Me in 2023 ZFRP

 Late as always, it's the retrospective look at my 2023 RP stuff!

Let's dive right in not by looking at plots first, but characters!

Shimmer

Her final year after showing up a tiny bit near the start of the year. I had no plans for her going in and mostly just expected she might latch onto Isabelle stuff, but I do think it was finally time to retire her. She had plenty of plots and seemed to have grown as much as she really could, and people like Yuuma bring a new perspective the usual "up for anything" that Shimmer had essentially filled of late. Sadly, because this is her last year, that's not much to say! She attended the Circe stuff at the start and then I decided to wrap her up by saying she's basically a background helper. Sort of like how comics will often note that yes, Bruce Wayne does donate to rehabilitation programs or show him helping the community despite what people say, Shimmer is out there for Kobber outreach now helping on the small scale.

Kogasa

A quiet year for Kogasa and intentionally so! She was mostly there to be just a character who could tell the kind of jokes I didn't have any characters who would reasonably tell otherwise, but her behavior this year is going to tie to things next year as we are heating towards a boiling point for her.

Claire

Now we're at a character where there were plans and things! Claire was moving back to the main roster for 2023 and I wasn't sure where to go with her yet. I felt like she should maybe have a plot but also couldn't think of one I was happy with, but her being tied closely to Clownpiece's stuff was the perfect springboard! She barely did anything else but was still fairly active this year because of it, and as I've noted elsewhere, me and Draco didn't so much "collaborate" as we'd react to what the other posted or say "let's do a thing" and roll from there! I think it worked out well, but one thing that did happen a fair bit was Claire kept guessing wrong on what was happening with Clownpiece. I basically decided that's part of her character now though, without future sight active on someone she's not really good at picking up clues.

Since Claire was so reactive on the plot, I also had no endgame plans for her future sight issues being cured. Not every element of her tie to Gridworks was solidified just in case I did do a big plot thing with it meaning that night before the reveal was really me going "okay, time to nail down the hard facts finally". Most of what was mentioned in the narration there was hard fact, Moonface wanted her more for her Gridworks nature than her predictions and all that, but she is a human made with Gridworks and not like, a Gridworks elemental. One idea I almost did with Gridworks is the idea the shapes made are sort of the Platonic Ideal manifest with impurities coming from the caster, but one reason Claire's hair is white probably is her nature as a "template human". She's human down to having a belly button (although I haven't committed to any lifespan ideas, mostly because I wouldn't mind her living long with Clownpiece) so I'd probably compare it more to like, a test tube baby but the test tube is magic.

As you can imagine I've thought over and scrapped details as they've been in the background to the point I don't remember them all but the Claire we met at first didn't have all these details in place.

Claire's magic teaching was originally my way of trying to make sure she did have something to do, like I could make a post about her teaching if she wasn't up to much and build on her that way. Funnily enough her students slowly became less defined by being her pupils despite my thought they'd just be side characters for Claire scenes! Hence why they weren't shown before rp started in the profiles or anything. Let's talk about those scamps next shall we?

Prosperity

Prosperity was the first student thought up and it ties back to when I was playing Pokemon: Legends Arceus. That game has a mechanic where, if a player is defeated by a wild Pokemon, they'll black out and leave a packet of some of their items behind. Other people playing on line can find these packets and send them back to the user, and as I played, I noticed I kept finding packets left by a player ironically named Prosperity. The contrast between frequent failure and the hopeful name amused me, and eventually I started shaping that into a character concept. My original vision was a girl with a good deal of band-aids and like, a single pigtail after something clearly happened to the other like it got chopped off. My mind did turn to designs like how Goo from Foster's Home might look aged up, an example we can see here:

Never found a version of Goo I was happy with although that might be the closest. Instead, I had watched the Moon Girl cartoon and liked the first episode a good deal so I went with face claiming her civilian identity, although of course it has to be aged up some. Prosperity is young in RP, she'll be 18 in 2024, but I do like her sort of dorky look and the general design with things like the hair poofs and glasses felt a good fit for an accident prone girl!

If you're looking for a greater depth to why her and her grandfather, the Las Vegas repairman Mr. Bixby, are so chaotically clumsy, you won't find it. There's things in this world that are off kilter and odd just like there are things that are orderly! You could say they're a little more chaotic than orderly, but not in like, "they're oozing chaos" sort of way. The world needs both! Prosperity was developed at first independent of any Bixby connections because of that Pokemon origin, it just felt right when I realized I had another klutz she could connect to (although it was in place before she appeared in RP). Her personality is heavily inspired by Moon Girl as well, not the same but sometimes I would imagine Moon Girl's voice actress to try and steer her back on track if she wasn't feeling right. I am very happy with her new adoption of Dexter; as referenced in RP, animals don't like her much because she's so unpredictable and sometimes causes accidents. A cat that can handle that is like a dream come true for her and she does all she can to dote on him, even if she can't help something like tripping into him or spilling out a bag of clean kitty litter. She did get a bit better over time, partly because Dexter is watching out and partly because she uses her Gridworks to avoid trouble! I think her most important role though was to counterbalance the other Gridworks student...

Sinful

Sinful wasn't supposed to be so important. In fact, Claire wasn't going to teach any other named students beyond Prosperity, I considered there just being a group of generics who learned properly to flesh out the group. Instead, I felt it reasonable that Claire would be bad at advertising a class for an unknown type of magic. Sinful's character concept has some similar origins to Prosperity's! I had rented the RPG Ragnarok DS from Gamefly and when I turned it on, I saw a previous save file on it had the name Sinful and they had made their character class Assassin and I was immediately charmed by it. Someone out there just wanted to be what they considered a genuinely cool guy, and while it was easy to dismiss as "edgy", it was so pure that it spoke to me. This person had no one judging them, and I wanted to honor that spirit of a straight-laced cool character who might read as edgy but would never have a moment where he was portrayed ironically.

Finding a face claim for Sinful was both not easy and surprisingly easy. I didn't want a joke design but I didn't want one that felt like it was trying too hard either. Thankfully, I remembered Hwang from Soul Calibur VI's DLC.

A pretty cool looking design, but with stuff I didn't want like the crazy feathers. I at first thought maybe some fan art would work that might hide the feather crest, but instead, concept art was the way to go! A different unused design for Hwang felt like it achieved a perfect balance, it more understated and not having any design oddities to explain like a tricorne hat or streamers. That choice of image is why Sinful has a sword though, I considered him mostly coating things like his needles in his blood as his means of attack but the sword in the character art gave him some more versatility. If you're wondering about that blade, it's dull because of its limited contact with his dissolving blood, but he has the oil sheathe so that when the blade makes contact, the bacteria eat through the oil first instead of destroying his weapon. I imagine it's pretty thick oil, almost sappy, and you can definitely tell when his blade is coated in it.

As for that blood, it was because I wanted him to have a cool power! Not just a basic assassin! A guy using his blood to attack is a pretty cool thing and again, I wanted him to be like the kind of badass I'd like if I was a young person unafraid of being judged. The bacteria idea definitely had to have tied to the needles being a chosen weapon, as in the needles inspired the bacteria concept. To make them actually lethal they would dissolve the point of impact, but how could that work? Well, a pressure-activation would mean they would only trigger the dissolving blood when they make contact, and thus it felt like it had to be something like bacteria inside his body triggering it rather than an innate quality. Some people have more simply called it "acid blood" but it is more complicated to try and be a touch realistic!

The nature of it being bacteria also has roots in his story origin. I wanted to make sure Sinful remained an assassin which doesn't always fly in the RP world, so early on I decided he'd essentially be an activist assassin. He'd kill the kind of people who just keep getting away with being awful because others tried to use the law to take them down, and quickly the early days of his career were conceptualized. Initially, rather than a bus full of activists being killed after they discovered a company had tainted their water and infected them, the city that was impacted by the careless chemical company was just going to be plugging along miserably. People would die and be worn down by it, but it would be a bit more brutally realistic. They tried everything and nothing worked, so they just wait around to die, which spurred Sinful's first killing where he would ambush one of the businessmen responsible in a snowy cabin and kill him, making a point he knew who he was. This was almost a blogpost I believe, but I'm glad I held off, since there was more that needed to take shape!

Instead, the tragedy was turned more personal and immediate. The activist group on the bus was killed and it included his fiance, Jessica. I had considered it to be his wife but that meant it was less likely he could ever get over the loss, and there was almost not even so much as a girlfriend before I decided to not resist my desire to give him a properly tragic backstory. The name Jessica was chosen because it felt like a straightforward attractive girl name, I almost picked Jennifer I think even, but again I tried to kind of imagine the mindspace of someone who would make this character authentically and that's where my mind went.

Sinful being a pro assassin was originally almost a bit of a joke though. As in, he was a pro, but he had probably only killed three or so people. This was rooted in a serious thought that he probably hasn't had too much business, but it also is kind of a joke at the idea that you can be a "professional" assassin. How many people do you have to kill before you are a pro? This did manifest a touch in RP; he's not a novice, but he isn't as skilled as Shirley so he made mistakes and lets his emotions get in the way more. He's done more work so he is more assuredly a pro, but he is trying his best to look the part and all to make up for less experience. I also wanted to make sure things like his name worked in RP hence the explanation we got that he bears the sins others shouldn't commit, and his real name, Seth, is also a name I thought sounded kinda cool so it got in on that "embrace the cool" rule!

Sinful originally wasn't a part of Tehom stuff at all! I didn't expect the students to be so important when conceived but then ideas kept flowing, but even things like Tehom's pressure powers were independently developed of Sinful's blood bacteria being pressure activated. So many things line up nicely by happenstance.

Gamecube and GBC

The Nintendo Hard Girls didn't have big plans for this year but I'm glad I brought them! I knew I wanted to get the relationship sealed on Gamecube so her coming along was a must, and Gooper came up with the great idea of the Artcade so she would have a reasonable place to be. What I didn't expect was such an early chance to do the love admission with Palette so the girls ended up fading into the background after the relationship started... but GBC stuck around.

Gabi is definitely flexible, having strong emotions but smarts on top and her hacking tools give her a unique angle when I don't feel up to Game Boy Color powers or they are just more appropriate. There was a bit of a push to get a relationship with her and I was conflicted on whether she should get with Lyrica or Burnin, and I'm glad I took the plunge and just had her ask out Burnin. It wasn't built up to as much as some relationships but I think it's almost more realistic, and their time together shows they're a good fit. Gamecube actually delivered my justification in the end for why I didn't back down and have GBC get with Lyrica after all. GBC likes to help people, she basically recruited the Nintendo Hard Girls not because they'd be easy to keep in line but because she wanted to help these people she saw who needed it, even jeopardizing who own goals with the group to aid them. Lyrica she felt that closeness to because she wanted to help her too, but Burnin didn't need to be a hero, so Gabi can just be herself!

Gabi's name has been locked since before she appeared! I even said once I wish I had revealed it at the end of the Sintendo Sisters plot and waiting so long bit me in the butt! I didn't expect another Gabriella to show up and held my tongue when she did, but GBC definitely wasn't the kind to go by the full name. I naturally considered changing course but didn't think any other name worked as well.

GBC being on Firebrow plot was initially an idea so that she could potentially be the one to explain things the others needed to know like if they were right about guessing things about the bird, but it worked well since she had a connection to the Prismrivers who already connected to Firebrow!

Ani

I didn't expect Ani to do much. I didn't think Oersted would see much play in Whalestrand but he was coming along, so I sent Ani with him, but I'm glad she was along for the ride. We got background confirmation the two fully got together even though we didn't see that exact moment. They already had their big moment last year so it didn't feel like we missed it! If Pitohui didn't have the witch plot I would have been disappointed with her performance, but in the end it was a great thing to attach her to and we can send her off with Jovi to a happy future.

Miyoi

Miyoi changed a lot from how I imagined her at first, right down to the fact... I don't know what she is! I considered her being a spirit like she is in Touhou, and she is canonically from Gensokyo in RP, but I kind of like the idea she is just a person now after we've got to know her so I backed down from ever committing to it. The old idea though was that she is a sort of house spirit who attaches herself to different restaurants and bars, working her way around Whalestrand to try and find clues on how to help Yuuma. Her and Yuuma both have a love of literature and likely read it together a lot, although Miyoi's was meant to make her more naive and blindly trusting at first. She still has that part in her, she believes every fish tale, but it's not like, her defining character trait. I had worried at first that her just being kind, supportive, and motherly would make her kind of boring, so the early positive response helped me commit to that direction.

 

Her flavor danmaku I expected to be much more important to doing her job, but I'm glad I used it even though it hasn't come up much in bar. It does facilitate moments like the Tiamat attack and helps accentuate she can't fight really even if she wants to.

 

Saltbaker (and let's do the Food Plot extended cast too)

The ruse! He appeared early for the food competition but he was never meant to be a real "main" character. He was destined for food plot and being a plot character, and him appearing outside of it was more just to support his eventual importance there. It took playing the Cuphead DLC to consider him, but he filled an important role in many ways. The big one was that I had already conceived of things like the Devil's Hair for Yuuma's affliction but not a way to cure it. The Wonder Tart though was a perfect concept for it, a magical food that in its source material brought back the dead but naturally I'd rein it in a bit.

One big question I had though was why something like the Wonder Tart was known to exist but it was being made before? The ingredients being hard to get was a factor of course, but then, how does anyone know it exists? This combination of food? That's where we get Tonio Trendy. I was reading JoJo and come across this character who can "sight read" a body and give them food that can cure their aches and maladies, so I'd take that character and plonk him in as the inventor of the Wonder Tart! Tonio probably does not have his Stand in RP, he just is gifted in reading people and coming up with this curative foods, but the Golden Chefs (hastily named because I realized I hadn't named the group a little late) were all about ego and yet I didn't want Tonio to be the same. Wanze was prideful and wanted to be the one who made it, Saltbaker couldn't believe someone of his caliber couldn't make it, and Cher was determined her methods were sound even to a fault. Tonio was the least "guilty" of the four of holding back its creation, but the four drifted apart because of their failure and he took it hardest, basically throwing away his old life to try and find the answer. Not working together was their issue of course, not balancing out each other's flaws and all that.

For the four Golden Chefs, early on I didn't have a solid idea of who they'd be. Wanze was picked early on though but potentially as a placeholder, but one ingredient being Livinguini seasoning was to make him work. The One Piece chef isn't like, a particular favorite of mine, but I did like fighting with noodles and while he didn't use any powers or whatever, I knew I wanted the Livinguini to be a battle to cook it once I came up with its name. I made sure to note it's more enchanted than alive though so we wouldn't grapple with any ethics! Cher Latte is an OC, although her faceclaim is a more youthful looking version of Enya the hag from JoJo. I didn't have a face claim for the conceived character for a long time, because even for a time, she was straight up dead! We'd come to her retreat where Baconator was and we'd learn she died in the time it took trying to make the perfect Foodon, but when I came up with the idea the Wonder Tart was first conceived for Cher that didn't feel right. Instead of Cher I did consider like, a generic old man or something before she was more important, and I even considered trying to find a Foodon that was humanoid enough just to be the Golden Chef themselves. I did want the Foodon we fought to be a big hulking thing and there is some sort of cow Foodon I half remembered, but I don't like most Foodon designs! Hence when I wanted a big beefy guy, I made my own, although the Baconator name stuck so much I just committed to it after a while. I adjusted some Foodon ideas to better fit the plot so attendees could make their own (I even considered drawing everyone's inventions! That would have slowed things down!). Sheep brought up actual Foodon mechanics though, so probably in RP there's just more means of making a Foodon or the methods are tied in ways not yet explained. I did consider the idea of Cher becoming a main character some day, fighting with Foodons, but I don't think she clicked enough in practice.

Saltbaker being the final fight was always planned, although originally it would include some of the sections you see in his boss fight in Cuphead. Things like the salt tornado and all really stuck with me and I liked the concept, but food plot was already doing pretty good at not being straightforward plots. I struggled to come up with an idea for an Ovenleaf event though. I thought a sort of "expedition" could work but I never really settled on a good concept, but it still felt like the plot was an event and ingredient short if I just left it out. Luckily, Chao saved the day, although I was amused that he was thinking up ways to account for Tonio possibly having an event tied to Ovenleaf when the idea was sorta "Tonio shows up with the Ovenleaf I guess?" before the battle cooking idea saved my bacon. Originally Saltbaker would eventually get the Wonder Tart recipe right but then his pride would subsume him, his common rage problems pushed forth and he'd refuse to give it away because it was too important. This would make him a bit of a bad guy even though he'd realize his error when he calmed down, but instead, I reworked it! In the Saltbaker boss battle in Cuphead, there's a part where he becomes just a glass heart, and I figured the idea that he could become that while his body was on autopilot would give us a fight without ruining the character. He wanted to make the Wonder Tart work so bad he did something stupid but well-intentioned, but he couldn't see still that the issue was he was refusing to let others help. Saltbaker's powers were inspired by his boss fight too, but ultimately they helped us have a finale where we fought but Saltbaker didn't go crazy mode on characters like Lanterby who couldn't keep up. Food plot going so well for even non-fighter characters was a big reason I didn't want the finale to break the established mold!

Saltbaker wasn't supposed to have a big presence after the plot, especially since in old versions he would have a breakdown that's harder to bounce back from after all. If Yuuma hadn't taken off so much as a character he and her would probably have a closer relationship still, but Yuuma's more active life takes her away from his new more sedentary one.

 

Pizza Vampire

That's right, we're not at Yuuma yet! The Pizza Vampire is a character created on the podcast Wisenheimers, a comedy podcast that hasn't aged very well because of its shock humor and all but it still holds a dear place in my heart for when it came out. It's where the name Yotam comes from, since he was one of the hosts! Pizza Vampire has been considered for RP for so long though because he's just a fun and funny guy! On the podcast he was created when Yotam tried to do an Italian pizza guy voice but it drifted and sounded like a vampire instead of an Italian, and on repeat appearances the character got some lore. Some of it made it to RP, other bits did not, mostly big backstory elements. On the podcast, the Pizza Vampire was possibly born on Mars and raised by werewolves (it hasn't come up in RP yet, but PV would say he was "raised" by werewolves because he lived with some after he left his home with Count Donut. He was already grown up and all by then though so, not really raised!). The Pizza Vampire also smokes a lot of weed on the podcast, I don't think ours would ever smoke more because it's not pizza related!

One element of the podcast though that I decided to rope in was his father... Dracula. Well, not roped in fully exactly, as we know! Count Donut is his dead, mostly because as I listened to My Brother, My Brother, and Me, I realized they had their own food-based podcast vampire with Count Donut and it was too good to pass up. Even better, Donut and Dracula both started with D, so I made an early joke that Pizza Vampire almost says his father's name, but only gets out the letter D... only for Sheep to immediately guess Count Donut's the dad :V On Wisenheimers, Dracula doesn't approve of the Pizza Vampire because he cares more about pizza than normal vampire stuff, but I changed it so Count Donut is disappointed in his son because he's not obsessed with the right food! It helps one of the more memorable lines in Wisenheimers from PV is him saying something about not wanting to be in the "family business", so here, that business is literal!

Pete Zaa as his real name is my invention, just because it's silly and fun and it gets the name out there quick. However, his birth name, Rick Donut Jr., is an element taken from MBMBaM since Count Donut says that's his son's name there. Donutvania is also from that podcast, but PV's mother being named Stacy comes from when father and son talked on Wisenheimers! I had considered the Pizza vs. Donuts thing on its own but it became a great way to transition to food plot, although I feel I had to cramp a lot into that event to keep things expedient, like the reveal of PV's father and all. Heaven and Hell Dough was my attempt to make it possible this could even connect to Wonder Tarts at all, so it was a late add to the ingredient list!

Pete being determined not to let anyone know he's a vampire is a direct result of the Millaarc event, I don't think I would have done the angle if it hadn't been said vampires weren't a big thing in Whalestrand! Pete mostly attacking with his food has made him hard to work with sometimes but he also feels pretty flexible plot wise. I did originally worry he'd never be around though since he'd be at his restaurant, I almost asked to have Journey's End contain a "pizza nook" inspired by something similar I saw a movie rental store. It was a little spot that attached to the adjacent pizza restaurant so you could order one from them along with your movies, so PV having a little spot in the restaurant would be where he makes pizzas and serves them so he could be around. Turns out, not necessary!

Count Donut was again meant to be more a plot character, but with Chara working at Donutvania we'll probably see him from time to time. The thing I realized in retrospect is that making two characters based on funny voices from podcasts can be hard to capture their specific humor from, but Pete at least has things like his odd way of talking, inspired by the podcaster Yotam's own phrasing quirks. He'd say things like "I'll hit you with my hands" or "I'm talking with my mouth" so Pete also sometimes adds unusual unimportant details when he could be more succinct. The hearse for pizza delivery is my own invention, but it is based on a podcast quote. At one point PV says he wants to live the American dream, which is having a house, a horse, and hearse. A hearse being a delivery car for a vampire sounded so appropriate to me I came up with an actual reason he'd want one, although I did consider the idea PV might have a horse too. The hearse at least lets him bring the ingredients for pizza around more reasonably.

Yuuma

There she is! Foodplot definitely came to be because of her, although like many of my plots, the fact I know very little about the subject is both a hindrance and kind of the reason I probably end up doing it. I don't think I'll be writing convincing food reviews from Yuuma's perspective because of my limited diet and cooking experience, but the food events being more fanciful instead of much straightforward cooking definitely helps to cover my limited food prep knowledge.

Yuuma was meant to originally more often play up her "Lady Yuuma" persona, as in, we might not even see the real her until near the end of the first plot event. I always planned for it to be something she's doing intentionally, putting on airs to try and be like characters and tropes she likes, but I also started thinking of her as a sweeter and more genuine character that ended up breaking the idea she could commit to a person for long. She was just too excited to finally have outside guests, and I think it was the right idea since people were more invested in the excitable version of her than the great pretender. She's well read and smart but also too eager to get into the world and experience it, leading to a balance I think will make her easy to keep around without abandoning her concept. She can be blunt because she's not well socialized though.

Concocting Yuuma's character definitely had a lot of steps and I know Lady Yuuma was even just a straight up original personality concept, but things started to grow and I have to give big credit to Draco for a line he probably forgets saying. He said something about Yachie not liking Yuuma because of Touhou lore, but Yuuma wasn't going to tie into any of her Touhou lore I decided early. However, I wanted to think of why someone like Yachie might not like her, and so I came up with the whole concept of Yuuma being responsible for destruction but technically being in the right. Most people would only know the Devouring of the Countryside from how other people described it, unaware why Yuuma did it, and one reason Yuuma was basically a feral child to start with was to help bridge that gap. She was known already as a troublemaker and prankster because she didn't know how to engage with others when she met something besides the wild animals she ate. That feral period is also the big reason she doesn't eat any live prey, since absorbing them into her also brought with it their minds and memories, which, you know, when you're a dying rabbit or whatever, are not pleasant. But, her failures to interact inspired the grand gesture, but the people of Gensokyo didn't understand it and so she was banished, thus allowing her to be a nice character but potentially have some infamy behind her.

It gave her a reason to be isolated too, although eventually her pain tantrums made it make even more sense she stuck in place instead of trying to find the impossible cure. She's a good girl, she didn't want to kill anyone while losing control! Her manor, while it's sometimes has been called by others a castle, is really more just a big fancy estate that I imagine sits between a forest for dead trees and with hill sides rising around it, almost just a single path to reach its front available. Yuuma probably got it when its previous owner died with no one to leave it to, leaving it abandoned until she moved in. Her spork being indestructible was more to allow my power concept for her to work, I had thought about a character who steals villain powers before like a leech but Yuuma can kinda steal powers from anything she eats. I turned that black oil into a sort of stomach acid to explain its appearance, and while I don't know how her power truly works in Touhou, it does mention that things she ate can impact her personality, hence why the Devil's Hair was able to assert itself and make her act in such violent and angry ways.

The Devil's Hair is apparently a real plant, a parasitic hard to kill species known often as Dodders but with the nickname Devil's Hair. A younger version of me would pass this off as an intentional real life analogue, but the name actually comes from me trying to concoct one based on plants with names like Foxglove. The idea that the plant was named like it was something used by a part of nature tickled me, so I tried to think of what a weed would be called by people. Well, the plant here drained everything of life when it sprung out, so it felt like the demons down below had their hair springing up from the dirt to feed on the living. I considered names with words like Demon or Wig, but Devil's Hair was straightforward and sounded right. Why a supernatural plant though? Well, part of it is because Gensokyo is this place with all these powerful people and creatures, but plants can have crazy powers too! So I came up with one, and one that no other touhou could easily stop. It could come back from incineration by Utsuho, Yukari couldn't possibly dump it all into a gap. It infected the land and had to be wiped out to the smallest bit, but since it couldn't all be destroyed reliably, instead had its every part absorbed by Yuuma. Her incredible digestion was always working to break it down but it regrew fast enough to outpace it, giving us a problem we couldn't solve with anything but the miracle food. No surgery can get that thing out was another important element, we can't cut to the finish line!

Ginny

Ginny was concocted for the Blood Bowl plot, but the fact I put a lot of thought into her helped make her manifest as something beyond that... admittedly mostly as a character for Brine stuff, but still! Since she was a Neo Neo Kobber, I wanted her to combine aspects of multiple users since we weren't being allowed many. Lady Stilt Man was already someone I suggested to CKR but she didn't use, but Ginny was a confluence of factors. The name Ginny is a joke on how we had a bunch of characters named Jenny active at once, although I changed it a touch so it wasn't just another Jenny. Her being the thief from Final Fantasy Tactics was a reference to the Sarahkin combing through those classes, and I had seen some fan art that made me actually take a second look at the thief class again since it wasn't the sort of generic look you find in most fan arts. I can't share it though because it's too lewd, like unfortuantely a good deal of FFT Thief art that actually gives her personality! Just look at danbooru and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, the last part, her thief job being inspired by Zeldoten and her short size in turn, also lead to her trying to weaponize a bug as her Nibbles equivalent, but this was surprisingly an important element in the end. It lead to her day job being a begrudging bug exterminator working under her Aunt-In-Law, and if you look at my old reject blogposts, you might come across the character Margarita. Maggie was a scrapped exterminator character, but now she's canon in a way! Ginny is the one doing the job that we know, but her aunt has been mentioned to be Maggie and is now much older than if I would have used her as a character, but the throwaway joke idea of Ginny using a battle bug to imitate Nibbles the crab lead to this element of her life! Her being from Gibraltar is a way of having my cake and eat it too, I wanted Maggie to be Spanish and Ginny in turn but Ginny's pretty apt at English and not the kind to learn a foreign language, so, she was in the English colonized part of Spain!

 

Firebrow

The bird is the word. First, yes, that is AI art, I generated it back when AI was more a fun novelty than something that seemingly threatened people's livelihoods! At the time, I had considered RPing a dock bird that would just act like a bird. I thought of straight up just RPing a Fearow from Pokemon because it had the proportions I wanted and it's generally a cool underappreciated bird, but I decided making it a species unique to Whalestrand held more promise. Still, to get Firebrow, I actually was putting in the word "fearow" into the AI image maker, although not only that. I tried things like egrets and dock birds and the like but it really struggled to make anything that looked interesting, and I can tell you Firebrow wouldn't have had that strange head plumage if not for the AI. I liked the general body shape, but making the head plumes make sense lead to a lot about this bird!

The name was hard to come up with but also a case of me thinking of Firebrow early and eventually just going with the straightforward but effective choice. I'm sure names with Flame and Ash came up. More importantly, I didn't want it to just be a generic phoenix, and so he could only kick up embers and had no revival powers. It is basically all but said that Firebrow is an evolutionary branch from phoenixes though, keeping their fire production to some extent but not much else.  Basically that just came from the idea that mythical creatures should be subject to evolution too! When we went to the Ashen Arch though, the initial idea was that the ashy cliffs would not be because the birds were burning special grasses in their nests to attract their mates. Instead, we'd find bones and stuff because the birds would incinerate themselves in the way phoenixes do, but they couldn't come back from the ashes, making it a pointless ability but one they did on instinct. I tried to remove some of the bummer qualities of the plot though, and I felt bad when people realized he was an endling, although I did want there to be hope for him yet!

Initially, I considered seeing Firebrow with a lady bird to possibly be one of the final posts in Whalestrand ever. The idea being that it would be a sendoff of hope, a proof that things could come back around even for something that seemed hopeless, but leaving that loose end for so long would hurt, especially since we probably won't see Firebrow much anymore. In fact, I was worried he wouldn't get much play at all! Not many dock plots that a bird like him could be involved in. I didn't have a Firebrow plot planned from the season start, but it started to form as I wanted to make him important somehow. The first event in his plot took some inspiration from the natural studies that Pitohui and Gooper have done as plots, although I think I handled it worse than them. More importantly, it was to establish what Firebrow is, but also get things moving on the poaching plot!

George and Jeb went through a few retools conceptually. At first both were bad guys in on the poaching ring, and while I wanted to give them generic names, I struggled to settle on them. I came up with George and Jeb and almost did a weird name mix where it was like, Geb and Jorg or something before I went the reasonable route. Their pictures are very much just the first neutral enough anime cameramen I could find, but I decided I wanted to keep the plot from being "all birdwatchers are evil", especially considering I was tailoring this plot pretty heavily to Pitohui and that would be quite rude! George became the nice one, a bit socially awkward but just really into the birds, while Jeb became a jerk and his whole "student loan" thing was meant to be a sort of shallow reasoning. Like, yeah, he needed the money, but he wasn't really that broken up over doing it for cash!

When I decided to make a Firebrow plot about poaching him, very quickly I remembered McLeach. The old rejects blogposts mentions the original character idea where he'd take the Kobbers on a hunt only for us to learn he was the one in the wrong, but instead I hewed him closer to his original depiction. In RP though, Rescuers Down Under didn't happen, and he's even noted as getting away with catching the Maruhite golden eagle from that film, although I decided against putting it in the bird dome near the end since it is just a big bird rather than a unique fighter. McLeach almost came aboard the bird dome in the finale as the idea was we couldn't get in without him, but I did sense he was rankling people despite how fun he was to play. People were upset that he was talking about the cushy Scandinavian prison he wanted to be sent to, but the idea was he would think he's getting a comfy retirement only for the prison to actually eventually reform him and make him regret his ways. Maybe we'll check in one day and see that.

EliteLorikeet33 was an idea I had knocking around in my head before I committed it to paper by making a Brawl effort with him. I still had some stuff I was figuring out about him then, but certain things were set! His talking quirk, him saying the 5 W's and How three times over, is a result of the experimentation. Early in the efforts to make a bird speak, they could get out things like who, what, and where as the bird tries to understand its new intelligence, but it still sort of "sings" them by way of repeating them. The scientists got past it eventually but didn't fix the early mistake.

Unsurprisingly, the streamer bird was originally also the main bad guy, but at the same time, there was still a rug pull. The Rainbow Lorikeet avatar was always a cover, and I wanted a less visually appealing and beloved bird to be behind it. I didn't want it to be like, a complete break away, not like a Hoatzil or something, so the Dusky Lory felt right, even though I was amused Pitohui later recommended it as a normal bird to be found in the dome while calling it beautiful! The speckled dark feathers is what made me decide on it, a less "clean" appearance to contrast rainbow lorikeets who have entire sections of the zoo devoted to you feeding them and letting them land on you. The AI running the birdwatching stream was a two-fold decision. It had to be a good cover so the streamer being Dusk all along had to be obfuscated, so even the streamer didn't know he was and thus no accusations would stick. Secondly, it meant the bird-watching streams were legit in intention even though others were exploiting them behind the AI's back. Dusk wanting to get birds away from humans due to the experimentation done to him was an early motivation though, although things like potentially using the Blueberry Academy as visual reference since the Pokemon DLC was just revealed back then were rejected. I think Fezandipiti would have been a good add though, although also RPing the full loyal trio sounds fun...

Anyway, Pitohui was responsible for many of the birds we saw in the final dome event after I was coming up blank on them a bit too close to the day. The Stymphalian Bird was a big save, since Dusk's involvement was always going to be running but Articuno alone didn't feel big enough. I could think of some other notable birds but I didn't want overlap with Firebrow's fire powers, and one reason we got the Legendary birds from Pokemon was because they would have interesting powers while being clearly rare catches. I was worried about the idea McLeach could catch such birds, but we saw him at work multiple times and he was definitely more a trickster poacher than a battler. The Moltres snag is based a lot on his snag of Maruhite in the film he's from! I do like Galarian Zapdos's concept is pretty much the reason they were considered, I felt it was a good midplot fight and after including it, I decided to use Articuno too. Funnily enough, I wasn't really considering Galarian Moltres, I latched on pretty quickly to the fact actual Moltres was around and it would be a great bit of connectivity to see him go for it next, and it tied to the whole "streaming" focus! I tried to leave things open for Chao to potentially have Iono have a moral quandary about how her streaming lead to Moltres being targeted, but at the same time, I get that he didn't want her to be that kind of character, so I didn't push it.

The ekranoplan has actually been in my future folder a long time simply because the design is cool, so it quickly clicked in place for McLeach's means of attacking the arch. The arch's ties to the business with CambriaChem and the blood bacteria was supposed to become apparent sooner but I kept slipping up on RPing the scene where Ginny shows the abandoned facility to Zadanost.

The Crygors

Penny was the main reason to RP the family after her wonderful song in WarioWare: Get It Together! charmed me with its optimism, but I think her family sort of outshone her! Penny's desire to mix idol life with inventing was planned pretty quickly as a motivation behind her inventions and I did the tractor gimmick so sometimes she'd fail in making them as is appropriate to her song. However, the idol stuff being so early in the year meant she had her motivation sealed up pretty quickly! I did have the obstacle that she's totally tone deaf planned from the start though and didn't want it to disappear too quickly with a vocal coach, but it made it satisfying that she had made progress even in her small way.

Crygor and Mike were meant to be support to her mostly, appearing alongside her but not taking center stage as much as they did. I even tried to limit Crygor's abilities fairly early on because I didn't expect him to take off like he did, but the air swim is inspired by how he plays in Get It Together! and Mike's powers are sort of taken from how he fights by spitting music notes in that game too. Mike's personality is entirely my invention and I think it was just initially to add a less positive person in the caring family, but he is always caring towards them and instead it's all internalized. He's fun to play even if his voice can be hard to write since I try to balance information with the original joke idea of how he just acts like he's a cliche robot. He can talk normally, but he gets out of binds or deflects responsibility by playing up his robotic nature.

Gooper suggested the idea of GBC mentoring Penny, but the plots went such a way I never even got to consider laying the seeds for it. Certain details about these guys will be kept locked away for now since I might explore them down the line, but they actually might not show up much next year. I think they did their part so only if they are relevant will they show up again.

The Cerulean Voice

We'll cover Henrik and Jahnu here under a broader coverage of my big plot for the year. We'll start though with NazRigar: https://www.deviantart.com/nazrigar/gallery

Browse their DeviantArt gallery and you'll come across many familiar faces! Yes, much of this plot's characters are derived from art he made, and the inspiration in general ties back to the art of the character we know as Henrik! MerMay is apparently an art thing people do, drawing characters as mermaids in the month of May. Well, NazRigar tries to be more creative with it, making merpeople who are a mix of different fish species. There are definitely some NazRigar designs I'd never use in RP not because they're gross or bad but because they didn't end up fitting the Cerulean Voice concept, but many I could use and I pretty much did grab everyone I really wanted to utilize!

Initially only Henrik spoke to me, I saved him as a nameless wolf eel-human mix for future use. When Whalestrand was put forth as the new setting, it seemed like he was a lock, but at the same time, I just did a whole setting filled with lizard people! I didn't want to make another setting where we just had a new species of animal people running around, so I had to think of new ways they could exist. I knew the fishpeople would be less abundant, but the reason as to why took a bit to cook up. The idea they were created took hold though, and I searched for a good name before the Cerulean Voice came to mind and it was locked.

What the Cerulean Voice actually is took a bit to form more though. Before the season started though Bree thankfully noticed some similarities between what was shown about it in the blogpost and what I told her of my plans and the Grove, and that helped it take on its end shape. The Voice is more an abstract entity of sorts, it exists but its not bound by a typical form. Originally though, it very much did have a form! The Tongue as we know it is just a manifestation so it can interact with the world, but the Voice almost had a full on body. I considered drawing it myself, giving it features like a Dunkleostus head and a lot of mixed fish parts but it would be huge. Like, imperceptibly so, you couldn't see it all at once due to its long body. These ideas were put into the Tongue as well, but the shape of the Voice would have looked more monstrous and less mystical in early plans.

In fact, in early plans, the Voice was almost just Typhon, the monster who is said to one day kill all the Greek gods before it was to be forced under a volcano. Somehow it would get out I guess, I didn't plan the Typhon part too far because I partly couldn't find any art I liked. They all had the accurate "arm that is a bunch of snakes" feature that I didn't want in my boss, so I moved away from tying it to myth and kept it back on the "original idea" path. Still, during its physical phase, there were some other ideas at play. The Voice was going to be the end boss of its plot, and we'd actually learn that yes, it is like the Grove, but it has come to detest all life on land. It would believe no awful thing could be made underwater and evolving to leave the sea was a big mistake, and the finale of the plot would probably be some big battle to prevent it from flooding Whalestrand. The Voice in RP still isn't too fond of dry land, but it's not going to kill them to try and solve the face they cause such troubles for the planet.

One element, before Sinful was integrated into the plot at all, was that things would kick off with us going to investigate the Voice just out of curiosity. It would be a submarine trip, and the Crygors would be leading it! Crygor would be developing the submarine and all, and actually, many things that were meant for it appeared in RP after all. The suits the Kobbers used to meat with the Tongue were developed in RP first for the moon mission, but they were originally planned so Kobbers could fight outside the submarine in crushing depths for the OG plot plans. On the first mission, we'd track presumably a fishman who heard the Voice and headed "Somewhere" only to get intercepted by one of the Voice's guardians. We'd dive again another day and then we'd encounter the Mosasaur and Anomalocaris guardians, and then the third day might not even be a fight. We'd come across a sort of underwater city, built out of coral and a giant clam and all, and there would even be an air pocket our heroes would step out into to talk with the Voice.

We weren't going to get along though, this version too bull-headed. Not literally. Anyway, as the debate fell apart, it would reach over and crush our submarine so we couldn't leave, although we're Kobbers and I wouldn't fight people too hard on even a quick easy teleport here. That submarine was initially going to keep getting upgrades along the little plot, including an on-board AI... named Chuffy! Yup, the AI that Crygor eventually put in his race yer' mates machine was conceived as a submarine AI, its mixing up of what vehicle it was piloting meant to make it fun and cute so it being "killed" in that one event would be more striking.

In the big finale where Whalestrand beaches would be attacked by fishpeople as the Voice creates a tidal wave or whatever, I had the big finale planned where after the fight Henrik would be the one aiming to strike the final blow. The Voice would be warning him that without it, Henrik would soon be unable to maintain his form and would die quickly of old age. Henrik would say he'd rather live those last few minute than live a life that wasn't really his and end the Voice. Afterwards, Henrik would wash up on a beach, Jahnu would be there, and Henrik would be rapidly aging and deteriorating. Jahnu would be kneeling over him, holding his hand, and while Henrik was too far gone, the old fish would ask his friend what's next. Jahnu would start talking abotu things like heading home to see his family and all the things they could do now as humans again with their lives free of interruption, but Henrik's crew would notice Henrik had died pretty early and Jahnu was just crying and talking to his dead friend while unable to accept he was gone. The crew wouldn't interrupt though.

An emotional ending, but not where things went! We'll get to where things ended up, but first, let's detail some more characters. The rarely seen Laki was meant to flesh out the crew, although he didn't do much. He was a fishman I saw in the show Arcane and screencapped for potential use, but he mostly just gave us a third name in case the two main fishmen were busy. Henrik's name was picked because it's a basic Scandinavian name while Jahnu I don't quite remember why I chose the name, although maybe I did know about the king who drank a river named Jahnu and I forgot I did! Sedna's name though comes from Inuit myth, and while I wasn't going to use her at first, NazRigar has a lot of art of her and I thought having a character with some emotional stakes in the thrall of the Voice would help kick things off better. I didn't want to just use expected fish species, Jahnu being Indian is because of where the exact catfish species he's based on is from and while I considered Henrik originally having an orca big friendly guy in the spot that became Jahnu, Sedna charmed me with her various works of art. I did originally consider the person the crew had taken from them by the Voice be a Houndshark, hence the name of the ship.

One thing you might notice is a lot of the fishpeople on the plot have pretty normal names. In the finale we had monsters named things like Marian and Olivier after all, but even before then, I wanted the idea that the Voice transformed normal people to come through. Balthasar and Imani were sort of exceptions, I gave them traditional names from old world cultures to emphasize these strongest servants of the Voice have been around a long time. However, there's also something very important about how I chose names. See, Cerulean isn't just a color, it's also a pigment made from cobalt stannate, so hence, Stannic Minerals. Why did they have tin mines? Tin is stannate too, and in reading up on stannate I decided that was their first angle before they were drilling for cobalt, both of which are useful in modern chip production. Building off what I was learning about cerulean pigment, I also learned a Swiss chemist named ALBRECHT, the name of the guy Sinful was sent to kill, was the first to synthesize it into something he called Collinblau... so, hence, Stannic Minerals is run by a Colin Blau. A man named Max Doerner gave it the name Cerulean though, so, Max could be Colin's son and Albrecht's last name became Doerner.

And it doesn't stop there! Berthe, the tubeworm lady, is named for Berthe Morisot who used Cerulean in her art. Oliver Lindquist designed the UN Logo with Cerulean, although I turned that name into Olivier to sound a bit fancier. Cerulean vestments are worn on MARIAN feast days, and an author named Aloys was the source for some of these Cerulean fun facts. These characters did exist before the name fun I'll note. I will also note I broke away from NazRigar for the finale since I wanted some spookier and deadlier creatures and I was running out of designs from them that I felt fit the plot, especially since initially I wanted it to all be fishes but decided under certain situations it could make just an aquatic animal person. Still avoided whales deliberately!

But JRM, you ask, what about all this Qlippoth stuff? Well, when I was growing disillusioned with the idea of the Voice just being a big monster that hates land people, I also had checked out The Devil is a Part Timer from the library. In that series, they eventually start encountering characters who embody elements of the Sephiroth, which made me perk up... but the characters just kinda share the name and have generic powers. It felt like such a waste, so I was inspired to try and make my own characters based on the Kabbalah's Sephiroth! I went with the alternate translation Sefirot which is likely more accurate to avoid the jokes, but I also quickly realized the Sefirot concepts aren't really great for villains. A villain based on Understanding or Kindness would be interesting but perhaps hard to cook up, and while I was making a few up that I liked, I also was reminded of their opposing force, the Qlippoth.

Also called Qliphoth, these dudes were based on bad things! Evil things! It would be much easier to make a villain group based on them! Although the sad thing is, Aleister Crowley decided to be hella basic one day and said the Qlippoth are just a bunch of basic demons. He throws in recognizable names like Lilith, Samael, and Belial, which isn't as fun! Demons are cool, but the Qlippoth aren't just a bunch of demon bosses, they're concepts that I wanted to represent with characters! Of course, going back to the OG Qlippoth also runs into the fact that some we don't even know even though we know there should be an opposing one for each Sefirot, but we still have ones based around ideas like being Formless, things like Iniquity, and then ones we met like Tehom (deep) and Esh (fire). I did sort of lead with the easier to represent ones, although we got to see Tohu the Formless and heard about the Sefirot of Glory. Still, I wanted to embody these old aspects instead of go "here's a gaggle of demons!" and the plot was taking shape!

But also, like, it wasn't. Concocting characters for many of the forms was going fine, but others were proving harder to imagine. I knew where I'd want a large plot about them to head, but making it work as a mega plot wasn't really feeling feasible. The Sefirot and Qlippoth weren't going to be all good or all bad and things would get complicated but also potentially crowd out a year, and I didn't want my last year in Whalestrand to go by without me doing certain things I wanted to do with the setting. Yes, Tehom stuff was initially sort of a preview of the megaplot coming next year, but then I thought... what if it's a gigaplot? Something like a sheep plot where we check in on it every year in smaller plots to build up to it. But finally I settled on this: these beings are so ancient that yes, the others are still out there after Tehom was taken down, but whether we'll see them remains to be seen. They might intersect with us again, we may not even know it's them before the reveal, this might just be something happening in the background of the world that Kobbers only see when it's dangerous or someone needs help. I don't know when I might drudge it up, but I think this works better than forcing anythign, and I bet if it reaches a certain point it will start picking up speed to wrap up.

Anyway, back to the ones we did get to know! Cerulean Voice plot was losing its villain as I made it more reasonable and the servitude under it more complicated, but I still wanted something to work towards. Tehom ended up the villain, and it took a while to find a good look for him. I wanted something big and bloated, I was almost so desperate to consider a Pig God fan art from One Punch Man, but I like the egotistical FF14 character I found even though I don't know what he's associated with. Esh's presence was originally much more important though, in that, yes, he was the one who killed Sinful's fiance and friends. The smell of burning pine was meant to be the clue Sinful needed to realize it, but instead, the smells around Sefirot and Qlippoth are kinda just more an unusual aura and an attempt to touch on a sense that isn't important in RP much. There could have been more "clue" moments like how Shirley sniped Esh, especially since Esh wasn't supposed to go down this year! Even after the changes!

Esh's face claim is from Hell's Paradise and the fact he had a scarred eye was a wonderful coincidence when lined up with the true form art. Malkuth's true form art was harder to find since I wanted it to be a world turtle that was fearsome, since it's kind of a distorted world turtle and I didn't want it to ACTUALLY be a world turtle. More like an island turtle, like the one from Majora's Mask. Anyway, Esh was meant to live on after this part of the plot, we even saw his intended method to slip away before Chao keened onto the fact the little flames might be him. I did want to post his epilogue talking to Tohu after the plot more closely but I lacked the energy. Anyway, he would have been just a plume of flame for ages, but he'd reappear in RP one day, not as a villain, but as someone leading us to some Sefirot and Qlippoth having a problem, mainly, Esh's opposed Sefirot, Tiferet. I won't say more, Tiferet is one of the more realized character concepts and likely the next one we'll see whenever I decide to pick them back up, but Esh slipping away is one reason he wasn't made the guilty party in killing Sinful's family, but that instead lead to the soul-crushing moment where Tehom reveals the protesting group was sold out by one of their own instead.

Tehom being delightfully evil wasn't always the plan. I almost used a frumpy fat businessman for reference art who was an incindental design in the Bakuman manga that I'd struggle to find again, but that version of him was very serious and hard to work with. I think I imagined a few silly retorts to lines said to Tehom though and we were off to the races from there. He became a lot more fun after that, and since he was Sinful's villain essentially, I wasn't afraid to embrace the pure villainy. There were a lot of moving parts in the plot I'll admit, I felt like I should do a Story So Far post in RP Scheduling when new things came along since it was basically pieces of two plots together, and even within that you have things like Colin Blau working begrudgingly with Tehom to keep track of.

I really wanted Colin to be a pufferfish in his fight so that was one of the first big breaks away from NazRigar, I know he had a behemoth design I almost used but it wasn't watery enough. I definitely wanted Tehom's power to be pressure and not gravity, partly because I had that Curse member who used Gravity powers and didn't want a repeat there but also it better embodied the idea of the Deep. I might not have given the Qlippoth true forms if I hadn't found that perfect salamander design that fit Tehom's personality perfectly. I know I wanted to do the big push down of earth to make a river from fairly early on as the plots merged, and I think originally a lot more innocent people were going to be converted into fishpeople by Tehom during that moment.

I considered having Malkuth show up later just to avoid things feeling a bit contrived but I'm glad he showed up when he did. He is a bit more passive than many of the Sefirot are likely to be, but he was also meant to represent the two sides of this ancient conflict aren't so easiy delineated as good and evil. His design is taken from a guy called Brawler in Akudama Drive; I had no familiarity with him, but the art I found of him had the right detached air and I wanted Malkuth to have dreads for reasons I forget.

It may not surprise you to hear Bi Reinhardt was going to have ties to the Qlippoth Megaplot, but I think I might be cooking something so he's not an anomaly. Might not be as big as you might expect, but keep a look out!

Cerulean Voice's approach and conversation being a two parter was definitely something that came out of the plot restructuring, sort of cramming things like how foodplot's first event had to focus on the vampires and Yuuma both, but the vampires at least were sillier so they could be more easily pushed aside. The conversation could have gone a few different ways, especially when Suwako was getting testy, but I can see like, in future ocean battles of great scope, something like Imani coming to our aid to show the Voice trusts in us to some extent. The timer until it acted I worried about implementing, but it helped that Sinful and Shirley could keep working on it. Chao providing Shirley for so many solo posts really made the plot work but also made me worry about people missing context, but the plot is so much better for those events that again, were me and someone else just winging it based on how the other contributed.

As for why Balthasar was the one killed of the Voice's two strongest servants... the visual image mainly. Tearing apart a crustacean seemd like such a good visual and really established the power of the enhanced Blaus. I liked Balthasar's powers more but they are more complicated, Imani can be brought back without me having to think too much about how to use them. The bulk of the forces in the final battle being Half-Formed were meant to even the odds, and I was glad people came up with ideas like returning a bunch of Cerulean tainted cobalt to the sea before the finale so that Tehom could more believably not have his uber powerful army. A lot of power level things I ummed and ahhed on because I don't often go for big stakes, but getting the final event of the year did lead to me locking in things like Malkuth having his massive turtle form and bulking up Tehom's troops a bit more with the named ones like Berthe.

One thing I forgot to do was put the deep sea mining rig closer to the Ashen Arch during establishing events so that future reveals worked better. Also, I learned so much about deep sea mining just to make the rig plausible. Like, I thought it was like drilling, but you'll see the whole discussion of an odd underwater grinder vehicle and stuff in the posts that I had to learn through research.

Mark from Pizza Church

I ALMOST FORGOT THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER! His story is not yet fully told... but he is just a nice guy! His face claim is a human version of Don Carlton from Monsters University because he has the exact energy I was looking for, but he was a monster! Mark is a guy! One thing that comes up on the Wisenheimers podcast is the Pizza Vampire not liking other pizza makers mostly because PV wants to be the best pizza maker of all. It's not like, actual hate, just a rivalry he imposes on pretty much all other pizza restaurants, hence the Dinkelberg-esque rivalry he had with Pizza Church! And guess where the name Pizza Church comes from? That's right, the podcast again, but like the hearse, it's not really carried over! PV at some point talks about the idea of a pizza church in passing, I believe while admitting his weakness to holy relics. I took that phrase, pizza church, and built from there.

As for the name Mark, well, there was some chatzy joke I kept making at one point that Mark from Pizza Hut was the last remaining villain or something to that effect in our last year in Agama. So, when I conceptualized Pizza Church, a guy named Mark was a nice fit! Pizza Church is basically just a business run like a business, but in a world where people are so passionate for their jobs and all, a guy just trying to work a job looks like an oddity.

I think that might be it then. If I'm forgetting something, just ask about it! I got big plans next year, but as Cerulean Voice shows, who knows what shape they could take? I should probably nail down more planning in advance though to keep things clean and tidy. I should, but will I? Who knows! We'll see in 2024 won't we?