Behind the Plots of 2015 Part 3: Not-A-Reptilian-Conspiracy, The Alruthine Plot

So this one has been a long time coming.

So long coming, in fact, that the big reveals this blogpost had to share have already been given in chatzy. Reveals that most likely led to this tardy blogpost since I wasn't itching to share them! But, we're here now, and here they come again, as well as new information never before shared about this big ol' plot of mine!

So, the impetus of this plot can be found in this exact moment, on what appears to be Halloween morning or the night before. One day, in chatzy, Jumpropeman got a little frustrated with his typos...

Venge: Actually, truth be told, Piers Anthony's style is somewhat similar in some regards to your own. You may actually like it, jokes aside.

Jumpropeman: the name sounds vaguely familiar, but not enough to attribute descriptors too

Jumpropeman: to

Jumpropeman: BLAJBOA:BJAB{DAJO

Jumpropeman: that's what I meant to say

Jumpropeman: Blajboa Bjab Dajo is my new character for 2015

Venge: Spoilers, JRM! D: I didn't need to know about Blajboa and her parents Bjab and Dajo.

Venge: Yet.

At that moment, my plans for 2015 were quite different. I planned to RP the two Mammoths, an Exeggutor, Keahi, and so many other characters... but that single moment changed all that. Plus, a look at the Big Bar Brawl 2 also completely derailed almost every plan I had made for 2015 in favor of the Professors Hector and Vector from the Brawl, and these then only-existing-in-a-joke characters Blajboa, Bjab, and Dajo.

Naturally, the moment I heard these names I did not have any clue what they were, what I would do with them or what their plot would be, and they were still in the works by the time end of season epilogues were coming, hence the focus on Hector and Vector and Theodore and Inch instead. But, the ideas were stewing, they'd just take a long time to take form...

First, I had to figure out what these characters even WERE. Ideas were floated about in my head, most of them tracing back to three important letters: BOA. No matter how far out of the box I tried to think, that part of Blajboa's name that tied her to a real world snake kept pulling the species back to a reptilian similarity. I never once considered them being a human species or a pre-established species, just for some reason with names like these it felt like they had to be something new, and unfortunately I had a lot of real world weight on my mind in trying to come up with a new animal.

I remember in one of the Axe Cop physical comics Ethan says how hard he found it to create new animals, and the new animals are all very "Jackelope-esque". Creatures with other creature's parts. I'm sure many proto-alruthines probably were like this too. Of the rejected ideas I can recall two: one was a centipede like creature that lived in the skies, based off an old concept I had where flying centipedes lived on the cusp of Earth's atmosphere, and the only time humans ever saw them was when rockets smashed into them trying to break into space. The idea was always meant to be ridiculous back when it was born in middle school, and I don't like having things in RP that should have been discovered or known about sooner... hence the move of the species underground. I considered people might think about the fact I RP'd ground last year as Dakota and now had something living underground, but even if it had come up it's like... why would Dakota mention it? Especially since Alruthine concepts placed them as living group-lifes in very small clusters throughout the world. Dakota probably met a few as they traveled but there's probably never been more than one Alruthine colony per continent as they are slow breeders with strong family commitment hard-wired into their brain. Even Blajboa was compelled to come home after leaving her kin long ago.

The other reject species idea I do recall was one I almost rescued from being rejected when the matter of a hotel receptionist came up. An almost Lamia like creature with a lower body of an immensely long snake, but a body made of plasma. It's head would be almost like a sun, with tendrils extending off of the glowing center that it used as arms, as it would have no true limbs on the rest of its body. I miiiiiight have made it a character elsewhere even just so the idea didn't die, like one of those strange restaurant owners Shimmer met in the April blogposts (still like the idea of Pinecone guy). But soon, the species took shape, and one thing I seemed to always want was it to be really REALLY long. Alruthines were born, as long burrowing scaly things. I quickly realized it had some parallels to worms, and when I tried to develop her biology... to be realistic, I unfortunately had to borrow a lot from them. Alruthines have light receptors on their bodies which they use to see rather than eyes (making it hard for them to see small details, hence why Blajboa couldn't read small print), they have a hydrostatic skeleton, a segmented body... they borrow some from tardigrades in that they have cryptobiosis, but their organ system is almost completely original as they are intellectually developed and thus must have the long brains that serve as their weakness.

So we got the species. Now we need the culture. Alruthines live underground, so they must communicate in sound. One thing I made sure of when picking Alruthine names is I had a way to say them without much articulation and can be said in a sort of rumble. I sound dumb doing them, but they work! The amount of syllables in a name also came to mean which generation an Alruthine was from. Bjab and Dajo are the only two syllable names because they are the broodmother and father, and thus far older than their children. Akljadlk and Vahvhetmx are older generations than the rest, but still not quit on par with Bjab and Dajo. Jirunbuf and Jisadjok are close kin because of their name similarity, the same going for Ugrsteh and Uysnskow. Almost all other children have three syllable names to show they are the "next generation" of Alruthines. The colony structure was quickly made to compare to things like ants or termites but with higher intelligence, hence independence of choice and a subsistent broodmother. Brood being the name is tied very much to things like X-Men's Brood and their concept, and Alruthine use the term "kin" to refer to each other as they have little concept of relationship beyond "father", "broodmother", and "everyone else in my species". Brother, sister, uncle, that's all nonexistant to them, especially since even though Blajboa and Jirunbuf are ages apart, she would treat him like an uncle despite him technically being a brother.

The ancient aspect of the species was done to make them seem less humanoid and also make it clear how removed they are from surface life. It also somewhat ties to their eventual name, Alruthine. I was President of the Prolixity Club at my high school, a club me and a friend of mine made when I took an interest in unusual words. Words like lanigerous, cornigerous, adscititious, and more entered my vocabulary through this club and have all appeared in my RP. But one thing we did for fun was make up our own word that we were meant to spread. The word we chose was Alruthine, which sounded real enough, which we decided meant ancient. The idea was to see if our neologism could be spread into other people's lexicon, and I guess making a species with the name would help for that! So with a name that meant ancient and other factors, Alruthines were given long slow lives, especially since they had cryptobiosis to keep them alive even when they were almost killed. Their regeneration time was a bit sped up for RP, as leaving Blajboa out of the picture for a realistic timeframe would mean no Alruthine plot at all! The race was also given a long lifespan as a way to justify certain things about them learning human languages and how to weave their body together. These things all took DECADES for each Alruthine to learn, and the youngest Alruthine we ever meet (the Brute) has difficulty holding together. 

Incidentally, the Brute, the Sand Gunner Alruthines... they don't have names. The species doesn't receive names until they are off a certain age and its kin need a way to refer to it. Young Alruthines have a habit of dying as they dig into bad places or don't know the world well enough to live in it, and even these decades old Alruthines that can make bodies can't really speak. Another thing: Alruthines can't say the "th" sound because of the precision it requires with their tongue against teeth that are just part of their body. They already struggle to compress air out like a lung to make the voice, so none have really mastered how to give them the teeth and tongue necessary for the "th" sound, so many just settle for the "d" sound instead. Bjab and Vahvhetmx manage them because of the surgery Doc Gerbil did that basically solidified their bodies into the human shape through a painful and nearly irreversible procedure. Alruthines also have issues with human language, mostly grammar things, but they calls humans People Folks mostly because they understand "people" mostly means any sentient creature, so they call groups of sapient beings people, but humans specifically People Folks. They have no actual name for their species, and its a bit sad the name given to them can't even be said by them due to the "th". Other things include calling young things "little ones", which is likely what The Brute and Sand Gunners would be known as until they got their name. It helps that so few children at a time mean if someone says "little ones", an Alruthine often knows which kin is being referred to.

Next came... how would they interact on the surface with people? Blajboa's periscope intro was thought up rather quickly, but I realized quickly they'd need better bodies to interact with the bar with. Alruthines already can probably trace their evolutionary path back to early reptiles (although they aren't quite reptiles), and the letters BOA came back to suggest the humanoid lizard forms. Because of their rough skin, they could not wind and sew themselves together into shapes that looked human, so they pushed it to look more like lizard people instead. Naturally, people didn't like that, and they never truly fit in. Blajboa's backstory involves her leaving with a group of Alruthines to explore the world away from her family... and a sour interaction with humans in South America lead to the others all being killed. Part of her heading home to find her parents was to just be with her kind again. She did, however, meet a wild scientist (possibly even Nathan Cardinal, the guy who designed Reject!) who treated her well enough that she feared humans less and he named her species Alruthine to boot.

So this is all the species I groundwork I probably had before it became time to actually plan a plot for these things. Well, naturally, some of them like the surface, as their intelligent brains crave advancement and new experiences. Humans are rocketing forward in technology, and they want in! So obviously they pretend to be people!

Uh...

Uh-oh, I remember all those changeling and doppelganger plots from last year. Last thing people want is another "WHO CAN I TRUST" "COPYCATS EVERYWHERE!" plot. Well... they obviously can't look like humans on their own, so they need something to make them fit in. Let's make sure Blajboa can hear human imitators too do to her sensitivity to sound from living underground (which would soon become their weakness as a species, later evolving into the vulnerability to high-pitch tech whines. You might barely remember Shen had a whine like that and that was meant to come into play more if the plot progressed differently, and if so many people hadn't bought the product! I'm so glad Ko and crew picked up on them though, that made me and Hector happy :3) Anyway, not-a-lizards. They needed flesh... and the ideas poured in. Skin Suits came quickly, and I tried to make them as not gross as possible as the idea developed. For example: The Skin Man became the livestock for all that flesh. Sure, its one suffering tortured brute, but its better than a bunch of dead people. Doc Gerbil was quickly linked to Skin Man as a mad doctor was needed and I wanted to end Doc Gerbil as a character somehow. More on these characters in subsections later. But I made sure the flesh grafts for Skin Man weren't gross either, usually from dead people killed not for the express purpose of skin removal. Small other details came up: the idea of different levels of success in the Alruthine community as humans...

And then came Bill Clinton.

People may remember I had an idea in 2012 for a plot where Bill Clinton closes off the block around the bar to try and curb the dangers the Kobbers posed to the world. He was meant to be an antagonist we couldn't just beat up, as killing the president would only prove them right for locking up the Kobbers and the Vice would just continue the war. Sailor's talk on Oprah was meant to lead in to that plot before the idea was killed. But... I wanted us to fight Bill Clinton... and what's a better success than being President of the USA? Bjab was given the role, and Dajo as Monica Lewinsky, their "sex scandal" suddenly a cover-up for the fact that ol' Bill was lonely amidst humans all day and night and wanted to see his true mate again. I'm sure I could BS up an explanation for how the scandal worked with this backstory but its way more effort than its worth, but I can make it work! Going to the Bill Clinton Museum in Little Rock made me realize that he probably still needed a human counterpart, so both Bill and later Mark Cuban when he was picked have real name-sharers in ZFRP who are living humble lives while someone uses their information and history to go to great heights.

So now we have the species, the motives, and things like their war against technology and more filled in the gaps to make their plight a complex one. They're dealing with a real obstacle to their existence, just in the wrong way. Some other things were added on soon, like Alruthine being able to redistribute their body mass to basically act like Mr. Fantastic but with limited mass (and hence why they were multiple miles long. People's intestines are super long already and even though Alruthines don't build bodies with internal organs when trying to be humanoid, they still need a lot of mass to sew together a stable human shape). Blajboa would enter the Brawl as the way to kick off the plot, although delays made it make a little less sense as Moyusfuy and Mark dragged their heels for no reason after seeing Blajboa reveal the truth of their species...

But something else came up. Bill Clinton a lizard person? That sounds just like... The Reptilian Conspiracy. Which is what I called the plot in my images folder as I realized the parallels. The reason Moyusfuy disguised himself as a conspiracy nutter when he showed up is so that anyone but Kobbers wouldn't take his talk of Reptilians seriously. When the parallels were noticed, I decided to roll with it instead of ignore it and try to pretend there is no connection, and basically the conspiracy is meant to be born from people actually seeing Alruthines on the surface. They aren't alien reptile men, they are underground worm-like creatures! They only want power in the same way humans do, and even when Bjab was Bill Clinton, many people say Clinton is one of better presidents in recent years, scandal ignored of course. Even Vahvhetmx only wanted "domination" in  the marketplace through legitimate means, he just couldn't handle the species-threatening technology through capitalism forever.

So uh... Names! Names are next. Still haven't mentioned where I got Alruthine names from besides Blajboa, Bjab, and Dajo. Well... I got them from pretty much the same way! I combed old chatzy logs and chatzy madness for other times people just randomly typed letters either through frustration or for humor. At first, I tried to make more Alruthine names myself, going to space chat and mashing the keyboard, but I didn't get any I liked. I also swore from then on I couldn't use any I made myself, as I'd be doing it on purpose, but old ones I did were fair game. For a long time I watched chatzy in hopes people would make more names... but it seemed like everyone just stopped doing it! Even by the time the season started some Alruthines were nameless as I struggled to assemble a group of names, and that's when I used chatzy madness to fill in the last few. Without further ado, here are the names of Alruthines besides Blajboa, Bjab, and Dajo, and the people who smashed their keyboards to make these names (although they are isolated from all surrounding gibberish)

Gewjogfka- Harpy
Baofbawwig- Jumpropeman
Akljadlk- Harpy
Moyusfuy- SK
Uysnskow- Bree

Ugrsteh-Spy
Jisadjok- Spy

Jirunbuf- Steel Komodo
Vahvhetmx- Draco

Ever since the first keyboard mash that made the plot, I decided the names were going to all be this sort of gibberish-like language. It was meant to embody that strange disconnect we get where we see a bunch of letters in a row that don't mean anything but look like they could mean something. Names like Akljadlk were a bit of a stretch, but then ones like Jirunbuf fit like a glove! Otherness was meant to be an important part of the plot, hence why Blajboa always stood around, not understanding what was wrong with not sitting. She'd stare with her head but not with her false eyes. Her species did not see what was wrong about reusing skin to make skin suits, that kind of thing. Bjab at least came around to understand the skin suits were bad, but felt them a necessary evil with no alternative at the time. The names were meant to be just readable enough to be words but still odd enough that they'll never mean anything in any language besides Alruthine.

So um... yeah! That's how you create a species! I'm sure I left something out, but that might as well be my catchphrase by now! Let's move on to the plot itself and the characters therein... But to do so, we must first start with four other characters: Theodore Rex, Inch High Private Eye, Hector, and Vector.

Strap in, this is a looooong blogpost!

THEODORE AND INCH

HURRAH! A SUBHEADER!  Finally!

So, lately, as I RP more serious characters with personalities that aren't just humor vehicles, I have been introducing characters who are pretty much just humor vehicles. Year 1 Jumpropeman was a jokester so that wasn't an issue, but as he faded into the background, new guys had to step up. Reject was an interesting mix of joker and character, but he was also a bit too nice to make some of the barbed comments I sometimes want jokers to make. Theodore kind of is too, but we had Jasper and Vector for mean jokes. But my point is, Theodore made his comeback with his new partner Inch to fill in the Joke Character slot, which will be filled by Sonic Man and the Lightning Bolt Society (which, let me assure you, will not be aping the Alliance of Evil. They originally were considered as possible fite club opponents for them, but I've thought of a direction for them I like, and I hope you can trust me not to copy someone's idea whole cloth.)

So that is the very basic idea behind why they came back, but they were added to the plot because I wanted to add a new element to my RP plots: a mystery! One that can be solved but might not be but you can still enjoy the plot regardless as it is more of an epilogue for those interested. I often had vague ideas of what the clues would be but I threw in a lot of details in the INCH HIGH INVESTIGATIONS to try and make them not straight forward. Pre-writing them would have probably benefited the time and pacing of the investigations, but I struggled with the mechanics for a while. If they could just search the entire crimescene its basically not much of an investigation, so time limits and a search structure was added, which I mulled over a lot. Ultimately, I feel even the clues that weren't picked up on were non-essential ones, even though I somehow thought they wouldn't find the skinsuits in the first investigation (and somehow didn't expect the characters reacting in horror! Am I secretly an Alruthine too?)

You might also remember one plot almost didn't have an investigation afterward, that being the confrontation with Mark, but that's because that was already cobbled together from two separate events I'll detail later. You also might remember the Hector Labs event having almost an entirely computer based investigation... that Springtrap tried to completely undo by just downloading it all. Trying to mix up the way we did investigating was an imperfect process certainly.

Theodore certainly came back this year partly for his role of being the cop who insists on doing the investigation properly, and if Mark hadn't died, imprisonment would have depended on the Kobbers following those rules. I also wanted to "wrap-up" Theodore. Although my 2012 newcomers didn't really have unfinished business save Izzy, I still want them to have a full chance like a character from some other year might have to be explored. Phantomon will likely always be around in some capacity as a branch of the JRM Crew, but also as a consistent embodiment of Death for those who need it. I mean, we've had tons of embodiments of Death around ZFRP, but they come and go. JRM and Phantomon stand as your Spirits to continue doing their job as long as I'm around!

But 2015 wasn't the first time I considered bringing the Dinosaur back. Let's flashback to a plot I almost did in 2014, one that Deckplot pushed out of the way, but was almost my first Serious multi-event plot outside of FITE WEEK. A serious plot... centered around Theodore Rex for some reason.

See, Theodore Rex's origins in RP are simple. I like goofy characters, and as I watched Theodore Rex on Netflix, the temptation to RP him became so great that I started RPing him WHILE I WATCHED THE MOVIE. I don't remember much of the late movie because I was dozing off and in RP I RPed him as a more likable fellow with less bad jokes. Yes, even though he told tons of bad jokes, he somehow has less in RP. He's also more naive and juvenile in RP, which I think works better than the character in the movie, especially since movie Theodore tells the same kind of jokes, just doesn't have the right personality for it.

His in character origin was lightly kept the same, with his creators New Eden pushed back into the past, and in current RP they're pretty much mostly harmless... but had Theodore Plot been done, we would have learned that the genetic creation of Dinosaur-human hybrids had gone down dark roads since Theodore left... and Theodore, as a new special SPACE COP, would be sent by New Eden to round up some of his Dinosaur Hybrid kin. It would have focused almost solely on the ZFS, as it was pointed out at one point that we mostly only used the Fantasy side rather than the Space side. The plot would start mostly silly, but by the end it would get serious, and here are the Dinosaurs we would have met:

All the Dinosaur Men were from recognizable (or, well, licensed) works. The plot's first event would involve Super Dinosaur in the robot suit there, from a comic of the same name. He was basically New Eden's first attempt at making a human dinosaur hybrid, and would have been running around the halls of the ZFS being a destructive dino. A robot suit dinosaur may still be a cool character for a fite club or something some day, but this would be a light-hearted start where we had to break his suit so Theodore could arrest him and send him back.

Next would be B.P. Richfield from the Dinosaurs sitcom. Repurposed into a general business man, Richfield would be in charge of the ZFS Mall that was visited a few times, and he'd be trying to muscle out the Kobbers from buying there when he learned he was being pursued by Theodore. They'd be barred from shopping, and any Kobber own businesses would be pressured to leave. This confrontation would be mostly character interaction based, where the Kobbers have to get to home without violence or else he could throw the book back at them and get them in trouble with Mall Security or something higher up the law foodchain.

General Galapagos (from the cartoon The Terrible Thunderlizards) would be a more lighthearted romp after the social struggle of Richfield. Galapagos would want to make an army to try and make reptiles the superior race... but he has no one like him in his army. Instead, he has a bunch of regular unaltered reptiles in armor with weapons on them. His plot would involve a string of these armor wearing reptiles attacking places and the Kobbers having to trace them back to Galapagos for the final confrontation with the Reptile Army. Amongst the animals would be whiptails with dangerous whiptails, crocodiles with steel jaws, and some actual Steel Komodos!

After Galapagos was wrapped though, things would get serious. Theodore would be repeatedly targeted by hyper violent attacks from Stegron (from Marvel Comics). Resenting his hybrid nature, he wouldn't be attacking Theodore out of avoiding arrest, but out of wanting to destroy anything that reminds him he's torn between a dinosaur body and human mind. Theodore would be fine of course, but Stegron would not pull punches and would use brutal tactics. He might've been the only one we had to kill rather than arrest as he'd even hurt himself to escape capture. Stegron was really preparation emotionally for the last character.

Ernie Watson, a triceratops detective from Anonymous Rex. Ernie was meant to be a dark reflection of what Theodore could be, and his confrontation would be more of a conversation than a battle. Probably a small clutch of Kobbers, Theodore absent, would confront him, and Ernie would talk about how there's no way he could fit in a world that will never feel right to him. If a Kobber had brought a weapon, he might even grab their hand and press that weapon to his head, asking with a casual air to be killed. He'd lay out the truth of New Eden, and reveal the arrested Dinosaurs were being sent back to be exterminated as failures. What would happen next was never planned, but likely New Eden wouldn't survive the truth, whether by Kobber action or the word getting out. Theodore would have kept his light-heartedness though, even with Ernie saying something about Theodore's jolly nature giving him a small bit of hope... if he wasn't dead or otherwise indisposed at the end.

So, I don't want my joke characters weighed down with stuff like that. They may have whispers of complexity and they certainly have solid personalities and histories, but I don't want to anchor stuff that can take away from them being funny guys. I think I said something similar about anchoring JRM with too much history, but even he's allowed to get more than guys like Theodore or Sonic Man as he's my username-sharing character.

So that as an unrelated scrapped plot, and now I can delete those images! But Theodore was planned for a comeback for a while, 2015 just ended up the year... and he got a partner too! Inch was very much pulled from a binge watch of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, where his basic detective personality coupled with a variety of small jokes made him appeal to me. I tried to watch some of his old series but not much of it exists easily available out there, but I tried to make him more like his old version rather than the reimagining from Birdman. I've been giving more and more characters partners so they can speak more freely, make more jokes, and deliver exposition fluidly instead of jutting it in somewhere. And Inch was small enough that he could appear most anywhere and almost reasonably be on Theodore's person at all times. Inch was a bit more serious than his partner and a little rougher around the edges, but both were still buffoons! The missing persons story was as flimsy a reason to get them to Vegas as it was in-canon, as Finkerton and the NYPD both wanted rid of their cop clowns. The missing people, as revealed later, were all Alruthines who had a bad experience with high pitched tech noise and broke their skinsuits, and whether it was in public or not, it still seemed more believable to the police that they were missing rather than they exploded into reptilian-looking creatures and ran off.

Theodore being a non-killer is based on his movie I believe, and of course Inch as a Hannah-Barbara cartoon never killed a guy, so they were meant to be good cops who could arrest villains instead of killing them. Now, after the plot is over, they'll likely just hang around Vegas at all the other casinos with their crazy attractions, living off the unexpected Cookie Cutter Business that fell into Theodore's lap one day. They may still cameo if the LVPD are called upon. I think it was mentioned once that Inch had a gun, but since he's so small and the gun was scaled to his size, its bullets were probably less dangerous than Theodore's claws. With the expanding cast of JRM joke characters like Soar, Melvin, and the Court of Cameos, it's unlikely these two will go with us to our next setting, but I hope they had a good run, and they allowed me to do the second side of Alruthine plot with their presence.

Enjoy Beautiful Las Vegas you two, you earned it.

HECTOR, VECTOR, AND HECTOR LABS

I don't recall when exactly, but something drew my attention back to the Big Bar Brawl 2, the Brawl where I decided to reference more of ROB's history thanks to his mysterious orb by bringing in the two professors from his source game. Now, I've seen a few supposed rebirths of Hector on the internet, pairing him with the character from Mole Mania of all things, but I basically decided to keep Hector as close to his game as I could, where he'd sleepwalk around and you had to protect him. Also, I recently bought Gyromite, so we'll see how that plays when it gets here. Vector, however, is sort of the pisstake off Hector, a younger, aloof, and cynical fellow. If you reread BBB2, he mentions he has a wife! I bet you can guess what happened to her.

Anyway, an idea tickled my brain, and that idea was to bring them back. I took the old pictures I drew of them and colored them in, and I basically made their personalities off the template from their BBB2 cameos. Initially they had no ties to Alruthine plot as I believe I came up with them before I did Blajboa and the gang, but the technology angle saw a perfect place to rope them in. The Professor's search for funding seems to have just sprung up somewhere along the line, can't remember where, but one thing I wanted to do with bringing them back is pay homage to our lost user Godbot, and the first BBB champion ROB. I'm a big nut for old stuff, like early cartoons and video games, and the real world ROB always appealed to me. I've been looking to buy one even though I don't plan to hook it up ever, but the prices are a bit crazy even on standalone models. I'm also good with him in Smash Bros (and Game and Watch too, go figure, and I enjoy the old Game and Watch games as well) so ROB was in my heart even before Zoofights. The tribute to ROB and Godbot also came with me doing something else that I felt at least needed some acknowledgment: Sintendo vs. Nintendo. In Zoofights we've called what is basically the same company by both names, and unlike Stretch Lizards it never fell out of use to call it Sintendo, mostly thanks to Pit. Probably due to the Croctopus time stuff, Sintendo and Nintendo must both exist in our universe, as on multiple occasions characters have played both Game Brutes or Game Boys, Mario Kart or ROB Kart, and other counterparts that kind of show that these companies are both different and the same. Without explaining too much, I thought that of course they'd be competing in the video game sector, and ROB really wasn't the kind of mascot Mario was, hence the Professors getting the boot. If not for Sintendo being such a huge part of Pit's backstory, I might've seen if it was okay to completely bankrupt Sintendo or imply worse about its situation, but as it stands, Sintendo and Nintendo is kinda something you want to say "yeah sure they're the same" but so many in-RP examples prove why that can't be.

Hector and Vector appealed to me due to their obscurity and the fact that I could easily explain why they are in a video game. I've mentioned in the past I don't want my characters to ever really encounter their source material when they are from something since it kinda cheapens the character and provides an unrealistic situation, but Hector and Vector were just self-inserts from the designers, although Vector grew into his palette swap appearance and hated every second of it.

Shen was their way of staying afloat enough that they aren't a pity case the Kobbers would just solve immediately and I was so happy to see people buying the phone or making an event out of funding it. I was afraid more characters would try to dump money on them and declare it solved, and although I don't claim to know too much about business, I did read up on it to try and understand it a bit better for their meetings, which turned out more detailed than even I imagined as I thought people might not be receptive to it. A business probably wants to split its investors anyway if they want any degree of control over their product after all, so money dumping wouldn't work.

Hector's narcolepsy is mostly a reason to explain why he'd ever be sleepwalking in public, and Hector and Vector are very much played as actual old people, where Hector needed medication and could never hope to hold his own in combat. The ROB Revolver was invented in case the professors ever got in battle and it saw a little use, but mostly they used their creations. Even if Twisted Metal was hella delayed, having the ROB Warrior opened a few doors for the professors on plots. MAC was also kind of meant for that role but also meant to be... well, hold on.

In addition to all the ROB prototypes and updates for new systems, MAC was one of the few other creations we'd see. At one point, I planned to enter Vector into the BBB to try and get the prize money for the company, using MAC as his weapon. He'd also sorta cheat and have his ROB Revolver as a piece of MAC that could be removed, but only after MAC was completely broken. MAC went through a few name changes that were all short acronyms, although he was once called WYATT and I don't think that ever got the full acronym treatment. After the Brawl idea was scrapped, MAC was kept around  and shown a few times to foreshadow that he'd be the main opponent during the Hector Labs event of Alruthine plot. I'm glad someone out there made a giant intimidating version of the cliche toy robot.

I'm sure the idea that would be Shu evolved from me imagining the April blogpost that would be about them, and now that I actually work at a retirement community, it seems a lot less farfetched than all the investors thought it would be in RP. So many residents there have iPads, iPhones, and iPads. You gotta remember that our new old generation is going to be people born in the sixties or so, and they are much more receptive to technology. I've been meaning to do a Professors epilogue that shows them with the results of the Shu Black Friday release, but the Professors may still cameo a bit next year and we may just hear about that in RP instead. Shen though is meant to bridge the gap between old Professors and new ideas, and a robot phone certainly seems plausible enough as both a successful product and an extension of the brand. It was hard to find a good pic to pass of as Shen, as I wanted it simple but not too outside of the ROB aesthetic. The only one I could find had a sushi design on its belly, lightly-excused in RP, but it would probably be explained as a sunrise over red hills if you ever asked for the corporate explanation from the Professors. Of course, there are variations in design. Shen talked and walked a bit more than expected, as in "not just to display the product", but that's not a bad thing of course.

Hector was given a vocal tic of saying things three times, as he is a bit of a slow thinker and uses it to buy his brain time. Vector was given a bit of a detached and misanthropic personality to differentiate him from Jasper, my other grump. Vector will do good things if he feel he should, but not really because it's the right thing to do. When he was called about Parsee being missing, it wasn't him being all "MISSING GIRL? VECTOR TO THE RESCUE!" but more "Parsee's a business partner and people are using Shens to track her so we have multiple obligations here".

One thing I've tried to avoid in RP is tokenism, making a character something just so I can point at it and say I have diverse characters, or that my character is more unique because I added this to them. I know my worldview and I don't want to represent a type of people improperly just to make my character more exotic, so when I made Hector gay, I made sure to really sit down and think about what that means for the character. One thing is Hector is in the toy industry, and he really likes being around kids because he enjoys seeing his products make people happy. Hector is also an old man who grew up in our cultural climate. Between failed loves and his desire to make his dreams come true, Hector knew he'd have to suppress that part of him. To emphasize just how much his creations and ideas meant to him, his backstory is about shutting off an entire part of himself that might've risked that goal back in a time when being a homosexual man carried a huge negative stigma. A lot of characters I make have big backstories that influence small things they do, and sometimes they go unsaid. If not for Satori we might have never heard directly about Hector's sexuality, although if anyone ever quipped that the Professors were in a relationship, Vector would've responded dryly "I'm not his type." They certainly never had an interest like that in each other, but it's an easy joke to make. Hector is my first step into making a character with a sexuality I do not have personal experience with, a small step to be sure, but I certainly didn't want to throw myself in the deep end and have a character burst in the door and yell they're gay in a stereotypical way. Hopefully I did it justice and hopefully I can explore the nuances of non-heterosexual characters more as my craft develops. I don't want to just slap a label on a character and pretend that makes them more interesting automatically. I tried to keep the three sins of heterosexuals writing homosexuals in mind to:

1: The character feels the need to reaffirm their sexuality at every moment. They offer the information casually in conversation and bring it up when its not relevant. How else are you supposed to know they aren't straight?
2: The character is sexually promiscuous, willing to sleep with someone at the drop of a hat. They are intensely sexual, constantly groping or kissing a lover no matter where they are as if to say "yes, we are homosexual".
3: They are automatically attracted to anyone of the same sex and will flirt with anyone save the deliberately ugly. Often, they do so as soon as they meet them or slip it in randomly during conversation. They have no preferences in the appearance or personality of a potential lover.

Might've got those wrong, but whatever. I also didn't want Vector's windfall of a large amount of moolah treated just like "lol tons of money NICE". Between them being realistic old people and these aspects, I was trying to put humans into RP, their robots were their weird sides really. Otherwise these might be two gents you meet on the streets, despite their cartoonish noses.

The Prototype ROBs I think emerged as an idea when I say a Project M reskin of ROB, although I think it was a fanmade Wii one rather than their official Virtual Boy one, although both were used in the event. Santa ROB was added explicitly because I saw it in Chatzy Madness, and ROB 64 was just a cute Star Fox reference really. I thought he'd be the easiest to write in combat, but that turned out to be Wii U ROB. I used all the Sintendo names for obvious reasons, but I refer to them here with the ones we'd understand in real life :P Anyway, Wii U ROB was found on this pretty cool thing called Redesigning Super Mario: http://bonnyjohn.com/rsmb/ Wii U ROB almost replaced Wii ROB before I realized Wii ROB, despite having the most basic design of the reimagined ROBs, also had cool potential with motion controls, and we certainly had the attendance to justify all possible ROB ideas plus MAC and the two Alruthines. My thought process for the attacks of most ROBs was to just use their system gimmicks offensively, but Wii U ROB's appearance and the gimmick of Wii U not transferring to combat well led to him being a pushy butler type instead. The ROB we saw in Hector's nightmare and the Agony battle was taking from Subspace Emissary, and he almost joined the Alruthine event as a ROB for the battle, but there was only one from Smash that looked different enough to be used and it didn't fit the theming found with the other robots.

The Professors fell off in the second half of the year, partly it was meant to make their disappearance more dramatic when we discovered it, but also because they got funded a little too quick and they really weren't attached to the Kobber life like most characters. They don't want to spend most of their time in a bar, especially since they have work to do, and being locked out of a lot of combat due to who they are also made them less present.

All in all, I liked RPing them, and I feel only Shu remains as a loose end. It would be very odd if Godbot came back and RPed ROB, but one thing I tried to avoid was saying anything about that ROB besides the references to the shared past of the Professors with it.

And there you have it! Alruthine plot was great fun to do and...

Wait, you want me to actually talk about the Alruthine CHARACTERS too?

Fine...

Guess we'll do them in order of appearance, at least event wise.

Before we begin though, a broad statement: for many Alruthines, its sort of a chicken-and-the-egg scenario for whether the art came first or I found the art for a character. Jisadjok certainly was made and then I remember picking up the old image of the rejected character Juan Carlos as I realized he was a perfect fit, and I always wanted Gewjogfka to be a chameleon scientist, but I could only find Chameleon warrior lizards before remembering Francis exists. Also: AWFUL LOT OF LIZARD PORN. Lizardpeople fall under the furry umbrella so I saw a lot of nasty naked lizards trying to find cool lizard pics. Almost every minion Alruthine was a cool piece of art I found with no real character to tie it to.

Alruthine plot had a few false starts, but it was always meant to be kicked off by Blajboa revealing her species and their existence through the televised BBB5. Didn't expect her to lose so badly, but I kinda glad she did, as with her low placement comes almost no questions about what she is save a lizard-looking thing with Mr. Fantastic powers from people who don't follow RP but read fites. The pre-plot teasers at least seemed to make people want me to do the plot, and I'm surprised the plot didn't suffer much for it, although it probably helped that most of the plot was contained in the events itself rather than having too many after event scenes like Deckplot did.

The pre-season blogpost was meant to give them a bit more character, which was nice since some like Akljadlk never got to show their personality during their events, but it also was to give them more character in my own head, so I could write them better and know them better. Telling yourself a character is going to be a certain way is much different than seeing it in practice.

I suppose I should apologize somewhere that I use the Alruthine names with such a casual air when probably no one else remembers them as well as I do. When you think about a plot with such oddly named characters for months on ends, the names feel like real words, so I can't help but think of the character on name alone. Hopefully the later sections or my character profiles can help you figure out who I'm talking about if you're having trouble remembering on name alone.

So now... Event 1

MOYUSFUY, UYSNSKOW, AND UGRSTEH

I'm fairly certain the designs of these guys came before aspects of their personalities, as they are all from the same set of images by a very talented artist on deviantart. Moyusfuy and Ugrsteh likely would have been about the same (Ugrsteh I wanted to be more like a dinosaur and he might have been the first of the group found.) Uysnskow was almost entirely based off her appearance and the bone weaponry found though. Ugrsteh and Uysnskow both represent some younger Alruthines (but not as young as nameless ones) that could never truly fit in with our society no matter what. Well, maybe Uysnskow could, at least if I had ever allowed my developing love for the character concept grow beyond a single event opponent. It is a bit strange that Ugrsteh was so early considering his power is basically an inversion of the species weakness, but no one ever really attacked Alruthines with noise, except Blajboa on accident :V But the Warehouse was the hook for the plot, revealing that for some reason some people wanted Blajboa did, and those people were actually not people at all!

Conspiracy theory disguise, as mentioned before, was to acknowledge the synchronicity with the Reptilian Conspiracy of real life and to keep anyone from guessing quite what was going to happen. I've always made a point of underplaying my character's role as protagonists in my own plots, and when Conspiracy Guy tackled Blajboa off into a new room to seemingly incapacitate her, I was playing off that assumption from people on how I do things. Chao even praised my method for removing her from the situation, unaware of what was coming up later in the battle.

Despite being short-lived, I feel I got across a lot of what I wanted to with this first event. Uysnskow explained her bone obsession well and Ugrsteh's grumpiness was conveyed as well, only Moyusfuy seems underdeveloped although we did see more of his story from the investigation afterward, revealing how he probably wants to fit in with humans the most of any Alruthine and hence was willing to do whatever Mark told him to do. I did not expect Moyusfuy to survive and was a bit surprised when he was revived, because besides maybe Ugrsteh, he'd be the least willing to tell anything about the plans of the group. At the same time, I felt the obligation to acknowledge he's not dead on occasion, but since Cornwind never really had anything come of it, I didn't either.  Moyusfuy simply had no in character reason to ever try and be cooperative.

I am sorely tempted to bring back Uysnskow in some way, but she probably works best as a one-off. She could certainly have a story to tell, but I don't want to cheapen or ruin the character with an unsuccessful revival.

Moyusfuy wanting to kill Blajboa despite being her direct kin was meant to show that basically anything goes with Alruthine on Alruthine violence, something that almost came up in the finale, but didn't! Bjab and Dajo never fought their daughter, and I actually kept Boa a bit busy so she couldn't immediately say DAT'S MY PA AND MA.

I also feel like this Investigation was probably one of the better planned ones, as it was the first and I wanted to lay down enough hints to get things started, although at the same time not give it away. That would become a common issue as I wanted people to figure out the motivations of the Alruthines before the end of the plot, which thankfully Gooper picked up on and stated in character as Sumireko I believe.

Also, a huge thanks for sending Sumireko throughout the plot, Blajboa didn't get to connect with many characters since opportunities like Amity fell right off the map. Boa thankfully got a bit of a character arc through Spy's plot so she wasn't solely the character connecting us to this plot. Things were a bit awkward when Raezin and Ugrsteh almost led to the complete collapse of the place we'd need to do our investigation in, but as event guider I easily just said things somehow survived all that. I was a bit wary with introducing the investigations after plot as it might not get attention or people just may not like it, but it seems to have worked out well enough, and although the limitations weren't as meaningful as I thought they'd be... that's probably for the best!

Really though, there's not too much to say about this trio that hasn't been said in RP. I take a basic idea and build off of it, and unlike Deck members the past of Alruthines are not quite as complex as they all have some similar origins.  Moyusfuy was fitting in fine and was content with life until technology broke his skinsuit and he lost his human life. Ugrsteh and Uysnskow had personalities that clashed with trying to fit in, leading to Ugrsteh's anger and Uysnskow's craziness over bones giving them away no matter what the other Alruthines tried to help them fit in. Mark just had a few Alruthines he considered expendable to try and clean up what seemed like a rogue betrayer to the race, and they all leaped on it because they had no other way to be useful as they are.

I guess I can say that Uysnskow was meant to emphasize how hard it is for Alruthines to hold their bodies together, as they must constantly think so hard about every action they make and its overwhelming. Uysnskow just wanted to stay in one piece and be able to enjoy life, and bones were what held together other organisms, so she became obsessed with trying to stabilize her life by stabilizing her body. When a single sound can cause your body to fall to pieces, life kinda sucks.

I suppose before we move on I can say why events were placed the way they were. Warehouse was of course the introduction, were the plot was more "Kill Blajboa" and only after the fact would we learn they were part of something larger. The Shipyard would help focus us in on that second aspect and reveal that Shens were being targeted, and if Kobbers had decided "maybe we should ask the Professors about that" they'd be nowhere in sight unless you knocked on Hector Labs's door, wherein you'd discover that they were being held hostage as the Alruthines were trying to stem the tide of the latest popular piece of tech that caused their disguises to break. Next we had the Casino, which was originally a separate event from the confrontation with Mark, but rolled together, as Jisadjok was meant to give us the information to lead us to Mark for a confrontation. And finally, we would have the underground bunker, where we'd have our last fight, learn how the Alruthines fit into human society and how they made skinsuits and the like, and have a few twists before we reached the end.

Now then, we move to the sea!

JIRUNBUF, AKLJADLK, AND THE SAND GUNNERS

As said earlier, the Sand Gunners come from a picture I found but had no character for. The fact that there were two of them was meant to make them taking down ships more believable, although they aren't meant to look exactly alike, as that'd make little sense biologically. They were sort of wrapped up as afterthoughts, as they were there for little more than to be the muscle that made ship-taking possible. They are young Alruthine as mentioned, and were both taken care of with little fanfare as the focus was the two who commanded them.

Somehow, I feel like I knew there would be a banjo gator out there before I found the picture I would use for Jirunbuf, whereas Akljadlk's picture was more of a cool water warrior who didn't really influence her personality so much as her effectiveness in battle. For a while I think these three pictures had a hard time being placed as the boat event was planned oddly for quite a while, and the Sand Gunners almost fought on sand, and I think Jirunbuf was almost fought in the Bayou. I forgot to mention too that the little titles I gave each Alruthine was really to just make them easy to remember if you didn't want to learn their actual names and to clue you in to one aspect of their character.

Jirunbuf was certainly the fan favorite of the Alruthines we'd face, and I don't blame them. Banjo Gator almost didn't even have the shotgun side to his weapon, but that seemed to make little sense, as how would he fight with music alone? Another thing I've forgot to mention until now is mind locations, which was meant to make killing Alruthines a more interesting process as people had to try and guess where to attack to kill them, and most of the time it aligned with their most cherished trait. Uysnskow's was in where her skull should be because of how much she envied bones, Ugrsteh his throat because of how he produced his signature Low Rumble, Moyusfuy where his heart might be as he wanted to be like a human so badly, Akljadlk placed hers in the tip of her tendril as she is tactical and wanted her mind and breathing portion as far from her active body as possible to avoid trouble, Jirunbuf's mind was in his playing hand as he is one of few Alruthines to master finger dexterity to do something as complex as playing an instrument, Baofbawwig kept his mind behind his pride-and-joy steampunk armor where it was thickest: his gut, Gewjogfka kept his behind his eye as he was so focused on vision and absorbing data while most Alruthine can barely read or can't really see text, Jisadjok keeps his mind in his teeth behind his sly and cunning smile, while Vehvhetmx kept his on the tip of his tail, a place no one would expect it to be while he was Mark Cuban and had no visible tail, Bjab's intellectual nature led him to storing his mind in his forehead where a human's frontal lobe resides, and Dajo kept hers in her snout so its close to where she'd give both affection (Alruthines show affection by pressing heads together, or placing where their minds are together in their normal long form) and punishment (her teeth). Blajboa kept hers above the base of her tail to try and be clever but was also meant to represent her looking back on the life she left in Vegas that she was returning to.

I should also mention that the theme that creatures can change their shape easily can't change their mindsets or ideology easily was a small thematic thing that was not meant to be overt but also I was hoping someone would at least quip about Alruthine stubbornness in such a fluid creature :P

Anyway, back to this event! Jirunbuf and Akljadlk were also supposed to show the complexity of the characters in the plot, with neither really wanting to do what they were doing but hoping it would help their race survive. These two both survived in the end, but despite some people being sad their opponents were really nice creatures in bad situations, it was meant to say "no, you aren't going to be killing obvious bad guys here. It is a species fighting for survival, just doing it the wrong way. Some will have to do, others don't need to. You'll have to make that choice." Bleak sounding, huh?

This plot event also introduced the never-really-used mud that was meant to counter sonic attacks so that we couldn't just steamroll every plot event in Alruthine plot. Sound would've still screwed them up of course, but I didn't want it to be instant takedown like it was on Blajboa when ever she went on plots.

Jirunbuf may still show up somewhere down the line as a cameo character of the like, but Akljadlk I felt like did not ever really show her colors. Akljadlk, along with the least human name, was also in a tight bind. She was an excellent and intelligent warrior, but she had a peaceful and thoughtful nature. She wanted to just relax and enjoy the water, as it felt so much more free and alive to her than living in the dirt or on the surface, hence why she hasn't even made human clothes on her humanoid form. At times you might be more likely to find her a clump of tendrils in the water than any other form, and the form she used to break into boats secretly from below was probably her most comfortable shape. She was smart and fierce... something that can't be conveyed well when the entire battle with her was underwater and she had no way to vocalize in her tendril form. She'd break into boats subtly and try not to really sink them, destroying what needed to be destroyed from the cargo while Jirunbuf and the gunners held the crew at bay. She's very much the extreme introvert to Jirunbuf's extreme outwardness. They only pair together well because they both respect that side of the other and can have actual conversations, mostly since Jirunbuf likes to figure things out and Akljadlk likes to share what she knows. Akljadlk's name was probably first on the chopping block if anyone had put in a better keyboard mash.

One thing about the Boat investigation I don't think anyone picked up on was how the cargo was being diverted to the Gulf of Mexico. It was meant to seem like someone was taking it across the country to the other ocean, but it was actually a hint at Mark being Mark Cuban, as he normally hangs out in Dallas, TX. Not a clue meant to actually help you figure out who he is yet, but a clue nonetheless!

And now we move on to...

BAOFBAWWIG AND GEWJOGFKA

 What lovely names these two have. Baofbawwig's picture I feel like was one of the first to be found and thus his personality is heavily based on his steampunk. Naturally, as it was time to pair up some characters in their plot events, I stuck him with his opposite: someone who embraces modern technology. I think their little exchange in the blogpost about their technologies is what inspired me to do that as it was in my head and the lines wouldn't get out except if I typed them up. I already said how Gewjogfka being Francis from Super Paper Mario was more of the idea behind the character somehow fitting him, but I also tried to find a picture of Francis that wouldn't evoke the character Francis. This image is much more subdued and most importantly isn't blocky and paper mario style. It even makes sense in canon that a nerdy Alruthine might be willing to basically cosplay as a character at all times, especially since he could then go out to nerdy places or conventions "in costume" and not arouse suspicion. Although he still mostly stayed inside because he's a tech nerd :V

These two were always meant to be a bit atypical, as other Alruthine rely mostly on crude weapons or their bodies for attack. Them being the ones for Hector Labs was almost a shoo-in, and I already explained a lot of the plot stuff for that event in Hector and Vector's section, so I'll try not to reiterate it here. I flipflopped on how well they would have treated Hector and Vector and decided that basically they were hostages that neither Alruthine knew enough about humans to properly take care of. They wanted information and had the time to wait it out (or so they thought), so it didn't really click how much their hostages were suffering from poor food and hygiene. I also had to have Baofbawwig shooting at Lying Cat even though its a cat because A: bringing something that shouldn't die on a deadly plot shouldn't exempt you from such things, and B: the Alruthines also don't have the same moral hangings about killing cats humans do. Lying Cat was interfering and Baofbawwig had no reason not to try and kill it. Other times though I do roll with things people are trying even when people misread my posts, like when Tenshi and Viola weren't tied together in the same skull bolo or later when the rules to Jisadjok's game were misinterpreted a bit. Probably for the best in the case of those rules :V

Again I feel these two were pretty straight forward and most of their story was told in RP or blogposts. Baofbawwig got the honor of being the first real Alruthine we met in the Good Doctor blogpost, as his weapon made him a good candidate for not revealing too much about the species yet, although both Dajo and Bjab were given cover names so they could be there too. I wanted people to hazily remember the blogposts rather than have them clear in their mind so that Alruthine giveaways (especially the accents, Blajboa never uses the "th to d" in her blogpost where she met Anthony for example) weren't clear until well beyond the point they were meant to be connected back. Also, if you are wondering, Blajboa herself likely won't get a subcategory in this blogpost, as information about her seems to be coming up sporadically or near the start where the plot conception was detailed.

Moving on...

JISADJOK, VAHVHETMX, THE GIRLS, AND THE BODYGUARD

This event got changed more than any other in the plot, and that includes the final event that had a huge plot-changing twist changed. I already mentioned how Jisadjok came before his character art was salvaged from my rejected characters blogpost, but Vahvhetmx was almost an entirely different character because of his image! The top hat and cane really can't be taken seriously, and we barely see this form in RP at all since he spends most his time either as Mark Cuban or the cut up version of himself that escapes. Originally, Vahvhetmx would have explained that he liked the look but knew it was tacky, so he could only take it on when he was being an Alruthine rather than a human. That was changed and his look barely acknowledged at all! The Girls are both Broodmothers, so they had to be big and intimidating like Dajo, as they are super large and are not hollow unlike their brood. Originally both were going to look like the first image shown here, but the mayan alligator thing was added when I could find no other place for it. If you couldn't tell, this event was a bit of a dumping ground for the unused Alruthine art. The Brute was meant to be part of Jisadjok's game and would have fought us normally if we chose the fight route instead of the game, although the Girls are implied to be incredibly tough and it would be a miracle if we made it through them without a few deaths on our side. They are his bouncers for a reason and have tons of body to spare, fighting almost purely on the offensive. They were made that way mostly to try and force people to play along with the game... but not the game we ended up playing. The Bodyguard got almost no attention during the plot event, as this plot was originally two events, as previously alluded to!

Initially, Gambling for Info and Confronting the Businesslizard, as they were called, were two separate events. Jisadjok would be willing to sell out his species as long as the Kobbers played along with him... in a game of Russian Roulette. He'd have a pistol, and a Kobber could ask a question he'd answer completely honestly as long as they put the barrel to their head and pulled the trigger. Only one bullet was in the gun, and with each chamber click the tractor would go from 1 out of 6 to 1 out of 5. He'd even hold the gun to his head and fire if the Kobbers said he wouldn't do it himself, which even if it fired it wouldn't kill him since he'd shoot his head off but not shoot his mind. I figured Sine might play along but most Kobbers probably wouldn't, so I changed the event to something less dramatic. The Girls were there mostly to try and force you to play the chance game with your character's life on the line as they'd probably kill you regardless... or even just go on a rampage and kill innocent bystanders if you said no as a way of forcing you to do so for the sake of others. It was really manipulative and that was a bit of the point, but Jisadjok was softened and the event changed to be less mean.

Designing Jisadjok's game was hard and ultimately it didn't seem as wacky as expected as everyone played the encumbrances and limitations completely straight. I tried to avoid copying something like Oogie Boogie's roulette from Nightmare Before Christmas and Kingdom Hearts, although there is certainly some of that there just because I used a roulette in the end. Coming up with all the difference hindrances was hard and I didn't really crack down on completing it until the night of the event, and even then most didn't get used. Monkey on the Back was one of the first thought up though as it seemed more interesting than a typical trap, and I tried to keep them from being dangerous or deadly as best I could while still being setbacks. I wanted the Brute game to be a bit less straightforward, but then it might be too hard to solve. If anything, this whole thing was me trying again to do a bit of an obstacle course for Kobbers instead of just another straight up fight event, and it seems that just like in Deckplot I struggle to make them work very well. Might just throw in the towel there and try different ways of mixing things up in the future.

Either way, the event was going to be short and be setup for the next event. Instead, it got combined with the confrontation with Vahvhetmx in his office, which was originally a full on fight with him and his bodyguard. Before we continue though, the Silver Dollar casino was referenced earlier in the year as Broderick buzzed outside it, refused entry as he wanted the owner's hat, which we now know is because that hat is actually part of Jisadjok's body. Also, the Silver Dollar casino will be around next year, as Chao asked if Jisadjok would return and it gave me a few ideas I'll be using involving the casino and its owner...

Jisadjok, of course, is meant to represent the obvious question: why don't you just walk around in the open as yourselves? Jisadjok found "success" in the human world by exploiting his subterranean nature, but people still dislike him and speak ill of his species (which they assume is just a lizard man), but he's so rich they'll shut up when he's around to hear them... or at least when they think he can't hear them. Jisadjok surrounded himself with the two Broodmothers to try and prop up his failing ego with something that would be a status symbol to his race but is severely limiting the reproduction and survival of his race. The Brute may or may not be one of the Girls' son though, although they certainly won't miss him too much after Belinda abducted him, as they hadn't even named it yet. Jisadjok is the Alruthine who lived amongst humans, and even though he's rather friendly sometimes, he doesn't particularly feel he belongs either on the surface or with his race anymore. If not for his riches he'd probably have been killed long ago.

Now, we move on to Vahvhetmx, or as you probably know him best, Mark Cuban. I wanted a sort of soft reveal before we got the big Bill Clinton one that a real person of note was an Alruthine. I didn't want it to be someone who might be used by someone else in RP, so big names like Bill Gates were off the table, but I still wanted them rich, successful, and recognizable enough for it to be a shock and to make sense with how the Alruthines were being funded and hid well in our society. I almost made Vahvhetmx Elon Musk based solely on a negative portrayal of the billionaire on Black Dynamite, but Musk is actually pretty cool in heralding in the next wave of technology... which wouldn't make much sense for an Alruthine to do to be honest. Mark Cuban was selected when I remembered my roommate's disdain for him when we were talking about the show Shark Tank one day. Mark Cuban is certainly rough around the edges enough that I didn't think anyone would really object to him being made a villain, let alone the main one of Alruthine plot. From there I did some research on the guy, but still didn't expect people to point out his charitable acts and all, which almost neutered his role as prime antagonist. Most Alruthine, as mentioned though, are just unreasonable creatures in a tight spot, and while Vahvhetmx would certainly give to charity, the pressure of keeping the race going in human society on his own broke him and led him down his darker path. In one of the few post-event posts I made, we see people recognizing Mark Cuban as he investigates the attacked Warehouse. I remember I was slightly worried something would be said about the Warehouse district that made it unusable in my plot during the Coalition of Malice finale, and I tried to imply the Alruthine funding was a bit excessive when the Conspiracy Nut took us to the Warehouse in a posh car. Still, if someone had found it was Mark Cuban before the reveal, it would have been pretty crazy.

Anyway, Vahvhetmx and his bodyguard would have been our sole opponents in a separate event initially, and he might have had an extra bodyguard as well for more muscle. No combat powers were really figured out except the Bodyguard might have poison weapons, as Vahvhetmx's plan with smoking out the Kobbers with toxic gas was the big lead-in to fighting him always, as the otherwise human people have their tails shoot out and grab some oxygen from a safe room as they try to make everyone suffocate. I had wanted Courier 6 to come along on the event as I had the idea of Mark Cuban offering him some money to help kill the Kobbers as the poison went on. The Courier would be immune and if he agreed he'd be the way of sweeping up anyone else immune. Just thought it'd be a neat way of doing something on the plot. Also: We were originally meant to kill Vahvhetmx here! See, he wasn't originally the final boss of this plot. That honor went to...

BJAB, DAJO, DOC GERBIL, AND THE SKIN MAN

Well, not all four of them, but yes, initially, Blajboa's parents, Bjab and Dajo, would have been behind it all! They were the top of the foodchain, rather than the trapped parents used as emotional blackmail to all other Alruthines to listen to Vahvhetmx finally instead of the family leaders. The idea would end up discarded as too cliche and I preferred the angle I came up with better, and it allowed Blajboa to have her happy ending, her species to have a way to continue to exist, and so many other better outcomes, but I just REALLY wanted Bill Clinton to be the final boss of this plot. We still got to fight him, but he wasn't much of a threat as other narrative factors limited how he could fight.

Since Bjab and Dajo's battle with the Kobbers would be a bit of a smokescreen, early on the idea of fighting Doc Gerbil and Skin Man was combined with the finale. I considered splitting it away a few times until I decided the parents weren't the bad guys and Vahvhetmx could easily stand and fight at the end too, even in his reduced state. The underground bunker was chosen as they needed somewhere that couldn't just be found easily or traced back too without the gambling for information event, but at the same time it would be super accessible for Alruthines because of where it was. Although Bjab and Dajo needed a special chamber so they couldn't escape so easily. Blajboa can burrow through really tough stuff, but no Alruthine can just burrow through layers upon layers of solid metal, not even a broodmother. Bjab couldn't anyway, as both he and Vahvhetmx had the procedure that made their bodies incapable of returning to their natural Alruthine form easily, as they are basically stitched and fused together like the Skin Man.

Bjab and Dajo's stories were also kind of touched on earlier, so I don't think I need to go in depth here. With a blogpost this long I fear I've repeated myself too many times already. Vahvhetmx's final stand was meant to be pathetic though. I thought the main villain being reduced to barely nothing for his final stand made a nice inversion of the mega stakes and superpowers of the Deckplot finale. Alruthine plot was also much smaller in scope, so the main muscle for this final battle would be the Skin Man and Dajo, with Dajo disengaging the moment we figure out she's just a scared and cornered creature lashing out at someone entering what was basically a torture/sense-deprivation chamber.

So, Doc Gerbil's turn to evil... shouldn't have been unexpected really. In ZFRP we have many villains who turn good and just stay good, but for a while after he failed as a character I wanted him to turn back to evil. The Good Doctor blogpost was to facilitate and explain that turn away from trying to be good, although I feel bad making M Sheep think the Good Doctor character was going to be far more interesting than Doc Gerbil was :V Doc Gerbil is me reading RP in much the same way as I did for Faith, although unlike with Faith, there were many times Doc Gerbil, the only qualified surgeon on the ZFS, was turned away from doing surgeries just to do pre-planned events or because they didn't want this or that cluttering things. So, when in canon characters must be specifically refusing to have Doc Gerbil work on them, you got to come up with a few ideas to explain it, hence him thinking of the mistrust from everyone else. Many things he said in his event were me playing that up with a dash of evil so that nobody would care about killing him, and although people tried to save him, I don't really think he could've been saved at all. He certainly felt bad about some things he did, but he'd fall back into this way no matter what.

I suppose I might as well explain his inception, as I noticed the ZFS in 2013 had no real doctors who could perform surgery, a fact ignored next year when we had multiple surgeries done by characters who were not doctors or seemed only general doctors before then. I considered using Doctor Lollipop from this video just because it was a funny idea and had some relationship with the IPU, but Edyth needed a surgeon, and I instead pulled from something else in my past. In one of my classes, one where you were always in a group with some other folks and rotated what you'd be working on, we three dudes all got into the habit of singing It's Doc Gerbil's World, so when we were tasked with making a trebuchet, I thought it cute to print out a picture of Doc Gerbil and put it on our creation. The trebuchet was supposed to launch a grape over a line, and it was too loaded down to do so, so the picture got ripped off as I tried to make it work, but we only managed to get the grape across the line when the trebuchet became so light that launching it instead caused it to flip its entire body over the line while still holding the grape.... which technically counted according to our student judges! Certainly the reason I pulled on him was the emotionaly attachment I got from that class and story. I didn't want to make Doc Gerbil too good and nice, but in the end I didn't make him much of nothing, as every opportunity for him to do anything was rejected or never came together (Doctor meeting anyone?).

So, the idea to turn him full evil came to be as it filled the niche of explaining the skinsuits. However, we may see Doc Gerbil may have had more of a history then we thought as we move forward in ZFRP. He had a long history before he got arrested and forced to serve on the ZFS after all...

As for Skin Man (who was surprisingly saved instead of killed, although he was made about as smart as livestock so no one felt too bad about his condition or possible death), he was meant to explain some things like how the flesh felt like it was alive and as a way of not having it be a skin harvesting thing. Sure, some flesh did come from the freshly dead, but it was grafted onto the Skin Man to keep growing while its bones were given to Uysnskow to appease her. Like I said, no one was ever killed explicitly for their flesh, although some people Ugrsteh killed just being Ugrsteh were used for this purpose. It was difficult finding a good picture for Skin Man, as Flesh Golem pictures are usually too gross or didn't fit the image well enough. Even the picture I used is me settling, as Skin Man was meant to have flaps of skin waving off is body like frayed cloaks. Skin Man was the least disturbing while still looking somewhat like a fleshy monster that can be sheered like a sheep. Despite really just being a bash-you-up kind of enemy, the setting and Doc Gerbil made it more than just a beat-em-up fight.

So after all that, we killed bad guys, saved some good guys (and bad guys!) and now the Alruthine race can rebuild. It is a slow process though, a lot of their biology is meant to emphasize how hard it would be to just enter human society anywhere besides the epicenter of weirdness that is Kobberland. After all, humans can't even treat each other right, why would they treat another intelligent species any better? Haven was a good last minute save for the Alruthines to go to rebuild, while Blajboa heads off with Moyusfuy to try and spread understanding, or at least sow the seeds of it. Much like how Bjab and Dajo will probably take 300 years to rebuild their race to an acceptable size that they can come back to Earth, that's probably how long it will take for people to accept them :V I didn't want Alruthines leaving Earth to be a perfect solution of course. Asking someone to just leave the place they've technically lived on longer than most any other creature is not a viable solution nor a fair one, but I think the surviving Alruthines mostly got off well enough considering their species population was at least cut in half.

CONCLUSION

So that was Alruthineplot, and many more things besides! What a huge honking blogpost, bigger than Deckplot's too I'm sure, mostly because so many more things needed explaining or mention! Inventing your own species can be fun, but it's hard to know how much anyone else is understanding it, and we also took a look back at many characters along the way who were tied, sometimes only lightly, to the plot. I guess... after all this, I do have something to say about a certain someone.

Blajboa. Before we say goodbye, a few more things about her. Her image is from a great Flash video series called No Evil, of a character named Calamity. If you google "No Evil Calamity" you can see a few images of her, and you'll also notice they all carry a lot of attitude or a tuning fork weapon. I ended up taking a still of a video where she read a paper (which, incidentally, would be hard for Blajboa to do!) as it felt the easiest to build my own personality off of... although originally I had planned to RP Calamity herself! She has a very fun personality in No Evil and she even has a voice that would be pretty perfect for Boa. This picture was in my recycle bin before I pulled it out and used it for Blajboa. The tuning fork weapon (which in No Evil can be used to guide water around) I mentioned was almost used to give Boa more interesting powers, but I decided to try the stretching angle solely since we really didn't have a character with that ability in ZFRP yet. Besides, we already had one Alruthine using sound as a weapon despite it being their weakness :V

I already said a few things about her character arc of learning her own strength through Raspberryplot, although her distaste for needlessly excessive violence never came up because whenever it could have schedules didn't line up or there was no chance to do it. It was never quite far as Everett's stance on death and all, but Blajboa instead thought death was justified sometimes, but maiming or disabling were terrible things to do.

And I believe... that's it. If there is anything more to say, it might be best not said, as this is already super long and only a few troopers will make it to the end. Still, if you have questions, feel free to ask, and I'll answer as best I can! My apologies for any repeated information, as I wrote this over the course of a week rather than all at once.

And see you all next year, as I try to do something a bit different with my plots...

Behind the Plots of 2015 Part 2: Smells like Time Spirit... The JRM Plot!

Now then, for the belated look back at JRMplot, the strange middle plot between Joyce Jr.'s small affair and the main attraction of the Alruthines! We're going to take a look back at the characters involved this time too, since it pulls a lot on the history of JRM and my RP in general!

INCEPTION

...Is an okay movie, but more importantly, the discussion of the inception of this plot! Now, JRMplot  was born from the fear of another FITE WEEK coming around this year. We had one in 2011 and 2013, so it seemed like we were in a pattern of them popping up. I think FITE WEEK now has to have some sort of small plot and a boss battle because by now its tradition, but as we all know, no FITE WEEK came to pass this year, but I wanted to try and prepare for it.


In doing so though, I made the mistake of tipping my hand too early. As part of my Six Months... series, I put down the groundwork of the plot so that it could be clever foreshadowing if we did get FITE WEEK as a thing, and it might give people something to look at as they tried to figure out what was going on. See, Tripwire would have been messing with the fites as FITE WEEK plots do, but he'd be taking a different approach than ultra-violent Rafflesia and corpse collector Dr. Satan. Tripwire... would be trying to make the fites LESS lethal, padding arenas and trying to tranquilize entrants so they go down non-lethally. Since the ideas behind the first two FITE WEEKs was to fite absurd things like a freaking planet and Actually Satan, I wanted this go round to have some gravitas in a different way. At the end of this possible FITE WEEK, Whitey or someone similar would be held hostage, and JRM would lead a charge to save him... and in so doing, get drugged by the pair of Tripwire and Hatch-o-Hatch. JRM would then go rogue, fiting the Kobbers alongside the other two in the final battle. Here, the stakes would be FYM itself rather than the world, and rogue JRM would go giant and be an actual threat for once instead of his goofy ineffective self.

There's a couple reasons the idea wasn't used, the one main one being showing it too earlier made me feel pressured to do the plot without FITE WEEK, but also because JRM getting his mind fucked with is probably one of the worst things that could happen in ZFRP if played straight, because his time powers would be able to instantly screw everything up. Needless to say, if JRM does get possessed or anything in the course of future RP, his Time Spirit powers are locked off from use because of Spirit related provisions rather than "he doesn't use them just because". Faith and Sunshower were also toyed with in joining the final battle, Faith a bit more seriously than Sunshower due to recognizability, but it all was scrapped pretty quickly and the plot as we know it began to form.

From there, two new goals emerged: to wrap up the never followed up on moment in 2011 where Tut-Tut went to the Sands of Time to rescue a dead JRM, and to try and make JRM relevant again, which was a good year to do this as he began to get close to folks like Ko and show himself a bit more. JRM as anything but fitemaster was falling off the radar, especially in regards to him being the Time Spirit, as more and more characters were screwing with time without the ghost and his role being considered. Cornwind, surprisingly, actually did pull me aside some in 2014 to talk about how JRM would see the time shenanigans and all, and I found myself having to jump through many hoops to explain why JRM wasn't doing something when people just did time junk willy-nilly.

So these were all mixed in one pot, as well as a few other things being added for flavor, but we'll see those in the character sections.

JUMPROPEMAN AND TIME SPIRITS

Origins of Jumpropeman and a few others are discussed in an earlier blogpost, so we won't touch those much here, but it's pretty easy to see that for the most part, JRM and me are alike in many ways. I've tried to pull him away from it by making him less empathetic and all, but when it comes down to it, he's still very much like me, even if we'd act totally different in some situations. However, with this plot, I hoped to make some more of those differences more evident, while at the same time playing on the fact we didn't really know the guy that well. Since the whole plot revolved around whether or not JRM is truly in the right sometimes or how he should be held accountable, I didn't want him to be too sympathetic at parts, and I knew trying to conquer the inherit "well, he's basically JRM the user, so I don't want to be rude" hurdle. Ultimately, the only one I don't think that was jumped upon properly was how JRM and Q worked together to program Faith in such a conflicted way, because most other situations could at least be shown as "best of a bad situation" or "he knows more of the universe than us" ways.


This plot was also meant to expand and explore the Time Spirit role a lot more, since it is very much the reason JRM is both cynical and prone to making decisions that seem heartless to others. His time displacement leads to situations like the one involved with Sunshower and Marina, and it gives him a powerful ability that could fix so many problems if used carelessly. You may also remember a 2012 loose thread where he realized he was alive in the 90s (he was in the 80s too but he was too young to be worth worrying about) and how nothing happened from there. Originally a few srs posts of him just chatting with himself under a false identity to try and understand who he was as a human were planned to peel back the inhumane ways we saw him deal with De Nomolos and such and reveal a nicer JRM, but that as scrapped. Also, living JRM would have met with ghost JRM on the World Trade Center once, and we'd see in ghost JRM's mind the temptations to undo horrible events like 9/11, which... It's probably best I didn't try and do it, since it could have gone very wrong if not treated properly.

Gooper once mentioned he thought of Samhain sort of as the Halloween Spirit to the Jumpropeman "pantheon" of spirits, which include Phantomon as the Death Spirit (who probably needs his own plot to reassert that role forgotten by almost all but Cauren), and although I wouldn't mind that (although a few things like Spirits being created by pulling off a face of the Ultra Spirit or being granted the power by another spirit might not work with Gooper's idea of the character), made me realize that the rules of Spirits probably weren't put into RP very well. Heck, the Time Spirit before JRM was mentioned like, three times maybe, so this plot would serve to explain their roles and hierarchy better, although we still didn't see the Ultra Spirit because if we did something super fucked would have gone down (and also because he'd be hard to draw :V)

Which brings me back to... ORIGINAL JRM 2011 REVIVAL PLOT! In 2011, we would have gone to the Sands of Time and faced Hatch-o-Hatch... and two Destroyers. Spirits are the tenders of their aspects, whether they be Death or Time or Sewers (which is based off a misremembered Monster Collector creature named Pipeta that I upgraded to Sewer Spirit. I looked at the pictures of other Spirits lately and they are all very underwhelming, much like the Time Spirit we see in RP! ...not the JRM Time Spirit, the other one, the original...). They are held accountable even if there are other folks with similar roles or powers who screw with their aspect, and if they screw up royally, the Ultra Spirit obliterates them from existence, past, present, and future. You would never know a failed Spirit for this reason. Destroyers are a tool of that. Although the Ultra Spirit is exempt from all powers of the Spirits or basically anything that alters our universe, he has some flunkies called Destroyers who basically remove things from existence if need be. The Ultra Spirit can destroy a spirit, but he needs something to clean up the mess they left if he can't find a reliable replacement quickly enough, and so, Destroyers wipe the slate clean until the new guy steps in. The Destroyers Hatch-o-Hatch would have been with were the Fire Destroyer and Storm Destroyer, and unlike Spirits, I actually liked the designs for the Destroyers even now. Why he'd have them with him and other things were not planned.

Anyway, THIS GUY. Kinda plain looking, but he came before JRM as Time Spirit. I toyed with doing a blogpost of JRM meeting him for the first time and may still do it one day, but this Time Spirit had to exist to fit JRM into the Spirit "pantheon", since most Spirits aren't actually dead people, although you have to be a soul to do the work. Even Tut-Tut is more a soul that looks like a mummy and keeps its physical form most the time than a true physical mummified dodo now that he's a Time Spirit. Jumpropeman was made a Time Spirit to facilitate things in Fites and explain away how he might have knowledge of certain things (which was also helped by the Snappers being a more physical representation of that), but from day 1 of making him the Time Spirit his predecessor was in mind to do... well, something! And that got addressed in this plot. The Time Spirit is also an inversion of the cliche "I live a long time so everything seems faster to me. A year is a second hurdaburdahur". The Time Spirit is so long-lived that time drags on instead, as time travel has made him older than existence many times over, and each second feels like a year to him instead. Immortals say time lost all meaning to them, but the Time Spirit feels time like the heavy yoke it is more than any other being, and his angst is the extreme version of JRM's own cynicism from working the job.

Sadly, as anything more than a plot piece, the Time Spirit is rather uninteresting and not worth exploring much. I wanted this plot to wrap up him and I had no planned ending for him as an attempt to let RP happen instead of sending people down set paths. Time Spirit is JRM's biggest moment of moral questionability, as he condemned someone weary of existence to eternal existence, although the circumstance was complicated and all with complete eradication from time being the alternative. The gauntlet ended up the means to wrap him up, and the Fabrics of Time are thankfully exempt from access as they are basically a Spirit exclusive construct. Much like how only Deck members and those they bring with them could enter the Dark Void, only JRM/Tut-Tut can go into the physical representation of time they made to make work easier, and thus the Time Spirit corpse and all super weapons placed on it are irretrievable.

Naturally, we'll touch on Jumpropeman a bit more as we move into sections on other characters, but I think that's all I got to say here about Spirits or Jumpropeman! Well, a few other things. I had him casually reveal the origin of his powers to Marina to get that story out of the way. And we learned a bit more about him as a human with the Hero's League. Say... the Hero's League wasn't explained much now, was it?

Maybe that's something we might all learn more about in the future...

MARINA AND SUNSHOWER

Jumpropeman's family. Originally there was an idea to explore this side in an entire plot about Jumpropeman's former life as a superhero, and we may still get that in the Hero's League thing I just teased. Before I continue, a simple bullet point for better understanding the Hero's League. The Hero's League has three tiers for its heroes based on their abilities.

A TIER: People with such overwhelming power that they basically aren't allowed to use it. A Tiers tend to be the face of the League and contain your Superman types, and they are usually only allowed to use their powers to stop disasters or villains of comparable strength. Most of the time they just do public affairs stuff. They're almost like politicians more than anything, and they're always itching to get a chance to go out and fight for real.

B TIER: Jumpropeman fits in here. Superpowered individuals who aren't that great. Basically a step above humans to combat threats more effectively than armed cops. Sometimes they end up commanding C Tiers into battle or police forces, but they cover the kind of real world crimes we see in real life, they just fight with their limited powers instead of guns. But they also usually carry guns.

C TIER: Gifted Individuals. Which is the Hero's League of saying "normies". People who are exceptionally skillful or resourceful. Your Batman types, really strong people, martial arts experts. They are about on par with cops because they are just regular folks who are really good at something.

The reason I bring this up is so you can understand a few things to be explained soon. Anyway, The impetus of this all is part of JRM's backstory, where he mentioned he's had multiple wives who were killed. Partially a joke at comic superheroes having "expendable" loved ones, and even a joke in-universe too as I believe the number has been listed differently, he's had 8 wives. Only one died before Sunshower happened, that being his first, and Sunshower was his fourth wife. JRM divorced his second and third before he met Sunshower.

Sunshower was actually an A Tier hero, and the Hero's League is actually a bit snobby about its tier system, almost seeing them like castes. Jumpropeman didn't care about that and would regularly mingle with C Tiers, and Sunshower did the same when she found out a B Tier was breaking the rules. The then quite overpowered Sunshower had near limitless use of heated water as she pleased, but the Hero's League held her reins so she rebelled in what ways she could, mainly romancing the B Tier hero...and getting pregnant in the process. They married and had their daughter Marina, who inherited her mothers power slightly and was affected by her father's weird biology, but things got... complicated. Sunshower took care of Marina most the time since her job was less demanding while JRM did his "basically a cop" job, but one of JRM's ex-wives was also a B Tier, and they were gradually reconnecting over the course of the job. Sunshower grew bitter with her position, her husband talking with an ex, and having to do the brunt of raising Marina, so she put an end to the ex-wife. When the truth came to light, she was forced to become a villain to avoid punishment from the League, and so began her punishment of JRM.

His second wife was killed next as Sunshower still tried to get JRM to take care of his daughter that she now protected too much to really let go. JRM tried to move on with wife 5 and 6 only to have them meet their end, and wife 7 was a Vegas style spite wedding to try and discourage Sunshower by showing he would not sacrifice his happiness to appease her. Last wife was a fellow superhero and meant to be part of a trap, and although she died in the battle, Sunshower was captured and imprisoned. She was also imprisoned following the first two wife deaths but she escaped and continued her rampage. When Jumpropeman died, Sunshower swung some cred she had with the Hero's League to get her Montana situation, where she was basically under house arrest and surveillance, although the Hero's League had more subtle ways to keep an eye on her than the cover Harry would use to keep tabs on her.

So there's that backstory! Anyway, Sunshower's powers diminished with age and lack of practice, but in RP we still saw her doing massive waves of water and whirlpools that showed that she still had it. The possible Hero's League plot had Sunshower showing up with two former associates based off of weather as well, although nothing solid came of it. Probably thunder powered guy (not lightning mind you) and clouds or something. They would have been tiny and tall as per the typical dynamic and been her "henchmen" of sorts... but they'd also be really old. Geriatric super villains are always an interesting concept, since they still have the powers to do their evil deeds, just not the body for it.

Marina was going to be a non-issue in that plot, but when Marina and Sunshower were worked into the grander plot Harry was kicking off. Sunshower's art didn't look quite as old and grumpy as I woulda liked. Jumpropeman and Sunshower were from different generations of heroes, JRM being from the tail end of "____ MAN" hero days and Sunshower on the cusp of the new "Single word gritty hero" era, so her costume was meant to mix elements from old and new.

Marina was not meant to become a full character at first, more of an anchor to get things rolling by pulling Sunshower into the picture, and the plans never did quite evolve far enough to give Marina a satisfying ending. Marina is heavily sheltered and despite being "super", she grew up in normal school where she didn't fit in because of her hair color. Home schooling after the age of nine made it even harder for her to adjust to anything outside her bubble, but she gets on well one-on-one since she knows that well from experience. Quite clearly, Marina is meant to pull apart the veil of normalcy that hangs over every character the Kobbers meet these days. These things aren't normal, and even normal people like Mary and Vince now just shrug and accept it. Marina is a character who SHOULD fit in here, but she doesn't, because she thinks like someone who is being shown unbelievable things. I do think I played her straight too long and often to the frustration of others, and many concessions had to be made even when paltry efforts were made on the side of the characters interacting with her to help her feel better. Suppose that's just the difference between single writer and multiple writer works, eh?  The RVPA was a stroke of luck for helping her find a place, as that was created solely for when Greed just did tons of damage we weren't allowed to do anything about to the border states.

There were some things early on to make you think she might be a more normal addition to the Kobbers, like having a combat power and her peppy attitude when one-on-one with Shimmer. There were some scenes I planned with JRM and Marina visiting Sunshower or doing small things to further their relationship that were scrapped for one reason or another. Shimmer's birthday was always going to get interrupted though, no doubt. I almost was surprised I had to put an actual party in front of the battle :V I tried to make it interesting and made sure none of Shimmer's gifts were broken during the battle. Do not worry though: Shimmer's birthday will go off without a hitch next year!

Unfortunately, Marina seems to shed a light on an increasing problem. Remember how Marina sympathized with Otik? Well uh... that was just like, my character's opinion man. Sometimes I make characters go against the grain, like Everett sparing Trooper C, Mac Tonight trying to find the good in Razaan... even if I don't think it's the right thing. Even if I think the villain is bad and should be killed. I'm adding an extra layer to an event, and while killing Trooper C would have probably been satisfying, Everett standing up and sparing him made that ending more memorable I feel. Marina and Otik was just another moment of me having a hero not immediately want to kill a villain, and Shimmer is like, the opposite of that, where she prefers to have opponents she doesn't have to think about fighting. She can just do it and be sure she's doing right. Ol' blue hair here was meant to shake things up in a way different than Everett while still shaking things around. A teenage girl who needed the guidance of Kobbers... but I always felt bad doing basically anything with her since people seemed emotionally drained by her.

Marina's name actually comes from a dummy Myspace account I made back in the day to try and find out what people thought of me :V Here's the picture I used:

That could very well have been the one I used, but I decided to look elsewhere before settling on the schoolgirl. Either way, blue hair was a must as part of her backstory, for we kind of accept character no matter what color their hair is in RP, but Marina's blue hair is actually something that caused her problems in "regular" life. Marina I think was the name of a girl who liked me but I had never met, only heard she liked me, and that's why I made her name the dummy Myspace account and the strange connection of a false girl I created made her a sort of daughter to the real me, so user Jumpropeman gave character Jumpropeman his own Marina.

HARRY AND FAITH

I love taking unfinished characters and trying to wrap them up one way or another. Whether it be giving all the pointless pets I put everywhere new life in Reject or turning them into villains like Doc Gerbil or Harry here, I always feel bad when a character just disappears without really completing an arc or leaving on a sour note.

Almost this entire plot was kicked off by my guilt over giving Harry a bad ending. During the Cenobite attack on the bar in 2011, his boyfriend Phileas Cardwright was killed. Phileas Cardwright is like my writing signature: I put a character with that name in many things I write although he's usually never the same character save being a man of British descent. Phileas's death left the jovial and loyal Harry rattled, and when we saw him on the Amazon trip in 2012, he was an all-business serious guy instead of the man we met the year before. Having him left off this way seemed mean, so it was decided he'd be the FITE WEEK foe. From there, other things like the Sunshower confrontation and reviving Hatch-o-Hatch's plot from 2011 all were pushed together into what was meant to be Harry... getting killed off actually :V A bad end is only bad if it happens to a good guy, so Harry going bad  would mean death would be fine. The pull away from FITE WEEK instead put the fate of Harry/ Tripwire in Kobber hands, and since almost the entire plot no one save Sunshower was really held accountable for being awful with good intentions, he lived.

Thing that didn't make it in: if we had fought Harry more seriously, he had an EMP and toxins on his body to make sure that if he died or went down, no one around him would survive either. It was mostly a threat rather than something he wanted to use and I believe he did threaten to use it, but it was kinda forced since the plot was turning away from that tone at that point.

Tripwire's appearance is taken from Assassination Classroom, a fact Chao picked up, but it had no ties to the character it was taken from. I simply needed a man in a shroud before the reveal it was Harry, and he was fresh in my mind. Harry as Tripwire was also meant to show how paranoid one should be when going against Jumpropeman, as literally everything on the forum is implied to be easily seen by him, even the most private conversations, whether by Snapper or simply being the Time Spirit. We see Harry killing Snappers in a poor attempt to do so, and some things were intentionally never seen on-screen to imply they were out of JRM's sight.

Harry was the connecting thread to make the disparate parts of Faith, Sunshower, and Hatch-o-Hatch all add up into one plot. Phileas's death was the most concrete time JRM probably could have done something but didn't for seemingly no reason, and it allowed me to explore the Time Spirit's powers and personality because of it.

As for Harry in general, I was fresh off watching Brazil and the character called out to me in 2011. Jumpropeman's network of employees was growing and I wanted to give him a Legman of sorts, and with FITE WEEK coming up and alt-JRM arriving, Harry ended up the perfect character for the role of "guy who realizes alt-JRM ain't right." The character didn't grow much as my RP at the time was scant (back then, I thought Fites were the more important part of my contribution as we still had non-RPers and all to appeal to in the bar topics) and although I hope we know him better now, he was once again used to show that something ain't right with a Jumpropeman :V

Faith... a character who was created solely because of laptop troubles. Ignazio and Edyth were trapped on a computer that wasn't charging, and as 2013 RP was starting, I was stuck on Rainbow Dash's laptop without my images of the characters or anything. Ignazio was easy enough to find because of his art coming from Tropico, but Edyth proved harder to find, and other characters like Reject hadn't found their legs yet. So, since this was me coming back to RP after my absence, I wanted to get in while I could. Tallish was created similarly I believe as the role was presented and quickly snatched by a character made up on the spot, but I quickly searched for a good holographic lady to do a holographic lady idea I had, and an acronym name was thought up to tie her to JRM.

Unfortunately... Holograms with limited mobility AND no way to interact are hard to use. And some efforts to interact were shot down. Faith fell to the side, and I gave her a way to interact just in time for me to decide she's better of soft-retired... but she was given a small role in Deckplot of wiping up the Tower's children as they seemed less likely to fill in gaps in action or Deck roles.

So when this plot was coming together, I decided it was time to try and give Faith a second chance... and get her killed by the Kobbers! WHICH YOU DIDN'T DO! I regret her and Dimitri never got a proper chat, but she'll probably be back some other year as I feel she wasn't satisfyingly tied up after she managed to survive her encounter. Faith was meant to represent things out of our control. Faith failing as a character was because of my poor planning for her (represented as Faith's flawed programming that basically is "make her a Kobber character") as well as her strange failures at interaction. Even when we don't mean to, sometimes just our inaction to engage with someone can hurt people. You might not ever know how others around you think of how you treated them, even if it was passive. I felt it a strong motivation for her turn to attacking the Kobbers in the hope of being killed, but as she was deemed sympathetic I kinda toned down her intended "I WANT THE KOBBERS TO FEEL ME... THROUGH BULLETS" and "KILL ME SO I CAN AT LEAST BE REMEMBERED FOR THAT" qualities. Again, her messed up mind was meant to cast a bad light on JRM more than it did, but there were also probably too many things to make it seem less bad, like Q's history of incompetence with AI like with Pool Robot and Jumpropeman being apologetic.

The Kori Bustard robot is named after the bird of the same name, it's name picked because for some reason I decided to really like the bird during high school. It was not meant to be too dominating in presence to make the hologram version of Faith inconsequential, and even when she's moving in it I tried to emphasize her over her weapon, as it really is just a weapon rather than an independent robot.

The Faith commission falling through gave Faith a tangible way of showing she was "fixed". She is, right now, a black and white hologram, with her blue holographic appearance representing her false self. She's currently trying to find her true self, so she's in this in between state. It was hinted many times what her real state might be as it shown through lightly during moments she was improving, but nothing ever pushed it over the edge. I wanted to do Faith fretting over her own mortality after the fight against Rex, but it never took off. I'll find some way to wrap her up some day...

Wonder if I could get you guys to kill her next year...

HORATIO

Sheep made a chatzy joke so I made him into a character. Yup. Horatio represents JRM trying to better himself and also showing that it doesn't work quite as well as Harry might think it would. Harry is now retired both in universe and out, but his victory was more of an abstract one as the physical side like the odd personality of lead Snapper Horatio stand as a strange reminder that sometimes you should just improve the foundation instead of trying to fix every shingle on the roof. I've been meaning to draw Horatio since it would be super easy, just a Snapper with a mustache, and I hope Twisted Metal wraps up so we can see how Horatio is effected by his predictions, but Horatio is just a joke character and we won't see him much. Only now and again with the JRM crew.

I'll also mention here Testers, which are robots Jumpropeman uses now and again, and which Snappers and Mr. Chips technically are. Monster Collector had a group of robots called Testers, numbered to indicate their function, and most had some sort of theme. Snappers weren't testers there, but there were testers used for time keeping, to assist with sleep, and so on, although it usually was a drawing of a robot with little lines holding appropriate objects (time one has clocks, sleep on has pillows, etc.) They're the grunt work of JRM's crew and we might hear about them some, but we'll never really get them as a prominent member under the name Tester only.

HATCH-O-HATCH

The big egg himself, and yes Chao, that is a nose, despite how hilarious it would be for him to have an orange goatee.

Perhaps one of my more cherished designs from Monster Collector, Hatch-o-Hatch is a mishmash of design that basically hides one thing: he's an egg that is constantly hatching. With false, larger claws to accommodate his nubby hands, a nose attached to his face to make him look normal, and glasses to make up for poor eyesight, Hatch-o-Hatch shouldn't really be doing much besides hatching into Time Snakes, but that's hardly the existence he wanted. His time snake origin was almost solely as the egg for the mythical Ouroboros, but with Zoofights having its own snake, he was a perfect fit for the plot that only just now came to be. We probably wouldn't have fought Gamma Constrictor back in 2011 since I'd be afraid to use a Zoofighter on the old forum, but now, we got to fight the egg and the former Zoofights Godbeast!

Hatch-o-Hatch's connection to JRM was never really laid down too clearly I feel, partially because of me struggling to rope him in after Harry and Faith were redeemed. After Faith was meant to die, we'd get the reveal that Tripwire was Harry. Harry would then go to Hatch-o-Hatch as he struggled to find out what to do next and we would've got a scene like the one Harry had with Faith, although Hatch-o-Hatch would have been the one in control and he would've let Harry know how foolish he was to release him. Tut-Tut would've been taken hostage as he was in the end, but the Harry scene with a Phileas Cardwright impersonator would not have occurred.

As said elsewhere, when Hatch-o-Hatch broke and revealed his body as a ball of snakes, that was an idea made live as I watched Slowbeef play Bloodborne during the plot and he just so happened to come across that enemy. Many RP ideas, like Jasper and a character I'm using next year, were slightly inspired by Retsupurae, although so far nothing has been directly taken, despite rejected characters like Rock Knight almost having been so. Before the ball of snakes, Hatch-o-Hatch would have likely been either one small snake or just a group of snakes that all slither away.

Yes Chao, that is fire coming out of his head, not a crown. That's the hole larger snakes emerge from, and a light/fire of the energy of time snakes shines out from the top. The cracks on his body are from wear and tear, but also from the imprecise holes made below his vest pockets for smaller snakes to slip out.

I probably should've done more to hint about Hatch-o-Hatch's history with JRM besides a blogpost that gave us Tut-Tut's origin in more detail. Most people probably forgot that secondary character and some people did ask who he was as he was written like someone you already knew. Sheep also expressed interest in his design which only made me want to use him more. Hatch-o-Hatch has always looked ridiculous, but I feel like his initial sketch looks better than my reproduced version oh so slightly, especially in the shoe department.

Yes those are shoes, not tentacles. The wings, thankfully, are just wings though, I don't think anyone thought they weren't.

There was a bit of an underwhelming turnout for what should have been a high-stakes plot and I've used it as an example already as the limitations of RP and how it reflects poorly on the characters if we take things on face level. Having a high stakes plot where characters sit off to the side and say "nah I'll pass" makes no sense, but it just happens with our format and its something we need to accept. I also felt bad having to tell people their time powers didn't work, especially when Ko tried to Haste, but the Sands of Time are the dumping ground for time controlling objects. Even things like the guy we met there who is constantly dying are only allowed to exist on a biological level, as his ability was partially biological and partly time based. Terrence was just made up as an example of something living there (or dying there rather) to better explain the Hourglass. I was tempted to have it a literal hourglass in season 1, but with so much time to think better of that, the dynamo we saw that is an hourglass in shape only is what we got.

IN CONCLUSION

There are probably some things I meant to be here that I left out, as is the way of things, and I apologize if I rambled or repeated myself, as the first quarter or so of this was written on a different day than the rest. I wanted to do a plot that explored the depths of JRM and bring his role as Time Spirit back to prominence. Jumpropeman actually did quite a bit this year, more than some characters who got bigger billing, so to speak. This was definitely my poorest of plots this year, primarily because of the mixed reception of characters like Marina, Faith's inconclusive end, a poorly handled finale as I tried to adjust for RP rather than power through with the original plan, and much more.

This plot was ever so briefly considered as a retirement plot for JRM, but I felt shifting the hands of Fite Yer' Mates is a poor decision unless a new user literally takes it over. Keeping some things consistent is best to keep FYM as a sort of easy entry for new users of a place where users who don't follow RP as closely can still keep track of what's going on in the arena. I do not regret this plot, but it shows its status as an adjusted FITE WEEK plot hat could have used more love, attention, and pre-planning. I'm sure the issues seem more visible to me, but I feel like this is more of what you'd have expected from pre-Deck JRMplots, which is fine, as it is very much a throwback plot, but I'm trying to get better and do new things, not rest on old methods.

So finally, tune in next time for the blogpost you guys actually want. The one about my major plot of the year: Alruthines.