So let's start by talking about Shimmer instead.
SHIMMER AND PLEASANT HILLS
Since Shimmer's little sideplot didn't connect to anything this year really save the moment in Spectrum where her voice was used, might as well look at it here rather than nowhere.
In my continued effort to keep this character fresh and moving forward, Shimmer needed a new conflict for 2017, and with her 18th birthday around the corner, growing up seemed like a pretty obvious one. Her struggle to become an adult is one I guess I can sort of relate to and I drew from, but most of Shimmer's inner conflict expressed itself in the outer conflict of the very adult situation of taking care of another living thing.
Shimmer would never be so neglectful as to let the animal starve, but her lack of knowledge and experience made her frustrated and aware of her failures. Bubbles the Gruntle, a throwaway gift Cauren give Shimmer for her 17th birthday, didn't start as the anchor and physical piece of Shimmer's character arc this year, but as an idea for a potential Request Comic to do during the off-season. I've had ideas for these a few times actually, once it would have been a Request Comic of Tut-Tut and Mr. Chips where users would submit what happens next ala original MSPaint Adventures and Pokequest. Shimmer's idea would have a chibi version of her and her adventures in trying to train Bubbles the Gruntle, who would have been a bit more violent instead of lethargic but still played for cute laughs. The off-season blog with the image from above was the intended art style for the request comic to make it quicker to draw, but Shimmer got redesigned and the image got shunted to a self-drawn picture by Shimmer in a video left for Marina.
Still, I decided to follow up on the idea of her struggle with Bubbles... but originally it wasn't going to be much of A Thing. Just something she'd reference now and again and maybe some comedy moments before it came to a head in that end-of-year epilogue where the Zoidberg Bros took him to set-up their thing for 2017. But 6 months is a lot to fill, and I realized it was a losing formula. Something would need to be done about Bubbles, especially as Shimmer became comfortable with her adulthood, so instead we got the first lynchpin of her development (second being Celestia comforting her on her birthday) in her attempts to track down and take responsibility for Bubbles instead of tossing him off to the side.
By now we all know it was a joke that she had sent Bubbles "to a farm where he can run and play with the other pets happily" wasn't the lie parents tell their kids to mask putting them down, but the real actual situation. Shimmer even acknowledges later she feared it might be that case and was very relieved to find him safe... on a farm overrun by rogue pets.
Now, as we dig deeper into Spectrum, we'll see a lot of heavy events with varying tone, but Shimmer's was to be a fun romp. I've worried about subjecting Shimmer to such conflicts because I don't want people to get tired of "oh, Shimmer's in trouble AGAIN!" while still trying to keep her a character with a forward progression. The Pleasant Hills event was part of this, where it wasn't any hard decision being made, just a problem to be undone. It also didn't have straightforward fights to mix things up a little, where the pets had to be placated rather than fought (save Carrot, I usually keep a saving throw in case a gimmick isn't working V:)
Speaking of Carrot, the moment I decided Pleasant Hills would be an event, some things had to be figured out. First, to give the place some people to run it, I thought of two gentleman who I couldn't help but think of as the Kratt Brothers, so, googling them, I found a current picture of them where they're quite old so it doesn't evoke them so much and used them as the guys who ran the place. The farm itself had a straightforward concept I feel would need to exist in a growing world like ours, and I was glad we got Dewnine from it! As for the animals I contributed, they were meant to show Bubbles's extent as a problem child, albeit one who isn't malicious in what he does. They're all just animals doing what comes naturally, a conflict Gran brought up as well. For the animals we would use, it seemed I had about the perfect amount. The first two to come to mind were, unsurprisingly, the borrowed characters! Woola and Carrot. Woola I almost expected Rainbow Dash to use in a Big Bar Brawl when we watched John Carter together and I noticed she took a liking to the dog alien, but I guess I remember that movie more than she does. Carrot, meanwhile, was me using a fun concept found in a few Final Fantasy games that exemplifies the exact situation that Pleasant Hills was made for. Some aristocratic lady in Final Fantasy tries to keep a Malboro as an exotic pet but it gets away from her and you are sent out to get it. The FF12 version of Carrot was picked as I wanted an actual image of Carrot and it was pretty much the only one, whereas I could've probably used any Malboro picture and gotten away with it. Thing never used bad breath, mostly to keep it from getting too serious, but I wasn't going to sit on it forever either. Just synced up where it wrapped up before I felt tempted to go through with it.
The other animals: Yippers, Puffy, and Slump, were pulled from images rather than media. Yippers and Puffy just both came from google/deviantart searches, whereas Slump was a painted figure I made in Arkansas once upon a time and always wanted to integrate into RP. One thing I did to make the Carrot battle more interesting was allowing you to use your tamed pet as a unique way to fight, and I was quite happy to see Yippers and Woola both adopted by the end. Aggie got some use out of Woola and Yippers gave Gran a bit of conflict I seized on when she fought the Wet Tiger in the Brawl and had to suppress its nature as she had Yippers. Pleasant Hills would also serve to be a good place to retire Whitey too when my joke about putting him to pasture got turned on me by Chao in a swerve similar to the joke of Pleasant Hills itself, so now the referee has a happy place to be nice to weird animals in instead of watching constant death and slaughter.
Naturally, this was my least important plot event this year, although much like the later appearances of King Vitaman and Cruella, they served to push her "adult" character arc along. King Vitaman was used as I have an old cereal box of King Vitaman in my room with the COURT OF RIDDLES which were just bad jokes and my brother made fun of the box, so I always wanted to integrate him/it in RP somehow, hence the small event where Shimmer is disgruntled about Vitaman calling her out for being kiddish. Cruella and Jean-Pierre were also me harkening back to the movie 102 Dalmatians, where I thought as a kid how bad it was that Jean-Pierre's entire existence seemed to be for him to say Poopy instead of Puppy and that is funny because Poop. I'm surprised Cruella never showed up in RP before, especially with Ariel running around, and I made sure to lock her up to keep her from being given unnecessary vengeance from other characters. It was also meant to sort of show the death of some of Shimmer's naivety, and had some of the early foreshadowing for the appearance of Shimmer's double, Rita.
I'm not sure what to think of the individual parts of Shimmer's growth into in adult, but I'm pretty happy with the overall arc. 2015 she struggled to be a Kobber, 2016 she struggled to be an adult, and 2017... she will struggle with loneliness. Nothing to crazy or over the top, but unless we some day get a dedicated Shimmer plot, it will be likely we just see her simple struggles with life, and she's getting better at coping each time around. As shown somewhat when Samedi showed her Lakebelt's citizens again! She's learned to cope with that and her Deck history, even though it still hurts her a bit. This teenage girl may have troubles, but she won't fall back into old ruts. She's still really fun and one of my favorite characters to RP, so the efforts to keep her fresh hopefully continue to work instead of turning into her being a troublesome character.
Of course, since we lead with Shimmer's event, you must know the other prelude to true Spectrum discussion, but at least this guy's event was tied to Spectrum eventually!
Finally, the time to talk about the fat bee has come!
The birth of the idea behind Broderick was a rather uneventful one. I just noticed that hats have a lot of personality to them and wanted to make a character around that idea. I believe I initially went through Wikipedia's List of Hats to try and think of interesting ideas for hats he could wear, with some obvious ones standing out like top hats, Kaiser helmets, sombreros, ushankas... but that wasn't all that interesting. He'd probably slip into stereotypes as well, and since the hats were almost more of an excuse to give him appropriate powers, I don't think the powers would be that interesting since they were drawn from regional stuff at best like ice for the Russian ushanka.
So, Hat Powers sat on the shelf for a bit, but when I came up with the idea of a foppish bee, things started to mix together. The gentleman bee would have the hat powers, and I soon settled on the idea of them being drawn from the personality of the wearer rather than the hat's aspects. For a name, I settled on Broderick, as it was long enough to fit a gentleman of sorts, but also because of a moment in my history. At high school lunch I'd sit outside and eat, and since I drank cans of Dr. Peppers, bees liked me a lot. They'd try to get to the soda, and through that land on me, but bees? Bees are bros. They don't want to screw with you or anything. I'd let them walk on my hands or whatever (not my drink, I had limits!) and one day one was crawling on my face and walked over my closed eye and under my glasses and then just shimmied on out safely. I don't know if there's a better way to see how friendly something is than walking on your closed eyelid, so Bro status was confirmed, and I decided to name all my bee bros Broderick. Just like, collectively, they were all Broderick. Now that I was to RP a bee, the name, of course, moved on to him.
Other aspects started coming together soon. I made him a bumblebee partly so that he'd be bumbling, not in the goofy way, but the bug kind, just always buzzing along vocally or through his always droning wings. His wing droning and his droning speech were very much echoes of each other as well, plus he was a huge bee so those wingbeats would be pretty loud. The second reason, of course, was to allow him to use his stinger multiple times without dying, although he was still shy about it because butt thrusts don't fit his normal persona. Millinist is an obvious spin on milliner, a word that stuck with me ever since I read a book where a lady was a milliner, and was meant to evoke the word well enough that you'd at least knew it had to do with hats if nothing else.
With all this established, I knew that the top hat would be the best first hat as it exudes a gentlemanly manner, and a polite and proper fellow was an interesting enough base concept on its own. I wasn't too surprised there were fancy bee pictures online, but I didn't like most of them until I found the one that would become Broderick. The others were too much bee, not enough man. If I had drawn it myself, he likely wouldn't have been so jolly looking. This picture is almost everything I wanted (save being sepia, although I imagine Broderick is basically normal bee colors but faded to almost match the sepia).
So, we had the picture, we had the concept, and other details just kind of grew from there... but how does a bee like Broderick come to be? Thought lines like these often send me down the roads to creativity. It was clear he had to be created, but Broderick had already debuted as a character before certain aspects were figured out. He was created in a lab by a scientist, of course, and the story of his stovepipe's original owner of Frederick was set in stone, hence why he had the prop gentleman accessories from the get-go. Some of my trepidation in using the child's hat was I knew it would be the impetus to explore his character, but not everything was planned out fully at first. The Propeller Cap opens up a more blunt and frank Broderick, as his attempts to be cordial and proper often filter out whatever worries or insecurities he might have from being discussed. We never got to see much of it, but the kid's cap was basically a sort of inauthentic duplication of childhood, as the kid who had the hat was trying to be the kid his father expected him to be rather than the kid he was. Almost every hat's power was structured that way: abilities afflicted by personality, and while I did consider perhaps inflating his hat rack a bit more with outside contributions, I think it turned out better just to mostly have Stovepipe as default and Propeller as the plot-hook hat, while other character hats were for the express purpose of fighting. I do wish I had used them more in casual conversation, but Broderick feels like a character I could bring back someday, and keep growing that collection as well!
Anyway, as I built up Broderick's backstory, we naturally come to the character of Dr. Zara, who was nameless for a long time and originally, was basically just Dr. Sivana from Captain Marvel in appearance. I think it wasn't until I settled on the name did I really get a better idea of Zara's appearance, and the Sivana look-alike melted away into a more serious character. The name comes from a friend of mine who I nicknamed Zara, and the digitized face you see that was Dr. Zara in a computer is actually a picture of her sent through an ASCII converter. I like how it came out because there's just enough missing to not show much, and now that Zara has an android body, she would not look exactly like my friend, although that friend did influence mostly her petite size and complexion. Once Zara started to become more of a character, her motivations also solidified. Originally it was a more malicious desire that fueled her, just an urge to move into the age of one singular mind that lead to her experiments. I came up with the idea of digitizing her entire mind in a warehouse of supercomputers as the end goal of it, and the original idea would have us fighting a whole building that she had control of through the computers... but it would also be her weakness. We'd be fighting a building from the inside, essentially... a concept Del beat me to the punch with in the battle with Meshugah. Rather than trying to salvage it, I stripped that aspect away... and then say Captain America: The Winter Soldier where Arnim Zola does something very similar in being a mind spread across old computers, and again, Zara was almost scrapped. I stuck to my guns this time as I was doing something different enough I felt. Plus, there was already quite a few other things developed around it by now that I could afford to have an idea that mirrored something else in the plot.
Dr. Zara herself I feel is a character I want to explore though, and now, especially with the new body, she's likely to return one year with her bugs as a main focus. I like her mindset and also being one of the antagonists who budged this year. She did do a bunch of messed up stuff, and her mind was effected by the transfer to the computers, so there's a lot to build on. It also would allow me to look at her two bug buddies: Absalom the Ant and Tiresias the Termite. Absalom is sort of the assistant to Zara and the closest she got with her experiment, able to easily integrate others mind into his but not vice versa, and the Yellow Spectrum allows him to change into them as well through a flawed transformation ability. Tiresias, of course, is her first success but also most morbid and flawed. Despite his belief now, many of the minds in him were taken against their will, although they still exist in the collective mind and now are happy it happened as they no longer live alone. Tiresias can't really see that unfortunately and its a dark mark on Zara so it would be interesting to explore. An interesting fact that influenced why Zara did these experiments was learning the true nature of how ant colonies and such work. The queen isn't the commander, everyone commands everyone and listens to everyone, each ant a node in a brain more than anything, and the queen just the part devoted to breeding and thus in need of protection. So, Zara's goal became to make humans like that, where we can easily communicate and work as a collective brain, and the bugs with hive mind like situations became the ones she worked with. At this point I decided Broderick would also be a failed experiment, or rather, a diversion that went well but also went nowhere. Fiction is full of characters who are the greatest creation of some scientist, or the failed experiment who rises above that. Broderick's issue was... he was neither. He wasn't even a blip on Zara's radar because of how the experiment proved fruitless, so she sent him out instead of dealing with him. Neither regret or success, he just kind of... was, and that was more damning, as she also tore down what he had understood about himself and showed it was all just kind of "there" as well.
As noted in the chat, the event could have escalated should people be angrier or more offended with Dr. Zara and Tiresias. The creepy atmosphere and all was make people on edge and both Absalom with his transforming power and Tiresias's many bodies would have made it a decent enough battle, even if threatening Dr. Zara could have ended it quickly since she moved away from being a fighting computer building into immobile and vulnerable. It wasn't very likely Broderick would have gotten to the point of full-on death when removing his hat, although it would have killed him if he succeeded. I probably wouldn't make it impossible to revive him but he'd definitely be a changed bee in a less than good way. The name choices are fairly obvious besides Zara and so: Tiresias's religious approach to their hive mind tied into the name, Absalom was meant to be ambiguous somewhat in that it can suggest either he's friendly or quite the opposite depending on whether you go "meaning" or "allusion" route. Plus, their names are alliteration, Absalom the Ant, Broderick the Bee, and Tiresias the Termite.
Still, despite his freakout, Broderick is a bit more composed than most and was not weighed down so much after the Kobbers helped him. He did disappear in the middle of the year, a trend that happens to me too often (but was also inflicted somewhat by three event fites in a row) but I felt he had a good enough return near the end and had a little personal conflict in the events with Shadow Knight and Levi. I do wish he used certain hats more of course but that was also a problem with becoming underutilized.
This event, besides an exploration of Broderick, was also the real start of Spectrum plot per se. We had the Red orb of Thomas, but this set the tone (that its more about characters than battles against bad guys and there would be fightless events more about how your character reacts and speaks than fights) and it brought in the earliest hint of the ties to the Spectrum, that being Broderick's use of it in his powers and Zara straight up mentioning her use of adaptational energy. I tried to hook people on that a couple times with Lauren using similar terms and talking about a Lauren going missing the same time Zara found her adaptational energy, but Aviaticus was always poised to call people by color to make it clear they were tied just in case. Broderick was also left off the Spectrum picture partly for I considered removing his role in the plot and keeping his stuff separate at its creation, as well as leaving a few mysteries about everyone involved instead of spoiling the whole plot's cast. I like that people realized the previous Lauren was important, it just took them a while to connect the dots, hence why I felt the picture was important. I can afford to wait on some dots to connect, but not all of them, and one thing I learned this year is not to rely on people figuring things out so much and pushing the revelation instead of waiting and hoping.
Much like Shimmer, Jasper, and Ingrid, Broderick feels like a character I can bring back anytime and get some use out of, although I'd probably give him some new arc as after he learned his past he struggled for a bit to find new footing (thank you Shadow Knight and Levi!). He was sometimes overly verbose and criticized rightly so, so sometimes I tried to make him a bit less wordy but without compromising his character. Most things he said were just propped up by a lot of manners and details really. Most of his stuff is thankfully pretty self-explanatory, although I guess you might ask how much of him is him and how much is the hat. The answer, of course, being however much you think.
I did quite like him understanding people on a level different from most, particularly with Ger'Shom as he could see the reasons the Courier acted as he did instead of judging based on what he could see. I also called him a dumbledore a few times since that's a fun name for bumblebees that fell out of favor and is mostly just associated with Harry Potter now. Even autocorrect tried to capitalize it since it doesn't know about the old meaning of the word.
I think that's pretty much all for Broderick, although we'll bring him and Zara back up in Lauren's segment. First though, I think a broader analysis of Spectrum's impetus is warranted.
Hey, it's that thing this blog's supposed to be about!
Now, obviously not every character who would become tied to Spectrum was always tied to it, especially since it goes back to 2011 with Fumes and Midori, but Spectrum was a uniting force and a nice way of filling in some very large blanks that I had accidentally left in some stories. There were a lot of nebulous ideas floating around that would eventually become Spectrum related, but the thing that made me decide on this plot and its structure was one major thing.
Items of Power.
A classic trope, one that's popped up in RP a lot too. The Guns, the Infinity Gauntlet, Sumireko's Occult Orbs (which threw me for a loop as I almost tried to completely rewrite Spectrum so people didn't think two plots about Spheres was too much for one year! I even joked with Goops early on that we were doing the same plot, although I mentioned mostly just Bouncy Blue and Thomas's Orb in that instance. We went different directions of course, but seeing Orbplot pop up was scary!) Long parenthetical statement there... Anyway, almost every plot about collecting objects or items of power is either to prevent their misuse, to find out they aren't good after all and then unleash something, or collect a good thing like the Dragon Balls or the gems in Gunstar Heroes and then the bad guy forces you to hand them over and they misuse it. I wanted to make a plot that wasn't about gathering objects that would hurt people if used properly or improperly. Of course, the individual pieces were often misused, but even despite the Black Spectrum ending, Aviaticus never really went on a rampage or tried to destroy stuff (although he hurt people fighting him certainly). It was a force for good, and the goal was something amazing and good that wouldn't backfire and couldn't be manipulated. Whether or not the final idea was similar to this initial idea is debatable certainly, but the Spectrum was never supposed to be about fitting those few molds. It was satisfying to get a new piece, and you weren't punished for trying to do good through it. You're helping the universe grow, and not a Star Trek II style where it can also be used to destroy. That idea is partly why the anchoring force need a conscious, especially when Black Spectrum being Destruction came in and you really had to trust the guy not to destroy the universe instead of build upon it.
From there, I started lining up the cast for it. So many of these characters are old ideas finally getting their chance to shine, with only really Aviaticus getting built from the ground up (although Pteron was the oldest idea, he wasn't considered seriously for RP before Spectrum either). I can't say exactly when things started clicking together, but it was certainly pre-Thomas and I know it was hard to go through with Alruthines while ideas swam about Spectrum. I'm pretty sure some characters like Lauren finally got their chance because they fit into the color grid so perfectly, or ones like Yotam had their character fundamentally altered to be in it. Ingrid's story grew a bit more complicated but satisfied two characters I wanted to use in RP (Ingrid and Taren).
I seem to recall early on ditching Indigo from the expected spectrum, since Indigo is just a single color between blue and purple rather than a nice concise shade. Plus, it would sort of tip things character wise I imagine, probably have to make Sonic Man have some strange connection. Maybe that's what could have kept Asobin alive... not really though, because as I thought up a purpose for each color in the act of creation, there wasn't really anything left over. Purple's tie was already a bit more strained than most, although the gift of life is important, its not so mechanical like most Spectrum, although Yellow is also kind of strange in that way with adaptation distilled into a force, although certainly a necessary one if Aviaticus is to turn uninhabitable rocks into populated worlds. Both life and the environment must be adapted. I did waffle on what to call Spectrum as well, but it never had any other name, the name just kind of solidified when I thought of the nifty image teaser having that as its spoiler title. I'm somewhat surprised I followed-through with that idea of the image, although leaving off Broderick and the Borax Kid probably played a part, and Phantomon lacks the runes on his cloak. The full art of some of the images shows they were meant to be trimmed too. That Chocobilly has a square as the rest of its body. Aviaticus wasn't drawn the best, and I'm still not the happiest about Yotam's appearance.
Another important aspect of Spectrum's plot was not the grander narrative, but how each event was basically a pivotal point in a character's development or character arc. Sometimes the end, sometimes a middle, usually super important either way, if you ever felt like ZFRP didn't have enough character arcs, this plot was meant to emphasize the cast's growth, almost to the point it rubbed it in your face and demanded you look at it. I think moreso than not baiting hooks well enough this year, another problem might have been drawing too much attention in narration and such to how a character's mindset was changing. Like, not so much my typical style of seeing inside their heads, but I think the growing failures of bating hooks also made me nervous about being too subtle with character changes and development. This varies between characters surely and it was often not the only way it showed, but I could have dialed it back.
It was rightly pointed out sometimes I did go into too much detail of how a character is acting or thinking, but at the same time I wanted to basically make each character have a year long arc as if they were the star in a story focused on them. These were characters I made sure to think about often and consider their reactions to most everything. Something I read that stuck with me was someone pointing out a small, unnecessary detail in Spirited Away that really helped build up Chihiro's character subtly... how she went down the stairs. When I first read this I forgot the set of stairs she goes down is really dangerous looking, but it started to make me think about small details like that for my characters. Almost every character has been run through the "down the stairs" test. Shimmer would either skip the stairs entirely, or, if she was going down them, she'd keep her skates out, stubbornly refusing to put them away for the obstacle and clunking on down despite making it harder for herself. Ingrid would keep herself poised and proper usually, but if there was trouble down those stairs, she'd bolt down them recklessly no matter what state she's in, only kept from falling due to her skill. Yotam walks down them slowly and rigidly, just as nervous on a set of steps as anywhere but also fearing his toeless leg's capability, something he doesn't notice so much in battle or the thick of things. Not everyone has a particularly interesting manner of going down or up stairs, but we've seen a few of these in RP itself (Shimmer and Ingrid I can name direct examples), but once you know the small stuff, the big stuff comes easier! But even more importantly, the small stuff does too! You aren't caught off-guard.
This mindset sort of bred the tone of Spectrum's events, where they were often more about difficult decisions or morality puzzles being posed to characters. Fights were added due to hesitance (I've felt bad about denying people battles before and it sucks to schedule an event and get people's hopes up if they find they aren't able to participate much in the affairs.) Perhaps if the decisions were more clear-cut or simple it wouldn't be so hard, but then... that's not as interesting! I wanted to see other people think about their characters, their reactions, their views, to be able to develop them more in a moment of strife... I think that lead to an inverse reaction. Characters like Nylora who had a personal stake shone brightly for it and discouraged others, but then spur of the moment picks like Rachel, Ricard, and Robert found unexpected footing and got to have important character moments! It's no secret that almost every plot I send a character on I try to make meaningful for them, although I've tried to rein in how hard I stretched it this year to make that idea work, and some things were subtler like growing an idea of Pteron's fury from his participation in various events. I wanted to give people big platforms to bounce off of, but instead I scared a lot of people and characters away as they felt they needed a stake in it or some personal connection. Heck, earlier mentioned Broderick stuff with both Levi and Sir Galrien were both because I decided to throw him at things and thought to justify it and develop it into him in a meaningful way!
Most individual aspects and such we'll go into for the specific sections on that Spectrum color, so buckle in boys, because we're finally moving into the plot!
Leading with the big guy! It was basically his plot after all. Even as other characters developed in their single event, Aviaticus hung around, slowly learning things about himself and the Spectrum and going through his own arc, although it never got quite so serious as other characters until the end, and I made a point to avoid most of the looks into his head to keep him somewhat mysterious and to test my chops of making development obvious with less tools.
First, we should discuss how he came to be at all! Spectrum could have certainly existed just as the six colors of the rainbow without Indigo, but we needed something to kickstart things, to be able to gradually uncover the truth of Spectrum, this mysterious thing from the start of the universe that broke apart years ago. Why did it break apart though? It lacked Unity, and so, something had to unite them. Enter: the White Spectrum. Given a conscious so it may push back the Black and search out the others. Unfortunately, the powers of the universe didn't give it much conscious direction, and its orb ended up heading towards Earth, slowly drawing all the others closer to the planet unknowingly for millennia. White Spectrum was alone for so long that the mind within it developed on its own and had to come to terms with its existence, often allowing people to simply tell him what they thought he was and him accepting it wholesale. Despite being so old, this naivety comes from his disconnect from the world and sort of lack of self-made identity. He didn't know much of anything about himself and just accepted the names people gave him. It almost made him more interesting than some booming god, and it was a comedic effect that was fun to play with. The voice of god was basically acting like a toddler at times because of his lack of socialization, although his years of knowledge showed whenever his domain was concerned.
Lets go back to the character origin for a bit. White Spectrum existed after the ideas of Aviaticus, although almost nothing of him was set in stone beforehand. The image was picked before any character idea even resembling Aviaticus was made, as I thought it was a picture with potential and I filed it into my future folder for later use. The name came next, as it sounded impressive but actually just refers to the vapor trails planes leave behind that look like clouds. The name certainly turned the scales towards his inauthenticity in being a God and his naïve personality, but for a while, he was just a named image in my folder with no real story. Maybe he could've been a bad guy the Kobbers fought? BBBP? Who knows what path might have come for him, but more likely he might've just been deleted eventually. He's just some photoshopped clouds to look like a sky warrior with a sun for a head, there was no obligation to use him. In fact, this image isn't that hidden on the internet either, and sometime after Aviaticus had actually taken form as a character, Chao shared the image with me and the joke "Final Boss 201_" (can't recall which year) and I freaked out a little, even saying I was going to use the image since I'm sure this was post Final Boss rush at the BBBP. Didn't give chao any details then, though, although I know after he started taking shape, I mentioned my idea for Aviaticus to Ven in person once and got the same ambivalent response that the idea for the Lightning Bolt Society got when I was trying to gauge his interest. I guess his ambivalence is a good indicator of what will work! Really though, the reason I mentioned it because I knew RPing a god, even though it would turn out to be a false one and the title actually hurt Aviaticus to use sometimes as he felt he didn't deserve it, is something that could rub Ven the wrong way. Incidentally the same year I RP Aviaticus, perhaps my most powerful character (JRM and Tut-Tut have strong enough shackles to Spirit bureacracy, whereas full Spectrum Aviaticus is held back by being a Good Ol' Boy), Ven brings in H'astra and Rahat and their near boundless potential! It's all about application, folks!
When Aviaticus became White Spectrum, some aspects of his character changed. I suddenly had an explanation for why he has a sun head, it's actually one of the important orbs! I think between Aviaticus's head and Bouncy Blue was what made me decide they were all to be orb shaped, plus its the universe's natural shape for objects in it, and Spectrum was a universal force. The Spectrum tie also lead to his interest in things like puzzles, and his weather powers that were an obvious choice came to be an aspect of the Unity powers allowing him to twist things around, weather simply being the one he discovered. Believing the sky to be his domain also became why he feared water and once had no interest in the ground. His cloud made body could not enter water so he grew to dislike it, as if he were to enter water fully, his head would sink and be unable to rise up... at least he thought so. Aviaticus could have made a water body just as easily, or a dirt one, although more solid bodies would be harder to move. I often wondered if someone might question him of what he thought of things like Dragonus or Columbia, and he would have said something along the lines of "I DO NOT BEGRUDGE THE MOUNTAINS FOR ENTERING THE SKY, WHY SHOULD I DISLIKE A MOUNTAIN THAT'S HAD ITS BOTTOM CHOPPED OFF?" Thankfully humanity/Kobbers have a negligible effect on the sky as a whole, so its not likely he would have been forced out before, although if we had fought Rehk this year instead he would have totally been there to counter the hurricane.
Aviaticus also had more of a serious side before I thought up some of his grounders (mainly, he likes small things since from the sky he never really noticed them before, and he likes puzzles or connecting things because of his urge to unite things), I thought to explore his take on being a god. I once expressed interest in him meeting Shiva/Kalem and while it might not have gone so bad after the character was fully formed, the original version would have Aviaticus condemning Shiva's behavior! Calling out things like leading on his followers, using their manpower and devotion to do things no matter how good they were, halfheartedly refusing them instead of outright ignoring them or condemning them... Aviaticus would have been harsh! The event never happened though and Aviaticus's personality and views on being a god changed, although he might have still said something about how the best way God's are forgotten and no longer worshipped are by God not responding at all, with a wink wink in the direction of the Christian god. For the best they never had a chat I think on that matter at least, and strangely Lauren became the character tied to Kalem most.
I was also antsy about his late year arrival, but I wanted other characters to be able to set-up their parts, personality, and more, and he's a bit of an overwhelming presence and might've kickstarted Spectrum too early... instead he got there too late! He managed to make a big impression at least and latch onto good buddies like Lucky and Mizuki, so perhaps he speaks for the idea of half-season characters being able to do much and develop in that small timeframe. I wasn't sure how I wanted to introduce him at first. I considered him just coming down from above and demanding a tour of the bar, discovering the Red Spectrum by accident and maybe only later knowing he was drawn there. I actually expected him to get the Red Spectrum much sooner, but there was a stalemate as I set him up opposed to Phantomon! I guess I understand why people didn't trust the 50 foot tall shouting sky god. I even wondered if I should keep up his constant booming voice, and it often lead to him saying very laconic statements to avoid growing grating. I think only Marie complained in-universe and no one ever said anything out of universe, but I imagine being half-year helped it from growing old as well. I also never wanted him to be too small, and like I remind people constantly, our bars are basically high-ceiling establishments now and allow dragons and kaiju to roam easily enough inside. I also never committed too much to an exact flat size for White Spectrum which he could not possibly go below even if he wanted to. It's definitely really large, at least the size of a double door entrance.
He went so much better than expected, and I'm glad people cared about his fate at the end, as that could have really hurt the Black Spectrum event if they didn't! So many things could have gone wrong, but just like the intent of having Spectrum be a force for good, I made Aviaticus light-hearted and fun instead of anything too serious. We'd certainly have enough of that elsewhere in the plot anyway!
The Punfisher was a strange way to introduce Aviaticus, but I was quite fond of it. I have quite a few characters like him in the wings should I ever need an interesting but disposable villain, and since Aviaticus was almost one of those himself, it was appropriate! Punfisher came from the growing trend of characters condemning the Kobbers for inaction or for not acting like a police force, which is strange since I'm pretty sure they just as often complained about the Kobber vigilante nature. Punfisher would lampoon the idea by laying things out barefaced and having the counterargument being obvious: the Kobbers aren't some police force responsible for patrolling the city. That's what the POLICE are for, and the Kobbers are a reactionary force that do things often for free out of the goodness of their heart. Nobody gets mad at lawyers for not tracking busting criminals before they step in! Either way, I was nervous about having an attack in the bar, hence why he was criminally useless with his fish guns that launched fish somewhat realistically instead of as dangerous weapons. And then he got eaten, because it was a joke battle through and through. Spider-Ham has a lot of fun characters who take the piss out of Marvel heroes, I was almost tempted to get a few more involved! Maybe some day...
As for Aviaticus, we'll take another look at the goofball when we look at Black Spectrum, but for now, we'll look at what was the true true TRUEST start to Spectrum as a plot: Red Spectrum.
Probably the only Spectrum that can't be said to have ever really caused a problem, unless you consider this digital duo to be one. Manifestation is a natural piece of the creation puzzle, and its actually a bit strange to think that this one ends up being the one with no event or issue around it considering its potential of just creating stuff wholesale. Because of Green's power being Guidance though, most Spectrum was limited as separate, although each Spectrum sort of has a bit of bleed from the others that means they can work well enough separately. Still, with no guidance, Red Spectrum couldn't create... but when exposed to rules for creation, it would activate and create the thing outlined. It could certainly be used practically instead to make objects or materials, but on Earth/In Space, it mostly was exposed to digital creations. You'll notice both Phantomon and Thomas are explicitly digital beings, made of code and all, which certainly made the mindless Red Spectrum have an easier time making them.
I've mentioned many a time that when I RP a borrowed character, my intent is they are not from a piece of work but an actual character. When Phantomon first appeared he skirted this line, actively telling us he came out of the digivice toy that is a real world object, so he did go from fiction to reality. Thomas would do something similar in that he literally emerged from the video game Thomas Was Alone on a computer. Initially Phantomon just thought he willed himself into existence, and I never did explain his origin too much until I came up with the idea for Red Spectrum. This still wasn't a year Phantomon was fully RPed, but he did basically get fully upgraded to a side character like other JRM buddies as Spectrum pushed him forward as well as the increased focus on death avatars with Komachi around and Phantomon getting some respect! But, we did finally learn more about his origin and now we know how he exists, despite being from the Digimon franchise which I'd still treat as fictional personally despite the appearance of guys like Lucemon, although I hardly think the logic there needs addressing from me. It's almost an Asobin-doesn't-believe-in-Sonic if other Digimon enter RP. Phantomon is and always has been a manifestation of a counterpart that was not alive or "real" until the Red Spectrum found him.
Thomas is easier to explain because he came straight from a game that no one else will RP from. If you are wondering why he was able to carry the sphere around, look no further than the in-game pick-ups in his game, and as shown with Bouncy Blue, Spectrum can't ever be fully integrated even when absorbed, so Thomas just pushed it back out when he realized he didn't need it and wanted to leave a memento with Tupai. That's right: Thomas didn't know what Red Spectrum was either, but had the same pull Phantomon did and knew to keep it around. If Thomas had died with it in him, the rectangle would've poofed and leave the red orb behind! And probably give people an even greater misunderstanding of its purpose. It is not a Thomas Egg.
Although both these guys are digital and explaining their existence is easier in reference to Red Spectrum, I also kind of opened a door slightly for myself and others should they wish to join me down this strange route. It might get weird to overplay Red Spectrum's influence, but it was mentioned to bring some fictional things into existence while owned by the Zoofights Corporation, although they never figured out how to harness it on purpose. I certainly like our world to make sense mostly, hence my recently shared idea that ZFRP reality was basically like real life Earth until the 1980s when the Zoofights reality was nailed together with ours and potentially others when Croctopus and Gamma Constrictor fought across time and space. Our world took a bit to settle but after Zoofights died and we took ZFRP into our own hands is about where I'd say the universe is relatively stable. Red Spectrum can be a means to make other aspects of our universe make sense, since the other methods are usually not caring at all or almost cynical approaches. Still, it probably didn't bring any worlds into existence, but if I had to pick something in RP that could fit in well, Priscilla's painted world would be a good one, since it is still connected to its game but its also real, a kind of weirdness that bringing a digital world to life might cause. Certainly won't say that's what happened, but examples are examples!
I explained Thomas as a character pretty well in the Joyce Jr. blogpost, and Phantomon was basically me trying to RP Piedmon by starting a step lower and hoping to have him Digivolve or become a Digi-egg based on an event I had planned and scrapped where a couple of the origina Digidestined, with their full Mega Digimon, would show up in New York and try to wipe him out in a campaign against Virus Digimon. Matt and Tai would be absent and it would be more about using the untouched Megas like HerculesKabuterimon and such, and Phantomon would enlist the Kobbers to help him hold them back... but he'd want to kill the kids to prevent them from doing this again, as it was basically Virus fighting against Vaccine. A moral choice that would have most likely ended in compromise or Phantomon dying and coming back as an egg, going through the Digimon life cycle until he came up to his old self. Decided against it for its needless dark tone, Phantomon not having that personality, and trampling some aspects that came along like him being the Death Spirit as well as the fictional Digimon universe in my stuff. Izzy and Kari and all wouldn't be real people, and neither would their Digimon be real! Bakemon are real though, as an extension of bringing Phantomon to life and his power to call on them. Phantomon and Bakemon certainly became Digimon I appreciate a lot more through RPing Phantomon and the Bakemon that is Reject's Head.
Red Spectrum got most its use about piquing curiosity and wrapping up Tupai's small arc, as well as kicking things off finally when it came back into the picture. I knew people would start drawing comparisons between it and Bouncy Blue and all, but that's not always a bad thing, especially when you had to wring conclusions out elsewhere and elsewhen. It's the least interesting Spectrum though because of it being a pre-plot hook, as I like to do the year before I do a plot. Lay down some groundwork and then explore it next year properly. Never too much where its like DO THE PLOT NOW GEEZE either, so its not really a plot spread over two years so much as disparate elements coming together in the plot as it starts.
I do wish I had found Phantomon more to do, and I considered having him pop up more and in other plots to keep him in people's heads. As I mentioned, his wish from Arceus remained for so long and I was hoping to finally use it here. The Death Spirit would never use it for a revival of his own volition and even had Josuke sort of do it instead, but there were a few points where I expected it might be called upon like to separate Lauren from the Yellow or to make Bouncy Blue separate from Blue Spectrum. Instead, both Spectrums had their ability be one that made sense for allowing them to break away, but Phantomon was already attached and still had his wish, so I hoped to find a use along the way, and Yotam found one for me! I even made sure not to mention it before I thought it might be needed just so it doesn't lead to people skipping a step in a plot or trying to revive someone who is meant to stay dead (like Thomas). I'm sure one year I might be able to make Phantomon full time like he was in 2012 to better explore him, but I like him being on the periphery now and just helping when needed. As it stands, he probably won't ever digivolve, although I still think it might be fun if he dies to bring him back through his digivolution chain.
Red Spectrum: perhaps the most simple plotwise but mose complex should I ever decide to reopen the door it made exist. Probably won't unless I get cornered into explaining while Fictional Joe exists, although I hardly fear that's a worry unless I pick someone too big and can't make it work (like: Mac Tonight was a McDonald's mascot, he was just actually a moon-faced man instead of a guy in a mascot suit! No need to Red Spectrum someone into existence if its that easy to explain why they're real).
Moving on, we'll look all the way back at 2011, where Spectrum apparently had its first effect on someone in the form of Green Spectrum.
It should come as no surprise that Fumes and Midori were not originally tied to this plot. They existed before Spectrum was an idea after all, but much like how we'll come across Lauren later, their story had a nice blank spot that could be filled quite easily.
The reasons for RPing these two have been repeated over the years... but here they are again! Some may say I'm a softhearted fool, but back in 2011, when the downtrodden and suffering of our society, the homeless, where being pegged constantly as pointless victims to violence (often from characters otherwise serving as protagonists), I was rubbed the wrong way. The sorry situation their in is often why its viewed less badly than plucking a citizen off the street to kill, but its not like they're any less human. When we started throwing random homeless people off the street into Designate_5's Servitor as part of its hecatomb of sacrifices (a plot point I'd doubt we'd ever feed into on purpose nowadays), I saw my chance to strike. No OC or anything had come to mind for a homeless character I could introduce, but I had seen the movie Life Stinks by Mel Brooks. A decent film, not one of his best or worse, but it has the same message about the humanity of the homeless and points out their plight... as well as a comedy could be expected to, by any rate. Two side characters existed in the movie, Fumes and Sailor, who seemed a good enough fit. The main characters was Mel Brooks as a guy who would become called Pepto, and in RP we would see him in a few of the homeless crowds, apparently denied the happy ending of the movie. We also saw some other homeless people from the movie mentioned at least by name: Molly, Billionaire, and Legs. Legs ending up being the door operator on Cyrano's ship and with the expected ironic nickname.
So, Sailor became the homeless man thrown into Servitor, and gave a face to the previously faceless. Probably one of the first time the Kobbers ever really got faced with a more civil issue than "fight the bad guy" I suppose as the fact homeless people were in the bar soon became "how do we make them not homeless?" I've also mentioned before that, as Servitor plot unfolded, I didn't expect to get Sailor BACK. I wrote him off as dead, and even had him die almost immediately after revival, but when Gamera tried to get him back again, I decided to let it stick and keep him alive, if out of the way... mostly.
What would come next with Fumes and Sailor was mostly ways to keep them interesting when they couldn't fight. Like, at all. Not even Sonic Man style or Marina flubbing around. They were just real homeless people. Their backstories were even that way. Fumes became a homeless man because of a very simple struggle. He lost his job, and never got back on the horse, leading to his family moving on to a life where they could still succeed without him. No supernatural fix for that or some villain, just a factory worker made redundant by progress. Sailor was the other side of homelessness, a man with an odd head that didn't gel with society. The only way we ever really saw his mindset shown though was my idea to give him unusual metaphors and similes, although he was always sort of spacey and such as well. Needless to say, neither is too much like their movie counterpart.
As for why the Lemarchand's Box showed up, it was totally a set-up for a Cenobites fight, one that I dragged my heels on until the big end of year finale. It also gave something for Fumes to putter at and make people nervous with its presence since it was quite obvious what it was. Nothing too complex about that thread's creation. While I'm sure a Cenobite fight could be done BETTER (it was mostly me fighting them and had weird things like Tut-Tut fighting, which he is still beaten up over) I don't think there's any benefit in bringing them back unless you went for the full pleasure-from-pain route which isn't quite appropriate for RP. Hence: they're a no-show when it got tied into Spectrum.
The big thing introduced, and the one that would need addressing and necessitated Fumes's return some day... was Midori. Midori Days was a darling anime a girl at my first job let me borrow for a while. It's just as prone to anime clichés as most Japanese media, but it had a cute central premise and Midori was a likeable and fun character. I can't even remember why I chose to bring it in besides it being a nifty idea, but I think that's how everything starts, ain't it? It just had no end goal really at first. Like, from the get-go Midori did lay out straight some obvious clues about what happened. She had seen a homeless man on the street and wished she could help him, next thing she knew she was on one's arm! The anime certainly had no justification given for why she became Seiji's hand save "she really, really liked him", and no justification for why she went back to normal either. I always knew that wish was the impetus and the means of returning to normal would involve her helping improve Fumes's life, but the how and such was a foggy mist of uncertainty. She just basically became a cute girl overreacting to stuff with Fumes as the old anchor, as I blatantly broke the forum's "no anime" rule without a thought. Certainly a gate that needing opening though considering what's come through it now!
2011 ended without wrapping up Fumes and Midori, and 2012 would do the same when I prematurely left with only half-formed ideas of how to resolve them in my head. The Amandus Flats (Del offered better names for Jonesy's suspiciously similar wished up deliverer of the neighborhood, but I like how crappy a name Amandus is and think part of the charm is how barefaced it is !)appearing might have wrapped up Fumes and the homeless people if not for Midori, as bad as that sounds. It was a different era then, really, where I could casually give wishes as gifts back when David and Sine were at their "worst" in doing Basically Anything. I've still tried to emphasize, even as it turned out not to work perfectly, that it did help like over half of everyone who got a house in the wished up neighborhood, but if there's anything I've become a stickler for, it's trying to make solutions somewhat realistic, and some people aren't just a house away from being homeless. 2012 had some poking at the idea when I had the ol' Bill Clinton as a bad guy plot in my head, as we saw that the wished up neighborhood was controversial when Sailor was on Oprah.
2012 was weird.
Let's not put too many carts in front of the horse though. Before we forget, 2011 had a certain trouble with Tribbles. Originally an idea I had where the little furballs would appear constantly through the bar causing mischief, they made too big a first impression for their own good, ended up cast in a Pet Fite they won, and went down Getting Murdered Road. I still remember the day it happened, going to class and thinking about the small controversy around wiping out the species. I've tried to be more careful since. However, the Tribbles tied back into Sailor and his dealings with a shady space huckster named Cyrano. Not watched much Star Trek myself, and hence know little of Cyrano besides Wiki trawls, but he was the means to start things, and he was a wide open door to push a bunch of these disparate threads together...
Too bad he had been crushed by a chunk of debris in the end-of-year battle just as my way of getting Literally Every JRM Character there. He was even in the midst of trying to sucker the people of Amandus Flats into working for him when he got crushed!
When I returned in 2013, I knew I wanted to wrap up the questions raised about Fumes, but more than just having unclear ideas, I now had a new issue: RP was in fucking SPACE! While, conveniently, putting Cyrano in the Amandus Flats left his spaceship unattended (and it was very early decided a lot of the homeless who couldn't handle home life would shack up in there), it was only technically a way to get Fumes to a space setting, and one of the reasons I wanted to go back to Earth so badly. Sure, he could pilot a spaceship up there with a bunch of homeless folks I guess, but it doesn't feel natural and would not be the natural progression for him wondering how to help Midori/the homeless people. This was before he failed as the pseudo-mayor of Amandus Flats as well, so he wasn't homeless again until that fell through. Well, I played the waiting game, and soon we decided to head back to an urban setting, perfect for the homeless man and his girl hand!
But I waited a year because by then the ideas were coming finally. Green Spectrum quickly became Guidance as it was the means through which it could fuse the two in its directionless lack of intelligence. Help homeless man? Well obviously you can help as part of him. It's the motion of the Spectrum and the blueprints, but that doesn't mean it works well on its own either. So with the sphere starting the problems, where did it come from? Midori was always said to be in New York with her school, so she got put near some classmates who would have it. I have a whole vision of how the scene of those three Japanese boys getting the Green Spectrum went but no real reason to write it, but they had to get it from somewhere, and they wouldn't bring it with them for no reason...
So in comes the merchant who sold the Tribble to another unsuspecting, naïve sort. Cyrano was the perfect way of getting the Spectrum in the picture, and he could've even done that and died still! The issue came in making this something we could learn somehow. Midori had no reason to go to Japan and talk to those boys. A few more branches needed to be on this tree... and good ol' Bubs opened the door.
For some reason (probably just picking a grab bag of famous occult objects), Del picked the Lemarchand's Box as something for Bubs to sell Viola, and despite a few jokes about it appearing before, nothing happened with it... and nothing kinda happened again later, save for it serving as a beacon to draw our pieces together. Now that the box was in the picture, a suspicious potpourri of 2011 stuff related to Fumes existed. Tying it back to Cyrano was too easy, the hard part was making him come back.
And then I thought of Cyrano as a character, and soon the idea of selling Problems came up. He knew the Tribbles were trouble, the Lemarchand's box was obviously trouble and he could've sold that too and it just found its way to Fumes since Cyrano sold around the weird bar on purpose. And lastly, he was pegged for Green Spectrum, which like all Spectrum was prone to mischief when misused. Surely, these Problems wouldn't be all he ever sold, and if he was going to sell such things and obviously have unhappy customers, he'd need insurance. Like accidental immortality, a way with the law, and some nice guns on his ship. Cyrano explained the idea behind selling Problems well enough himself, but I really tried to make post-squashing Cyrano disturbing on two levels. I liked the idea of a man who should be dead basically moving around still as the squashed mess he is, hence the glass coffin thing he was found in, and since homelessness is a Problem as well, it was in his market. Literally, in real life, many places will buy bus tickets to ship homeless people to more developed cities, so selling their work contracts to a man who takes them off-planet is just a more sci-fi version of that!
So everything was finally in place... except our two central stars. Fumes and Midori needed reasons to come back, and of course the "girl on hand" issue was central to that. But I still wanted to do the original idea as well: she needed to help him before she could be separate again... but now it was almost a personal mission instead. Fumes had developed a lethargy and self-doubt from his situation that held him back from success, and he only really persisted for Midori's sake as his empathy was greater than any love he might still have for himself. Midori also became less of the cheering child she was in 2011, as age came as well as the forced maturity of trying to help hundreds of homeless while anchored on a man who was lost in his own self-loathing. Fumes wasn't exactly miserable or really hating himself, he just didn't see the point in trying to improve. I've known more than a few people who just allowed themselves to be homeless and didn't try to change that fate, one of the reasons being a lack of self-worth. They quickly got their interpersonal strife set-up, and like everyone on Spectrum who would have a character arc, they suddenly had theirs basically from me thinking up A: why Fumes would be homeless again and B: how Midori would've changed over the years.
So, most the pieces were set. I liked having Cyrano pulling Green Spectrum across the universe since I didn't like the idea of this universal power all being on Earth conveniently. Unity may have drown his path towards us, but Green Spectrum spent ages off in space and only visited Earth back in 2011 when Cyrano decided to make his sales. Cyrano also worked with what would become a Spectrum theme of an adversary/antagonist we couldn't just kill and be done with it. Cyrano was seemingly unkillable, had a huge amount of homeless people in his hold, and precious information. It required something we hadn't seen from the Kobbers before really: playing along with the bad guy. He pretty much knew from the start they would try to pull one over on him, but he thought himself a step ahead, only to find out he overestimated himself. Still, even with the whole "we have to play into his hands some" thread, I still wanted to have something for us to do. Another Spectrumplot theme was having a battle that still had purpose, but was not the main objective or point. Enter the last hanging piece of this puzzle: the three Japanese boys who bought Green Spectrum.
Right from the start, as soon as I knew we'd fight them, I came up with the idea of them taking on the forms of Goku and other anime protagonists. Midori had opened the gates for anime, and now I was going to bring the taboo anime heroes into RP in probably the only way we could do them without openly courting irritation or misfortune. Originally I thought of the boys as much younger, essentially the ages they would have been when they got the orb in the first place, but with Midori growing older, it wouldn't make sense for them to stay young. I briefly considered trying to give them some decent Japanese names, but nothing inspired leapt out at me, but I remembered some old stories I wrote as a kid, when Japanese things like Dragonball Z were just getting hot... Kwongi's name came first, and he was from an old story I half-wrote called Sushi Roll, which was meant to be a Japanese centric spinoff to a series I wrote called Ghetto Bananes. Only problem is the idea had little direction besides "Japanese Stuff". I can't even find it anymore. It was inspired, I believe, by a roll of paper that looked vaguely like a sushi roll that I would try to eat in front of my friends and gag on since it couldn't be done. Gross stuff, that, in retrospect. Cyn came from a video game idea I had that I remember very little about save I think he had a weapon called the Pistalice that was a gun that evolved weapon traits as the RPG progressed. Barracuda was named after a serial killer I wrote on a standardized school writing test who managed to trick the guys executing him into going down as well as he mixed their eccentric execution methods together by agreeing to all three at once instead of picking one. Barracuda was the only hard name to justify, hence it became the guy trying to act tough. The images were mostly pulled from me trying to find some decent looking Japanese punks on google, and I really wanted someone who had one of those medical masks on like characters in anime do to REALLY sell the anime-ish side of things, but Barracuda's pic was the closest I got to a good one.
The three boys were a bit of a basic idea of what power would do to such young minds, and they hung around a junkyard to have tons of material on hand to use to enforce their decisions and whims. Their ending was kinda eh since I didn't really expect it to be followed up on, just throwing them back to their families for the punishment of being made normal again. The anime heroes were picked, basically, because they were the most obvious guys we probably can't do well in RP due to their series being so infamous. Inuyasha was left off despite I feel fitting that bill, and I avoided Luffy from One Piece since so many knew about it and seemed to like it and I didn't know much. His powers might not've worked well either... or perhaps too well! But it certainly seems more adaptable to RP than the others on display: Goku, the obvious go-to "this guy's stronger than everyone". Sephiroth, the only game character but pivotal for things like xXxGokuSephiroth420xXx, being edgy, and not likely to mesh well into RP. Naruto I wanted to make the joke about him being there, but I know so little about him that I decided to have Kwongi be the same and switch over to Ichigo who was pretty much guilty of many of the same sins but I actually watched the show some. I regret not introducing the idea that people could just as easily use Green Spectrum's power against them earlier, it might've made the fight more interesting and unique, but I tried to do two things and ended up giving the anime joke side of it more attention.
So we got the fight, Midori and Fumes got their character development along the way with the Nejems and a little help from small things like Komachi and the dream plot, and we're finally about to wrap-up Midori and Fumes... but how? I saw a chance to clean things up in a fell swoop, but worried about what people might think. Midori killing a man and making his body into her new body was strange, to say the least, perhaps brutal as well. Hence, Cyrano was not a very good man when we met him again, and the shooting of Fumes's foot during the pivotal scene helped seal it as now everyone's life was in jeopardy, and it wasn't so much a selfish wish as it was trying to get rid of scum from the galaxy that couldn't be wiped away otherwise. Cyrano's body also helped me find a way to give her a body that made sense, instead of being some weird magic or nonsense! I also had the Green Spectrum give her green hair for a similar reason. At some point I just decided I didn't want to have anime hair colors on my character seen as normal, so both Marina and Midori got explanations and both acknowledge its strangeness. Just helps with that normal/strange border I like to maintain at times. Anyway, Cyrano is gotten rid of, Spectrum acquired, I feel kind of bad because I wish I had given Viola a more important role than Box Haver, but she was fun on the plot at least! I also wish I had done better with the group scenes of the homeless people. I think the atmosphere being odd and off-putting worked, but presenting them as humans in a crowd didn't work so well. Thinking about and fleshing out those civilians and side characters is something I need to improve on. I also wish I could have done the final scene without assuming everyone stood around, and while I was happy that Midori and Fumes both got REFRESH as a fluid and fine ending, I think Midori (rightly though) got more focus after the split than now-Theodore. Midori did get a bit more shown of her after becoming a full person again (even if I never found a full body pic I loved too much), but Fumes lost focus and I wish we could have had just one bar chat or something to get his post-plot stuff out there. His end-of-year talks with Midori sort of did it, but I think the guy deserved a larger send-off, although he's certainly sort of "happily ever after" now that he knows to love himself and works hard to keep a job he loves. I do also wish they had just done more, the Nejems set a fine example of non-combat characters and I wish I had gotten these two around as much, although things like Komachi's Gift got them out and about for a while.
On his name: Fumes is named after the actor who played him, Theodore Wilson. I almost didn't use the name because Theodore Rex was still around, but Fumes only had the rest of the season left and Theodore Rex was infrequent enough... although I usually did say something like "the man once called Fumes" whenever putting him in a new scene. Also, since it apparently wasn't obvious, the smell that hung around him, while not supernatural or anything, was basically an extension of his poor attitude. He didn't value himself, so his body was smelly. When he learned to care and finally got his life around, he accepted his old name again and stopped smelling bad. So there, Cornwind, you made me spell it out!
I'm really happy I finally got to wrap up this loose end, and I feel the scene of the separation was really good and a good payoff. Sorry for making you wait for so long! It only took five years and a day! But I am trying to wrap-up a lot of my loose ends, and this basically united a bunch of old 2011 ones and worked through them. And it was only part of a bigger plot! I guess there is still a loose end in that Midori doesn't know what to do about her original family in Japan, but I've bandied about a few ideas, and mostly its something she'll face down the road when she has a stable life and can go over and see them again and know she'll be alright doing it and being able to go back to REFRESH after.
And yet, despite that wall of text, we're not done here. ON TO ORANGE!
ORANGE SPECTRUM
More than any other story or character in Spectrum, Yotam and the Orange went through the most changes from initial conception to actually appearing in RP.
When the whim struck and I decided to finally play through Fallout 3 from start to finish, I decided to make my character look vaguely middle eastern, and as I struggled to think up a name, I came onto the name of an Israeli fellow whose animations I like: Yotam Perel. I even considered having the character have the same last name but ultimately went with no last name for Yotam in RP. Yotam Perel's animations are often quite silly and goofy, a stark contrast to what would become the character.
As I played through Fallout 3, I related my adventure to Ven and told him about Yotam and how I was developing a penchant for using the sledgehammer as my main weapon, as melee seemed more fun and easier than guns or other weaponry. Hence, Yotam became a hammer man who preferred to use his hammer over speaking, leading to Yotam's quick use of it and laconic speech in RP as he never did more than he felt he needed to to get what he wanted or needed. Talking about him made Ven seem to want to have Yotam appear in RP, and while I thought it wasn't a bad idea, I didn't really want to make a Fallout character for a few reasons, the main reason I'd be intruding on a universe almost clearly Ven's now and another being he'd need a story from the wasteland and I just had no ideas/prefer making characters native to our universe instead of the dimension hoppers.
This almost became an issue as, even as I reworked the idea of Yotam in my head, Ven decided to have Wanda go asking around for him to give him a weapon in RP. This lead to some convoluted attempts by myself to work in a Fallout past to the man who would be Yotam that never really meshed, but we'll come back to that in a bit. For now though, unless Wanda somehow knew about the simple mutant in Israel, we'll just have to accept there are two hammer loving Yotams in the multiverse. A stretch, I know.
Besides the hammer usage, Fallout would leave a mark on Yotam before he got reworked away from those origins for RP. See, in Fallout 3, there is a health indicator that shows your character's body and the state its in. For some reason, even at full health, the indicator shows the left leg as a toeless stump.
Through torture of course!
While I never pushed into describing the nitty-gritty of it in RP to remain tasteful, I decided Yotam would be a soldier who had been tortured and had pieces removed as part of experimentation... but not from Dr. Naeem, or because he was a mutant. These pieces came along even later. We were only just getting to the point he was ready for RP in any way, and it was at this point I decided the reason he had the pieces tortuously removed was because robots!
Yup. Robots. Israel originally had a problem with a few strange potentially interdimensional robots who decided to drop by to figure things out. Mainly: humans, how do they work? The main robot would be a medical droid with a ton of different limbs with their own implements, almost like a more humanoid Mr. Handy from Fallout, and he'd have an entourage of other fightable robots for us to take on when we went to basically stop them from being crazy robots. Yotam would fight the doctor robot on his own and it would involve the robot taunting him about the procedure as he easily and nimbly dodged as Yotam grew angrier and angrier. An idea I had for the doctor robot and his buddies was the way they'd breach the language barrier. While Yotam and others usually spoke English or later had translation done actively instead of obscuring the meaning, the robots would say their lines in like, six different languages all in a row in writing, but it was meant to come out all at once in RP. It would include English and Hebrew of course, and I might've thrown Telugu, Japanese, and probably some other big languages like French or something to make the lines of language they used to try and communicate effectively without understanding how Earth's many languages really work. It might be an idea for reuse some other day, but likely with a character who doesn't speak much or a one-event wonder.
As for the other robots, we now bring ourselves back to the idea of Yotam potentially visiting the Fallout universe in some way. One idea I had was a robot that essentially was a sentient moving portal device that, in fighting the Kobbers, would likely fling them through strange universes to fight. It would be mentioned that once Yotam had been thrown into the Falloutverse when up against the portal robot, but this was a huge and ultimately dumb stretch to make Wanda's unapproved dialog work and compromised the character more than it helped him. I've also been sitting on a picture of an orb-shaped robot I quite liked who we could've fought but other than that nothing solid was further made of these ideas, and the robots got scrapped.
From here other aspects began to involve a bit more willy nilly. Dr. Naeem came to replace the doctor robot, and I began to develop who he was going to be. It was pretty early on I decided he'd basically be a doctor who felt history was only made by those who could put aside their morals, as even know we talk about the tests and experiments that modern practices outlaw and forbid for we know better. He was still messed up of course and torturing mutants just to figure out which useful bits he could try and replicate. His design was up in the air for a while, the one thing I knew I wanted was him to only have one eye where Yotam had knocked it out to escape, and that eye eventually was rolled into the idea of the Convenience. It was also lead to him being made of Iodine later to survive such a hit (and, while I did consider having different metals for Naeem's flesh, ultimately I came upon the idea of Iodine and couldn't shake it, despite a doctor having Iodine skin being perhaps too cosmically convenient.) I toyed with the idea of how else Naeem might be injured as his mutant power was thought up as well, the healing mist that sealed wounds and allowed Yotam to be functional despite his missing pieces. I thought of the idea of a missing arm to play into some behind-the-scenes stuff with Sheep, and I also decided it would be cool if I could tie him to Sands when it appeared. The tie between Naeem and Doc Gerbil was an early idea as the idea of a posthumous character in the way of Gerbil intrigued me, so we got this aspect of their backstories intertwining and connecting into the vital piece of Naeem's investigative plot, which was basically me trying to do yet another villain that we couldn't take down through just fighting. And also it was me trying to do something like Inch High Investigations but have it actually matter to the plot! So, Naeem was down one arm and one eye, and now I was thinking on his legs. I never wanted him to be an imposing presence, and he was wheelchair bound before I decided to remove both legs, mostly based on an image I saw in a comic of a character not far from what Naeem was in my mind now: Heinrich Megala.
Doc Gerbil as a posthumous character also justified the decision in putting the Convenience where I did. I'm not sure how it might've been worked in otherwise, but I knew I was feeling bad for Gooper and people constantly imposing on his characters to heal even when they or he aren't present. The medical ward has almost cleared that up, but in 2015 that wasn't the case, so I gave my goofy cop duo a way to be more useful on plots with a healing box that, we'd later learn, was powered by Naeem's eye. Naeem's powers were well-researched, and much like how Zara's work is mostly based on stuff I read about how ant colonies really work, Naeem's were based on a long, descriptive look into the process of death and decay in human bodies. Naeem's mist tricks the panicking body that is trying to cannibalize itself into consuming the mist instead, which provides adequate substance for the body to self-repair. Not quite revival, but it did fill the lungs of Theodore Rex and Inch when they thrown in space with proper oxygen until Wanda scooped them up. They were mostly thrown out there to sort of punish Cornwind for going "BILLIONS OF COCKROACHES IN BAR BUT THEN PORTAL TO OUTER SPACE" and expecting that to somehow have no repercussions. The main repercussion being that Convenience had a place to slip into RP, as I had no idea how to introduce it otherwise!
I was actually worried that almost every step of the investigation, someone would just bring up the Convenience and skip to the end. Surprisingly, I got in every step of the process and then the conclusion was reached, and unlike Inch High Investigations I wanted it to be something we could do anytime and, originally, I expected it to be over a longer period of time. Cornwind kind of poked against the investigations by sending Collins to talk to him, but that well was already dry of info pretty much. I never wanted Naeem to be completely naïve, only just enough to give people a good starting line. Cornwind did once say if Naeem didn't cooperate Skein would just stick tendrils in Naeem's brain and take the method of treating the mutants of Barkan out of his mind by force, which... kind of would have been skipping to the end! :V Naeem's name is another one of those ironic names, meaning "comfort" despite his torturous care for the citizens of Barkan.
Speaking of, Barkan and the Orange Spectrum... I don't remember when quite it was pushed into Yotam's story. Probably between becoming a mutant and Naeem being born as an idea. Adding the Spectrum almost made the plot impossible to do, as I was afraid people would ask why don't we just wait on Aviaticus to get Spectrum's power so he can fix the people there instead of investigating Naeem? Much like Lauren though, one of Aviaticus's limitations to his power became him requiring a certain level of knowledge to do certain things, not to mention the sky god's hang-ups on potentially harming humans with Spectrum considering what it did before it was united. Luckily we got both parts of the ending, where Naeem's mist fixed them up and then Aviaticus felt comfortable matter shifting them. The Orange Spectrum itself just added to how crappy things were for Yotam. Alteration was another easy Creation power to think up, and as soon as it came to mind, so did the fun ways to make it horrible! I wanted Spectrum to come in all sizes, so I made Orange enormous and made its fall to Earth much more devastating than the others, more like a real meteor than Bouncy Blue's simple fall to the planet. Very quickly some of the ideas like buildings made of materials that no longer stood and a girl turned into glass huddled and trying not to fall apart came to mind. I think it could make for some horrifying imagery with a good special effects budget! Yotam of course had to be something functional, and his sledgehammer shouldn't be the same material as him. Tungsten Carbide was a very durable metal I found through google that fit the bill of making the hammer both hit harder and capable of putting up with an owner whose power would make him break lesser metals with enough pain. Yotam's skin being YBCO was an evolution of the initial simple idea of making him Yttrium, but Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide was a bit more believable (Orange Spectrum wouldn't just neatly turn everyone into single elements but rather various materials of all compositions) and it worked, as well as lending to the "always hot" angle that came in later with Drag-Inn and his relationship with "always cold" Catarina. I wish my creativity lasted as, when we went to Barkan, most people were made of simpler materials I could think up off the top of my head. Again, coming back to not doing crowds or nameless characters well, the soldiers of Barkan and the mutants held hostage by Naeem by their own need for treatment could've been done more effectively.
Barkan itself was an extension of the Israeli-Palestine conflict I felt I might have to address if someone cornered Yotam on it. Ultimately, he has a soldier's attitude of trying to protect his loved ones. He doesn't care if Palestine has a claim or not, he just knows they'd kill his family, while also knowing Israel might do the same to Palestine. Yotam just happens to be on the Israel side of the mirror. Barkan itself is a real city, and originally, it wasn't even a mutant hideaway until I thought it made Naeem being a mutant make more sense, as Sands had made him want to investigate mutants. I also decided to flesh out Sheep's mutants more by having governments take different approaches to it, so Israel just makes communities for mutants and benefits off giving them jobs that need doing but they don't want to risk others for. Barkan in real life was built by Israel on land they aren't supposed to build on, earning Palestinian ire and making it a good bubbling pot for Yotam's unit to be sent in to fight. Originally I considered not making Yotam entirely YBCO as I hadn't thought of it still working functionally as flesh (which, ultimately, became Naeem's motivation more than anything: working synthetic flesh made of durable materials.) The idea was he'd be just on the edge of the Orange Spectrum's radius of influence and thus maybe just get his back turned to YBCO, but it made no sense and the metal flesh worked better. I also originally thought of Orange Spectrum still being dangerous, giving off its glow of matter alteration and making it impossible for anyone to go near it without changing, but no other Spectrum was that way so it was changed. I ALSO considered having the Borax Kid only appear after Naeem was completely investigated and stopped as Naeem would hide how to access the Orange Spectrum until cornered and then we'd fight the stone alien, basically making the initial event more an introduction to the situation (and possibly making the soldier fight longer/more interesting).
Speaking of Borax Kid, I also feared people trying to get him to undo Orange Spectrum's power... but he so perfectly fit with it that I finally turned him into somewhat of a character instead of "gambling ship owner". Perhaps I do the "fight the old good guy" card too much, but you'd think it'd be more common with the Kobbers being a contentious lot of super-powered drunkards. Still, he situation was created to be dire but also remove the possibility of, if people had remembered, Borax Kid just waving his hands and exerting his matter alteration powers. His teleportation is still all him, but he used matter alteration to heal injuries and keep a body that shouldn't work moving for way longer than it should've, and since he lost actual body parts, he lost the bits of Orange Spectrum in them along the way until he realized it was too late. The powers and the text color were a perfect fit for tying him into Spectrum, but since Yotam was slated for orange in his voice, the Kid got a border. I didn't expect people to be so sad fighting him, although he was always a gentleman beforehand and he did cave in the end because he's not bad at heart, he just got desperate when death was at his door. The Feldspar Queen also gave me good transportation for the plots as, originally I thought of using Cyrano's ship before Mizuki scooped it up!
Surprisingly, there's still more to say! Yotam's actions in RP were rather serendipitous outside his own plot. One day of bar chatter gave him both of his good buddies, as I saw Caitir in the bar and said "hammer? hammer!" and put Yotam next to her. Catarina was there as well and, initially, I wanted to show Yotam, despite his nervousness and mistrust, was still weak to a pretty find and kind personality, something we'd also see when Alu tricked him in an event I only alluded to where she played the fake sex slave to earn a bunch of cash and sympathy. I wish I had done that scene or at least given it full attention in a retrospective instead of tacking it on when Big Dice went to the Drag-Inn and met Alu and the others. Anyway, I didn't expect Yotam flirting with Catarina to get a positive response, and while its not the most developed RP romance, it was something good for the two characters to have to give them a bit more focus instead of slipping completely to the background. Both Catarina and Caitir were good ways to show the nicer side of Yotam, as he was an open and friendly guy before the army and the abuse of his mutant ability happened. We'd see a happier Yotam near the end, too, when he managed to get his skin turned back into flesh and turn into the cure for mutancy. I would have been happy with Yotam sacrificing himself permanently. It was a fitting end for his character and it had the proper gravity Sheep's mutant stuff deserved for its ending. It did finally give me something to do with Phantomon's wish and, as shown by Wanda's parents, the wish could bring back people from nothing so it wouldn't interfere with the mutant cure in anyway needing a full mutant body. Wanda really did have a lot to do with Yotam's plot in the end despite him no longer being a Fallout 3 character...
The Drag-Inn I guess is the last big point of Yotam's part of this plot. Initially just conceived as part of the introduction post to nail in Yotam's otherness off the bat, I began to give the place a bit more character in case I wanted to develop Yotam more on the side... while it might not have happened otherwise, Yotam killing Lil Dice opened the door on spilling out my Drag-Inn plans. You'll notice, first of all, me mostly calling it Drag-Inn, even though its name was originally Dragon Motel and the Drag-Inn was a nickname for its poor quality. People started mixing its name around though so I stuck with the one people seemed to remember the most. Hertali, Alu, and Eldgja are all named after volcanic vents (as is the briefly seen brother Holuhraun with a non-Newtonian fluid version of Hertali's smoke belching), appropriately so since Eldgja is actually one! Originally the Drag-Inn was just hot for no reason before I thought her up, and Hertali's physique was based on my boss at work mixed with a mutant power that I thought was suitably bad to make up for my perceived cheatness with Yotam's ability. Alu, besides her story of eliciting sympathy and eventually learning some empathy from Yotam rescuing her family despite their horrible treatment of them, was visually thought of to look like Creepy-Chan and I decided her power would basically be playing into the emaciation that made her sympathetic to marks. Eldgja is a volcano vent. They were mostly just a fun secondary cast to envision who we almost didn't see any of, but thankfully Yotam being a mutant opened up so many doors for his and their characters! I was so excited when Sheep wanted to set his event there.
Yotam's arc was a bit more simple than other Spectrum characters, learning more about trusting again and opening himself up after harrowing experiences. And also becoming a normal human again. Catarina gave him a perfect "into the sunset" ending when Permadeath was removed from the table, but I really don't want to punish people for liking a character, so when they wanted him back, I obliged. Besides, Goops had a point about how it made him getting what he wanted sort of lame if he missed out on having it! So Yotam got a happy ending despite being such a miserable guy at first. I even entered him in the Brawl because I knew he had a shelf life of one year for good or for ill. Yotam is actually going to be a go-to example in the future I use for how not every character needs to be a main character. Him and DJ Candy both got good enough use to serve as supporting cast/secondary characters. Yotam had his arc, he didn't need to go on a bunch of adventures or chat too much to do it effectively. I guess one thing I could do more effectively was with Yotam and Ingrid I both had them vaguely allude to their histories (Yotam mentioning Naeem/Barkan in narration/thought) but it didn't seem to drum up any interest until it was presented properly. Might just be the multifaceted nature of RP that makes dropping those kinds of hints and teasers less effective.
Either way, that's how Yotam went from a Fallout joke to... well, all this! Orange Spectrum certainly was more a unifying piece here than any real mystery, as this was more about Yotam and Naeem (and briefly, Borax Kid to give us a fight and something more to do for people who only fought soldiers earlier, as well as put a nice bow on him before sending him off).
Moving on finally, we head towards the next Spectrum color on the agenda...
Ever since I first played Final Fantasy 11, I wanted to work my character into RP in some capacity, a calling I would feel once again when I played Final Fantasy 14 a few years later. FF11 is certainly the worse of the two, using old final fantasy systems in an MMO instead of adapting fully to it like FF14, and by the time I joined FF11 the game was already packed with so many things that I could hardly enter a town without triggering three cutscenes for different plotlines. FF14 I got in relatively on the groundfloor, with still a lot to do but not an overwhelming amount, and the gameplay was more fun and interesting as well as its plot have some good characters and moments.
I always expected someone like Cornwind to RP their MMO character before I did, and for a while I left the idea by the wayside. I also feared Draco might RP an FF14 character before I did, and Gooper even had a blogpost mention he almost had a Lalafell character! Thankfully, the stars aligned, and as I was figuring out my 2016 cast, Ingrid finally got pushed to the front as she felt a capable character both in battle and a decent base character who could get involved in a lot of things. Her tie to the Spectrum was perhaps the least important and tellingly it was sort of added to make her fit rather than building a lot of her character around it.
Before we begin, I suppose its worth mentioning Taren and Ingrid's origins. Taren, the Tarutaru from FF11, is a Ninja/Red Mage, which was ultimately my favorite combination before I let my subscription lapse. My first ever character was actually a character on my brother's account, a Galka named Sheepsquatch who would feature in Taren's backstory as the adventuring pal who underestimated Taren and made him so eager for recognition as a hero. What might surprise you though is that Taren's name in FF11 wasn't Taren! It was... Tarbabby. See, in Uncle Remus's folk tales about Br'er Rabbit, the rabbit encounter a baby made of tar on the side of the road and ends up getting stuck in him, getting more and more stuck in the tar the more he struggled. The idea of a baby made of tar was an amusing concept to me, because its the right kind of weird. Unfortunately, despite being from an African-American folk tale, people started to think "tarbaby" is a pejorative term directed at black people. Don't you hate when a goofy concept is ruined by racism? I even had an idea for a fictional universe once where one of the main races were essentially tarbabies, and in FF11, I named the Tarutaru Tarbabby mostly because of my love for the innocent tar doll in Uncle Remus's story and it fitting the Tar- prefix of Tarutaru. I did one day receive an email from Square Enix about my name being flagged as offensive and to change it... but I couldn't find out how and nothing happened after the warning so...
ANYWAY! As much as I love tarbabies, Tarbabby is not a very serious character name, and Tarbaby made even less sense for the character, so I tried to find a realistic sounding name that somewhat tied back to the Tarbabby moniker, settling on Taren. As I never got too far in FF11, I didn't have a strong familiarity with the story and world like I did with 14, instead relying mostly on early game info and the original main plot of fighting the Shadow Lord, who I've never actually fought! For a while I considered RPing Taren as his own character, with no ideas on his personality forming for quite a while. It wasn't until I started to work on Ingrid did I think up a way for him to get involved, mostly that I needed a justification for Ingrid's unique facepaint and the idea of a split-face representing a body shared through possession meant there was an opening for the Tarutaru to enter RP, if as a less important character than he might have been otherwise. Taren began with a much more selfish personality where he wanted Ingrid completely out of the picture, and he went through a flip into something more complex and less awful (not unlike Yotam flipping from his original purely selfish motives into being a character motivated by the idea of suffering so others did not have to, a strange almost reflection of Naeem's own idealogy of doing awful things others won't do in hopes of finding the good behind them.) While Ingrid's story is heavily tied to FF14's main plot, Taren was basically stuff I made up about him being the unrespected hero until his foolish bravery earned him martyrdom fame when the Shadow Lord made a show of killing him. Taren's main motivation of course was simple: find a way home and hopefully back to his life, and since Ingrid was a character who wanted to help wherever she could and even when she couldn't, it started to give birth to the reason she would be on Earth at all. Bludletta wanted Ingrid removed from the picture to build up the Primal, so giving Ingrid a near impossible task that sent her off-world was the perfect way, since Bludletta could not bring herself to kill Ingrid for how risky it was and... well, something else.
Taren's possession gimmick was hard to work out, and I liked the idea of flipping characters on a 1 role, only for it to nearly never come up or come up when I was trying to do something with Ingrid or couldn't get much use out of Taren anyway. Ingrid failing at darts was initially not going to trigger him since I was still trying to introduce Ingrid at the time, but it ended up perhaps Taren's most important moment in that it introduced quickly his story and motivations. Since he so often only briefly got to use Ingrid's body, he often went overboard or tried to grandstand to earn what little glory he could in a small timeframe. Maybe I should have made the personality flip cover a wider number range, but then they might have flipped too often! Taren I definitely feel could have been done much better and I do wish I could have introduced his legacy better than Phantomon even if it did keep the Digimon somewhat relevant. I had considered perhaps a small trip to Vana'diel as not an event but a Thing To Do with downtime to introduce his legacy and give him closure, but c'est la vie.
But of course you don't care about Taren! You want to hear about the big character! Chocobilly!
Originally, I knew I wanted Ingrid to have a mount, but I had decided not on the iconic FF standby of yellow big bird, but a set of Magitek armor from FF14 that would have been called Maggie and been self-aware and all that. It looked pretty cool and would have possibly been a ton more useful in combat than Chocobilly, but around the same time I was considering RPing a pest exterminator named Maggie and didn't want the name overlap, so I scrapped the Magitek armor completely. Shame I didn't bring in Maggie, she would've been perfectly for A: Goldbug and B: Medusa's rats!
When both Maggies were scrapped, Ingrid still desired a mount, and who better than the first one you get in FF14? The company chocobo is your first introduction to mounts and hard-earned before they start giving them a bit less carefully, so it was a big deal when I got my first mount (and back then, they couldn't even fly!) When it came time to name the bird in-game, I decided to call him Chocobilly, a callback to Final Fantasy 7's silly name for its Chocobo breeder. RP Ingrid basically felt the same way about her first bird and doted heavily on Chocobilly, even when she started to cultivate a whole stable of birds and other mounts (that are still in Eorzea and, admittedly, she does miss them, but not as much as if Chocobilly had been left behind as well). Chocobilly would serve a few vital functions: diversifying Ingrid's combat capabilities, give us a healer (albeit a weak one), make up for the Lalafell's short legs and give her flight in her arsenal, and of course give us that amazing CHOCO KICK technique that is just a kick. Really though, his most important aspects were meant to be outside of combat. Chocobilly's silly name, his personality derived from how much Ingrid doted on him and spoiled him, and how she spoke more candidly with him rather than her attempts at proper discourse with others was meant to be the first bit of peeling back that beneath the surface that Bludletta had built up around Ingrid, she was still a simple girl. That's also why she loved fishing so much and chose to make leather gloves for Nylora rather than something more flashy. Those were aspects of her life before Bludletta groomed her into the perfect hero.
Another thing that was meant to hint at her past being strange was the poorly hinted at two last names Ingrid gave at different times. Angelheart is her last name by birth, and Bladeswift the one she acquired through marriage. While I'm not saying if she'll ever be Ingrid Dredd, the use of the two was to show some of her strife with coming to terms with her marital situation and her growing displeasure with it. We get ahead of ourselves, of course, since Chocobilly was meant to be the subject! I quite enjoyed making him a bit of a brat, something he shared with Tupai, the other non-speaking pet I think I did a decent job with. Chocobilly was never meant to learn any lessons or anything, but he had a close connection with Ingrid and we saw time after time him risking his life or Ingrid hers to keep the other alive. They had fought and died so many times before in Eorzea that they knew death wasn't so permanent, but its hard for that message to ever sink in fully since one day it won't be reversible. Actually, one reason the Purple Spectrum was added was because Ingrid had died and would die while possessed, which should logically free her spirit and Taren's, but the Purple Spectrum anchored it to the body even when it was dead.
Now, lets actually take some time to look at Ingrid. Ingrid's name comes from my FF14... but her last name was changed to protect the innocent. Or rather, to avoid associating her with the character she named after: a lady in Resident Evil 4 named Ingrid Hunnigan who my brother and I both thought had cornrows back on our crappy standard definition TV when we first played it.
We're not done with origins here either. Ingrid's two new last names after Hunnigan was dropped come from FF14 as well! My brother's character in FF14 and, incidentally, Ingrid's wife in that game (we got married to get the sweet wedding swag) is named Edyth Angelheart, and if you recognize the name Edyth, that's because Edyth in RP got her name from my brother's FF11 character (who was originally named Yedythe after an archer character in Final Fantasy Tactics but account problems made him have to change his name and he just made Yedtythe into a more normal name). So, strangely, Ingrid's in-game's wife name became her original last name in RP, but Bladeswift... Here we go deeper. Ingrid's marital strife was thought up as I felt it was an interesting idea to explore. So many characters in RP are cool with open relationships or flat monogamous, but Ingrid was going to look at something we hadn't really seen. An unhappy married person. Sure we didn't see Bludletta's side much, but that was intentional! We'd only know Ingrid's side really, and as the impetus for spurring Ingrid's thoughts about the truth of her marriage, I decided to borrow another user's character from FF14. During the final dungeon of the original main plot of FF14, I encountered a very friendly fellow named Ridge Racer, and dropping the last name for obvious reasons, Ingrid began to realize that Bludletta had basically been passionless whereas Ridge was being very friendly to her instead of treating her like some legendary hero, opening Ingrid's heart to realizing she wasn't happy or in love. Ingrid was made bisexual and interested in both sexes also as an attempt to try and show the strife of choosing one over the other... but then she ended up falling for a girl again, thankfully so thought because Nylora was so pivotal and perfect! I didn't even start to push them together intentionally until they were well into being friends and getting along. At first it was just me smooshing all my characters against Nylora because I liked her so much :V
I guess it is also worth mentioning that I wish I had done her reaction faces and such better and more often. The pictures I took weren't the best really and I didn't want to renew my subscription just to take a bunch of pretty pictures of Ingrid, although I did once consider/wish I had pictures of her in different armors and attire. I had some wedding dress pictures but nothing else, and those weren't likely to be used. I seem to recall my difficulty of getting good in-game images of Taren as well, although the fact he possessed Ingrid's body made them mostly moot. Here's a small gallery of the Ingrid images I do have and some that were used.
Ridge in RP is a backstory character who basically did to Ingrid what the real guy did to me (well, the whole "showing up to fight the original plot final boss and being nicer than anyone else in the game" part, not the whole "I'm unhappy with my marriage" part), and he almost got to have his character picture in RP! Or could have BEEN the original lover! But... one thing put the kibosh on that. When I looked up his profile to get a picture of him... he apparently used an item that lets you change your character's appearance entirely, even down to the gender. He was now a she and looked almost like a jester, which was not the Ridge I wanted for Ingrid, so instead he became the side character we nevre met. Bludletta Bladeswift was another user in FF14 who I met one day. I was just standing around doing something in a city when they asked about my Free Company, which are like guilds. My brother was part of the Mog Free Company and when I joined he got me in easy. They helped me a lot with boss fights and such when I needed it and I tried to return the favor when I could, although I was not so talkative with them. However, their chatter was fun to read and they were always so friendly and helpful that when Bludletta asked if it was a good Free Company, I gave a hearty yes and invited them to join! We didn't really talk much after that, but it was a good experience and Bludletta's character looked perfect for the role of Ingrid's wife. Taren almost revealed earlier than Ingrid did that she was married by making fun of a union with a Lalafell, because of basically the stigma Ingrid brought up later with Nylora about dating Lalafells. It would have been part of the meaner Taren's attempts to make Ingrid seem less desirable than him, but I much much MUCH prefer what we got instead. The talk between Ingrid and H'astra about love was such a good one I feel and really worked for that small friend trio (quartet technically, but the Nejems were so often connected at the hip :P).
Perhaps more important than where these characters came from though is how I decided to interpret the world they came from. Initially, the idea with bringing in Ingrid was for me to test the waters on a style of RP a lot of people do: characters from alternate or different universes or timelines. While its not my cup of tea, I can see why people do it, as its often the only way to get a character from the future or a postapocalyptic place that is meant to be Earth or something very similar (I'd probably just place it on another planet honestly, although that's kind of what became of Eorzea!) Still, Eorzea was going to be a separate dimension, and back then, I thought the way she'd leave was going to be through the Aether Network, a series of crystals in the game connected to each other that you could teleport to through use of magic. Earth would probably have one that might be destroyed or hidden and would ultimately be both how Ingrid got there and potentially how she headed back to Eorzea. The Lifestream wasn't introduced in-game yet, so it seemed the only logical option before "life force connecting life across the universe" was introduced to game canon. This also put Vana'diel into another dimension and the attempt to use the Aether Network to get there would have just gone awry and put her on Earth. No Spectrum ties this early in the infancy of conception. However, as I began to figure out how her Eorzean past would be, I thought more about the world she was in.
FF14 is one of those baffling MMORPGs where you play as the sole chosen hero of the goddess... in a world populated with other users who are also the sole chosen hero and go on the same adventures and through the same story as you. The only time the story even accepts the existence of other users is when it says "you and some adventurers" to reference a group working through a dungeon or trial. This is obviously done to give FF14 a good plot even if that gameplay aspect doesn't match up... but I'll be damned if I didn't try to make it work! Everyone from the person who did all the in-game content down to the person who barely started the game and only got through the opening cutscenes was supposedly a chosen hero, so thus I came up the idea of multiple Eorzeas, where Hydaelyn was mixing and matching heroes to take out threats but each world still technically only had one chosen hero as the focal point of whether or not the world would continue to exist. The world where a user joined briefly and didn't find it to their tastes and quit FF14? It was now part of Hydaelyn's project for a perfect world, one of the failures she destroyed. Why did she want a perfect world, though? Well, the original release of Final Fantasy XIV was awful, leading the developers remaking the game as FF14: A Realm Reborn. Literally reborn too, since the previous version of FF14 ended with the world destroyed and the realm being remade in the wake of the devastation (probably not a full on destruction, but in RP I escalated it to be so). Hydaelyn, so desperate to make a world that worked and where people would not lash out at the goddess who created them, created millions of worlds and only cultivates the ones that seem promising or safe. Usually on the Warrior of Light, her chosen hero, would know this information and fight for that reason, but in FF14 you meet other characters who can communicate with the much more benevolent version of the mother crystal, so in RP, you instead get a character who could communicate with it and learn about my reinterpretation of her. Bludletta was terrified to know her life and the world's hinged on what was essentially a bumpkin, so she devoted her life to grooming Ingrid into a perfect hero by any means necessary, even marrying the pupil to elevate her legend and import and allowing Bludletta move into what seemed a more permanent solution: Primal Ingrid.
Final Fantasy 14's version of eidolons/espers/fancy name for summon is Primal, and they're so powerful a player as a Summoner can only call a small piece of them for battle. Primals are built up by prayer and the magic of crystals, and it was such an open concept that I came up with the idea of what we'd get. One reason we had a fight with Good King Moggle Mog was to introduce the concept of Primals before we meet Ingrid's replacement, as well as try to establish their strength so Primal Ingrid would look even more powerful by comparison by taking them out. Good King Moggle Mog might not have been the best pick since instead we fought his Mogglesguard, which was me trying to do an MMO style bossfight in RP but not really having the characters present to pull it off or the commitment to be a dick and punish people for failing at their appointed roles. I wavered on whether we'd fight Moggle Mog at all himself, but this year I felt I balanced the timeframe of fights poorly as I always felt like they were going on too long while also being too short. Moggle Mog mostly won the pick for the Primal we fought for three reasons: A: we were in the Shroud, Ingrid's home, and he would conceivably be in the area. B: A more interesting fight. and C: that theme, man. I wanted to share it, its so fun and catchy! Apparently the Mogglesguard are supposed to be living Moogles who serve the Primal, but Primals do summon creatures in their fights so I decided that was simpler. Also, because apparently killing Moogles was controversial even when they want to destroy every city in the land and rule through a tyrannical magical dictator. I thought of using Odin as well as he was also a Primal found in the Shroud, but between Zantetsuken being a one-hit kill that might remove important characters from the meat of the plot (meeting Bludletta) and just not likely doing the Primal justice, he got the boot. Plus, Ven had brought in Odin briefly the previous year, and I was just not up for debating interpretations of mythical characters again or hearing jokes about them being the same Odin or something. Ifrit was considered too just because it was an archetypal primal fight and hence why he was shown in the epilogues as another easily dispatched foe for Primal Ingrid. If people had pushed things too far, we could have fought Primal Ingrid and Bludletta, but it wouldn't be a fight anyone really won, and I would not hold back Primal Ingrid either, lest it hurt the point of her being Eorzea's perfect protector.
I was very happy to see people willing to humor not being able to find Eorzea/Hydaelyn when Ingrid was introduced, especially since like the first thing Dawn did was try to find it, but it came up blank in her logs. I did play off the idea it might be an alternate dimension off first, and gave the truth to Taren, originally the idea being he'd soon trust a bargoer enough who showed genuine interest in him to tell them that Eorzea is in the same universe as Earth but it was on the planet Hydaelyn. The Mother Crystal originally had tons of dimensions tied to her instead of worlds, but this worked easier and made a more compelling mental image I feel. The plot was really a deconstruction of MMO worlds and the chosen one trope, because soon Ingrid would find out that most of her life was created for her to adhere to this path, so many things were false or inauthentic, and even worse, despite being completely devoted to the idea of protecting her world, she was made obsolete and required NOT to be there to maintain this better protection! Originally, Ingrid was likely to be catatonic for possibly even weeks from such a revelation, but happy happenstance instead gave her a rock in the way of her relationship with Nylora. I can't remember when I decided to push it as a romance instead of a strong friendship, but you can bet it was pre-Brawl! They both ended up helping each other quite a bit (although Nylora certainly more since it gave Ingrid something to live for after her life was basically undone). They also had a quite mirroring in their situations. Nylora was once Hecate, someone she wanted to be no longer. Ingrid was once Bludletta's tool and Hydaelyn's chosen, something she couldn't be anymore either, although Nylora was turning away from bad stuff and Ingrid from good. I tried to emphasize just how much it had been nailed into Ingrid to always help, helping even when too injured to be of much use or sacrificing her happiness to lend aid, again part of her training from Bludletta but turning into a true personality trait. Ingrid had become a mix of her real self and the way she was trained to be a hero now! It partially mirrors an RPG character's seemingly sporadic interest in helping in any way, even with weird unimportant sidestuff. All part of building up a hero! It was meant to bite Ingrid in the butt at some point, but I think Ingrid has some legs and maybe one year she'll come back and face the consequences of such a mindset. I even originally had it in my mind she'd hold disdain for anyone who actually say people in peril and said "NAH I'LL SIT IN THE BAR AND DO NOTHING". It happened a lot less this year than the previous and when it did, people usually said so because they were recovering or actually busy or, they didn't even address the call to action and thus can be said to have missed it rather than ignore it completely. Ingrid would probably still say something about it if it did happen in her current state, but not with such disdain.
Tellingly, the Purple Spectrum wasn't too important to this character arc. Ingrid was still really fun and grew a lot, but the Purple Spectrum was footnote to close a gap in the story, although it did show Bludletta's extent to get Ingrid out of the picture. It was even found in a Necropolis by Bludletta to sort of hint that it had been causing trouble, basically bringing dead bodies to life with new souls. It also was the smallest, and despite me drawing attention to Ingrid's "purple Materia" on her bow, no one ever thought it might be connected until it was more clear of Ingrid's connection to Spectrum.
Unsurprisingly, Ingrid's archery and bard music are ripped straight from FF14, perhaps to its detriment. It gave her some nifty skills, but despite my attempts to play with bard buffing, the music you can play in game is rather limited and not exactly open for more interpretation. I sort of did it uneasily as well as I was afraid to tip the tractor too far in either direction, but next year I intend to have characters buff or assist more openly and freely in that respect. Sad the bard, whose purpose should be to do that, was the testing ground instead of the one to relish in its use!
I guess there's not much more to do besides gush about her relationship with Nylora! It helped show the love situation and all and was really fun and cute, and I even tried to make their super mushy date important (in that, like Bree wanted to see, it got them to voice their opinions on the relationship barriers of one being dead and the other ridiculously small. I made her maximum shortness in Final Fantasy XIV as part of the joke design, leading to her getting lost behind tall grass at times as she was the minimum of minimum character heights! She's 2 foot 10 inches! Remember that! Chocobilly's only 5 feet tall! TINY HEROES!) I knew Ingrid was smart enough to figure out Nylora was undead earlier than she was told, but Ingrid would also respect Nylora for not wanting to say it, nor would Ingrid acknowledge what seemed like a sore point. Ingrid even said she didn't want it to be true since what it meant for Nylora! Still, somehow I got in relationships with two brine characters and yet couldn't get him to confirm either kiss they went for :V both got happy endings at least, although...
Yeah, there was no real solution to Bludletta. They had something better, and any opposition was basically risking a world on sentiment and attachment to Ingrid herself. We were helpless in the hands of a goddess who didn't care for the plight, and Bludletta's option WAS better for the world, just not for Ingrid. Notably, while Ingrid "divorced" her, I tried to make it clear there was something still in her heart that made such a separation from a lifelong mentor and supposed lover difficult. Ingrid's post-plot lethargy (instead of being catatonic!) and the spark for the date with Nylora was partly her attempt to try and replace the lost love with something new and true. Also, if you reread Bludletta's dialog during the plot, you might notice something. It's hard not to care for the hero you groom for years to save the world, and she didn't kill Ingrid after all...
One aspect barely mentioned was Ingrid growing accustomed to not being recognized a famous legendary hero. As an adventurer who leaps at every opportunity though, she's quick to adapt and thus rarely had the "NEW TECH WHAT IS THIS" moment other characters from medievalesque worlds often have. She either did not show her ignorance to try and be proper or tried to work through it. Hence why she didn't find the tape recorder Taren's story was on until much later: she didn't know what it was and had no one to ask without looking foolish!
I once considered not having Ingrid be her name in RP because it sounded like an old lady name. Ingrid is 31 and has a very deep voice (guess where the voice aspect comes from? :V) to emphasize she isn't a child or anything though. Some of the small stories she told (like backflipping off a floating island while fighting the sky whale Bismarck) are actual tales from me playing FF14, but mostly, she was what she was meant to be: an established universe character, much like Sarah, although the universe was instead made a planet amidst thousands of planets and I took tons of liberties and... well, Ingrid was fun. If anything, I downplayed the people and story of the world she came from as her true story was not the one the game wrote for her, but the one she developed in RP. In fact, we were never really supposed to find a way for her to return to her homeworld, although H'astra's method was perfect and we got the cake and ate it too. Like Naeem and others, Bludletta was another foe we couldn't just fight, and if anything, Bludletta and the Primal Ingrid were not only a foe we couldn't fight, but we couldn't defeat them either. No solution was ever proposed that would work and the ones that did come up were dangerous. I don't think there will ever be a solution for the situation Bludletta created, as there is always a perfect solution or sometimes even a good one. Maybe if we see Ingrid again some day it will be explored, but its still a world with set rules that can't be broken so flippantly. It was a problem the Kobbers couldn't really solve, but maybe that's needed sometimes?
Purple Spectrum, sadly, but perhaps helpfully, was only a small punctuation mark in Ingrid's story ultimately, and its power given to it to make it more work as part of the Spectrum rather than through any greater inspiration for plot shenanigans.
I believe I plumbed those depths fully, so let's finally move on to a character for whom Spectrum was far more important: Lauren.
Yet another example of a character inspired by Retsupurae. They're like idea fuel!
So, back in 2013, I was watching the youtube recordings of some FTL streams Diabetus did, he had a crew member who was a Zoltan, a race of humanoid green energy beings who are really good at technology. The odd thing about this alien crew member though, and something he called out, was that it was named Lauren. I believe it was just a quirk of the game's random name generation for characters, but it was such a fun and absurd idea that I wanted to do something with it. So, removing the FTL/Zoltan origins, Lauren got boiled down to two aspects: being named Lauren, and being an energy being. I very quickly stripped the humanoid traits out of her to make her even more unusual and alien, deciding she'd basically be free-floating sentient energy from a highly-advanced race. When I went in search of a possible good image for her, I came across the one she uses now, a yellow swirl that was absolutely huge. It had a faint watermark on it that you can still sort of glimpse in larger images of the Lauren picture, but in small versions it just distorts the picture ever a bit more to make it seem a tad stranger.
And yet people kept calling her a banana peel when they say her image in the Spectrum preview :I
One thing I tried to emphasize but might not have stuck in people's heads was the fact that the image used was meant to represent a basic idea of the form, not its consistent appearance. Narration often mentioned parts of her fading in and out of existence and it being easier to focus on her general space than any one part as it was not likely to stick around. She was a cloud of energy! A rather big one, that reduced in size when energy was expended. I believe the original intent was she'd be a perfect endless energy source, but to make her usable in battle and all it was reduced to where it could generate new energy easily, it just couldn't do so quickly. The Yellow itself can, but it is Spectrum so its mass can never be reduced or destroyed (save the Uniting power of White Spectrum reducing the Spectrum's physical size). It's still really hard to kill Lauren, as we heard when it came up that Dr. Zara really had to push to get the previous Lauren to expend all its energy. I'd say her willingness to expend energy would halt when she's equal in mass to about the size of that sort of central yellow marble in her image. Again, that orb in her center can fluctuate, disappear, change, or not even be there, but that's a good reference for how small she can get compared to her normal size.
Originally, I had planned for Lauren to be part of a potential 2014 cast, and idea shelved when Deckplot came along and the cast roster quickly got packed. Lauren was meant to be the extreme example of space clashing with our medieval setting, as Lauren would not only understand the world below, but stuff we took for granted too! For example: I had been sitting on that bit with Lauren not understanding stools for YEARS! A perfect being does not need to sit! This idea is what brought up the idea of Lauren being from a race so far advanced that, while it believed itself to be above most beings, it was woefully naïve when it came to simple things that it should really understand. I was actually surprised how few negative reactions Lauren got. There was some unease in the bar certainly, but besides Yamame getting miffed when Lauren did not understand lesbian relationships, mostly people tried to help Lauren contextualize of understand things! Lauren's misunderstanding was often played for comedy, and almost an extreme version of Ven's penchant for having his medieval characters to react to modern technology like "what is this device known as... a toaster?!?!" Lauren's idea may be older than Ven RP, but I certainly enjoyed being the exaggeration of that joke style! The potential sacrifice of that angle almost made me not use her on Earth, but a chat about the character concept in super vague details made me realize she could do a lot of the same stuff on Earth, just not while actively tapping into the Space/Medieval dichotomy that I thought needed more playing up in the Porphyrion setting.
Before we even got to the point Spectrum was considered, Lauren got the bits of her backstory that would slot so easily into it. The sort of homeworld would be just a bigger version of herself, originally completely identical in appearance to further make it just silly. When The Yellow became the Yellow Spectrum though, it had to adhere to some rules, hence the image of a circular Yellow (which is really just like, a picture of our sun with colors and settings tweaked). Originally I had it as just Laurens, all of the named Lauren but not really having a hive mind so much as being all born of an identical mind. They still have to communicate with one another and use their native language to do so, another joke that I liked but we didn't see too much of. It did, however, cause me pains, as I also decided the reason Lauren had her name was a play on the "My true name is too complex for your minds to understand and impossible for your tongues to say", except her real name was just Lauren and the name she presented as an easier substitute was the difficult one. Speaking of, if you ever wish to decipher the seemingly nonsense strings of her native tongue, here's the means: http://codebeautify.org/encrypt-decrypt Just choose Twofish and ECB (electronic code book) to translate it back to English. Sometimes you might have to connect lines that aren't translating right since its translation into code gave it lines so long they broke the forum tables. I often pressed enter after punctuation marks to make it easier to spot the splits. Twofish chosen because of two- for Lauren and Scott, fish since I liked that it was organic but evoked fluidity kind of, and ECB since Electronic sounded all energy-like. Lauren never said anything too complicated or that felt like you were missing out anything though. Usually introduction stuff. During the Yellow event, the Laurens and Scotts who speak say the same exact lines in their native tongue as its the typical method for greeting new species! I also liked repeating a bit from Lauren's introduction there as well, where they try to assume accents and cultural slang as they recognize their existence but fail miserably at them. I had expected DJ Candy at the Yellow event for some reason but still got to work in the "street jive" I had thought up there, and Jake as bartender was perfect for Lauren's attempt at being southern.
Fun Fact: one day I had joked in chatzy about RPing the Yellow M&M, and later people said they thought The Yellow might turn out to be him. Although it wasn't, I was half-tempted to try and make that angle work, but a planet sized Yellow M&M is not something the world is ready for...
Lauren's name almost got changed once, and that was when Rockcandyguy entered BBB5 with his Lauren. Originally, my Lauren was slated to enter the Brawl in the year she would appear (before I realized the problem in that she'd either be too hard to cool or impossible to revive due to her nature). I considered renaming Lauren, even to something as simple as Laura, to avoid having characters with the same name but were different characters in BBBs (think of how it might effect the Brawl quiz!). I also generally don't like using a name that's been used by a big character in the past, although Lauren being Brawl only made it easier for me to justify using the name myself. Lauren's name would also influence the name of her counterpart: Scott. Laurens were to be the information gatherers, and Scotts the information processors, to help split up The Yellow and make it more interesting. Again, same jokes about Scott and The Yellow somehow working perfectly in English despite them thinking its impossible for us to understand. The Yellow of course being a somewhat simple but ominous name for it. Scott, however, comes from a real person. I knew a girl named Lauren in real life, and in her friend circle was a fellow named Scott who I was good chums with. He makes Electronic Music! I'd recommend some of it but it never took off and as far as I know I can't find the album he gave me anywhere. Anyway, I came up with the role of a second type of Yellow emissary before the name, and ran through some simple male names to serve as counterpoints to Lauren's feminine one. When I remember the Lauren I knew and Scott, it seemed like a perfect name, for being such a simple and sort of underwhelming name just like Lauren. They also aren't quite Bob or Tim level where a lot of characters who are supposed to have underwhelming names use those names. Also, as Lauren said, while neither Lauren or Scott are female or male, they assume the roles to simplify interaction. Our Lauren who broke away would likely wear it a bit more proudly, just like how she now accepts her name is an English word and says it like so, rather than that gimmick I learned to regret where she said Lauren, Scott, and The Yellow in her Native Language Voice instead of the simple color=goldenrod style. The name would always sound a bit more echoey and spacey was the implication, but remembering to tag them, especially when she was questioned about them, along with her style of speaking, lead to many a color tag adventure.
I tried my best to write the whole "advanced alien being" thing differently then where I've seen it elsewhere. Interestingly, Steven Universe had started doing a similar angle with Peridot at the time, and I tried to make sure Lauren didn't sound like her. Lauren was actively attempting learning from her experiences rather than assuming she understood. I was a bit worried the idea of her development would be cliché, although I also wanted to show that despite her supposed advancement, there were actual flaws worth adapting out of. Learning to be an individual isn't a new story for a being like Lauren, but I also didn't want her to go too far down that. Even now there is so much she doesn't or only barely understands, she only barely emotes, struggles with simple concepts... she's still adapting. But she had started down the path through the Kobbers. Was it an advantageous adaptation based on her seeing how it helped the Kobbers, or was the Mother's touch enough to break her away from her kind's normal style by altering her? Was it both at once?
Even back when no Spectrum was evolved, Lauren's plot always ended with a sort of defiant turn from The Yellow, leading to a flood of other Laurens (and the later idea of Scotts) coming to the planet to retrieve her. Originally it might have been too much like Peridot turning against Yellow Diamond (ha, yellow) but instead Lauren's fleeing was not active rejection of The Yellow but of a growing fear of losing her self and identity by joining with The Yellow or Aviaticus. She still does not really condemn or despite the Yellow, more just slightly disagree on the more advantageous adaptation. They wanted to become even more whole, and her, even more separate. Scott and Lauren alike both allude to similar issues with Laurens adapting away from The Yellow or disadvantageously, and the one Dr. Zara exhausted to power her transition into a computer mind was noted to have an adaptation deemed completely disadvantageous in that it allowed itself to exhaust that power rather than trying to resist or adapt to free itself. The mind of the previous Earth Lauren was strange and can now never be fully understood, although its energies still flow through Dr. Zara and her creations. I tried to drop the hints better here than most places. Dr. Zara said Pure Adaptational Energy so many times I felt it was like when a product's full name is used in a brand deal! I also mentioned she was inspired by the advent of the nuclear age to try and unite humanity in a mental grid, and the previous Lauren was said to be sent to investigate humanity's advancements when the nuclear age caught The Yellow's attention.
Speaking of The Yellow: yes, it can speak, it doesn't have much reason to though. Its emissaries do the talking and work, since if one advantage is obvious, its that getting other things to do your stuff for you is good. Even in the original version of the event without Spectrum, The Yellow itself would float closer and closer to the planet, only failing to exert devastating gravitational force by virtue of is ADVANCED PERFECT BIOLOGY allowing it to basically rub up against a planet in a way Actaeus would be jealous of. Actually, both kind of had similar protections that allowed them to move through or near other planets without disrupting things... save where they meant to of course. Originally, we also were going to fight the Yellow's endless army, and likely learn pretty quickly that combat did nothing and we'd need a new solution to push back an unbeatable foe. We didn't fight the Laurens or Scotts at all in the plot's final version, as it again fit the theme of not having foes who we just fought, although the event also had no fluff battle piece. Sort of hard to get people to follow them at first I recall, but although originally I had no idea where to host the event, the fact Dr. Zara was allowed to still exist gave us a perfect setting! They had the Yellow Spectrum ties and Lauren was told about it, so she felt it a good place to lie low to avoid Aviaticus and his attempts to integrate the Yellow Spectrum. The fact one Lauren was completely expended did destroy the initial idea that every Lauren and Scott was needed to fuse into Spectrum, but I think it worked better this way and allowed a cleaner break, even if we basically had to tell The Yellow "you don't want this Lauren, its totally busted and not as good as you". I do like that approach though! It very much showed people learned to understand their thinking through Lauren's behavior. I was also glad for the post-plot character development of Lauren as a healer (thank you SO much Silence! That scene was beautiful). I had no idea where to send her post-plot and bringing her on to help heal characters like Patient 421 can help in the future to avoid certain troubles and obstacles, although I've mentioned she's not perfect either an must understand what she's treating and more importantly: does not know how to adapt to revive someone.
So, despite all that's been said, I still haven't mentioned why Yellow Spectrum was worked in as Adaptation. Lauren had so much of her story ready before she was considered for Spectrum, but Spectrum was perhaps the snuggest fit for her of most characters save perhaps Bouncy Blue. She was already yellow so she got that color of course, and while Adaptation more than any is a sort of stretch for Spectrum powers, it also gives a world the tools to evolve and, sometimes, evolve more quickly. It allows Aviaticus to create a world with cats on it despite the atmosphere being pure methane, because adaptation will change the cat design to breath with methane. He can artificially age a world or species to ensure life lasts rather than making a world full of organisms that won't be there next time due to an unforeseen event. Its power also slips into The Yellow's story of being the "most evolved and well-adapted being". It did so through the power of adaptation first giving itself sentience and then using that sentience to build up more and more adaptations. It still has a yellow orb core no matter what, but it learned to live with that. Again, since I wanted Spectrum spread across the universe somewhat, The Yellow was also good at putting a part of it really far off into space, and Aviaticus uncovering his nature gradually was a good way of dragging it over, with perhaps one of my better explanations for why we had to wait a while to solve a problem: The Yellow can only be pulled over towards Earth so fast after all, even by a supposed god!
I was hoping Lauren would be more interesting in combat, learning to adapt powers from other characters and basically fighting like a shapeshifter might. She was always trying to observe and change, but sometimes I decided to just use her innate knowledge or understanding to give her more interesting attacks. Don't want her to be "and I do that thing also!" after all. As for her development, I feel sometimes I made it too obvious? We'd see her thoughts and how they were changing gradually, but I guess when you have to actively insert a change it becomes a glaring part of the text to yourself. Again, I didn't want her to full flip either, so its really something I'd need opinions on before condemning as bad or praising as well done.
Well, it seems that one was comparatively brisk! It helps a lot when the initial version of your plot just needs the word Spectrum appended to it to make it work! Although I wish I had done a lot more comedic moments with Lauren as she tried to figure things out, she's on the medical staff now and might be able to get them in as a pseudo-joke character or potentially during small scenes with the docs. One reason I had the gag of Lauren being obviously hidden under a blanket in Zara's lab was an attempt to get another one of those in to show that yes, all the Yellow are pretty much exactly like what she was initially.
Now then, to the last of the six collectible Spectrum...
Ready for a ride back to the past?
Pteron is probably the oldest character I conceived to ever enter RP, as I'm sure I made him up when I only had a single digit in my age. Ladies and gentleman, meet Pteron.
Because of his cool design and action potential, he became a central toy in a lot of games I played as a kid, certainly nothing like he is in RP save he fought bad guys and such. My brother wanted to integrate a game I had been playing with my Sister Rainbow Dash into his Enchantica game that he played with her, and to be cool I came up with a lot of fake history to the game my sister and I had played, as well as allowing him to name it Team Power. Team Power joined Enchantica to became a three kid game of Chronicles of Enchantica, and Pteron was basically my main character. Later, when we three grew out of toys but my little sister Custardkittensrock was still into them, I recycled a lot of old Team Power/Chronicles of Enchantica toys into a new game, a story about a bunch of heroes so obsessed with Cookies and Cream they named their superhero team after it. Their quests often involved the objective of getting more Cookies and Cream, and so, of course, that game got named Cookies and Cream, and got a spin-off about supposed retired superheroes back in action called Old Superheroes Ya! and a third spinoff that died pretty quickly called something like New Superheroes who I think had their base in Antarctica. Cookies and Cream though had a few actual plots compared to the old games, like a quest across the world to collect The Ruler Pieces, pieces of a broken clear ruler from school that in game could change the rules of the world if united. They fought Halloween Bear, a giant Halloween teddy bear who later got turned into a chili pepper. Nothing deep or complex, but certainly where I tested out early ideas and something I have a fondness for. Incidentally, these games are also where I got Pteron's supporting cast and powers from!
Okay, first, Pteron going Gold is totally a ripoff of Super Saiyan powers, mostly because it was young DBZ-interested JRM and his bro deciding to introduce such power-ups to our games. We had a tournament arc even that ripped off the Cell Games where some Blue Biker (probably his name) was blown up in such a display of gore and viscera that you could probably tell we were too old to be playing with toys. The reactions from other characters of course was "wow, this IS serious! Someone died and blood was everywhere!" Again, dumb kids were making this stuff up. Going Gold was our Totally Original take on the idea, and Pteron was one of a select few who could do it as he was my main character. Pteron normally could shoot energy balls from his mouth and hands (reduced just to mouth in RP) as well as a take on DBZ, and the mouth projectiles mostly just because the fact his mouth could be moved a little made it interesting to fire from there. Because Pteron was a big character from my childhood idea farm, the idea of bringing him into RP always appealed to me, and I twisted him just enough away from the toy and Bullzeye to make him something interesting and unique (and legally distinct :V). I don't know why the toy had purple skin, and I did almost consider having that weird gold paint on his face in RP (possibly as a permanent scar from going Gold instead of just paint), and Pteron's clothes design carried over the silver color, although he now has brown pants, wristlets, and a collar instead of like, the weird half broken Bullzeye clothes. The way I described the shoes is about still spot on with their design on the toy though. Pteron in RP is also a lot, lot, LOT bulkier and built up. I wanted a guy who was super-strong logically, which I decided mostly came through being incredibly thick. Blue Spectrum still filled in the gaps of implausibility (one reason everyone like him and Midori had small flecks of it in their blood was to give them constant fuel to keep certain things maintained, Pteron's being a body that struggled to work). Pteron struggled with lifting big things because of his grounded strength logic (could only lift a corner of the boxing ring, tore up a chunk of sidewalk instead of pulling up huge slabs). I also like his little side group with Owen and Dia Monde as they were sort of the half-accepted, morally dubious Kobber group, joined together for being the only doctors sketchy enough to be trusted by two guys who pegged themselves as outsiders as well.
As I tried to figure out how Pteron would work in RP besides being really strong, somehow I came across the idea of him also being an exaggeration of the Kobbers penchant for violence and killing... although I think I did it a year too late to be effective. 2015 saw us weaning off it as the ultimate solution and arresting more often, and 2016 there were many villains who got the book instead of the blade. Pteron didn't get too many chances to go crazy, although I did try to always give them a hint of how it triggers or how it doesn't, and the Vacio line (always spelled properly in RP with the line over the i!) appearing and not appearing was meant to be the bigger clue, although I don't blame people for missing it. His fight with Peri also helped show he wasn't a complete monster who killed indiscriminately when in a clear mind, but I think to be effective he should have been more of one. I held back out of respect for other people's plots, like when he was trapped when trying to kill Amber, or not having him go overboard in other fights. I do wish people had figured it out earlier, but I did want to cut off the idea of altering him to make it work. Hypotenuse's attempted solution I was actually happy to see tried as it showed that no, you can't just rewrite this broken brain, it only works because of the pieces need to unite man and pterodactyl, and you can't just excise part with destroying him entirely. Like I've mentioned elsewhere, killing him was a valid tactic to deal with it, but I didn't want to trigger a confrontation before it was time to make it plotwise. I did like when Leviathan tried to cool his jets, probably one of my favorite things they did. I even remember playing Legend of Kay Anniversary between posts, I so vividly remember posting their attempts to help him and his denial of it, along with the reveals of his real name and such. I almost wish that shadow pterodactyl monster that was formed from his fury could've been something more, but him being possessed by it went against the character's concept. It was almost like I was trying to deconstruct the childish concept of violence and death... but then Brine kind of did it better. I thought Clash was almost going to be the same concept but she got shut down early, but then Ino came in and kind of did Pteron's arc in one night instead. I do wish they could have hung out more, could've helped explore them both, and their BBBP together is one of the easier moments to explain why he didn't say Vacio.
Speaking of Vacio, much like how Yotam is based on a real life Israeli and thus my understanding of that lifestyle comes from what the namesake has said about Israel, Pteron being Argentinian came from a lot of knowledge on the area I got from a girl I met back in Gaia Online (yes, I played that once sadly) named Andrea! I am so happy Bree brought up translation brackets < > as originally I wanted him and Bouncy Blue to speak Spanish to each other believably like people in Texas do when its just them, but only use English when speaking to English speakers. No gratuitous Spanish (I read a comic lately that made fun of X-files doing that saying "Let's go talk to some Mexicans who know how to say every English words except yes" to acknowledge the gratuitous use Si to remind you that yes, this person knows Spanish). Early on they only said simple things that you didn't miss out on translating, as I didn't want to make people feel bad for not translating it. Vacio, of course, went untranslated since it was a meaningful word. Empty, because Pteron's primal pterodactyl side wanted to kill for food but got no closure from it since Pteron didn't eat people (VERY IMPORTANT! HE'S NO CANNIBAL ALTHOUGH THAT WOULD'VE BEEN A VERY EASY TRAIT TO ADD!) and hence, the reason defending people or providing for them provided closure in the kills.
Before we keep going though, it's probably good to mention a few more origins here. Along with Pteron came a few other characters from games I played with either my brother or my sisters. Bouncy Blue himself was a character I came up with for CKR to play as. I'd include a picture of the toy but its literally just a bouncy blue ball like the kind you get from those coin vending machines. One day, for Cookies and Cream, we each only played with one toy, me as Pteron, and her as new character Bouncy Blue, aptly named of course (him being a lighter blue than in RP). The whole gag of that particular play session was that Pteron did not believe Bouncy Blue was alive, in a more "somehow denying the obvious" way than the more tragic take it got in RP as Pteron unwilling to believe something that made him what he is and caused his friends to die could be alive and conscious of what he did and still be around. I was SOOOOOO happy Ven picked that up! I felt like it was the one time something was instantly picked up as it was hinted! Because of that particular play session and the gag, Bouncy Blue was elevated to be one of the few characters from those old games to be put in RP, and I'm sure CKR voted for Pteron in the Brawl because she recognized him and Blue. Bouncy Blue was also a great guy to turn into the Blue Spectrum, a clean one just like the Yellow as well. From there the rest was figured out. Bouncy Blue would've landed in Argentina as Aviaticus unwillingly pulled him to Earth. Bouncy Blue impacted hard, releasing his powers unknowingly and bringing himself to life, as well as hitting the group of runaway kids nearby with his ability to power things up.
Those kids? All based on old toy game characters too. First of all, Pteron's name, Santiago, comes from a kid I knew in class. Originally I considered names like Fabien and Luciano as well based on people I knew from school, Fabien especially since it felt like a name that never gets used anymore anywhere. Santiago sounded nicer though, so Fabien and Luciano instead got their names put on Pteron's friends. Andrea, my Argentine friend, got to be the one female in the group of teen friends, as I wanted her and Charlie as the groups main center rather than predictably putting Pteron at the head. Charlie, of all of them, wasn't named after a real person. That New Superheroes game I mentioned had very few good characters, but Charlie was essentially the star. A large metal sixteen wheeler toy I had was the originally Charlie, and literally all the other characters could fit in his trailer. Charlie was a good name for a truck, but I think the original reason I did it is... wait for it... there was a character in that game as well named Charlie's Horse. Because he owned a horse. PUNS! I didn't even know what a Charley Horse was until years later when I had one and was like OW THIS IS WHAT ONE IS. Charlie being just a talking truck in that game made me try and twist a person into one somewhat believably in RP, leading to the horrific fate of RP Charlie and, sadly, a character I wish I hadn't killed off since it was a fun if terrifying concept. Fabien and Luciano got to become old toy characters as well! Fabien became Ragdoll from Blue Spectrum's power infusion, based on a toy of the same name that a long time ago my brother and I found below a gutter drain. It was a Robin from Batman toy, but a lot of its paint had worn off and all its limbs swung around freely, so we thought its limbs moved freely like a ragdolls, hence the name. Luciano became Wolverine, which, was sort of my take how it wouldn't be surprising if superheroes did become real, some would name themselves after fictional characters, and also based on a toy that we called Last Wolverine. Supposedly the last of the wolverine clones from the future or something in my brother and I's game of X-Men, it was based on a weird cyber-enhanced Wolverine toy that almost looked like a kid, so in our games he was a kid! Last Wolverine's cyber designs is what gave his RP equivalent the metal in his body that made him more sympathetic to technology than living things.
Triggering that event was a hard one. Many times I mulled over how we'd have to eventually deal with Pteron's dangerous murderous urges. I'd almost compare it to how I didn't know how to have a confrontation with Furfur back with Edyth. Some ideas I had to make us say "whoa, now we HAVE to do something about Pteron" included: him killing a bunch of the Weasel Bandits from the Lightning Bolt Society (rejected to keep the LBS lighthearted and jokey throughout, and since it was mostly so I didn't have to handle a bunch of faceless goons before I made that their shtick), fighting the Laurens and Scotts for a Yellow/Blue Spectrum twofer (he probably couldn't kill them if he tried and would just grow frustrated), perhaps some Gold Pteron rampage? Or even: using a Punfisher-type villain from the file to fight first and then have wild Pteron go on a rampage we had to stop. Him latching onto Major Armstrong and Ven's refusal to revive him worked so well for it instead. And when Bree suggested she wanted to use Komachi to tell him delicately, I knew I had my hook, as not knowing it delicately would be a great way to start a rampage. I had actually forget Armstrong never openly said he remained dead out of embarrassment though. If he had we would have likely got that rampage still, as the argument he used against Komachi about her potentially letting Nitori die and stay dead works better when he can say "would you let her stay dead because she's EMBARASSED?!" I've mentioned elsewhere that if Pteron couldn't be cooled down, another idea I had was Yotam and him fighting. Perhaps the thing I would've gone with without Armstrong was Yotam and Pteron on the same plot, Yotam realizing the threat Pteron was, him scolding the Kobbers for their inaction and going off to fight him alone. We'd likely find the fight and might see it end, or maybe we'd arrive and it would end only if Pteron was escalated. Either way, I had planned for Pteron's point-of-no-return to be if he got pushed to killing Yotam, potentially stomping him into the ground, biting his head off, and spitting it to the side. It was partly to have a permadeath, partly to give Yotam an appropriately tragic ending, to sort of punish people for letting dangerous Pteron stay around... mostly no good reason really. I did avoid using that kill method all year despite the temptation just in case though, and my two really strong guys fighting might have been cool.
Propping them up as outsiders also made things a bit hard for developing their characters. Bouncy Blue was the reasonable talker happy to share details, and I wanted him to also be overbearing in his traits. Pteron was the exaggeration of the Kobber penchant to kill, and Blue was their urge to help pushed too far. He was like a controlling dad, always trying to change or fix Pteron, but it came from a good place. Bouncy Blue bouncing with Spectrum's release of power was a perfect fit for the gif I found, especially since Spectrum orbs have no give and couldn't bounce like the ball he's based on. Him being the Power Spectrum also made it easy for me to integrate going Gold despite how it was a goofy childhood idea. I decided Blue could only be pushed through bare flesh mostly to make the Brawl a bit more interesting, but also because Pteron having his chest showing made that aspect perfect. Pteron being purple even made a little sense, since he had been tinted by Blue's energy and thus had a blue tint that filtered through his skin looked purple. Pteron was also supposed to be a lot more fun, almost Yuugi-like, but the outsider angle made that less likely, as did the whole "I could go psycho if things get too intense" angle. Hence why at first, Pteron was a shoo-in for Drown Yer' Mates!
Whereas I think Yotam benefitted from being used sparingly, I think Pteron suffered. I still like quite a few things he got involved in, but I feel using him more would have done him justice. Hanging around the bar more especially would've helped them both. I believe I already mentioned Bouncy Blue being a potential wish to split him from Spectrum, but also just having him join in with Aviaticus and lose his mind was an option from early on. He would've likely left the battle with Pteron in the middle to try and turn himself over out of self-loathing, and Aviaticus would... well, it still kind of happened in RP! Just, we had other characters present to suggest things and talk him down. Aviaticus had a lot more wisdom before he actually entered RP, as he would have talked Blue through it like a kind grandfather instead.
More than any other, Blue Spectrum's parts were tied to development. Armstrong's death, working for the mayor, being treated by Owen and Dia Monde... they probably became the most RP influenced part despite also needing to be in it more! I am glad most people respected Pteron's fearsome strength and fury at least, it helped the Brawl pushed that angle too. I'm not dissatisfied with the way they finally got in RP, I just wish I had done it more... and not killed off his old friends. I even thought maybe Phantomon's wish could've brought them back instead, just so I could get some mileage from Charlie or Ragdoll!
And I believe with that, we've got all the component pieces out of the way. All the character arcs too... except one. Aviaticus's and how it all came together in the form of...
The finale of Spectrum plot... and one that wasn't even in the original plans.
Yup. There was a quite long period where I thought of not having Black Spectrum at all, or even more importantly: a real finale to the plot! Aviaticus would just absorb Blue Spectrum and be raring to go at this point in the original plans, but it was changed before the sky god touched down in RP. I do find it funny that people suggested Hurley could be Black Spectrum after my joke along those lines, mainly because I did decided to give Hurley strange origins in that Ozzymandias wished him up by accident (partly to explain his sudden appearance, partly to sort of absolve him of being the serious and sometimes depressing character from the Lost show, as well as not requiring me to know too much about Lost), and I even thought "maybe I could make like, a Brown Spectrum that he'd just present the orb for as a joke and it would be given with no problems". Never thought of it further than that, and it didn't work with the Spectrum letter coloring gimmick and I have no idea what its power could be. Once I did commit to doing a Black Spectrum though, I waffled on having it be Destruction. It makes sense: a power of creation needs its antithesis as well to work effectively sometimes, but its negative connotations I worried might make people not like Spectrum or trusting it to someone anymore. Being able to destroy openly and easily is a villain power, but Aviaticus is thankfully not likely to even think of it that way. So then, I worked it in as not only the contentious part of Spectrum (because Black is the color of EVIL so of course) but the one that Destroyed the original Spectrum and required Unity to be created. Unity made all the powers harmonious when sometimes they clashed or wouldn't gel properly, and Black Spectrum was sort of created from the mix of those powers butting heads.
More important than Black Spectrum's fight though was what Spectrum plot as a whole would represent. As I started uniting old plot ideas and coming up with new ones, a theme began to emerge. One that I could find in Shimmer's plot, Sonic Man's, Broderick's, and all Spectrum events. A theme of Identity. Sure, its a bit of a basic concept for a theme, but there are stories that tackle concepts besides a person's concept of themselves. All those plots and their core characters struggled with their identity in one way or another, often in the way outlined at the end of Black Spectrum's fight when Aviaticus speaks in their voice. They all struggled with what they are, what they think they are, what they are becoming, what they want to become... It was such a good connecting thread for the year I went hard on character arcs! Of course, near the end, I started suffering core concepts I wanted people to notice, leading to some people thinking White Spectrum is Identity instead of Unity, or when Black Spectrum said "I am Suffering" in caps to emphasize the pain and word, people thought it was a name he was offering for himself. I kind of rolled with that interpretation, but it was always Aviaticus in there, just being torn apart by Black Spectrum's destructive influence and his knowledge of everything Spectrum had done now that all the pieces were together and he had a full concept of it all.
Another aspect of Black Spectrum was I didn't want to punish people for uniting Spectrum, hence why even Aviaticus was like "let's go somewhere safe if shit goes down." The big black orb/cocoon he made for himself after changing would have happily sat there until Spectrum broke down again without harming anyone, but when people tried to intrude on it, Black Spectrum did get aggressive. I did consider mixing the powers of Spectrum to make interesting concepts, but don't recall any of them and I quite liked the attacks we did get of him going through each Spectrum one by one and needing it hit back. Most of the attacks were also meant to emphasize the whole "not trying to kill you, just trying to keep you away" aspect, although I was glad Orange Spectrum rolled a 1 as that would be harder to write as less malicious because it could turn them all into statues and be done with it. I was happy Blue Spectrum was the last in the order ( the order, of course, being based on the order Aviaticus absorbed the Spectrum) because it made the finale more dramatic, one final explosion of energy and power that everyone had to fight against to save Aviaticus. I was also worried Aviaticus might not BE a character people want to save before I started RPing him. His arc happened gradually with each appearance and aspect of Spectrum he discovered, but even more importantly his interactions with Mizuki and Lucky. Fittingly, Mizuki and others also got to explore their Identity on Spectrum plot, Rachel had that great moment at the end... I almost felt bad when everyone tried to open with the appeal to Aviaticus since it was a better closer and didn't want to discourage it by turning it away. I imagine that's why some people felt it wasn't Aviaticus still, since he was acting both very strange, not responding to them, and capitalized the wrong word :V
You know the best part though? Of that final battle with Black Spectrum?
It was essentially an obstacle course. A.K.A. the thing I didn't do well on Deckplot A.K.A. the thing I praised Gooper for on Neo Kobber plot A.K.A. the thing I said I wouldn't do again because I learned my lesson. Final boss, pivotal moment of my plot, and it was making a physical progression challenge interesting. Breaking into the dome, pushing against manifested obstacles and things that impeded progress... they were still attacks, but the goal wasn't for Black Spectrum to kill people. He was trying to stop them, like an obstacle course. It was a fun event that I think went very well, and I was so glad Lucky could make the last minute entry (although like Mizuki and others, she also started off by trying to instantly appeal to the "This isn't the real you!" angle instead of properly working through the issues). Things lined up very well to where I didn't feel I forced the progression to fit the amount of Spectrum we had to get through either. Probably the best paced moment of Spectrum in every regard.
For the image of Black Spectrum, I wanted it to look strange and otherworldly, and I wanted it dripping its blackness like tar. Sadly, MSPaint isn't the best place to design some imposing creature like that... but I did have photoshop. Drawing its basic design with the six other Spectrum and Black in the center overwhelming the white with its influence, I drew a basic body but then sent it through filter after filter of Photoshop until it had a nasty texture, and I changed the background to a strange smoky effect meant to represent its unusual aura and the strange conditions inside the black shell it had created. I might try to do more filter effects and all in the future on other images, but Black Spectrum survived it for being so simple and working well with weird stuff applied. Maybe if I just need more psychedelic or horrific imagery I'll use it. On the subject of art, I'm pretty happy with Pteron's look, although I wish I could have displayed his weight better, done a proper from-the-shot picture that didn't make him look awful or goofy... but he was distinct enough from the toy and you still got most of the idea I was going for... and it looked pretty good when I made the plot teaser image! Plot Day Teaser Images an idea I totally cribbed from Gooper.
Before we depart, here's a quick look at the sticky notes for Spectrum put in a little pastebin for ya: http://pastebin.com/m3TUJd61 Not much to em, huh? Plus, Black isn't even the event section, Yellow Spectrum never got its new plot shape adjusted, and Pteron's was rather bleak :V a lot of stuff basically boiled down to mental planning and adjusting the structure based on RP this time around.
Ultimately, Spectrum, more than any plot I can think of, could only work in RP. The Deck, Alruthines... with some retooling they work perfectly fine as standalone stories. Spectrum, however, is so tied to the fabric of RP it can't really be divorced from it. It was a set of disparate stories and character arcs tied together by one uniting force that also went through its own development. The plot events were more character moments as well as the main antagonist often wasn't fought and instead relied on characters and their traits and development. I don't think it would be possible for me to ever do a plot like it again without it being convoluted and forced, despite my urge to do character arcs again and maybe end them in plot events. It was about how a character grew and changed in other plots and conversations and how it all came to a head in one event, which is one reason why it hurts me to hear things like Sheep not reading the bar thread or Bree not feeling up to read parts. I tried to spread this stuff throughout both bar and SRS to make it natural and progress fluidly, and characters like Lauren got most their development in the bar, a place that sometimes can be just people dicking around to fill the time. It was my writing ethic expressed fully, and I hope, in the end, no matter how much you read or participated in, that you enjoyed it.
I'm sure I've said a lot here, but if you have any questions or feel I left something out, just say so in the comments! Thank you all again for letting me pull off this crazy plot, and more importantly, for making it possible, as your events and characters were just as important as my part. Deckplot may have been my proving ground for being able to write and RP well, but Spectrum was my definitive RP plot... for now.
What an excellent blogpost as always! Let's see if I've got some thoughts...
ReplyDelete-Shimmer development arcs have been an interesting way to keep her active without burning out, I agree. I enjoyed bringing back Okuu for her birthday, although it's too bad I missed the plot itself... wish I remembered why :V
-I'm very glad you let Broderick pick hats from other people. It's allowed for a bunch of interesting choices that harken back to other RP! ...I'm also glad i didn't just randomly toss Chiharu's hat at him, Jake's was much better.
-...Huh, I never even considered Broderickplot as setting up Spectrum, although it makes sense, especially after I realized the connection.
-Items of Power! You're definitely right in that I thought there would be some kind of ending where Spectrum was never given its full complete power, just because of the trope of misuse and the like. Nope, it happened just fine!
-Completely agree that Spectrum was incredibly character-driven. I think the greatest example of that is Ingrid, where the Purple Spectrum was basically a side-show. The real story of that was Ingrid's plot, no doubts about it. It definitely worked for the others as well, that's just the big one that comes to mind!
-Not so much me, but I remember that when Aviaticus first appeared there was some concern about "just what is he planning". He looked so menacing! Then he was a big goofball.
-Absolutely true that half-season characters can be important. Sure, some are busts, but other times you get characters like Aviaticus, Kasumi, Dolby (when she became important), Diadem... the list goes on, and it's all about how big an impression they can make.
-I kinda use different explanations for different borrowed characters. With Samus or the Touhous, games have been made about the preexisting characters, same with Josuke and the manga (helps that he knows a manga artist), with Praline it never came up, and sometimes I just don't think about it. It's very weird, I admit, but just a product of our unique mishmash of a setting.
-TRIBBLES (also I love how you just shoved anime in and then i ruined everything with anime)
-I had forgotten how unintentional all these things for Green Spectrum were! It's really amazing how you managed to make them all fall into place, even the Box from its minor 2014 appearance.
-Well that's one way to wrangle some details out of sheep. BRB making an Evolution Solutos character
-Naeem investigations were really fun. I feel you made a great strike there, and it definitely benefited from being its own thing rather than being a sideshow. Kinda like I did, huhuhuhu
-The Drag-Inn feels like one of those uniquely JRM things, where you take something that would normally be so small and unimportant and flesh it out with developed and interesting characters. Good work!
-Oh god, I remember how hilariously Taren got buried with the lack of 1s. Especially when you rolled 1 to get him out and then got another one and had to stuff him back in. If only you had Ven's tractor luck instead!
-Averting another alternate dimension was part of why I fully divorced the Alliance from their original roots. I had been considering them coming from that dimension and landing in the ZFRP verse, but now they're original to this land. It helped that I cut Eggman-X and HIS alternate dimension!
-Pretty glad you didn't rail on characters for not helping. It's a case of RP mechanics, imo, where characters might be invested but not help because of the user's situation. Needling people for it would feel kinda mean.
-Okay, you skipped the thing I was most curious about: How much impact, if any, did the connection with The Mother have on Lauren? That seemed like the major turn, considering her attitude was "eliminate traces" and killing the Chuck Brothers rather than trying to understand them, but did you always have some other replacement in mind, or did that accelerate things, or what?
Delete-I remembered you mentioning Pteron was a character you came up with in your childhood, but I didn't realize just how many little details came from there. It's amazing how many old ideas can really be properly recycled if you put a little thought into it!
-These kidJRM stories are just making me remember some of my own ideas as a kid and what I did with my magnet toys and legos. Fun times!
-I think that Pteron's reaction to permadead Armstrong is my favorite of all the possible hooks, but admittedly that's just because I like that sort of interconnection. I agree though that the lightning bolt slaughter would have been 2dark for that group.
-Honestly, I actually liked the idea of making it a destruction that could be properly harnessed! As you said, sometimes you've gotta break things down, whether to start from scratch or to make room for the new creation. It definitely fit, and I liked how Aviaticus was able to properly absorb it at the end.
-I think Spectrum was a wonderful plot, overall. It was very much a unique creation, and part of why I love ZFRP and being able to contribute to writing all these wonderful stories. I really enjoyed getting to explore the non-Nitori kappa on this plot, especially Mizuki, and even giving Hisou Tensoku a good proper showing after it was stomped over on Dracoplot. I'm very glad I made it to every event, and I'm excited for everything you do in 2017. If there's one thing these past few years have taught me, it's that shifting to regular RP was one of the best calls you ever made!
I'm sure I might have contrived some sort of natural development for Lauren, but coming in contact with the Mother was a clear and distinct turning point. Whether or not its the influence of the Mother, knowing about what she is and the threat she poses, or if it just appeared at the perfect juncture in her natural progression of learning about life and individualism is something I'd rather not commit to as it might still be explored or elaborated on since Lauren is still around. I assure you if Sheep does step up his Mother plot, Lauren will both be involved and we will finally get some clear answers, but obfuscating the truth is just part of being involved with Sheep stuff!
DeleteI do kind of wish he had gotten at least one kappa hat, probably Nitori for the potential and easy mixing or Mizuki because she's my favorite kappa :V I imagine a Chiharu hat works better as a post-2017 idea though based on your ideas to show more of her off.
I certainly don't hold other people justifying a fictional work's existence in RP, but things like Theodore Rex where he's quite different from his film and it existing with the plot it has makes little sense are big reasons to just try and quash any discussion of it. I've been trending towards more OC casts anyway so its not as big a problem as it used to be.
Rest in Peace, Taren. You taught me a valuable lesson about tractor gimmicks...
Mostly what I meant for railing on characters for not participating is an example I've brought up before: JRMplot where time itself was at risk literally had characters in fighting shape say "Nah, I'd rather stay in the bar and chat" which doesn't work either way. It makes my plot seem small potatoes and that character callous and apathetic, and I don't think that was the intent. Sometimes its better to say nothing at all unless directly addressed in those situations.
Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the plot, and I was certainly thankful you attended as many as you did, considering the big footprints you left on it as well... and thanks for the comments too of course!
An excellent blogpost about an excellent plot! You always put SO MUCH thought and care into your RP in ways that sometimes make me think twice about my own work. It does inspire me to try harder with my own plots though!
ReplyDeleteWhile there were several occasions in Spectrum where I felt hesitant or anxious about the many non-straightforward problems, that was definitely no fault of yours. I was very happy when I was able to work in some unique contributions, though, like Rachel's bit, Helios and Karin having more to do after their role in Mutantplot ended, and of course Silence becoming Sally and transitioning into retirement.
You're right about the whole meta problem of not joining in on plots for RL/meta reasons but having the character on the forum give a weak excuse instead of just not being present. As you suggested in your response to Chao, the character simply not responding at all is probably the ideal way to go about that.