs an impact and made for something dramatic for Build to overcome despite losing. Despite giving Sam, Max, and Nilmates their personalities as skeletons, it's fairly standard necromancy, hence why no one else had theirs and also so I could keep speeding through the scene.I know Sheep expected Ostarion and Jeffery to potentially be at odds, but it just felt like Ostarion would be bros with him unless directly opposed. Bonebros.Skeleton King is definitely a good champion though. What wasn't so good was TOINETTE dropping out so early I couldnt' really do much with her. I wanted to find a use for that addicting fruit power and I kind of tried to squeeze in as much of her stuff as I could before I had to pop her. I know she had an iron weakness and probably could have used Hanz to do it, but the bees blasting her apart seemed a less potentially humiliating defeat and the fact they are metal is probably why I so quickly thought of them for doing it, even though I am secretly glad I didn't have to bother with distinction between steel and iron effectiveness on the fairy. Probably would have let Del bring Toinette back earlier if I didn't need her down for Asuraman to steal an arm. Kind of not sure how tall Toinette is exactly, so I avoided another thing there in that Overview and her fought at range mostly. Was able to avoid Toinette being done in by her flirtiness too to try and lessen the sting of an early loss. Things like that and Nyx's laziness were definitely avoided as a contributing factor to a loss. RYUJI AND HARU Made it a fair bit deeper into the Brawl. They were a team entry so I could kill either first, and the temptation was of course there to let Haru shine more, but I subverted my initial inclination to let the boy shine instead. Besides, it let me put the Town Burner grenade launcher down so that we could get more close combat, but Haru still used it to great effect before death. Here, balancing Persona usage was probably a big thing, not just having them pop in every time we see them. We basically got a big moment for both of their Personas, although having the wiki open lead to me almost doing something, double checking and seeing I was wrong about a skill, and rewriting quite a bit. SAM AND MAX were a lot of goofy fun and made it surprisingly far. I had a huge Sam and Max kick... I believe around 2012. Played the TellTale games, watched every episode of the show, but I didn't play Hit the Road sadly but I now at least own it and can get to it someday. Of course, a pair with banter and jokes is fun to use but the temptation to use them too much is always there. They got little cameos before their fites to be silly still. Their mind control resistance came up quite a bit surprisingly, partially because of the Smooze, partly because of Jeffery's stick meaning Max couldn't go bonkers holding it. Figuring out just what their inventory contains was an important question, it mostly ended up being stuff meant for a gag so that the reader wasn't asked to keep track of too much or just figured Sam and Max could do anything if I decided they could. The adventure game battle with Briggs was, of course, fun to write, and I sort of concocted the weapons on the fly instead of preplanning them for maximum oddness. I don't think Barbara even had much of a way back into the Brawl before the wallet idea (She was going to pop out of a picture on Glob's kindle originally, I think). They were definitely fun to have and fun to write and sticking around a while ensured I got to do a lot with them so I don't feel like I wasted their potential. Max outlived Sam in the end because of their high placement. Sam going noir mode didn't really fit with his company, so Max going crazy seemed better for such a high spot. One annoying thing: I kept calling Max the proper "rabbity thing" in Word but it always autocorrected it. I fixed some of them in posting but no doubt it's inconsistent now. Max's inventory jokes were of course references to old Sam and Max titles, with Lou being the needed one to give Jeffery another sports kill.

STEELKOMODO
Our second place user, finally shaking off his fourth place curse! If that was a thing. KAMEN RIDER BUILD came with quite a few odd considerations. First of all, despite being a reploid, I wasn't quite sure how human SK wanted to write him. I basically erred on the side of him being as advanced as reploid ever get in the Mega Man X series, assuming that he has metal in his body as well the ability to survive underwater. Even if he didn't, I at least said Build was "set" for underwater in pre-fite, and the warp metal skill Agatha uses on him... well, luckily that wasn't an issue in the end thanks to SK confirming metal insides during his hospital stay! I definitely spent quite a while on Kamen Rider wikis looking up various skills and finishers, hence why we saw things like the Rose finisher (although I tried not to pull on FullBottles that weren't confirmed in Build's posession to avoid stepping on plot toes). Still, he got to do quite a few little tricks with his weapons, although I definitely had a preference towards the 4-panel ninja blade for its versatility and the Drill Crusher for being a drill. Build definitely took a bit to get steam in the narrative, but I tried to get him on par with the Skeleton King before their final duel so that you couldn't tell either way who was going to win. Hesitated to call him Vent like I often hesitate to call any costumed hero by their real name, but it mostly crops up when it actually refers to his personality more than powers, like when talking with his family. I tried to look up videos of the finisher moves and we got the whirlpool one during the duel at the end because it was so perfect after seeing it, but mostly I had to run on what the wiki single images showed. I know I mentioned it earlier, but Build's arm getting broken was a holdover of the idea of the winner of the Brawl receiving permanent damage early on, but I had to keep it functional or some of Build's neater tricks would be off the table. If this is the last year of Riders as SK has said it might be, they certainly made a splash here before leaving! KINNIKUMAN TIGER, despite some votes bigging him up, ended up low on the ladder, but it at least let me get in the destined battle with Asuraman without the worries of having to come up with what happened to Kinnikuman Zebra. Would have been awkward if he won it all too because finding that information would be a perfect epilogue, or at least a hint or something. Still, I tried to integrate Tiger's move list of course and had to the inevitable wrestling research to try and keep it accurate. Not sure if there was much scrapped for him since he became pretty Asuraman rivalry focused and the results sometimes come before ideas. PEARL AND MARINA, or Off the Hook if you prefer, was again a case of me going against my natural inclination for who survives of a two-man team. I prefer Pearl, but I put her out first to give Marina a focus, and since team entries means free bodies for lower placing fiters, Pearl got put on the chopping block pretty early. During Pre-Fite Show I considered having them sing one of their actual songs but didn't want to go with the obvious one or a potential spoiler for Splatoon 2. The Autobombs were fun and cute, probably the weapon besides the Inkjet I felt I could get away with making it incredibly effective since these weapons were noted as not being jailbroken. Octobrush would have to get creative to kill, and while that's not out of the picture, their targets oddly ended up being mostly mechanical or people in armor. Tried not to whip out their super moves just because I could, Marina needing time between both Inkjets. Also made sure to emphasize their squishiness after Callie and Marie didn't really touch on it much last year, mostly by running Pearl over, surviving hammer hits, and Marina needing a shot from a power missile after the more image-friendly crash before her death. Even told CKR she could draw either version of it before just saying "do the crash, it looks cooler than a power missile to the butt". Didn't actually say that, because otherwise we would have got a power missile to the butt guaranteed! And last we have BARBARA who I grew pretty attached to during the art phase. I don't know, she was just fun to draw, and even CKR captures her well in the one pic I had her do of her. Tried to keep her comprehensible during the Brawl since the incomprehensibility was just a pre-fite joke, and I worried after having fun with her fiting Viki that we'd have Clippy/Wids lost in the city style thing, but the long Brawl and her early return hopefully avoided that. I was very happy with myself for using her portrait hopping partly because people wondered if it would even be relevant, but between that and a stretchy axe, I tried to emphasize her odder and less seen powers while not focusing solely on them. She still gets crazy with the axe like a proper barbarianess. She may not have placed high, but she was definitely fun to have here in the Brawl and didn't feel like she missed out on her potential.

SPY
Last year's champion dropped a bit, but I still feel JIM AND BOB didn't crash quite as hard as Silence did, partly because it was very clear who they had to fite and how that was going to go down. Jim and Octavious, another battle I wanted to do, also came with a supporting cast, meaning Jim and Bob could both land kills before croaking and they had to be ganged up on to be taken down. Jim's spells were interesting and I definitely wanted to use them before he was killed, although I made sure the fun death method of aging to death had an immediate out said afterward because people seem to really stick to making things difficult if you don't specify a kill has some way out of it, despite our efforts with the medical teams and such V: Luka may not have been missed depending on Bree's future plans, but still. Trying to balance Jim with being a vampire and not really ever fiting was interesting, but I'm sure most of you are wondering why I did what I did with Bob. Well, he got his commentary in early, and he actually used it to great effect to stop Ophelia's alterations and I was glad he was there for the weirder early stuff so he could be confused by it. Of course, we all knew Bob wouldn't sit up there the whole time, and while having Jim give running commentary for the Brawl he helped win was nice, repeating the same trick for a second Brawl after they went out early isn't quite as justified. Plus, no way Bob was going to let Jim get killed without trying to help in some way! Rushing in let the champs get more kills and let Octavious's crew do more damage, and while it's always a shame to see a champion drop in the ranks the next year, these two at least didn't feel too similar to how they did last Brawl. Probably the hardest thing about them was trying to keep Jim both an effective vampire fiter and his suave persona, so no hypnotic glare, nothing too crazy-all-over-the-place, and he never went feral or anything. I actually worried he might not have a sun weakness at one point since vampire rules change so much! AMIKYU was a bit more straightforward, although despite being a Ghost I didn't full invalidate "normal" or "fighting" hits on it. The disguise is certainly a material connection to this world but if they touch the ghosty part, that's the one it would have passed through. Amikyu's disguises were all about me trying to take big Kobber names and come up with Pokemon moves for them. Jonesy was obvious with flamethrower, Zephyrus with gust, but the one I was proudest of was Cauren with Growth. Was almost tempted to make disguises too capable with having multiple moves but I reined myself in to stay accurate. I was surprised a bit when I wanted Amikyu to run faster but couldn't think of many Kobber speedsters, hence Sonic Man getting a mention despite not being on par with the fame of other Kobbers represented, and the Erebus disguises was used for the Jeffery distraction so that I wouldn't have to think of what move he could have while still name-checking someone huge in our history. More was said about this little dude up in pre-fite stuff, but "dude" reminds me... I didn't know Amikyu's gender :V So it's mostly an it save where I might have slipped up. I bet someone can point it out easily but sometimes you just lose track of stuff in the shuffle. Blob Brigade kept Amikyu around in a lot of posts even though it only got the kill using its Z-Move, although I did hesitate in using it because that's sort of "that's out of the way" to make people suspect it can die now. Disguise ability was probably the hardest thing to consider, since having new outfits should mean it reactivates, right? Didn't effect things too much but it's one of those back of the brain considerations. HARVEST got put together with the kaiju dudes, but of the ones we got, it was probably the one that best matched the whole "ganged up on by smaller guys". Some Harvest stuff took some figuring out, like how it would react to the electrical pylon damage (I even had to get Spy to clarify it wasn't remote controlled due to rules considerations) and then there were things like... nanomachines are really powerful! The armor is super strong, I almost wanted to break the claw with Labrys but couldn't due to its noted durability. I had him harvesting of course, but nothing besides metal plating and armor because of size differences and the one target who could have given him something useful, Trash, going much further. Eggerchef too maybe but he went even further! I wavered on if calling him Envoy or Cancerian were acceptable substitutes to avoid saying HARVEST HARVEST HARVEST, but it was done sparingly and wasn't done without proper context to assuage my own worries. Looking back at the image to get a biological reminder definitely happened quite a bit, particularly with the legs and tail. ASH brought with him a lot of little summons that popped in and out. Ash himself, I tried to do his platforming thing when I could, but the weight was definitely to be carried by his buddies. Despite being from an unreleased game, Bum-Bo became a huge hitter, partly because he was a hitter and he had the item variety. Meat Boy, because he's sort of Ash with legs, didn't get seen as much despite the obvious temptation to get more of that little guy in the Brawl without an official entry. Steven shows up, but even in a Brawl full of what the fuck moments, taking people to another dimension wasn't shown, just mentioned. Partly because of fite rhythm though, we were focusing on the important part while Steven stalled when he used the power. Spewer was definitely the one I had a lot of fun with just because I have fond memories of the game and when it came out, even seeing kids in class play it once upon a time. Azazel died early during the Knack stuff so he wasn't destined to do much after I decided he'd appear at that section of the Brawl. Their summon nature made it a bit difficult to keep track of who is around or not, but it also wasn't important so if they were here one time and gone another, they probably were easily poofed and would pop in when the game cart acted up again. Breaking Ash's T.V. made me wonder if that was okay, but it felt it had to be done to get the game characters out of the running with Ash's imminent death. Plus... I'm pretty sure Spy couldn't have expected it to survive. MEEN AND OPHELIA... what a team! First of all, the twerk picture was described earlier, but Ophelia sticking around that long was partly to keep her history alterations that had stuck around, but also to keep Meen as a sort of distracting factor for people not in the big focused battles yet. The idea of her altering history to keep him around was a fun one that I couldn't resist, even if it didn't pay off with another kill or anything. Meen's intentional grammar errors got more attention than typo fixing I wager, although they were harder to make subtle than expected. You don't want to lose track of the meaning because of them. His teleportation, I wish I had been more imaginative with, but describing each one could slow the action down. Vague magical powers also meant he probably could have done more but I don't feel I underutilized him... and Ophelia definitely got put through her paces. History alteration out the wazoo, with me slipping in a Secret Fiter reference since I had run out of spots elsewhere, tons of little goofy ideas, and some surprising combat uses grew naturally out of it. Ettie being pegged as perfect for disrupting them meant Myra and Meen were destined to meet. Ophelia also tries to play up her kind granny persona like she did with the Kobbers at first, but I didn't play these two as too sympathetic I hope. I mean, not totally evil or anything, but they were still tricky old people who died fairly easily when things caught up to them finally.

BREE
Let's kick off Bree's section with IZUMI the incredibly powerful oni! My main worry with Izumi was her activities while not in focus. We had plenty of big kaiju and heavy hitters to keep her busy of course, we even saw her struggling to fite Nyx at one point and we can assume Battra or the like can walk off some of the injuries she gave them, but it still feels like when someone says "can throw a mountain" that you can't express that perfectly without them always in the focus. She still definitely showed how powerful she is, and I quite like the image of her hair whipping during battles. The lorekeeper part was, if anything, the less touched on aspect, although she uses it on Jiang to good effect. I looked up a specific oni book and even had a line or two straight from its pages as she tells the story of onis and warriors. "Japanese Demon Lore: Oni from Ancient Times to the Present" if you want me to cite my source! It was partly why I set these two up to fite, although finding the book elucidating on it came after the initial idea of pulling on that lore. I thought crushing shoulders was also a cool subtle way of Izumi breaking it instead of her just, you know, smashing Jiang or something. I know Bree emphasized her appearance being a potential limiter, that being she doesn't want to get her hair cut or clothes ruined, but again, I try to avoid things like that being too big a factor or the character owner will be disappointed it was such a factor quite often. It comes up in small doses, but let's not let it dominate them if we can help it! IBUKI and her dubstep gun. I certainly had fun with who it made dance, using Battra's moves to keep the early central scuffle chaotic and killing Ophelia with it, but perhaps I had it overheat too much to keep it from just making everyone dance the whole time. I almost had Mr. Fish mention it as why Captain EO wasn't needed but forgot while writing, and she was the perfect choice for facing him down even though she couldn't use her gun for it in the end.That little concert, the keytar playing, was definitely one of the first things imagined for the Brawl and felt a good way of doing "big musical thing" that many Brawls have in a different way, since usually musical battles are one sided with people not affected stopping it. Ibuki's physical skill wasn't touched on too much outside the Myra confrontation a bit, partly because we haven't seen too much of it and I didn't want to strain imagination too much with her being uber gymnastic and martial artistic. I mean, I don't have humans flipping about much anyway unless they're really special, so maybe I didn't do too bad there within the bounds of my writing style. OCTAVIOUS and his little gang of stormtroopers slotted in quite well in the standings. Right next to the Smooze so I knew his no-mind-control aspect would be perfect for a fite while Smooze disables most brawlers, and being above Jim made it good for him taking the vampire out as per his dislike of them. I've said a few times already I tried to keep that present but not all-consuming,him trying to remain tactical and level-headed during the affair but slipping at times like when Jim's powers really show. He did score the kill though, but he also recognizes the cost. Unfortunately, against a tide of purple arena-filling goop, tactics of a two person squad can't compete. There was a major temptation to give the three stormtroopers along for the ride a lot of personality, but the Brawl isn't the spot to develop characters a bunch. The pre-fite show almost had a really long chat between them though. Heather got the most focus of the three since that's the one Bree put most of the RP effort into, so she got to outlast the other two and be the one to tangle with Jeffery. It was hard not to lapse into RPing Neil as if he was my own, the memories of Trooper H in the trooper fite surging back, but I kept him under control and even kept away from calling him Trooper H much to avoid it more. Luka was sort of doomed as being the least known of the three, especially with me actively resisting the urge to make a big deal out of some canvases with room to work. I'm glad they placed higher than FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER in the end due to Bree's hope they would, but when you enter something like that in the Brawl, it's an obvious vote magnet for those with a more casual investment. Of course CKR or RainbowDash would vote for it, it's fun and silly and they enter characters like it, but you sometimes get a vote surge because of it that people need to anticipate when they enter guys like this or Lanky Kong. I do of course like these guys, I invite my sisters back every year eagerly, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster was a fun but odd force. I didn't emphasize Neil's Pastafarianism too much since religion didn't come up too fluidly outside of Blind Scorpion Nun's motivations, but the vague godly powers let me do silly things with noodles and sauce. One thing I enjoy is imagining the Brawl arena after the battle, and that means at the end, there was a giant spiral of spaghetti noodles where the tornado spin had wound them up in a big stack. BSN's motivations set her to be the one to fite him and well... some entries you just have to have eaten. Killing it some other way would have felt wrong! The LEWDNESS from it getting its noodles around some our brawl's sexier competitors was again from a pre-brawl idea people had and a perfect segue for Disney to interrupt, with Flying Spaghetti even landing in a fairly decent spot so it wasn't too soon or late.


GOOPER BLOOPER
So... how about that RACHEL, huh? Yeah, my love for the character has developed into a full on joke, and when you hit that point, you have to wonder how much to embrace it. Well, seeing that she got fourth place meant that she'd have to do something big to deserve getting that far, and that's where we get that #NOBIAS post mentioned earlier. She gets two kills as the only person getting kills in that post, but at the same time, she needed them at that point. She was mostly assisting in earlier fites rather than sealing deals but despite that, some people do see the numbers game as a sign of how well they did. I tried to keep her under control most the Brawl, and of course, when handed the hardware power for the first time and given a pretty good outline of what does or does not count, I tried to get creative. We went for obvious stuff like buzzsaws, chainsaw was perfect for facing Walter, but then belt sander was me having a bit more fun. I felt I had to get a ladder in there since it's sort of the "weird" option, but I tried not to just have her toss them about like crazy because she is meant to be somewhat impeded from that. We don't hear about her pulsing head really, but I hope you assumed it was headache central at times! I wanted to make her fly so many times because she's touhou-esque but I kept myself under control and even made sure her sword wasn't underrepresented just because of a cool power set. She was the perfect way to keep YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE's partner Rifa in for the long haul as well. Having fun with Bravely Second's magic spellcrafting is both great in RP and in game, and since Nerd Club is an obvious alliance area, I kept Rifa around for a long time as Rachel's support partly to do more magic junk and partly so Rachel wasn't on the backfoot when hardware wasn't available for generation. Rifa being an assistant gave her benefits, but Your Worst Nightmare did his damndest to make a mark despite another low placement for the robot. I made sure he got a kill of course, but the robot was bound to be broken. Sometimes I forgot his size, almost making him bigger than a car but correcting it in time. The extra tools made him a more interesting combatant this time around, but I still had to give the KO to the old spinning blade. Some things just feel right. Hammer and axe could have got more use but again, time constraints by way of placement. He uses the spear better than even I anticipated until I wrote the scene, although the spear was originally a higher hit when I had the size issues in my head. Sure hope this isn't the last we've seen of the form, although whipping it out again definitely would take something special. Gooper put a lot of work into it! But Spy did for Harvest too, and others put a lot of work in the writing of the entry, so you can never tip it too much in your favor through determination it seems. BATTRA, or Goops continuing to gift the Brawl with kaijus. Didn't want a repeat of Biollante stuff, so it was tons of giant battles here and becoming an immediate focus. Still, despite the attention it gets in writing, Battra got really far and got to throw down with a few giants before he met his end by way of smaller brawlers.  I held onto Imago for quite a while, and I wouldn't even dismiss the idea of a lower placing Battra never using it, but it instead gave the moth a second wind and even let me say "hey, yeah, I acknowledge the Brawl airspace is small now that two tiny brawlers aren't the only ones in it!" I think one reason it was pretty fun to right Battra this time was he was often in the dominant position. Big guys often are reactionary due to being ganged up on, but Battra was going for the KOs much stronger and got more than one and on equal-sized opponents. He wasn't always on the backfoot. Felt a bit bad Fairy was squashed so early since she didn't do much, could have tried to concoct some creative use of its unique senses for things you can't see, but Battra was the main attraction and could do tons of damage without his little buddy. THE SWARM was where I definitely focused on trying to keep as many of them about as possible for longer to show them off better. I knew I wanted the Opossum to clear out a few bugs, keytar a given from the start, but I didn't want to remove the tarantulas entirely and Stag Beetle is too big a deal to chump out. Rhino Beetle was the sacrifice to make it a 3KO, and I'm pretty sure Gooper gave him the driving role as he was the simplest combatwise otherwise. Tarantulas had venom and webs, the mantises had their forelimbs and instruments, and Stag Beetle is the most developed and with the super mode. I do like to highlight the background guys, but again, crowdpleasing year, let the guys they want to see show off do so. Keeping track of super modes was harder than expected, and we almost didn't get the moment during the Captain EO fite where Stag powers up the Eggerchef with super mode until I realized that is totally a kill. I briefly considered Elohim letting a different bug super mode as a joke or maybe some twist like if Stag had died before the others. I never did put on the angry eyebrows, partly because the crate was in such a state near the end and the bugs under constant assault. For the foam fingers' secret, I wavered a lot on what could be inside. Almost had Ophelia make it custard pies underneath, but thought the deception too obvious if that was the case that the bugs wouldn't buy it. I felt bad Widow Maker never even got to try and guide her bugs into realizing the history alteration, but I both wanted Gooper to have a chance to decide if the ticket change in pre-fite hit Wids properly but didn't remember to edit as I focused on posting quickly. Barbed wire underneath originally seemed believable enough while still being good. I know I swing for the absurd often, but these bugs couldn't have attached anything too crazy and it might ruin the appeal of No. 1 Crate to have it packing incredible heat. I wish I could have found a song for the mantis band that matches their instrument layout, but... do any? It's a weird arrangement. Great way to get Stag Beetle in the Brawl and some other "wouldn't it be cute" guys like Five Mantis Band as well.

CHAO
Let's start with EGGERMAN. I was worried for a bit he'd be in his gundam the whole time, not getting to use his muscles for much, but when I put him as the guy to kill Trash, I knew the gundam would go down in the fite, but I was quite pleased with how I sealed that situation off. Eggerman couldn't take Trash in a fist fite, meaning that her wrecking the machine was impossible for him to come back from really... but playing into his villain past was really fun without him going full into it. I also emphasized Mayorman with the pre-fite show, and he was able to use those muscles to good effect on Rainbow Dash, so I feel I managed to cover quite a lot of him and what you'd expect to get from him... partly because he made it so far! Seeing Ready Player One actually helped a bit with understanding the plasma whisk and spatula as you see a gundam plasma blade in that movie, and I was oddly proud of myself for having Eggerman use them like cooking implements on Trash rather than as weapons like he does elsewhere. No reason to mention Eggman here, this was Egger's chance to shine fully! MIU AND KIIBO were certainly a bucket full of potential, but where I went with them was up in the air for a while. I considered things like Kiibo just getting supermegadeathrobot style upgraded, I had an idea of Kiibo's mind being uploaded to the arena's systems to mess with the bubble, but ultimately, he and Miu both were basically scrounging up what the Dawnlings left behind! I half-wondered what to do with Miu after I was sure that Kiibo would get disintegrated and not introduced to new hardware, but Freddy's scythe seemed so effective that even someone with no fiting skill could use it, and Miu tinkering with it made it more her weapon after it became a beam staff of sorts. Miu, along with a few other brawlers, certainly made this my lewdest brawl, and while I tried not to consider the bets and such made before the brawl when writing it to make that more fair, I couldn't forget the "miu loses her top" one. I did shred Miu's clothes but that was on others to decide if it counted, and I totally cranked the meter up on the Miu/Kiibo ship where I could. Kiibo not having full systems access was also done to make him different from the parts he was stealing rather than "here's more Waste". I left his idiot hair antenna at the end just in case he needed to beam out his mind or Chao wanted to say his mind was in there or something, part of why it was disintegration was to give Nyx more of a footprint, but there's a reason there's a KO there and that's because he wasn't coming back from it. FEDERATION FORCE felt like they put in an impressive performance, probably because Chao and others probably wrote them off. I've mentioned some stuff on them in pre-fite so forgive the repetition, but I wanted James around late to better emphasize the most developed member and keep an effective power-set around, although Maurice's shot types were missed quite a bit. K.G. stuck around because he was bit less aggressive and would support James, whereas the other three were obvious targets for anyone attacking. I know pre-fite suggested they were working on working as a team... but "working on it" means you need to work on it. I didn't make them uncoordinated or anything, but they were overwhelmed and lost members for it, working better as a smaller group with easier focus. K.G. being with James also meant that they wouldn't clash much, even though I missed the decoy after saying it was their last one. I hope everyone else will remember the Federation members' names better now. I just saw no point in calling them by color save where I needed name variety, and I definitely remember who is who now. Identifying them as colors really should be phased out in my opinion, just to help cement their identities. I've just touched Other M again now, shame I didn't before so I could integrate game personalities a bit more, but at the same time, I think the Federation Force made an impressive impact in the Brawl despite Chao being willing to write them off. While I enjoyed writing Fed Force for sure, ASURAMAN and his arm gimmick definitely had an odd thrill to it. Keeping track of the arms, making them do different actions, I've mentioned before I like the idea of a multi-arm character using each limb to full effect and I got to tap into that and make it even more varied when he started pulling on the limbs of dead choujin. Brawler limbs, surprisingly, were less interesting to draw on, partly because that point in the Brawl most of the dead brawlers had fairly normal limbs, whereas the choujin had a LEGO limb, an electric one, a metal one... I still got to make tiny arm jokes with Peter and Toinette, but Bob and Tiger ensured it wasn't going to be all duds. Unless he pulled from robots or something weird, Asuraman's brawler arm range was limited in general. Maybe Blind Scorpion Nun? But yeah, mostly a lot of people whose power comes from something special outside limb shape. Spinning the heads around was fun, considering one "dead" essentially after taking more damage but Asuraman having some to spare. Working in his wrestling moves was almost me stepping back and saying "he should do a move, huh" instead of just doing arm fun the whole time. I made sure the ultimate asura buster was present and drawn well for his only KO. I might have lost track of a few arms between posts that Asuraman is, moreso in their exact placement on the body. I had a good mental idea for the most part but I think maybe the LEGO arm moved up or down or something? I tried my best and would probably be able to edit it easily if I slipped up. The blade was almost a bit too much on top of arm fun, but I used it and it let Tiger cut some limbs off to keep things moving. Only regret: not having Asuraman turn into Akuma Shogun's giant arm or something like that. THE ARM MAN BECOMES A BIG ARM! I've also mentioned to Chao that if Asuraman got something like, the win or top two maybe, he would have grown like, a hundred arms out of his back in the ultimate power play, brawler limbs poking out all over and used in crazy ways like sixty making him crawl across the ground or something.

HARPY
Harpy always gets a big push in the Brawl, the main focus this year in that effort seeming to be MAGIC, so the way the tractor placed her certainly seemed odd. I think the sack of surprises being sabotaged certainly makes a good in universe explanation for some of it, another being she was up against Walter who was going to be difficult for anyone to touch. Naturally, Walter was a good pick for killing her to avoid heat on a likeable character, but also becuase... I really liked the image of chainsawing through all the robes! I mean, the image I drew of it wasn't the best, but having to push through each one to reach the girl beneath made a good integration of them, since before that it was mostly to add resistances to her like bulletproof and the famous flame proof one from the halloween fite. I knew I wanted her dream travel powers to come up, although originally it was going to be her and nyx dream-fiting but Nyx's path went elsewhere and the dream world for Nyx wasn't as important as Kaleido's could be. I let myself play with MAGIC's transformations a bit without going overboard on it, she's a girl with a lot to draw on and I wanted to make sure I got in some of all of it... although after writing it and well into writing other stuff, I worried the dream stuff might be compared unfavorably to Sara's death a few Brawls ago. I tried to make it clear it wasn't a complete deception, Kaleido wakes up and has some time alive before the fire gets her, and CKR's image helps make it clear that this was less lying to Kaleido as it was distracting her until it was too late. JIANG did better, and while I know some people will always call him Gonzy, I decided to push his newer name to help it stick, almost a bit like Federation Force got real name treatment mostly. Gonzy crops up, and pre-fite show even brings up THE GREAT GONZALES because I'm like "I don't want people to forget the other name for when I want to swap". I thought I would use the blood magic a lot more than I did, but Jiang ended up fiting mostly brawler types who wouldn't really scratch or cut. I did get creative with it when it did manifest, and while Gonzy going to fite Izumi sort of telegraphed his end, it felt like a really good showdown and holding your own against the oni for some time with two shoulders down is still a feat, even if you die. There's a part in the Brawl where it's mentioned Ostarion's skeletons pick up weapons of the fallen, Calamity probably one of them, but I sort of lost track of the weapon and decided to let people's minds fill in the blanks so I didn't make a mistake. The accel charm was definitely left alone, partly because I wager few would keen its use and think accel is a natural ability unless they're the research type. I worried a bit I might be doing it wrong too, so leaving it on the body served that benefit too! DUER was mentioned as a potential godbeast, and boy was I tempted by that line. It is why he went full hate elemental, but I didn't let him become the kind of threat where everyone would focus on him. We still got a few people after him all at once, the Swarm, BK, and RD, but they were all sort of drawn in by their fites rather than going "uh oh big trouble everybody dogpile!" Duer breaking apart the way he did was definitely one of the first KOs clear in my mind. His magic I got by way of HarPM made me hitch on Scorching Ray quite a bit for some reason. Just seemed like a wonderful attack to up in power with hate. The weapon generation was fairly standard as I focused more on other aspects. He made them, they were probably claimed by skeletons later, but no pool noodles of fire sadly because Duer was very serious business here despite getting killed by a pony and a beetle. I definitely liked having him in and it's a shame he was silent for early Brawl stuff. I think I almost had him in some scuffle but removed him for one reason or another, probably just the whims of brawl design. PRIER got a lot of late support thanks to me posting a picture of her butt :V really though, if anything made me like Prier a lot more, it was writing her here and really digging into her stuff. The La Pucelle skill lists and such were a hard find but fun for their use, Prier's attitude was fun to transfer and she made a lot of fun little brief rivalries and friends, perhaps the most connected brawler due to me linking her to the religious things, pegging her as best for killing Walter thanks to holy magic, and her getting so far meant she had to make a mark as well. I don't think I would have said so before the Brawl, but she's the one I would have wanted to go the distance, Duer would have probably been my original Harppick. Things like drawing in Mr. Moo are a perfect example of how not planning KOs beforehand helped the Brawl flow and add some silly KOs. Almost lost track of her four fire companions though, had to edit in their disappearance after realizing I did so. I considered using her examples of big bats and mermaids, but the battle never put her in a situation that called for either, although if she hit the water, we would have seen that mermaid for sure! I think the butt picture and subsequent attention is partly why she was roped into the "lewd" group with Miu and LEWD. It was also sort of cute to have Prier warm up to FSM before it died. The blind scorpion buddy was mostly there as part of Gooper's suspicion one might join the Swarm, and while it seems to be doing so after the Brawl, I gave one to Prier instead since it worked better thanks to Prier's monster taming thingy.

IVEL
Oh ivel, I was hoping this would be your year! I requested guys like PUDDLENAUT because I was like "that's a good ivel winner! I could make an epilogue for them I bet!" Still really glad we got Puddlenaut of course. This was his Brawl in the same way it was a Jaws Brawl, just one where water fiters had a clear advantage compared to my usual attempt to put something there for them. Prinnynaut was a great add and while he talks in the pre-fite show, he's mostly Puddlenaut's more close combat companion. Puddlenaut can shoot his stuff, Prinnynaut goes in and starts tearing robot sharks with his bare flippers! When I told Gooper to draw Prinnynaut "fossilized", I didn't mean it so literally but liked the image enough I adjusted the wording. It sucks to kill the little dude but it had to be done. Puddlenaut being in the water gave him a lot of screen time just like Jaws, swimming around and poking into most battles, often being the most interesting contributor of the three for more versatility. I hope he made up for last year, and I certainly don't mind seeing him again because like I said, good ivelwin choice :V GINO is of course another, ivel's flagship character winning a Brawl would be fantastic. Getting a longer skill list this year let me get more creative, I didn't even use his paladin mode because I wanted to focus more on his less-explored tricks. I was very happy I could work in Crisis Escape, I almost didn't find room for it, but when I had Build there, and K.G. with the Scan Pulse... it all came together. (Also, Chao, Metroid wiki calls that skill Scan Bolt, if you care at all for future use of it!) Gino definitely was sort of facilitating more kills than he straight up landed to ensure that the KOs were spread better. I tried to give a lot more partial credit this year but I can't predict how the standings will spin it. I mentioned earlier that originally he only had Ice Bear to kill as Ice Bear came back for a vengeance, but I think I worked him in well so that he didn't drop off, and while Gino is famously lazy, I only really expressed that once so it wasn't blamed for his failure, that being when he misses his chance at an ambush. I think the longer skill list and higher placement definitely made him easier to write this year, and with ivel getting more and more into RP every year, I feel I'm settling into writing his dudes better and better! Speaking of character traits not ruining dudes, PHOENIX IKKI was stripped of any dangerous pride so that he wouldn't be stung by his last place last year. Having ALDEBARAN there definitely made them work as a pair before they were split apart, adding a new twist to Phoenix fites as the two worked to keep groups busy. It was like he was learning the value of teamwork! Save when it didn't work! Aldebaran's skills were all new to me but I recognized them well. It wasn't hard to get them all in there, and Cosmo was the perfect excuse to finally have Build's common "may get distracted by a random molecule" FYM stat come into play after wanting to put it in so bad! Aldebaran was definitely a tough dude, and I put him against another, Dominguez, because I thought they'd make a good pair. Possibly even as friends! And I hoped CKR would draw them well since they were burly men. Ivel rosters repeat more in Brawls than some users and I actually kind of like that trait, so I wouldn't mind another Aldebaran run, although I didn't feel like I left much out here, just more I bet with different opponents he might have different results. Tearing apart Your Worst Nightmare was definitely meant to show "dis guy stronk". I didn't forget about Phoenix in the shuffle, although his shin injury was hard to keep integrating as he went on. I know I call how Phoenix died "a noogie", but it was basically having your head ground down... which was how Gino died. Gino's death I avoided details because I'm sure a belt sander can be messy, but at the same time: 1: It's Brawl, there's probably a lot of blood and gore skimmed over that makes things brutal, and 2: the belt sander breaks quickly after just like a real one would. I looked up so much about belt sander use and they would not survive harsh pressure for long enough to do more than kill! Anyway, that Ikki guy I get distracted from, I'm glad he had the uppercut to spice things up and I designated a KO for it quickly. Didn't use the Phantom Fist much this year to foucs on other powers, especially his hand to hand in general. Seeing different sides of Ikki will keep him fresh, and he made it much further this year so he had a few moments to do some things like his fire blasts and all.

BRINE
Put off a very important thing until I got to Brine, primarily because Brine gave me two beautiful lists of spells to work with this Brawl. That being, the curse of using a character's full moveset. There's so much potential and I'll always take more detail than less, but if you exhaust it all, that's basically a death flag. This means, essentially, I might work through all the skills before I lose the character, but growing aware of it, I try to avoid it more and more as time goes on, meaning some cool ladies didn't tap every possible ability and thus missed out on some cool ones. Definitely tried to work in as many as I could fluidly, although things like "use two or three times a day" didn't matter so much outside of AGATHA who used her super solar beam exactly twice so that there was one in the chamber to avoid that idea of "oh, she's used all three mega beams, she's gone". She of course had many other skills, but that just means she's got potential for future fites still! I worked in many on the fly, wish I had been able to use some like her Sun Sight or Flower Dream Mist which would have been perfect for a MAGIC thing if the fates had aligned. Others though, like teleportation, I used more than expected, while her solar form I touched less than expected. I hope Brine saw enough of what he wanted to see, and I had her avoid fire like a smart girl but still couldn't avoid things like Barbara's axe or weirder fire sources like Maurice. She placed a lot lower than I expected... although 36 still ain't bad. She was just a force at the start of the year, so I expected maybe 20s minimum. Tried not to mess with the butt flower too much, a good warrior protects her obvious weakness, although I did constantly check how Brine described her sword use style as I didn't want to mess it up. NYX was the other Brine gal with a huge skill list, and it perhaps got tapped even less. Nyx's sword perhaps got tapped even less! Unlike Clash's aura, Nyx's aura definitely played a lot in how her battles were chosen and set up and why we got Brilliant Kid as the one to take her on as he could definitely penetrate it without question. No justifying why someone pushes through the forced lethargy since it's basically BK's big skill of not losing optimisim. I liked her claws so much the sword seemed like a bit much after, and her need to bring it around also made her lethargy play a factor in its lower usefulness, especially against such fast foes. Her skills I made sure to whip out, even devastating things like Disintegration and Acid so you wouldn't forget she is one freaking huge foe despite the sloth. I mentioned earlier I only had her sleep a bit to avoid "damn, my characters just slept the whole time before dying" but still got it in for those who wanted to see it. I'm surprised by how much Nyx love there is, but that's probably just because I swing for different Brineladies on the preference list, now that I don't get why. TRASH is easy to understand the love for, we love cute ladies who are also instruments of death and destruction! I didn't use the chicken gun. So sorry. I didn't think she'd actually use it save for something weird if she had fought Sam and Max or something! I did play around with Imperium weapons, tapped on her forcefield skill and teleport since they were mentioned explicitly and they seemed good fixes for certain situations, and gave her a big chest laser because COME ON she needs one! It's such a good fit for robot/machine types! I tried to make sure her personality came across despite her also being committed to actually fiting in this thing she entered knowing the reality of it. Tried to keep her bad vision in mind and distaste for melee, although Eggerman's situation was special and necessitated something. Trash and Cirno's friendship is probably the closest I've got to wanting to post reactions in the Brawl thread, but I keep all my post on topic to avoid jerking readers around. Hope everyone kept up with the Warhammer weapons, I know I'll probably forget some of them but I explained the weird ones! Even bolters! ODA certainly seemed like the favorite of Brine's gals to win though. I had her get involved in a few squabbles before she got kills, had to do the general face-off even if I wanted Glob to get the kill. Oda I often had little questions I hoped were answered properly, like "can she use Czech Hedgehogs", "how do airstrikes work exactly", and so on. I almost had Ostarion drain the souls of the soldiers holding the floating guns but I don't think that's how THAT works. I also almost had Oda's kamikaze a lot more straightforward failure, because I really wanted those grenades in her coat to backfire. I rephrased it and tinkered so she thought she would survive but Skeleton King interfered to make the plan not work, a miscalculation on a near self-destruct that made it a full-on self-destruct. Probabyl should have made more use of the bayonets, was happy I made the trench digging work for an important kill, and a bit sad I didn't use the napalm trench more after its formation. Oda's a character you wonder how far to push her ability wise but I also didn't hold myself back if I really liked the idea, it was usually how it was presented that changed at most.

BOOKSNIPE
Welcome to Zoofights, BookSnipe! Hope you liked the meat grinder! New people often take a bit to get steam in this thing, but you had a pretty good showing! AIMIKO dropped out early, yes, but the pacifist route really doesn't work in a giant death tournament and that's probably why the votes for her were low. I must admit I'm sort of relieved she got low, it made the angle much easier to play instead of going Cauren mode who got second place in her Brawl and had to kill everyone she tried to make surrender instead. I wouldn't dismiss the idea of her convincing someone if they had made it far, probably Peter, but second to last meant Aimiko was instead spending her time trying to stop the fiting before it got her, and she did strike when attacked so she wasn't a sitting duck. I integrated a few things like siren music, hopefully accurately but it was fun how I did it so I hope it was! Turning into a human in cold water required a physics lesson but I did want to include that aspect just for kicks. Hopefully I wrote her dialogue well in the pre-fite too. So many considerations, I'm sure I could have made it work if she got far, but it's one of those things where a character type might not be compatible for this arena. Others certainly were, like AGENT KALEIDO. She never used her airstrike because that felt like it might be stepping into outside interference a bit much, but she did have her team in her ear the whole time, and I tried to establish a sort of relationship. Of course they'd find the redneck personality harder to deal with, and they did try to help when they could. Maybe I could have had them try and wake up Kaleido during the dream, but that overcomplicates a complicated sequence. Part of the dream battle was meant to give us a look at both personalities before they had to die. I figured if Agent Kaleido is successful, both personalities can get the job done, so nothing too absurd from either, but dream Kaleidos were full absurd since they were in an absured situation! Otherwise, we had the agent fite fairly smart if a bit brash as redneck. I like her design too, that became a thing with BookSnipe characters and the art definitely helped cement how much the detailed description did to make me like them. GENERAL OVERVIEW I think was on my list of potential votes before it shifted around more and more. I love old characters :V And Overview was both believably frail but had special tech to make her not a pushover. The lasagna comment meant she had to be making one in the pre-fite show, and her harsh tongue came out during that as well. Mainly though, she was all about ordering bees around, and I did enjoy the hive's unique aspect. Mainly, a bunch of capable little guys that can form shapes, even if I never got complex with them. Overview also got roughed up a lot before her death despite being frail. She went from a pun to a character I quite enjoyed! DR. LEWD is definitely the case of a character going from simple joke to really enjoyable though. I was really happy with my art of her, and during the Brawl, she was the perfect character for raunchy humor. I had to rein myself in, as between her and Miu, I wanted to point out every potential innuendo in-universe even if it wouldn't make much sense! Their clash was inevitable, and they had to have a lewdness battle even if they might respect each other or something now after the Brawl. Surprised she got so far, but it did let me keep the humor going, let me get the Super LEWD form out without having her ham up the poses too much that it was just solely for doing that, although as BookSnipe herself pointed out, its sort of a cosmetic thing rather than a power-up. Really happy with the CKR art of it despite microbikini issues. I didn't use LEWD's real name too much, was just easier to go by the recognizable name here whereas I pushed Jiang and Fed Force names more... but at the same time, I think the LEWD name was what BookSnipe wanted pushed!

BRILLIANT KID
THAR SHE BLOWS! A Big Bar Brawl white whale finally enters, and we get basically everyone we wanted out of it and a few treats! WALTER was of course the big snag, the odd assistant bartender having hit the wishlist since basically his appearance. I didn't expect him to be so... invincible, though. The revenant who really didn't need to be solid much was a bit different from other ghost entries, but that played into who he fought, that being the likes of Prier and Blind Scorpion Nun. Good targets for him I feel, and while I'm not sure what BrilliantKid's actual choices for how sacraments would be acceptable would go, I did go read wikis and watch videos to try and make Walter at least seem pretty accurate to how he might do them. Having to say things out loud to justify it hopefully didn't seem too odd to the reader. The chainsaw was his only skill outside of being ghostly though, so perhaps it wasn't too bad that he had that aspect, and he got to do quite a bit all things considered. Not quite as much as the surprise runaway entrant of this Brawl, BRILLIANT KID, riding his optimism into the high ranks! I suddenly had to take a guy whose main skill is being really happy and turn him into a top 10 contender, but he had a few things going for him. I tried not to have him say "Brilliant" all the time despite it being his defining thing, but even on The Fast Show he mixes it up, and trying to match his lines on the show lead to some dialogue styling. The goat alliance was a great way to keep two entrants busy for a while and he was the perfect pick for a surprising amount of things: he resists the Smooze, he resists Nyx, he could help calm Duer... maybe optimism is a really good power after all! Being a surgeoneer didn't hurt. I didn't expect the animal companion that ended up influencing his alliance, Drilliant Kid being good for combat compared to his owner but also a great way to give Brilliant a weapon after its death. With our finalists though, if BK had made it much further, it would be very strange to keep him in-tact, but I'm sure I could find a way, probably involving more surgeoneering. A small trait that could have kept him going if need be. KOROKU was the more unexpected but still welcome entry. It means I have to kill a dog of course, but that's passe at this point. I already mentioned how I softened it as well, but dogs eating brawlers is like, a trend, and Eye-Scream was sort of turning that on its head... by using his head! Koroku's size was an issue of course, trying to figure out how much the Beast Rune would change him and all, and while he never hit quite as feral and fearsome as Gooper's image, he was essentially there at times but able to come down from it, since despite Cornwind bigging it up, I'm sure BK wanted some of the best of both sides of dog brawler. Viki was the real surprise! No Mike despite him being "the Suikoden guy", but Viki's teleports were fun enough to use. Not complex, but the Barbara fite was simple fun, putting Flubber on the moon gives it a moment before its first death, and she got to do some things before her inevitable demise. Funny that Barbara did it though, Barbara almost only killed Viki but adjustments happen. Other than that, fire barks for Koroku were used as his main attack with some silver wolf action, but the Alert Rune might as well not have tagged along considering circumstance. Hopefully BK was happy with dog murder and dog death, it killing Flubber was also done since I was sure "magical True Beast form" could justify breaking incredibly durable rubber thing if need be. Of course, FUNNY VALENTINE was definitely the most unexpected, in that... I couldn't predict it even if I was into JoJo! You can't pretend him appearing just for brawl hurt it though. The alternate universe stuff was fun to write, had weird things to play with, powered up our champion, got in secret fiter cameos... Funny probably got out worst from using it but everyone else benefits! I mean, he got guns yeah, and he killed Dominguez (who I made sure to scoop up and return to our Brawl just like Luka was saved from perma-old). Sometimes D4C was classified as an assistant, but classifying Stands was a bit of a weird task and one I'm still uncertain on since they're tied to their owner's health. Some aspects of Funny were changed for Brawl, one being him passing on his Stand to other Funnys after dying and I took us to a universe where Funny had just died after almost taking us to one with a pre-dead Funny. Wasn't sure if the rules gelled there. I did read and watch some JoJo to try and get Funny's personality and powers all down, but I'm sure it left my head shortly after it did its task save the first scene I saw that was some dub of the manga. No spoilers since it seemed pretty spoilery! He was very fun even if I usually don't like alternate universe stuff much like Ophelia was cool despite history tampering, partly because it all kind of ends on their death and reverts to normal... well, not Funny's stuff :V that's a lot of trouble for those alternate brawls, but in writing I was not concerned about that so much as a good show. Enjoy your Flubber champion, random other Brawl! Your CKR is overjoyed no doubt.

RAINBOWDASH
We all knew we would get RAINBOW DASH back this year, but for a second, it was only her! And I'm glad that wasn't the end case, because while there was some thing about simplifying her approach despite her new "serious" costume, we've had a gimmickless Dash before and I've plumbed the depths of that character pretty well. I'm sure I could whip some new moves up for her if I caught up on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but I've lapsed behind. Every Rainbow Dash move I used this Brawl I wondered if I've used too much in the past, like the Sonic Rainboom, tornadoes, and so on. Rainbow Dash supposedly had a new angle, but I decided to flip it since it wasn't all that new, her drive to win always there but RD trying to be more heroic and face bigger threats instead of being opportunistic or prideful. I sure hope she has a new gimmick next time, although I will likely dig deeper next Brawl to see if I can unearth some new tricks. Part of why RD was in the pocket instead of the action for a while was partly because of this. I almost wondered if I should work in the Judging Hat somehow, but despite being a funny sign-up thing that gets a reference in pre-fite, I didn't see much room. Still, I of course want Rainbow Dash in every Brawl. She's almost as iconic to it as Mac Tonight and I do want to see her get that win some day... but who knows when that'll be. QUEEN GOAT AND DEVIL GOAT were the reason we almost got just Rainbow Dash because apparently seeing me halfheartedly play Goat Simulator inspired RD but she couldn't remember the game and nearly got frustrated enough to not enter anyone but the required pony. I think I might have let her play a bit, it's fairly good for occupying people who don't play games much and it's short term silliness, although I'll save any more on it for a Game Hoard review :V I did really want to make sure all goats had their tongues out, even though I think I could have used them more in combat. The fact the goat horde was such a thing meant many people attacked it from range. Devil Goat was taken out early for the more disruptive power and the lower potential for shenanigans. Queen Goat made it so far when you consider how odd she is as an entrant but that was perfect for all kinds of weird Mutator goats, although a desire not to spend too much time researching each and every option lead to me using more straightforward goats I wouldn't have to explain too much. We still got interesting ones like Builder Goat making a big splash. Devil Goat could have been lumped into "religious stuff" if BSN was another user's character or I didn't have goat alliance on the mind. The Queen Goat scene in pre-fite actually deliberately mimics something from Goat Simulator, although much like Amikyu designs seen in pre-fite, most of the mutators seen there can be assumed to be in the Brawl, just never given much focus. THE BLIND SCORPION NUN was nice to have back. I try not to play too many characters as overly religious, even Father Squid I didn't want it to consume his character, but BSN has been me playing that up whenever I get to. She is a bit forceful and violent, although the scorpion storm was an interesting idea. The real life joke is that RainbowDash the user was trained by BSN, and since another joke in real life is RainbowDash is a career murderer with weird sacrifices and all, her idol is of course a little unhinged. Giving her a small congregation of Emperor Scorpions sort of puts her in charge of something besides just a nun going around being Catholic and all. They are just mildly intelligent scorpions though, and they definitely get in a fervor around their leader and in a big group, so when she's gone, they scatter. The one that survived and was Prier's brief companion was made blind to mark it as different and worthy of adopting from a mess of samey creatures, and even then you could see it was acting differently without the guidance. I won't speak too much for their mindset if Goops wants to better explore it or RainbowDash comes in next year with some new twist, but it did make the nun a bit more interesting in combat even though her natural body weapons are good too. Lastly, we have ARR, RainbowDash's strangest entrant ever but endearing for that reason and played up to no end that his oddness is an actual trait after I saw a route to go and took it. You can see right through him, his body is held together oddly, can self-repair, can change its shape and size a bit (although as a dwarf pirate, he's always somewhat small) and... he's interdimensional and interdenominational! I couldn't do the religious stuff too much in the middle of the action, especially with so many characters competing in that realm. Maybe if we got BSN or FSM instead of both Arr could have tagged along, but he did his own thing. I do have a good idea of how Arr works in my head, not sure how much to tip in case its invalidated or reveals too much of the character, but I will say "interdimensional" was played up a lot more this Brawl partly for the Ostarion/Funny stuff but also because I think his color shift is basically him swapping around elements from different dimensions. I'll leave greater explanation on the table for the future, but we also got Arr's weird hat. Originally, RD said that was just a badly drawn skull and bones, but the frown on it is becoming a defining character trait and it even changes expression, so I put it on Veronica and hinted more at that interdimensional nature. I'm sure you have enough context to cook up the rest somewhat accurately or close enough, but I am glad to have him back and can even see him going for the Brawl again to further touch on his weirdness. One thing, we saw Arr get more emotive this Brawl and the Seacons clearly understood him, so he's shaking off "too weird to be here" and becoming "too weird but also here".

CUSTARDKITTENSROCK
While I would normally discourage a full alliance between a user's characters, the Blob Brigade was something special. First of all... CKR was totally cool with it not being an actual alliance at all. It was more a character theme with a catchy title and it caught on quick with other users for being so. As long as you're cool with me not doing it, I feel I'm probably more amenable to allying them all up. After all, most users, their characters are already essentially allies, and with dudes like Lysias's guys last year, I went that route for the most part already. My ideas do change with whims of course and we'll touch on this again in Cornwind's section, but the Blob Brigade was a fun idea, a weird alliance of low power guys that was open to new members. We saw them a lot because of this despite me trending towards pseudo-alliances to avoid huge amounts of constant face-time for a group. Despite all this, PETER was probably the first character CKR had in mind for the Brawl. We saw, I believe, Infinity War in theaters and it had a Deadpool 2 trailer and Peter immediately inspired her, and after seeing Deadpool 2 together, it was pretty clear that he was still amazing. He's definitely in over his head in that movie and doing the same "I saw the ad" bit that was his Brawl entry in total, and while some characters that seem unassuming enter the Brawl and do great, Peter entered it and was just a regular guy. He did his part as a Blob Brigade member and helped during little fites like calming Koroku and protecting the Swarm from Veronica. His affinity for the Swarm was inspired by the fact his movie tie-in twitter says he's a beekeeper, so he respects bugs and wouldn't kill them so thoughtlessly. I lined his pockets with regular guy stuff so he could throw something to be a bit more useful, but he was kinda destined to just be there and then die, but it was a good joke while it lasted. THE SMOOZE came after. While doing work to prepare for the move, mainly taking down wall ornaments and nails, I asked CKR to play some music for me, at first asking for Sea Ponies and then The Smooze as they are ridiculous songs to ask for. The Smooze apparently caught her attention quite a bit, although we had to work out that he'd start in a cauldron since he starts out way too big. I almost had the witch from the old My Little Pony movie appear in the pre-fite show before the Blob Brigade was so solidified, but if you watch that movie, even though winged ponies push back the Smooze with their wings, they don't kill it so much as reseal it. So, killing it in the Brawl was a challenge, and I decided to well and truly mix it up with so much gunk that it couldn't hold together. Burning napalm and goat corpses in a trench seems thorough enough, and the fire kept burning for a while. I think I made it hydrophobic too just so it couldn't leave the arena and that was always an option for killing it if need be. I decided to make it fairly friendly too. It sings a jam in the movie and seemed more like a force that was doing as told. It drains positive emotions of course, something that complicated the arena flooding segment but also let certain characters face it because of their resistance, but it also made the smaller Blob Brigade battles better so it wasn't just sitting in a cauldron waiting. It could hurl its goop! While Rainbow Dash did help with killing Smooze, it wasn't the big thing, because even though these two were pretty much set-up to face off, I didn't want it to just be the movie's ending or a slight twist on it. RD does the same thing the flutter ponies do, but she needs more help for it to matter. FLUBBER was also fairly hard to kill since its durability is one of its big things, but magic dog chewing it up seems fine. I'm fairly sure we only got it because CKR had committed to the blob theme and saw the Flubber DVD on my shelf and rolled with it. Disney's only canon entrant in the Brawl, but even then I didn't want it to dominate Flubber's performance... but getting last made that less of a worry! It could found the Blob Brigade and be Disney related, and I made it the founder since it was technically entering for Disney but decided to do more. It was hard to get across Flubber's personality in the small time we had with it, mostly just a booty shake because that felt necessary, but the moon thing right out the gate was definitely good for setting up the insane tone of the Brawl and the crash down to Earth help make it leave at least a small impression despite dying first. It's definitely not a surprise last place nor one that I bet will sting much when CKR learns of it, I think she was even struggling to come up with stuff it could do. I did read an interesting article on if Flubber is sentient for the Brawl though, so I got something good out of it! Last, we have EYE-SCREAM. CKR is now well aware that people thought "weird Batman villain" was going to be a trend for her, and while she was considering Kite-Man, she felt it was very "this is the one that I can think of". Luckily for her, comics have plenty of other weird characters if your spread the net, and while I had some to suggest to her that I won't mention in case she picks them up some day in the future, Eye-Scream from X-Men ended up being a character who captivated her. While we didn't get quite a Polka-Dot Man scenario, I did turn up the jerk factor on Eye-Scream despite allying with all these soft hearts to help hold the brigade together. He's harsh, mean, and made of ice cream, and while I referenced it like once or twice, apparently he has a dial on his chest that controls his refrigeration levels. He just sort of ice creams on the fly in the Brawl and I tried to make it a different flavor every time to play on how his power is "turn into any FLAVOR of ice cream" as if that was important. Some powers are strategic like turning into nasty ice cream, some are telling of his mood like vanilla, and after SK was saying he found a favorite flavor in Birthday Cake ice cream, I made sure to put that in there for him :P Not quite as open to insane uses as Polka-Dot Man, it was still a power with quite a bit of legs that I enjoyed toying with. Hopefully comic books continue to deliver weird villains to CKR, and I'm definitely keeping my eyes open to suggest some to her only to be surprised by the one she goes with.

DRACO
I did think it was odd that GLOBGLOGABGALAB survived his plot event, but it made him perfect for the Brawl. I had a lot of fun trying to think of books to draw from, and while Strawinsky and the Mysterious House just kind of has the Globglogabgalab (no typos in the Brawl of that at all! Yay me!) turn into generic things like an elephant and hawk, I decided to lean more towards actual references. Some were self-indulgent like delivering on a real old Walter the Farting Dog joke and my love for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, others were meant for broad appeal like Call of the Wild, and of course I wanted something crazy for his last book before his death so I leaned into Lovecraft to make you wonder what would come out. Of course, death came out. His death. It was still definitely a fun character to have around with a unique skillset and a strange personality who was, surprisingly, one of the Blob Brigade's heavy hitters until his death. LABRYS was nice to have back, and I defintiely leaned hardest into her new Alternate Dame stuff, although I just called her Labrys the whole time to avoid confusion. The Dark Knight powerset is, of course, very good for damage marks, hence why I punched through her gut and she didn't even heal it! I'm not sure what lets an android use white magic but it does make the Dark Knight class more interesting when you have to choose what to keep in a power balance sort of way. I didn't use her Persona at all unless I'm misremembering, but I think the greater focus on darkness powers helped set her apart from Fite Yer' Mates where I draw on Ariadne a lot, although it also leaves open another route if she wants to Brawl again. Her axe on her back made me consider whether or not to use it in two ways! For underwater movement it was great, but flight in the arena I used it more sparingly, a knight fites better with her feet under her after all. For attacking, I didn't see a spot to whip it out, so Dark Knight mode it was, CKR drew Labrys quite nicely I think. A really good Draco char, might have got a vote from me if it was possible/I had more room. DEB was an unexpected entry, but a lot about her has been a surprise. Suddenly seeing Goop art of her and all, Deb went from someone I at first thought might just be a Draco background character into perhaps a really important character in his stuff this year! And I do like that she's also sort of a regular person here for regular reasons. Money is good! You get a lot if you win! I wish Dawn didn't undermine the prize money with insane prizes worth multiple millions! But for Deb, the Ferrocrusher was a cool way to get her in and a fairly fun machine to work with. Watched the Other M boss fite of course (need to work typing it as "fite" out of my system now that Brawl is over) and it had a few gizmos and such to keep it competitive and fresh against Izumi and Oda and others. Unlike Eggerman though, taking her out of the machine would likely severely limit her unless she could Miu up someone's lost weapon, so I had her and the crusher go down together even though she was smart enough to see a sinking ship and try to bail. GOD NEPTUNE was a good get, and while the temptation to use the Seacons in their regular forms was strong, I instead kept to Draco's entry and that is sort of why it's fair game to enter anyway, so it's more me trying not to bend my own rules despite how cool it could be! I had a little combiner fun and personalizing a limb loss was a neat addition, all of that on top of water mobile giant robot made God Neptune a fairly good giant competitor for the big scuffles. I sort of emphasized Scylla because she got a bit more focus from Draco in RP thanks to the same name joke, and I kept the shark Seacon alive because with so many Brawl sharks, it felt appropriate to leave one standing. Naturally I read up quite a bit on the Seacons as research, but I'm not sure how much is applicable because of Transformers having a pretty set separate canon basically made all by Draco. I did learn that Scylla has a crush on a robot that my brother had a toy of! That... wasn't relevant anywhere sadly.

CORNWIND EVIL 
Cornwind surprised me when he was retiring Dawn from Brawl entry, especially since I had reached the point I accepted her presence like Rainbow Dash and was now hoping she'd get her win some day. The Dawnlings idea was definitely a cool twist though, but one that needed a lot of hashing out. Mainly, the "no remote control" rule was made partly to prevent them from fiting from the stands and setting a dangerous precedent that could devalue what a Brawl entrant should be. We already had Faith as the perfect example of how to handle it though, we had the obvious idea that they couldn't feel pain (like many robots shouldn't but hey, fiction is weird!) and they were definitely totally into the idea of fiting instead of being Baby Winstons, so I approved it. Their forms had a lot of details though, WASTE/RONNIE being the one to push what a robot could have in its body. However, watching the Strider boss fite and you can clearly see how it all works and why it's not as overpowered when it's turned from list form into practice. It's got basic boss pattern attacks and I found some good use for some of them. Not to mention that twisting around is required to activate some of them and Waste is by default the most vulnerable for being a big ol' groundbound tank that seems like an obvious target. The Dawnlings being young was definitely played up at times to make their incredibly powerful bodies less insane, and even then, Cornwind did try to bring them down a few notches. Ronnie and Battra both had "electrify my body" skills though so a lot of fun "fiting on top of them" was ruled out for smaller fiters, although we did get it when Kiibo was in control of Waste. Unlike some other instances here, the Dawnlings swapped their real and form names quite a bit, sometimes to emphasize their behavior. RENNIE/WANE especially, who had his kiddy moments and his killing machine moments. Being the most developed personality wise, he was great for the one to get the furthest and he made for a fairly good tactic. The Dawnlings would inevitably stick together, although I think Cornwind gave me permission to split them? Probably, he did that for an alliance with other users so why not here? Still, Waste was basically the guide as the big one they had to watch out for, the two fliers on aerial support and quick damage, and Rennie hiding and waiting for his moment to strike. I think I removed a few ambushes of him intruding on other battles but it was still his main tactic and one that crumbles basically any moment he has too much attention on him. He was noted to be very easy to break apart despite being able to survive decapitation, but I tried to keep it simple despite the room for such damage so that it wasn't so weird that a Rider punch did him in. Rennie's mischievous nature also made him perfect for the bubble popping, of course he'd do it! He'd do it just for fun to see how people react! When you've got someone like EMMA/WRACK in the Brawl though, suddenly you got to really think about how you use her skills. Poisons, acids, chemicals... very many brawlers could be killed quickly with them, but I tried not to just use them sparingly. In fact, Emma often erred on the side of launching too much as compensation, emptying her reserves a bit. Ryuji was the one we saw its effects on most, basically making him ripe for the kill after he killed Emma. I kept thinking of her little dragonflies as tonfas but I don't think they really are, but it's why Ryuji took them as they were present in my mind and I didn't want them down with the ship. I am a bit sad I didn't have them fly about independantly, but even though it didn't say it happened in the narration, it can likely be assumed it did occur. We probably don't see a lot of activations of certain skills as they whiff or are just used as a standard attack pattern. Wrack's attacks required caution in use, but so did FREDDY/WROUGHT and his laser scythe. Something that cuts through anything is devastating on hit, and while his cloak made a good back-up attack method that won't kill people instantly, it was still a lot about avoiding that blade in fites but not making Freddy completely useless. He made it pretty far, and boiling Eye-Scream was something I wanted to do really bad and the lightsaber mode for the scythe was the perfect choice, especially since it allowed kids love ice cream jokes. His weapon would live on in other hands and he was always something to be feared in all Dawnling scuffles, but it also marks that we've got all three Freddy Fazbears in the Brawl now! Unless I'm forgetting someone. I legitimately would not be surprised if RP had more Freddies hiding somewhere. It does feel a bit strange to see the Cosine family say this might be the end of their Brawl run, especially since I don't know who Cornwind could enter to feel the gap, but this was a cool idea and one that held together fairly well on contact with the Brawl. They got a lot of action since their placements were basically evenly sprinkled throughout, the best you could hope for in terms of presence of an alliance.

M SHEEP
While some years we get Sheep entering characters like Nemu before we've really seen them in RP much, this year I was given four fully formed mutants, a shark, and a skeleton! Chao chose a good year to support Sheep as this is a fairly strong lineup. DMITRI placed the lowest of the bunch and thus I didn't get too much time to try and mimic Sheep's wonderful but hard to place cadence for his speech, but I hope I did okay with it! Meanwhile, I went all out on weird bubble uses, probably more than Sheep intended for me to, but I pushed the power of bubble to its limit and even found some unexpected uses like trapping Aimiko's song! That sort of came together rather than being planned way in advance, and Aimiko trying to keep the brawlers from drowning while under her spell was a unique way to sort of show how the barrier works really early on. While I pushed Dmitri's bubbles to the limit, I didn't quite get to give Euphonos Polar a flying shark moment, the machine staying in the water the whole time just like Dmitri. An old idea that never got close to the writing stages was Miu using Euphonos Polar as an upgrade to Kiibo's arm like he was a land Puddlenaut or something. Euphonos's odd movement was played up as to why it was both sort of wild but not very accurate. One thing I was proud of was Dmitri pretending to stab Jaws to bait his allies, but that was also because I kind of wanted Dmitri to stab him? Sheep's entry mentions a quick turn from ally to foe with no indication of it, and that's about all I could squeeze in there. Maybe were I meaner I would have played up the suit ruptures as ways for the sun to hurt him, but that felt a little cheap and unecessary pain... so naturally sheep will be sad I didn't do it. DOMINGUEZ had been around for a bit, but that Dudemanguy speech really inspired me to do the whole Swarm thing. It helped he voted for the Swarm in-character as Dominguez, but of course Dominguez spun off into his own battles to defend their honor instead of their bodies. For some reason I felt people might not understand a fairly straightforward idea of giant fleshy butterfly-like arms popping out of the mutant's belly, just one of those things you wonder if you need to describe more and wonder about the terminology. Shame I couldn't use their light-sensing properties for much. Alternate Dominguez obviously is very proud of himself and supported by many good friends like Rifa, the opposite of our Dominguez :P That alternate Sheep RPs so much fluff... I didn't think of that til now though. I just needed a healer in a pinch and even thought of using someone else or trying to find a secret fiter for the role, but Dominguez being a better chum in another dimension is still a fine curiosity. Part of why I had Dominguez killed by alternate self contact was just the idea of him hugging himself for support, but that would have deemphasized Funny's role in the kill so I went with what we got. Of course, after seeing Dominguez would use his flesh wings to swim like a ray, I had to put him out in the water for some combat, Aldebaran a good mark since he wouldn't be as mobile and could still go toe to toe with Dominguez. ETTIE AND MYRA got so far and it was great to have Ettie around that long to keep pushing things! Since she was both hardly a combatant but wanted to be one, I decided to have Ettie be the one to push down Push early on... and it became a running gag from there. Pushing Asuraman, Ophelia, Ibuki... it was her primary skill because it works so well! A punch requires muscle, a push requires body weight. I almost forgot she was deaf tough when the megawub happened, but Myra was deafened by it. Myra's splits were kept low, partly because they are long to write and an odd format, but mostly because she wouldn't waste splits just for the sake of them. It hurts her to do too many, and I definitely emphasized Myra's brutal use of effective tactics. She fought very aggressively and went for simple kills, and Pigstalker's shaking got to be relevant after she lost her hearing! Myrasplits are a fun challenge, and while I could be tempted to mimic how they were done in Collin's fite, that being both paths leading to KO or death or something, I decided to toy around with it a bit more. Myra choosing not to KO because of the embarassing situation and worse tactical position since she'd be a tiny mammal. Myra chosing to deafen herself because it was a guaranteed kill despite being the worse tactical position but at least one of progress in the late game. I tried to make her interesting as Ettie's main mode of battle. Ettie wasn't a slouch in combat either, calling out Ophelia, bending Rifa's ear, small shoves and distractions... I really enjoyed writing her dialogue too and I hope Sheep found it up to par! It's such a delightful quirk and Ettie is really cute... I think I might have pegged her as one to vote for before I forgot some of my votes. I know there were a few in that bunch but I'm not sure if she whittled out. Lastly... JEFFERY. While Ettie's dialogue is fun to write, Jeffery's sports are fun to draw. It was a simple process, look up sports poses and draw just a skeleton doing them, and I definitely tried to mix up the sports for maximum pose variety. Jeffery is pretty easy to think of as smaller than he is though, or capable of flight just by being dragged along by like, a wire from above like a bad prop. I reined that in some but he was definietly tumbling about oddly at times and I certianly played up the insane screaming in reaction to stick damage or bad situations. Chao's push for him definitely inspired me to push for him as well. He places high and I don't want the winner to be obvious from a mile away, so it's good to build up a few characters rather than just the tippy top. Jeffery was great for this because it's so easy to come up with new methods of killing with him. I did have to reach a bit to say Amikyu looks like a sports ball, and I was worried Sheep might not approve of gun sports, but I reckoned he wasn't great at wrestling because of a lack of flesh. I was also unsure how much damage Jeffery could recover from thanks to stick powers. How much can this skeleton break and come back together from? The stick was definitely the biggest missed opportunity in that someoe else could have gone sports crazy with it, but Jeffery went so far and would absolutely go mad on anyone who touched it... and most people who did were mind-control resistant! Rachel wasn't hence a glimmer of that towards the end, but I didn't want to cram it in either. Maybe we should get Jeffery again for a fite or something so we can see it! Right Sheep? Riiiiight?

DOKTOR HANZ
Hanz is back! And... you wouldn't know it's that special based on the Brawl writing. I was definitely happy to have DOKTOR HANZ fiting in a Brawl again, but this was the first time he was in a very crowded field. Like, 60 more guys than his last Brawl, but he still got an impressive 37th even in such a big group. RainbowDash was of course happy to have him back and spent tons of time drawing his accordion head. Not even sure why she likes it so much but I guess we all have the characters we like to draw, like I'd definitely do all Jeffery pictures if he came back for a second Brawl. For Hanz himself, my Brawl notes make fun of something from early Fite Yer' Mates days, where I made Hanz a very nimble fiter with little justification as to why. The notes basically say "Nimble! NIMBLE! NIMBBBBBBBBBBBLE!" but ultimately, I think it got one reference during the Brawl explicitly despite a plan to emphasize it for something that... would probably just amuse me since no one else would remember! I tried to get as much funny German stuff in, requisite innuendos about meat since Hanz brought a sausage, but I was pretty happy with the idea of shifting his go-to weapon to something a bit more oddball after it broke. Hawaiian shirt was a nice touch, maybe we'll see some cybernetic Hanz if he comes back for the next Brawl? It would certainly explain how he came back from the obvious decapitation I had to do! So hard no to use the accordion more than most heads since it's his defining trait... although I was nervous initially to straight up call him a nazi even though I had no qualms with it in BBB1 and 2. Probably because of real life right now, but we all seem pretty assured this Hanz was not a nazi ideology wise. As for THE ORDINARY OPOSSUM, you hit this point when writing a Brawl where you ask if these characters are meant to shed the shackles of their mystery or if you're meant to let the user elaborate. Hella Jeff was turned into something more by FYM, but for Opossum here, since Hanz had really been playing it as basically an ornery creature without ever hinting much more, I kept it up! We got the jokes about Abnormally Adjusted Opossum, but otherwise it behaves like an animal, hissing at most aggressive enemies but only attacking the Swarm as they were on its level and its prey. Actually watched videos of real opossums to see how their aggression works but they really are big bluffers for the most part, many videos just showing hillbillies and such easily handling wild ones without getting bit. I didn't acknowledge why the Opossum was in the Brawl like I did things like the Tit or Sunflower, but I feel like Hanz the character has some in-character tie I wouldn't want to speak for. Just let the accordion-man do his thing. Do agree with ivel that Zolfar could have been a funny entry or vote framing, but hey... ideas for the future? Unlike the Opossum though, I wager we'd get more mysteries solved by his entry by requirement, perhaps that's why we didn't get him! Back to Hanz, never found a spot for turtle hate because Halfshell wouldn't really be out of Neptune mode and you don't want to force some things. Mostly, Hanz's guys got involved in some classic scraps and the opossum's expected one, and before we move on, allow me to quote all the notes I took on Ordinary Opossum: "Yeah."


PANDA/XNITHI 
It is certainly a shame that Panda's only entrant placed 57th, but hopefully VERONICA still put on a good show. First thing I did to better understand the Paolumu is look up the battle with it in Monster Hunter World and was a bit surprised by it, especially how it looks with all that puff down. I was a bit worried people might not understand why Veronica was doing a few things since they would have come from the game instead of the entry, especially if I overemphasized the lack of poofiness after the air sacs are emptied, but since most of her listed skills were CUTE and FLUFFY I'm sure people knew she could do more than that! Low placement also meant she couldn't really do too much but I did put her with what is essentially her weight class. Her images were definitely bad scalewise, but I think the writing had her at the proper small size. I don't think I had any big ideas for her before I saw the results and knew she'd be lower on the ladder, mostly just wish Panda could have gone further to better absorb the Brawl and get hooked! 

CONCLUSION AND THANKS
Yup, that's everyone! I hope. So much rambling and repetition and the required me saying "I'm sure I left out some stuff!" goes here. Geeze, I'm not proofreading this, I'm near the end! This is nearly done! Why am I still typing? Probably to say a few things like, I think we had a very impressive roster this year that felt surprisingly solid. I don't have any glaring things to nag at like accidentally burying Tenshi and Ice Bear in this Brawl, and I feel I did a lot of what I wanted to do with this gang. Not everything is perfect of course, and I can't ever really compare Brawls for being so close to them, but this was a very good year I think! Thank you all so much for reading it, joining it, voting on it, and helping with it. The artists especially who made things easier to finish, the idea from people that made it in the Brawl, the amazing people who made these characters... There's so much great about the Brawl but it's made so much better because each of these dudes comes from a person I love making incredible ideas up and letting me hold onto them for a short period. It's so much trust and I'm glad to have it, and I hope it continues to live up to expectations. I wish I could make it more than it is already, that I didn't have to disappear to make it, but you guys having a blast reading it in the end and seeing all your reactions makes it all worth it. This is a weird, special little thing we have here, and I'm glad it's still going. Maybe some of you didn't read this part because it was asking a lot for your to read so much more on top of like, 120,000 words of Pre-Fite and Brawl, but the fact you'd even do that just makes this pay-off.

So... I could keep gushing, but I think you deserve to move on to new things. We'll be back here in a year anyway, to take a look at a new Brawl in a new arena with new amazing characters, great returning ones, and a bunch of friends gathering together for an awesome time where we see the best we got all in one glorious day of violence and silliness.

And that, my friends... was the 411 on the Big Bar Brawl 8!