The first year without Fite Yer' Mates to constantly demand my attention was one where I really let my creativity fly, and I am very happy for it! Some people leave a setting with stories left untold and while I could probably concoct more for the sci-fi city in the sky, I had a good chunk of ideas that I am still surprised I got done the way I did!
Salvagerplot is so big that it will need its own blog covering it, but my 2020 activity was so big that the other plots need their elbow room too! I'll probably mostly go into cut content and perhaps the mindset of certain choices but I don't want to make these blogposts too absurdly long so let's cut right into looking at... well the title of this post implies Roller Derby first but Crocomire has less to cover so lets do his stuff first!
CROCOMIRE STUFF
Crocomire and Stoke, first and foremost, were an attempt by me to avoid the typical "goofy guy balanced by the cynical foil" that does lead to a lot of fun interactions but I feel like I've done it a lot! Crocomire having a more supportive Stoke actually lead to a pretty fun father-son dynamic in the end and Stoke trying to overcome his analytical mindset to support Crocomire after realizing how the Space Pirates manipulated the giant alien made using them pretty fun. They also had a pretty good balance in one could be serious and one silly but I feel at times their concept, Stoke being focused on revival and Crocomire not having the drive to seek out danger, lead to them being a little hard to slip into some plots fluidly. I probably wouldn't have done them at all without the mutation angle, and a lot of the role of Doctor Stoke and all that just came from the fact that Crocomire somehow ambulates as a skeleton in Super Metroid after his death.
The encounter with Samus was an inevitability even if it did require calling on Chao to bring her back, and before we knew Ridley would be seen again he seemed down for orchestrating it in one way or another. I think it was originally tied to her dropping by for Brawl viewing? But, him wanting a make up match with Samus was always the plan, but it wasn't going to be in 100 Fites at first! Crocomire vs. Samus was going to be a sort of side event with just me and Chao, and I was pretty much going to heavily lean to wards making the outcome have Samus win. Certain aspects of how this might happen would change. Samus would have her powers so Crocomire might ask Stoke for a mutation injection, but Stoke would think Crocomire didn't truly want the unfair advantage and give him something that doesn't provide much of a boost like some harmless creature or even just something unrelated to the DNA injections. Crocomire losing would damage his ego some (even thought now in RP he's just like YAYYYY I FOUGHT SAMUS rather than caring about the results) or he might have felt betrayed by Stoke using the false injection or even just cried because he felt like he let people down or something akin to this. Running off into the city on his own, he'd soon hear a voice that was incredibly familiar...
See, slipping Crocomire's amicable and silly personality into the Space Pirates required a reasonable explanation, and a history of emotional abuse and manipulation developed around that. It made sense that they'd push Crocomire around and use fairly simple tactics of pretending to be his friend to get what they want since he's not too bright, but since Samus and later the Kobbers took down the group, you're sort of denied Crocomire actually coming to terms with the abuse and learning to better protect himself emotionally and only develop healthy relationships. That's where the reappearance of an old face was set to happen, and while it ended up being Dark Star Ridley in actual RP, the original plan was...
I kept dancing around directly saying what my plan for a Ridley cameo was this year since I feel like it could be used in the future, but I'll just let the cat out of the bag since I can't see having a huge excuse for doing it down the line. Nintendo Land features all sorts of theme park versions of Nintendo characters, and in its Metroid section it has a puppet of Ridley to fight. Puppet Ridley here would be in a shadowy alley and start using the same tricks the real one did to start working Crocomire over to his side, buttering him up even though it was all just to get what the owner of the puppet wanted out of the giant alien. Puppet Ridley would actually manipulate Crocomire over a few weeks, us getting little check-ins on Crocomire being hesitant about it, exactly how Puppet Ridley was manipulating him, and soon either Stoke would grow too concerned about this or Crocomire would receive the instruction to bring Stoke and Samus over for a visit.
See, Crocomire was a pawn being used by...
BIG TIME BRANNIGAN! Aka a random alien character I found on the Metroid wiki. A rather cool alien creature who is basically just the top half of some humanoid thing, he was in a Metroid comic as a sort of rival bounty hunter to Samus I believe and the premise was he had worked with the Space Pirates, knew about Crocomire, and exploited that knowledge so Brannigan could get a shot at killing Samus and taking in Stoke. Or just killing Samus. Or later, when the Salvagers became big, I was considering that he could be a Salvager who wanted to capture Stoke while also wanting revenge on Samus in the process as a two-for-one.
The fight would start and we might either be tricked into thinking its really Ridley as we fight in the dark or just realize its a puppet from the start when we see the strings or systems controlling it, but after it was ousted as a false Ridley, we'd get to fight it and Brannigan together or just Brannigan for a wrap-up to the event. Crocomire would be able to more easily see the manipulation for what it is without the history of Ridley's shadow over it and learn more about healthy friendships now that he was aware of the problems inherent in his old ones, and that would be that! I think Dark Star Ridley did work better because it had more self-actualization built into it as a concept, and its been said before that Gooper felt bad about Crocomire being mistreated and considered having Ridley not be so bad as a way of extending something nice to Crocomire. I got the mindset but the honey and vinegar approach is a big problem with these kind of friendships and being actually good all along would set Crocomire back quite a bit! There's more complexity to real life emotional manipulation and such that I don't think should be tackled with a friendly alien who is practically just a big happy kid, but this was basically my "doing a plot about emotional exploitation without being immensely uncomfortable" approach and I think scrapping the old version removed some unnecessary melodrama and lead to something cleaner for this personal arc.
The only other things really worth mentioning was a scrapped scene where Crocomire and Claire would discuss 100 Fites and Crocomire would be begging her to tell him if he wins while Claire keeps trying to explain her power limitations to him, Stoke potentially mixing in DNA from things like Pokemon since looking up Metroid enemies with interesting powers who don't break the No Really Evil Guys rule was starting to feel limiting near the end, and Stoke just getting a true coda to the Dawn talk would have been nice but she was gone too long for it I feel. I think in a year with less goofy characters Crocomire might have been more prominent, but with Cirnos, Shimmer, Roller Derby girls, and so on, it was a little crowded.
CIRNOIL
Moving onto other Dark Matter matters, we have the one character Gooper allowed for us to have as a Dark Matter alternate! Going into 2020 I didn't really have any good ideas for what to do on Cirno Day, I think I might have had a few vague ideas about things it could be like something new involving Eternity, but as we all know now it became Cirnoil Day!
Before Cirnoil was conceived though, I started off a bit unsure what I wanted to do with my Dark Matter character. I felt Shimmer or Cirno had to be the pick since they were the characters who had been around the longest and felt like having a dark alternate felt the most natural, so the first idea I had was a Dark Matter Shimmer who was basically crazy. The concept was that when Dark Matter attacked and started taking over and possessing all of her friends, DMverse Shimmer would realize that her attempts to fight back weren't going to work out, and what's more, she had to fight against her friends. The only way to be with them would be to give in to Dark Matter, and since Dark Matter would assure she could still be with her friends even in this Dark Matter world, she would work on convincing others to join with the idea they were all joining a collective where they would be safe with each other forever instead of potentially losing each other.
Dark Matter Shimmer, either during the attack that converted her or some time after, would have been greviously wounded in battle and had to reconstruct a fair bit of her body with her light powers in a pinch. I was thinking it would almost be a split, the idea almost being a Dark Matter Utsuho just vaporized a chunk of her with ease, but I'm not sure I'd be able to justify that with like, the fact some of her brain would just be straight up gone if half her head was incinerated. I still wanted the striking image of Shimmer with a body carved up so pink light portions replaced flesh and all, but I also felt lazy and didn't muster the energy to draw it before new ideas started percolating.
However, if we had gotten Dark Matter Shimmer, the premise of her attack method would be trying to endanger Shimmer's friends to try and make her a willing convert. One night when Shimmer would be out with Voyd and the Pink Neon Pulverizers she would be attacked by DM Shimmer, and at some point in the fight DM Shimmer would have everyone but Shimmer being crushed by like, pink light tentacles. DM Shimmer would reveal how she survived and all that, but she would start taunting Shimmer and pointing out that her powers could do so much more if she was willing to let loose and get cruel. Shimmer would be pushed hard and grab the light that made up the missing parts of DM Shimmer to get her to release the others, but she wouldn't be able to actually tear the alternate Shimmer apart, meaning we'd later have the Kobbers learn of this and we'd somehow face DM Shimmer in a different battle. I almost wondered if I should throw DM Shimmer into a different DArk MAtter event because I only had the night time conflict setting it up planned, but later on the idea for Cirnoil came to me and it was a lot less dark and didn't tempt Shimmer's morals or anything potentially upsetting.
Cirnoil I'm pretty sure came to me while I was trying to sleep and of course made it harder to sleep as the ideas flowed. We've joked about there being a fire Cirno before and an idea for nine cirnos with different elements popping up somehow has been an idea for a Cirno Day even though it was nothing beyond the basic skeleton of the concept. Cirnoil, though, was my immediate idea to do something interesting with an alternate Cirno that wasn't just "oh its fire instead of ice." In fact, the oil came before I even considered fire powers on top of them, because the idea of an alternate evil Cirno dripping black gunk to really show her corruption was the idea that seized me. I was pretty sure somewhere online there would be a black clothes Cirno image that I could use so I immediately started thinking of what her deal would be, but the black Cirno image was harder to find than expected. She almost had a different outfit based on random black clothes Cirnos I found before I found the unhinged black ice art I altered for my purposes. Mainly, I want her to have the same blue hair because it changing colors didn't feel natural to me, but Chao's suggested black streaks worked nicely I feel to set her apart visually even though some of the intent of bringing her in at all was to give Cirno a second Cirno so they can be a terrible twosome of almost identical girls.
Naturally though, Cirnoil would have different tendencies. I have wavered a lot on what Gensokyo would be like in Dark Matter verse since it would be super relevant for Cirnoil's character history, but the Cirno is a better fit than probably any other Gensokyan for never needing to address it because not only was it established that base Cirno was awful at remembering people (part of her development was shedding the need for nicknames to remember!) but she was also sort of disliked by most Gensokyan natives because of her attitude. I bet if we did try and flesh out the fate of Dark Star Gensokyo there would be a lot of pointless discussion about minor details and all, so instead Cirnoil gets to dodge most of the questions about it while also getting to experience a different development path, sort of fast-tracking it since she has regular Cirno to explain things in a way she comprehends.
Cirnoil's fire powers were mainly added to her oil/tar stuff just to spice them up since I don't think sticky gunk would be fun forever. In the original version of her event we would have naturally fought her primarily, but with Handy's Pizza becoming a thing, it soon become the core of her and Cirno's friendship. Originally I believe the idea was Cirno or someone else would come across Cirnoil in the Undercity, I think Eternity might have even found her on her own and Cirnoil's main goal would be to capture Eternity for Dark Matter. Cirnoil would have been doing something like picking on the Gulpin population, but instead I went for Cirnoil being a lot of talk on being evil and mostly causing problems with her unintentional effects caused by not having a good hold of her powers. Handy's Pizza was soon becoming the obvious home for the battle though and adding in a Handy fight felt like a good way to sort of seal off his loose end albeit not wrap up since he was just possessed, but as the actual event showed, there was a lot of talking as part of the battle and keeping Cirnoil evil and aggressive during too much of it probably wouldn't have worked out. Handy was pegged to be more in complete control by Dark Matter to make up for that, but Rexy's loose end was perfect for adding a bigger action component after the people who could listen to reason were talked out of their ways. I remember it was meant to cap off the small Pizza Ball arc that emerged where Handy's Pizza would have been doing a grand unveiling of the Pizza Ball as the big attraction, and I also remember almost having kids there and protecting them would have been an element of the event. I also would have done a lot more with the Chuck E. Cheese sort of machines and such as attacks but I'm not sure of any specifics beyond the ones I did slip in.
I'm still not too sure about the Cirnoil name. It's a fine pun but I always wonder if there's something better out there, and like she said, she doesn't want to be Cirno Two or something since she doesn't want to be lesser than our Cirno, especially since she's still got a lot of the ego in her that Cirno's slowly overcome. Cirnoil will probably be the more negative and meaner of the two going into 2021 without being like, overly either one of those. It's more she lost everything back in Heart Star and is having trouble adjusting as well as not having the slower, more natural development of Cirno so she'll fall back into her old ways more easily. Overall I think she was a decent get from Dark Matter, I just think planning a huge plot on top of my smaller stuff left me wondering how to work it in. Just like Curse I kinda need time to adjust my mindset to these collabs I think but then I really start rolling into them once I've got the time to sit down and think... or in Cirnoil's case lay down and not sleep :V
GALACTIC ROLLER DERBY LEAGUE
As I've mentioned before in the past, I like to make sure Shimmer has something to do each year as long as she's going to be sticking around. Being a mentor to Voyd was her 2019 deal, and pretty early on into 2019 I already came up with where to go next. Don't remember how Roller Derby found its way to my radar but it was a natural fit for something fun and loose she could get involved with, and as I realized that leaving Voyd behind would be hard for Shimmer, I decided to increase her ties to Olympia to have her potentially finding a new home being one of her angles this year. It was meant to get more focus with things like DM Shimmer and other small posts I didn't make in a year too busy for a lot of normal post making, but it came up in her ending and we'll definitely see her adjusting to leaving Voyd and the team behind in 2021.
Galactic Roller Derby had a pretty simple idea to it, that being I'd just come up with some general team archetypes and see if I could find some cool alien designs to fill these teams. Alien ladies was obvious, and there are a bunch of fun androids and rock ladies on the internet to draw from, but one team that didn't make the final cut was a team of plant ladies. I always wanted to make sure the girls could conceivably fit into roller skates (or in Crushinator's case, had an equivalent) so that lead to many nifty designs not making the cut, and flying/hovering was right out except as limited abilities so that took out a few more. I definitely was a bit too content to just hope I'd bumble across cute or appropriate designs. Knowyourmeme has a lot of cute monster girl images I could have drawn from but the alien section was surprisingly weak and I wanted them to be definitively alien for Girl-actic rather than just a monster girl getting upgraded. I also thought Knowyourmeme would have more good robot lady designs but it seemed to dry up some after I committed to the concept, and naturally Roller Derby, suddenly there's tons over there. A Deviantart trawl got most of the other ladies I needed to fill in the teams with but Girl-actic was definitely the hardest since finding non-fetish bait or ones with compelling designs was tougher. I do think characters like Sandra were a bit of a "couldn't find nothing better" but I enjoyed a lot of the girls! I feel like I could RP characters like Mason, Sue, Crushinator, Smoothie, and more as actual characters rather than just amicable rivals.
Before we move on, I'll share some of the designs for potential GRDL girls that I rejected for one reason or another.
A good frame of reference for how old the plot idea was is that Chao posted this lady as background color during the club event of Blastoplot 1 and she was already in the files as an alien for Roller Derby plot. I didn't start planning abilities for most of the girls until closer to the actual event, but the tentacle helmet was an obvious pick for some sort of obstructive power.
Before Cybelle, there was Tuva Van Void. Some show called Alien News Desk has this robo-lady and you can find a lot of different expressions for her with a quick google, so being presenter felt like a decent job for such a lady. Never saw the show, but lesserknownwaifus on tumblr was also one of those sources for cute space ladies I put too much faith in. Honestly don't know how many girls I was even able to pull from it in the end, but Tuva here was one that cropped up there. She probably wouldn't have been as fun as Cybelle, still a bit wacky but maybe with some biting commentary on top of it.
Our last rejected lady is labelled Reboot. I think this is by the same person as Mason and I was really hoping that artist would have given me more usable designs, but this nerdy robot certainly could have found her way into Circuit Sisters or Red Dwarf Destroyers since she has a sort of mean air to her. Again, the crowded android team lead to her not making the cut, especially since nothing speaks to me powerwise save maybe something with those antennae.
There were no doubt more reject roller skaters that I didn't save or only briefly looked at, these are just the ones who had images saved as a statement of intent.
The Red Dwarf Destroyers were always pegged to be the rivals ever since I came up with the idea of Sonata getting her back broken to force her to sit out. I needed reasons this team would come to the Kobbers so losing Entrapta and Sonata felt like a reasonable way for them to recruit ringers, but the funny thing about the Red Dwarf Destroyers was I came up with the name before I realized how perfectly its acronym lined up with Roller Disco Devils. In fact, starting off, I was considering them just to be Rival Sports Team and Bolstus just didn't know her own strength, but Bolstus was also imagined more closer to the pink goo rock golem Bulbit (so named for the Pink Slime type of meat BLBT, or Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, since her goo reminded me of it). So early Bolstus could have been just rougher than realized, but soon she became the core of giving us a clear villain for the plot but one who wasn't like, going to kill anyone.
Boltus being a bad lady let many other things fall into place. Shyne was some random tumblr radar image I thought was really cool, and I considered her being Glo's ex, who was also a tumblr radar image I thought was cool, although I had to edit out her tongue for making her look goofy. Glo might have actually been the start of Roller Derby since I remember the idea of Glo being sort of a more serious Shimmer, someone Shimmer wanted to befriend but couldn't, and Glo might have been a bit of a jerk, basically replacing that old idea of having the one person Shimmer couldn't befriend. Glo being a rude girl was definitely changed, but she was a shoo-in for Roller Derby because she matched the Pink Neon Pulverizer idea of everyone being Shimmer-esque. Shyne wasn't kept as her ex though, maybe they still are, but Glo's character really wasn't touched on compared to other PNP members. The Glo we got worked as an exotic dancer with her light rings to get money to fund her rather unpopular interpretative dance work, but it was her passion so she kept at it despite little interest.
QT-2 was from lesserknownwaifus and apparently a disguise for the main villain in the show, but she worked as a good way of making Bolstus's hold on the team more believable. Pairy (who I think is a fakemon) has an ego to stroke to make her a bit easy to manipulate, but QT-2 and Bolstus bullying the other two felt like a way of making the actual bad guy angle work, and QT-2 having her head reprogrammed absolved her while also adding some interesting android-only ideas to the plot. I think I said QT-2's original power was basically Split Woman's repurposed but I don't recall anymore and it would require chatzy digging for the truth. RDD's team design was basically one member representing each of the other teams, an android, alien, rock lady, and then humans for the PNP, but then we had Lady Bud Knight.
I'll touch on Bud Knights in general here. The end of year joke about Shimmer and Voyd protecting Olympia from Bud Knight trying to force drink exclusivity on the bar was part of my old MO of coming up with a joke and immediately coming up with its importance before posting it. Bud Knight was always destined to lead into Bud Knight Platinum appearing later to avenge him, but Bud Knight appearing for the jail plot was not planned until way later but also gave us the fight we were "denied". He was always meant to be a set up for the more interesting and cool design of Bud Knight Platinum, whose mascot commercials immediately made me want to include him in RP in some capacity. The whole idea of him avenging the original knight played well with ideas percolating about Sir Nicholas's power stoking people to act, but Entrapta's unusual ties to the group was the bigger one. I didn't know much about Entrapta besides her design at first, and when Spy posted this long thing on his tumblr that seemed to portray her as anxiety-riddled nerd so I seized that characterization... even though the show clips I saw later made her out to be eccentric but it was already too late after the plans I had for her. I do think her friendship rift was maybe too real a problem for us to handle in RP without people having the time or devotion to really concoct a way of potentially fixing it, but I think we got a decent enough outcome despite the character drama being a bit hard to navigate for people.
Lady Bud Knight was some cosplayer I came across while seeing if there was another Bud Knight to potentially draw from, but she ended up the perfect way of integrating the Roller Disco Devils. I had very few plans for the Bud Knight Platinum fight before I hit on him just weaponizing other advertising campaigns the company had, and for Roller Derby, Lady Bud Knight was going to be lacking until I came up with giving her the angle of roping in the Disco Devils. The anniversary year was pretty much the reason they appeared and enhanced the enemy team, and since they're low-danger guys who are from Hell I feel less bad whenever I whip them out for battling again. I realized as soon as the idea came though I had to include them because no plot deserved them more, but I also didn't them too dangerous or serious a threat which they thankfully never feel like they've become. They're a goofy season 1 enemy and I'm not sure I'll ever use them again after this seemingly logical final bow, but they added some spice to the final battle and made Lady Bud Knight joining the team work more from Bolstus's perspective and gave us one more clear villain to take care of.
The round robin style to the plot was to avoid it dragging, and a regular tournament structure did mean we couldn't potentially lose. I was soft and gave us the Girl-actic win in the end, and I think maybe if the alien team was more compelling I could have let us lose. Maybe if Circuit Sisters was close instead I would have allowed the one loss, but the angle of having to outscore the Destroyers by a higher margin was a cool idea for the finale but not necessary once the Devils came into the picture I feel. Small fact too: originally the Red Dwarf Destroyer were Demolishers instead, but it didn't have the same ring. I also stick by saying Pink Neon Pulverizers has the better bounce to it, Neon Pink Pulverizers just doesn't ring the same to me! I think Neon might be too weak a word to lead with in my estimation and thus putting it central leads to a rise-fall-rise word layout... but anyway, the reason the plant team was scrapped was primarily so that the plot wasn't too big. Facing each team was necessary and a five event plot felt a bit too big even though I ended up sharing the sentiment I wish it could have kept going and the girls could have stuck around doing more. They did get some post-plot play definitely, not as much as planned due to DM Shimmer's removal, but I really did get attached to a lot of these ladies.
On the Pink Neon Pulverizers, they were all sort of Shimmer knock-offs in concept and many were characters who appealed to me almost exclusively because I saw a lot of what I liked in Shimmer in them. Characters like Honey Lemon in Big Hero 6 stood out to me because of their similarities, and so she was an early pick for the team along with Koala Princess who I mainly just knew for her design. Sonata came easy when I played her source game, Glo's whole thing was already that she was going to be a sort of serious Shimmer back when she was a more negative character concept, Dreamcast I always worried would be too much like Shimmer if I kept her personality from the Hard Girls show, and Entrapta I think was just sort of surface level Shimmery-ness. But, each of the main girls was meant to be a Shimmer with different aspects turned up. Honey Lemon was Smart Shimmer, and I kind of wish I remembered the different aspects of her little chemballs better (and she was almost at the Imposter event in Salvagerplot but that felt like too many characters so she only sort of mentions her presence later). Koala Princess was Stupid Shimmer and surprisingly fun even though "stupid" mostly manifested as her being incredibly out of touch and sheltered due to her being so rich and pampered. Glo was Serious Shimmer and thus the right fit for a team captain who could keep things under control and deliver things plainly in an eccentric cast. Dreamcast being Sega Shimmer was just to keep the SS theme but her concept was being the more violent of the group, and then we have Sonata, who is more of a normalized Shimmer with a similar power but her SS was always to be Salvager Sonata.
Sonata probably has the deepest history of the PNP team because of how much it tied to Salvagerplot. Originally she was 100% a willing Salvager and would reveal that once she had things in place. She was actually going to team up with other members of the Lovely Heroines cast, but while Parsec the gizmo girl was potentially interesting enough design and concept wise for RP, the other ladies weren't the best. One was basically Supergirl and another Storm and their designs weren't great and often too fetishy for my tastes as real RP characters. The idea would be Sonata would team up with these other superheroines for the attack though, and she even mentions the superheroine friends in RP... but it is part of her cover to hide that she was an Undercity resident and poorer than her friend group in the final form things took. She became too likeable a character with her cheering fan gimmick I feel and pretty quickly the idea she became a Salvager by choice was scrapped, and Sir Nicholas's powerset became a good idea of how to still get her Entrapta character drama into the plot. Bud Knight Platinum was added to ensure a battle and we got rolling from there...
But originally, the superheroine fight would have been interrupted anyway, and that's why we need to talk about a different rejected character that Maya ended up replacing. Georgette was a character I kept putting off drawing and thus likely ensured her rejection, but her concept was she was an african-american singer who had a brief period of popularity in the era of Motown female singing groups like the Supremes and even takes her name inspiration from The Marvelettes who had both a Georgeannea and Georgia but not a Georgette. The idea was that Georgette was a big singer for a brief flash in those days, but fell out quickly and did nothing of note until her death in around 1995. While a great singer, she actually was also carrying on an incredible power inside her, the ability to shape music into powerful energy forms. Her daughter left her life before Georgette could pass the ability on properly, but Georgette came back as a ghost and was looking for her granddaughter to carry on the legacy. Sonata was to be that granddaughter but Georgette would only realize it during the combat event because Sonata had at least manifested the basics of the power (being sound manipulation).
Georgette's own powers were a lot more varied and weird than just sonic manipulation, and she would have been another character whose basic attacks would be a lot of work in the same way the Sega Hard Girls prove to be. Sheep linked this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfECJrXkfrk and I had it stuck in my head and kept watching it, so eventually it came to me that a character who could turn song lyrics into attacks could be pretty cool. From the song Don't Pull Your Love specifically we have things like "cry for 100 years" and "drowning in my tears" could manifest as a big water flood formed by the sound, and "gonna leave, gonna take that big white bird" would manifest a literal big white bird for an attack. It's a power with mileage and who knows, maybe I'll use it one day, but Georgette felt like she depended on Sonata too much and the power was high maintenance in a year with high maintenance powers so when Maya's concept slammed into me close to RP's start I made the swap and don't really regret it.
Other little details: Voyd's small confidence arc here wasn't planned in advance, it just that her being there lead to very specific denials so others could shine and that ultimately makes a very good concept for her doing the big play in the end for maximum sports movie. I did want it to be sort of sports movie trope-y (hence the "save the league" angle) but also not exclusively that, but with Jenny joining the plot as well it was too perfect to pass up. I definitely figured out what went wrong with explaining Roller Derby rules, mainly it was explained in-character during the practice event rather than shown as a series of concise bullet points when it was actually relevant in the competition event. I did legit consider having the team somehow transition into another sport, but I think the Sega Hardcade plot will cover the same sort of tone and non-combat concept when it shows up in 2021 early season while feeling very different in terms of how characters interact with it. Pairy's name is from Poison/Fairy, the types the Fakemon was given. Cassini of Girl-actic is named for the astronomer who discovered a lot of stuff about Saturn like the ring division that is now named for him. Kristel was the first rock girl and I plumbed Invader Zim for designs but also came up with only her. And... that might be all I can think to say! Let's move on to our last plot then!
BLASTOPLOT 2
AKA I almost did Death of Blasto again! The point where he would have died is a lot more clear since I basically kept it in and removed the death, but in general, 2020 ended up showing us more of Blasto without ever drawing too much attention to it. He wasn't as active in regular events but when he did stuff it showed more than his movie-style devotion to justice, from finally being willing to hand away guns at the end of the year to showing that he valued many things more than just busting perps. He has a code for not using melee weapons, he wouldn't sell people out for even the best gun, and he'd willingly die if it meant protecting others, although trusting Einst to be true to his word was of course rather naive but at the same time Einst probably would have left well enough alone since the personal slight was taken care of and he wouldn't have to deal with Kobbers anymore. Regardless, the idea was to show more of the person behind the jellyfish alien before he was set to retire in a similar way to how Blastoplot 1 helped us get to know Niftu a bit better. I of course couldn't go through with killing Blasto, and while sometimes I feel a decision may make work better as a writing decision, I'm writing for a group of friends so I'd rather them be happy then sit on a stump and insist I have to have this ending that might make me feel like I wrote something marginally better than what I went with :P
That is a positive statement by the by! I don't feel bad at all with the final form of the plot, and Blasto surviving still had the intended meaning. He was ready and willing to die if that was what it took and was willing to swallow his pride for it, he survived by luck in the end. I almost called this plot The Death of Blasto so its best I didn't, but at the same time I'd totally do some sort of fakeout despite the name if i felt like it.
Anyway, talking about the general structure of the plot. In the same way the first plot had people named for Black Hole adjacent ideas and people, I wanted to do the same for this but whip out the big names. Calling someone Einstein or Hawking would be far too on the nose though, so the names were carved up and distributed. Einst as the main villain, Awki getting the middle of Hawking's names, and Hening picking up the pieces. Cerulean Star was from a Blasto comic and I thought mostly it was cute to allude to that comic, but it was originally going to be that Blasto had a romance with her that he didn't remember at all and Slasho had a romance with her that he only valued as a way of spiting his brother, but it added a weird layer to the whole affair so I didn't end up committing to it. Instead she just became the more competent and capable speaker for the first event!
However, the way things would kick off underwent many shifts. I thought at first roping in the Lodge would be nifty since Slasho was teased early on by being a high ranking member, so I almost had Niftu and Miyu meet up at a fancy eatery to discuss it. This is where the idea of the Totameians emerged from, partially for Niftu to flaunt his sometimes underutilized expert knowledge of Xenolinguistics and culture and partially just because I liked the idea of the society that bit its food to show its quality and trust in the ingredients. I concocted a bit more about the world for Niftu to potentially bring up like their relationship with food quality and splinter groups who relish the risk of eating the potentially dangerous base ingredients of their world, but in the end they became color for the policemen's ball instead. I considered drawing them and they went through many shapes before the sort of pelican-centaur came to life, I'm not sure I would have drawn that form, and drawing them would show intent of using them elsewhere. I did wonder if I should make more use of them then just a quirky chef and waiter race, and I tried to make them work as basic enemies for the ball attack, but it never clicked. Z'xarv was going to be more involved in this old version of the event too as he had been tracking Slasho specifically.
Another idea for enemies at the ball would be Hening and a group of similar dandelion aliens serving as the waiters and revealing they were in on the attack. It would probably leave too many people in inescapable positions to have waits pull guns out on them and that doesn't work with the intended Suicide by Cop approach they were hoping to have Blasto experience and shamed by, but mostly I just knew people liked the dandelion waiter I came up with for the Chili's scene with Cirno and wanted to make him more important. He was locked in as important when he became part of the hook for the next year, but rather than being more bodies than necessary for a dangerous fight, I just had Hening be the connection to Einst we needed to uncover through the prison event. I did waver on how Hening communicated and briefly considered sign language before I realized that wouldn't work with my animal control idea for Giggle, but the text hologram sort of gets the idea of being silent but able to speak with others.
TE pills and the related "black hole" weapons were all about getting the black holes into the plot without just retreading the use of them by the diva aliens from last year. Having people get sucked in again wasn't that cool, so I came up with the idea of the matter crunch weapon, and while there was no drug to drive the undercity mad, I thought having a weapon that was both incredibly power but reasonable to recover from worked well as a new big threat. It did come with the caveat I couldn't do direct hits without permakilling people, but the BH pistol worked well for low scale damage that still hit really hard. I did waver on what to do with Einst's ship and its upgraded matter crunch powers like a self destruct or have its weapon available for taking or whatever, but like usual I think I settled on the best result.
Blasto meeting with Slasho was almost a different thing entirely, Blasto turning up to an obvious ambush, blasting all of his attackers (likely other disgraced hunters or Black Hole thugs) and then speaking with Slasho until Cerulean catches him off guard somehow. One idea was that Blasto wouldn't be under the control of the asari's biotic power but instead there would be this sort of yellowish parasite creature similar in concept to the exocells from Cold Fear. It would go inside bodies and sort of puppet them and Blasto would have one in him making his seeming betrayal happen, and the prison event would have Awki be the host creature that controls the small parasites from afar. He was originally going to be a sort of muscular yellow creature in a prison jumpsuit and the prison event would involve him controlling people with more of the parasites rather than finding willing people to work alongside him, but then I came up with the idea of it being a guard and I felt that made more sense for how someone on the inside was able to get away with their manipulation and working as an invisible relay for Einst's work in Olympia. Turning Awki into a slug thing was meant to be to make him more unassuming and I know people probably won't remember the actual villain of the event well in the future and I don't mind! It was more about the fun of revisiting villains and I knew from the get-go I wanted Brad to crop back up, and Gooper and I even joked he and Pink might be an awful couple during the event before Pink was made actually likeable. I do think the villain selection would have been greater if we could have somehow justified even older villains being around and I do feel a little bad about the setup denying appearances by characters like Lord Dominator, but I also didn't want any controversy or quibbles about if a character should be dropping by. The fun of the event was revisiting villains we'd likely never hear from again and some got their chance to shine like Mustacho who I really wanted to show had internalized Meiling's attempt to teach him to be a better guy.
I did probably drag my feet a bit on getting my villain group going partly because I didn't remember my arrests vs. deaths pretty well. Other ideas included having the fight go down in the cafeteria instead of the yard, but I think that's about it for different ideas that were almost used there.
Einst's battle was pretty much assured since the teaser at the end of Blastoplot 1. I really wanted to sell this idea that Einst was fucking enormous, and I'm glad his text broke because it really did nail in how loud he is too. Some early concepts were outright ridiculous, like a small spaceship turning out to be Einst or even an asteroid being eaten by him, but he was in a chair during the teaser so I decided not to be TOO absurd. I still wanted him absolutely ginormous because the first concept for the fight was we'd meet him and get ready for the fight and he'd scoop us up and eat us. And that did happen! It was far more abrupt originally and I think I was going to play up the "well you're boned" angle more, but fighting our way out of Einst was always the idea, but originally it would have been pushing through multiple layers of the body rather than one enormous chamber. I always sort of maggot look for him where he was just one long fat grub to justify how he had all the stuff inside him added to kill his victims, but he would have looked too much like a big face or gate without the Jabba the Hutt posing. I almost gave him a mustache before i realized hair didn't make much sense for his creature type and instead made his nostrils look like a thin italian mustache, and he's sharply dressed because I continue to commit to the idea that aliens probably wouldn't be totally naked all the time if they interacted with other cultures. Drawing his teeth I think was the hardest part because I had to make them work within the concept of sealing people in while being a weapon in themselves. Originally there would have been no part with fighting regular crooks on the spaceship and I think that's what I meant about being a much more abrupt I EAT YOU scene. I do like we got the action movie ending of the organization ruined by the leader being killed but also the more realistic idea of the Space Police and Lodge sweeping up the gang's remnants now that their power structure is broken and much of their strength lost.
Bubin is perhaps the last character to talk about. I knew I wanted to kick things off with him returning to elcor form, and the Policemen's Ball was a good day to do it. However, originally, rather than just being back to normal there, his return to being able to speak would lead to him telling everyone that he had knowledge of Black Hole he's been wanting to tell them for a year! If I lampshaded it enough maybe I could get away with that angle but it felt like he'd make some effort to communicate it while Hot Foot if it was important, so instead he just got to be a huge alien instead. In the original idea for Blasto in RP, Bubin would have been there as his partner to be the dry counter, but I felt my cast was getting packed and I wanted to focus on the police chief/vigilante cop angle more. Bubin did get his role though and after his restoration he got be partners with Blasto a few times, the back turret proving to be a bit more flexible than I originally anticipated even though I didn't use Bubin much to really explore it. I think Bubin's voice quirk of saying the sentence's emotion could have worn me down since I already sometimes struggle to write Blasto's convoluted wording and one-liners at times, but Bubin played his role well enough. Oh, and I guess I'll say I had been considering Giggle for an Inch romantic interest since seeing Toy Story 4 and the animal control angle helped it manifest, but since Inch's joke about the Policemen's Ball donations being what inspired Bree's interest and then the general idea of incorporating it into Blastoplot at all, I decided to rope in Inch being really into the ball so he could get a date with his new honey. They might not interact too much in the coming year save moments set up for casual relaxing, but hopefully Giggle and Hening get a good amount of play.
And... that might be it, for these plots at least! Salvager blogpost will probably be a beast so I don't know if I might take some means of cutting it down into something more manageable, but this should be most of the behind the scenes for unrelated material! See you whenever I can muster the energy for another big blogpost!
An excellent blogpost! Took me a bit to think of something to say, but here's a few thoughts!
ReplyDeleteCrocomire was oodles of fun, I loved the concept the instant it was revealed. I've long pushed for Crocomire to turn up in RP since I thought he had potential, but I'd never considered him as anything but another fight. Playing heavily into the goofy persona he's built up in fandom was a great idea, though, and I thought the "father-son" dynamic he had with Stoke was great. Speaking of Stoke, I also REALLY liked a Space Pirate being a friendly character, since we'd established in past seasons that some Space Pirates did finally stop being jerks once their leadership was wiped out and we didn't have to exterminate an entire species to the last man or anything like that, and Stoke was a great look at a former evil mook who's turned his life around. You also did very well to latch onto other plots to develop them, like having Stoke revert to his old cold and strict self when afflicted by a Mary Beast aura, or merging Crocomire's development with Dark Matter after I revealed I'd be using Dark Star Ridley, who ended up with one of the best arcs of my Dark Matter villains as a result! The idea of a Ridley we could reason with never made it very far, it was more a thought experiment I had than anything I had real plans for, and I agreed with you that we had to wipe him out for the plot to work correctly. While I do love the concept of a big scary evil-looking flame-spewing skeletal purple dragon fighting on our team, we have Eternatus for that!
Galactic Roller Derby was absolutely packed with cute and interesting designs, no doubt. There were absolutely multiple characters in there I could have easily seen as full-fledged RP characters. The Circuit Sisters in particular was stuffed with potential RP characters, so I'm not surprised they got the biggest push out of the non-Pulverizer teams, becoming our friends and even popping up for some Brawl effort. I'd give the "Best Fit For Agama" prize to Copernica (how much more magitech can you get?!) and the "GB personal favorite" prize to Smoothie. I do so love the "hair covers eyes" look. She's so cute!
I wasn't sure what to make of Blasto's "death"! I usually approach any protagonist death scene in RP with "they're not really gonna do it" and then it becomes some negative emotion like dismay or sadness if they actually go through with it. My approach to this one was similar to how I approached Zeldoten's death during the Mr. Mind fight - Patty and Sumireko were both convinced the character in question was okay, and refused to give up hope. Sumireko ultimately was proven wrong and it crushed her. Patty wouldn't have reacted as badly since Blasto was merely a liked and respected colleague as opposed to Zeldo being Sumireko's very loved girlfriend, but we probably would have seen a more subdued, jaded, and serious Patty for a while as she struggled with the death of a friend.
Very interested in the Salvagers post, whenever that happens! Glad I could get the ball rolling on the yearly development blogs.