Dracoplot 2020

 After another successful year of RP, it's about time to write about another successful year of Dracoplot! Yaaaaaaaaaaay! Overall, I think my RP went very well this year! There wasn't a lot of cut content (there was still some) and I was mostly satisfied with how things turned out. Last year I started with what I disliked, but this year I think the most appropriate topic to start off with is probably the most shocking and controversial thing I've done in RP (At least, I think it is. Maybe you really were shocked and appalled a few years ago when Commander Fox got in the Brawl.).

The Life and Death of Zeldoten Renstim

Just gonna start this section off by saying it wasn't my intention to kill Zeldoten off and make Sumireko sad when the first Sumidoten seeds were planted. There are currently no plans to kill off DeMonde, Yoshiko, or any other pairing members.

I think I made it pretty clear early on when she was first introduced that Zeldoten had a serious allergy to one of the staples of RP: the extreme presence of white magic and its...um...magical ability to cheat death. I even introduced another character entirely to explain how she could possibly be revived from dying in the Brawl, her mother, DeMonde. There haven't been many characters to whom death is a potentially-fatal consequence and Zeldoten was going to be my one character that it was going to be a big deal for, refusing all death battles except Brawl 7 after winning Brawl 6.

The decision to have Zeldoten make a huge sacrifice was conceived...I think it was sometime in July. I'd already had plans to have DeMonde be manipulated by Mr. Mind and used to aid the Zonders in their plans (though her role wasn't as big at the time) and started making my "lol random" barposts where Zeldoten tried to get Nibbles to talk followed by Zeldoten having the impromptu concert (I'd just heard My Hero Academia's "Hero Too" song recently and had to include it somehow.) Later came Pudge being told Zeldoten's history, something largely not touched on besides how she came to meet DeMonde before then.

Zeldoten started RP as a Chaotic Neutral semi-jerk, a selfish sneak who was more interested in fame than actually stealing stuff. Stealing stuff was, at the time, how she got fame though...then she won a Brawl and her world turned sideways, slowly pushing her up in the alignment chart to...I guess you could it the Lawful Evil of Neutral Good...due in part to her friendship with A NERD. So, after years of learning to use her powers for good and getting beat up by Black Shadow and Robbie Rotten's gang for Sumi's sake, I decided it was time to cash in on the "Zeldoten can't be revived" card and give her the ultimate heroic moment, a noble sacrifice to protect the most important people in her life, the first person to ever see value in someone who'd been otherwise considered a curse since her birth. Beside, who else but a Brawl Champion is powerful enough to single-handedly cripple a godbeast? Hu hu hu hu hu~

If Jumpropeman hadn't let her take a couple of the TE Pills during the finale of the magnificent Blastoplot, I had other things in mind for how she could have crippled Mr. Mind in much the same way, but it felt a lot more appropriate that she use something she stole to help deliver the blow rather than me having to introduce a relic that played a large part in DeMonde's pre-RP adventures: a magical rod that her party had to reassemble to give them the power to kill the God of Magic and that would cause a magical explosion with a minuscule chance of the breaker being thrown to another dimension.

On Chao's wise counsel, I did tell Goops a week in advance that something really bad would happen to Zeldoten during the finale, though I had to be vague so as not to totally spoil the moment. I'd be lying too if I didn't confess that even on that Saturday morning I was struggling to decide if I could actually go through with it. I'd been writing cutscenes for two weeks leading up to the Zonderplot finale and still had cold feet about the whole thing, but ultimately it felt necessary that for it to have the right impact, Zeldoten's sacrifice had to actually BE a sacrifice. I was rereading parts of that scene earlier tonight and just thinking about how I felt when posting it made me cry a bit.

I think I took y'all by surprise when I did it and I appreciate Gooper being a very, VERY good sport about me killing Zeldoten. Reviving her was, admittedly, always part of the plan, even if it was uncomfortable in the interim and while I would've been alright doing that solo I think the scene we cooked up was an amazing way to formally conclude Dracoplot 2020.

The day we scheduled the revival, I reached out on Discord and commissioned that picture. I normally love sharing RP artwork I get as soon as I get it, so it was both joy and AGONY having to keep it a secret. The looks on y'all's faces...

Parsee might've been my first serious RP character, getting a big role in my first big plot, but Zeldoten's been without a doubt my star, my first truly original ZFRP character and one of the most prominent faces on my cast for years. Literal YEARS. She's brought in a lot of other great characters and done a lot of fun and exciting things.

It's going to be hard retiring her, even if she IS scheduled to cameo a couple of times in Agama and even if it is only temporary.

The Invasion/War of the Zonders

When I first teased this plot, it was Invasion of the Zonders and then I called it War of the Zonders in at least one post towards the end of it. Either way, it was a chance for me to do my own silly, over-the-top Super Robot Plot. I'd had mechs appear plenty of times in RP before Season 10: Gundams, Transformers, Macross/Robotech, Patlabor, Big O, and Xenogears. GaoGaiGar stuff in Season 9. Probably some others I don't recall off the top of my head. This was the first plot though that really revolved around having giant robots being an important part.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with how it turned out. There wasn't a lot of cut content: one big event, a smaller event that ended up being a cutscene, and some characters. The pacing went very well too. I had important moments and a few "Monster of the Week" style events that Super Robot anime is so fond of. It was a lot of fun writing the big cutscenes too where I could take my time writing out these cool action scenes full of hot blooded yelling and fighting without having to worry about taking up your time too.

Cut Content

Machinedramon was originally considered to be one of the Zonderian Generals because of how much he contrasts with the other two characters I'd already picked for the other generals, Mr. Mind and Gerbera. Where Mr. Mind was a manipulator and Gerbera used subterfuge and trickery, Machinedramon would've been far more direct in his approach to trying to take over Olympia. Harpy ended up using him during Season 9 though as a member of the Curse. The position was, after plenty of deliberation, given over to Don Karnage instead.

The one major event of Dracoplot 2020 that got cut was...the original finale! I joke about plot stuff in chat all the time and one that came up a bunch was Deb being the Dracoplot Final Boss!

Because she was going to be. During the first Don Karnage attack, Deb was hit with some shrapnel that put her in the hospital for awhile. The shrapnel was supposed to be laced with Zonder metal, quietly infecting her and incubating within her for months while using her exposure to her own technology and the G-Stones as a way of eventually adapting to its natural enemy. I admit that idea was taken from GaoGaiGar, except there's not much foreshadowing to that happening in the anime that I can recall. It would have taken place about a month after the battle with Cathedral Terra, slowly letting you all think that the Zonders were defeated. There would have been small mentions of Deb doing solo jobs around the city from time to time throughout the year to foreshadow the final battle.

Deb would have woken up, covered in Zonder metal, and gone for Olympia's core, the power generator for the entire city, and begun merging with it. Bundles of Zonder Metal, hidden throughout the city's infrastructure in places that detectors couldn't find, would have exploded as a surge of power emanated from the core to begin transforming the entire city into a Devil Gundam. Except Deb, being a brilliant engineer who knows actual robots instead of a die-headed gangster who build some Gunpla, would have been actually threatening, generating full-sized, fully-functional Death Army mobile suits to destroy the city so it could be converted into a flying Zonder Metal factory in order to rebuild the Zonder forces. Phase 1 of the plot would have been fighting off the Debil Gundam and the Death Army, including a new set of generals so I wouldn't have to reuse the same four from the King Dice Plot.

Phase 2 would have been a battle with Deb herself, merged with Olympia's power grid to give her unlimited self-recovery and self-modification powers. The Devil Gundam's final form would likely have been part of this battle if it had occurred and she would have been weakened enough to be defeated when someone, probably Nia assuming she was spared like what actually happened, arrives at the battle with Deb's kids on speaker phone, weakening her resolve and the Zonder Crystals' ability to tap into her for power.

This event was removed for a variety of reasons, including that I thought up something better to be the big finale, it really was a bit TOO similar to the King Dice finale (even if Deb is way more threatening), and I'm pretty sure I've been way too mean to Deb already. It worked out for the best too since part of the big twist in Sheep's plot was also that someone was trying to assimilate with and take over Olympia. And he did it better.

Fun Fact: I originally came up with the "Debil Olympia" plot finale in October 2019. When I suggested it to Chao, he said it was TOO big for a finale and that it shouldn't be able to affect all of Olympia so non-participants wouldn't have to react. Then Gooper Blooper, his best friend, had a finale where a giant mecha squid tried to sink the entire city and Chao withdrew his objection.

Part of my Season 10 teasers was DeMonde finding and keeping a Zygarde Cell. The Pokemon side of the plot got pretty sidelined considering how much I had going on otherwise with the admittedly more-important giant robot side of things, but I was able to put most of that into cutscenes. The backstory of Necrozma and Eternatus was completely my own creation, written out long, long before the Crown Tundra DLC released. Eternatus was originally slated to take on Necrozma's role as the Mr. Mind magic mushroom until Harpy said she wanted Mr. Bones for herself and was kind enough to play along with my backstory stuff. The Sealanders would potentially have made a comeback too for a small event where Necrozma awakened and needed to be contained before it could eat Alola's light, with Gerbera capturing it and teleporting away. Zygarde-form Necrozma was briefly considered as a way of getting Zeldoten out of Mr. Mind before the TE Pill detonated using the power of Ultra Wormholes, but the Hero's Sacrifice was more important to the story.

Sorry again for killing Zeldoten, however brief it lasted.

The Plot Itself

Mecha anime has been one of my biggest entertainment loves, second possibly only to giant monster fiction like Godzilla and Gamera. I grew up watching Power Rangers, I had Battletech toys, Metal Warriors for SNES was one of my favorite games, and then Gundam Wing aired on Toonami around the time we got the Internet for the first time and changed everything for me. I've wanted to do a full-on giant robot plot for awhile  - and not just individual events happen to have a lot of big robots, like Harpy's Greed invasion in Vegas. This being the big anniversary year, I figured why not? I was going to have my big, stupid, awesome giant robot plot and only Lord Timzonius was going to stop me!

Turns out he was busy and couldn't stop me.

Action! Drama! Giant fights! The Invasion/War of the Zonders was everything I'd hoped it would be and, while there were cuts and some hiccups along the way, I think it went very well.

Zonders

When I say Zonders here, I mean the Monster of the Week grunt type enemies like you'd see destroyed by a cool special attack in the last five minutes of the episode. The ones who were the average joes with a tragic backstory that got turned into monster robots. I deliberately only took two from the show itself and that's because they were the ones with the best connections to the rest of RP: the GaoGaiGar Zonder and the Zaku-looking Zonder that both appeared in, as the Barchives call it, The Spiral Queen's Betrayal. The original idea behind the Zonders' form (that I think the anime kind of slacked on after the first episode) is that the negativity in a person's heart is supposed to shape their form. A guilty adulterer turned into a snake, an old man sad about not getting to share his toys turned into one, an obnoxiously-lucky duck turned into a slot machine, etc. I got a few good events out of these and that was enough; RP is too busy for nothing but Monster of the Day events!

Mr. Mind

The first Zonderian to be revealed. I saw the Captain Marvel movie at some point in 2019, flying to or from my cousin's wedding, I think, and I enjoyed it. Not sure how that Billy Batson got to be Captain Marvel, but this isn't the Film Hoard. Anyway, seeing that got me looking up Mr. Mind on Youtube and Google and saw some funny stuff. My RP's usually rather light-hearted so he seemed like a good choice. There WAS another reason for picking him though and Gooper (and Cornwind too, I'm sure) knew it: Mr. Mind has a godbeast form, perfect for a boss of some sort. He got to be the little man of the Zonders, bitter that despite his power everyone looked down on him, even beings he considered beneath himself. He got psychic Starmen from the Mother/Earthbound series to be his minions.

While he ended up being the Final Boss of Dracoplot though, he and Gerbera were originally slated to, well, NOT be the last event. They swapped places with the Spiral Queen and would originally have been just a one-day event in which the Dark Axis launched its betrayal and tried taking Olympia over for themselves. Neither Gerbera or Mr. Mind would have been as powerful in this version and been defeated a lot more easily.

I'm rather proud of the backstory I crafted for Mr. Mind and his fictional race, the Sivana (named for Dr. Sivana from the Captain Marvel comics). Would you believe I more or less came up with a lot of it on the spot? Chao asked me to help set up Kanade finding some way to use the Godzilla Symphogear from the mobile game (RIP in Peace), so seeing as I already had two kaiju who associated with humans in RP (Mothra and Gamera) I threw together a story of a kaiju war where each side had human helpers using magic artifacts to gain powers. Kind of like a Symphogear! It also became a great way to get Baragon and some other smaller kaiju some respect, tie Mr. Mind to some of the kaiju, and unnecessarily explain why modern kaiju are so much bigger.

Don Karnage

While he wasn't my first choice to round out the Zonderians, I can honestly say that I don't regret casting Don Karnage as a badguy in an anime-style plot where flashy fights are the norm and style is a bit more important than substance at times. He provided a colorful flashiness to counter the too-serious Gerbera and the petulant Mr. Mind, a flamboyant duelist who enjoyed winning fights, especially if he cheated to win. He was a perfect fit for capturing the Cease and Desist from Parsee and being the villain of an event featuring ship to ship combat in the skies of Olympia.

Being, admittedly, the least important villain on the plot also made him a perfect Zonder to kill off and get the ball rolling on the Spiral Queen's big invasion. That it also served to awaken Yoshiko's Heart Star and demonstrate her growing power was just a bonus. The Air/Sky Pirates were a good addition to the Zonder forces because they provided a counterpart to the Beastmen of Gurren-Lagann. #Spoilers The Beastmen of Gurren-Lagann were an artificially created race of animal people designed to not have any Spiral Power so they can be used to suppress humans without contributing to the Spiral Nemesis themselves. #End Spoiler. Throwing in the transforming Biplane-esque Seekers from Transformers: Hearts of Iron also made it so I could consider this another year of Deceptiplot after last year's baddies were...GASP...Go-Bots!

The Spiral Queen, Nia Teppelin

What's a good Super Robot Story without a villain AND a tragic figure? The reason that Olympia was targeted with Zonder invasion and the reason that the Zonders didn't just try to destroy it immediately. Nia got introduced in Season 9 specifically so she didn't just appear at the beginning of Season 10 for people to start pointing fingers at her and going "There's the badguy!" She got to appear early to establish herself as being Deb's assistant, to establish herself in RP before the Zonders even appeared (publicly; King Dice was one all along) so she'd have an alibi, using Spiral Powers to teleport between Olympia and the Cathedral Terra as needed. She was both mastermind and victim, an unwilling tyrant that nevertheless was doing her best to balance her love for her former home and the Anti-Spiral's demand that she carry on his mission of suppressing life in the name of saving the universe.

#Gurren Lagann spoilers begin

While I borrowed HEAVILY from Gurren-Lagann, the series Nia originated in, I did change a few things. In the second half of the series, Nia is chosen at random (according to the story but c'mon) to be the emissary of the Anti-Spirals when humanity reaches one million people again after being suppressed by Lord Genome, the Spiral King, Nia's dad. She does a lot of bad stuff with hints of her original self popping in just enough to keep the Anti-Spirals from winning. The Spiral Nemesis isn't really defined in the series itself beyond having too many "Spiral lifeforms" will cause it to destroy the universe; I think supplemental materials say it's a giant black hole caused by too much Spiral power creating too much stuff. Anyway, Lazengan, Cathedral Terra, and the Anti-Spiral fighters and ships were all taken from Gurren-Lagann and used pretty much in their original roles, though Cathedral Terra was from the movie version; the series version was just the moon until the heroes took it over.

#Gurren-Lagann spoilers end

I deliberately avoided using Gurren-Lagann itself because while it's appropriate for the kinds of craziness ZFRP usually gets into, I didn't want the badguys having it and the heroes already had GaoGaiGar. Sanae DID get to use its signature attack, the Giga Drill Breaker, though. I enjoyed getting to write the scenes where her backstory was explored too. Her fate was never sealed in stone either; she could have been destroyed or spared without the event itself changing. Some of the aftermath might have been different and my epilogues would've changed too.

A small cut scene would have had Cathedral Terra stopping by where the Maw died, but I don't recall what purpose it was intended to serve.

Professor Gerbera a.k.a. Nu-Alex of the MALP-verse

Before I say anything else about Gerbera, I need to state that the original intention was that his home universe was the City of Beasts ultra grimdark RP universe that is sometimes joked about in chat. His references to "Cobbers" (pronounced like City) are to that original intention, but as time passed it really just made more sense to have him be from the MALP-verse, which was established in RP already and was also really, REALLY shitty already. We didn't need to add yet another universe to our lore. Making City of Beasts an in-universe nickname for MALP Zoofights City worked out for the best though when Goops surprisingly and kindly made Sectonia the MALP Widow Maker.

With that out of the way, Professor Gerbera was practically made to be in RP. He's a robot, he's evil, he has a really cool theme of his own, his in-show backstory was pretty ripe for the taking (just turn some time travel into dimensional travel), and he had the perfect Prime universe counterpart already in Nu Alex. This did cause some people to think he was a Dark Star, but that didn't happen because I already had my own universe to have copies in and Goops didn't want too many Dark Stars that weren't his, so Gerbera was (eventually) from MALP. Giving him an assistant in Metis aka MALP Aigis also worked out because - and it's easy to forget - that the Labrys that's been in RP since Vegas is also from MALP!

Even I forgot sometimes, I'll admit.

I'd originally picked him because I think he's a cool villain and I wanted an evil genius on the Zonder team, hence his efforts to research powerful, esoteric Pokemon and use them to turn Mr. Mind into a fully-frown Sivana. As time between seasons 9 and 10 went on though, I got more and more ideas about how to turn him into the real villain of the Zonders, someone who had had a shitty life and was using it as justification to do evil things to unrelated people until it was just utterly rubbed into his face that he was being a hypocrite. I'm rather surprised he was given a chance to surrender, honestly. He schemed and backstabbed, but after an exciting fight to write (I was up an extra hour or two the night before organizing screenshots after tracking down the episode Gerbera appeared in as a Gundam).

I was worried that the reveal that he was a Gundam would be spoiled by Sheep before I got a chance to do it myself. Cobramaru and the Cobra Colors are from the same series as Gerbera; I was concerned that he'd spend a lot of time randomly browsing the SD Gundam Force part of Gundam Wiki to see Gerbera.

Because he was spared though, I decided he was going to take advantage of it...and genuinely try to face turn. He went on a plot and got a decent ending that I'm tickled was referenced by Sheep during his wrap ups.

It didn't get a chance to appear in RP, but during a flashback and a...hallucination, I guess...Gerbera appeared in his original Gundam colors before turning evil. SD Gundam Force was a fun show, but one thing about Gerbera that I was NOT going to bring into RP was calling him...Madnug. Gundam spelled backwards. Captain Gundam, who was Nu-Alex's last faceclaim, called Gerbera that when he shed his armor for no reason and even for this silly show it was a bit TOO silly for RP.

Said the guy who had DeMonde and Zeldoten fight Meaner Weiner on Day 1 of Kuwahawi.

As Gooper pointed out to me though, Professor Gerbera and his little insurrection marked me finally bringing in the Dark Axis from the Rejected Content list! It's not just Sanae who got to ascend to being in RP thanks to Olympia. Grunt minions aside, I also tried to use some of the lesser characters from the anime for Gerbera's Dark Axis; he got the knightly Mercurius and Vayeate prominently as his bodyguards instead of the show's evil trio Zapper Zaku, Grappler Gouf, and Destroyer Dom, though those three did appear in the finale (with Dom even getting some dialogue). I almost used Cobra Color Black as a stealthy way to mark Gerbera as actually a Gundam, but at the time I had thought Sheep used Black already. It worked out though; having Cobra Color Black cameo in the Green Hell Zone was a nice touch.

Wriggle Nightbug

Wriggle is, admittedly, someone I threw into RP because I liked her design. It was pure fortune that I was able to come up with a fantastic role for her, a quasi-mystical character with ties to Mr. Mind that she wasn't aware of until Suwako, who was originally there just to cameo, made her more aware of what the little bug was. She was also a great reason to bring yet another Mothra into RP: the 2000s one who starred alongside Baragon! She might not have gotten to do a ton of stuff outside of the plot, but she'll be coming back to help Kanade in her quest to become Godzilla.

Sanae Kochiya

As has been pointed out in chat a few times, Harpy's Revue of Rejects plot from Season 9 has had plenty of ripples! It gave all of us a chance to bring back characters we'd considered and passed on for just one plot and quite a few stuck around! Byakuren ended up being Futo's cool aunt and helped win the King of Fighters tournament, Baragon's gotten to stick around and make a few more appearances, and for my own part I got to bring Sanae Kochiya, the Dr. Pepper to Reimu's Pepsi/Coke, into RP after she and Suwako had been mentioned in posts from time to time in previous seasons. Part of the fanon, as I understand it, is she's not just from outside of Gensokyo originally but she's also a HUGE nerd, including enjoying mecha anime. She got to appear a few more times in Season 9, mostly for the Revue, but when I decided I was going to do a Super Robot plot, she was primed and ready to be the star! She was going to pilot the robot and beat the bad guys and...

...and then got replaced as my Main Character by a certain Alternate Universe Meatball. Don't get me wrong, Sanae still got to be important! She was on the frontline of the Zonder Invasion and got in all kinds of great robot battles, including fighting Hanamaru's Big DuO first. She just ended up getting fewer appearances than she would have if Yoshiko weren't around. She got to be the hero though, using her Shrine Maiden powers to outpunch a moon-sized mech. Few of my characters have done something that cool and it'll be awhile before that achievement gets topped.

Ironically, in the GaoGaiGar anime, GaoFighGar is supposed to be the improved, upgraded version of GaoGaiGar. I once heard GaoGaiGar the robot described as being rather slapdash and thrown together while GaoFighGar was planned. It got to be a fun twist turning the roles around since GaoFighGar got introduced first because, frankly, I like it better, but then it got destroyed and a "slapdash" robot made in a hurry with the best tech Deb could remember replaced it, which I think is fun. Should I do more GaoGaiGar stuff in the future, there's a couple of upgraded versions I can pull on. Someday.

Suwako was brought in for a cameo or two after after the previously-mentioned Spiral Queen's Betrayal and just...stuck around. Not really doing much at first, but then she got to participate in Hinaplot a bit and then became a bit more important when she got her own role in Dracoplot, dispensing knowledge and then filling in for Baragon as a Guardian Monster alongside Ghidorah and Mothra to battle the Sivana.

Doktor Lucille Gear-DeMonde

Whew! What a roller coaster this old gal has been on now that she's...not so old.

Originally brought in to serve as a plot device for why Zeldoten would be able to come back to RP in the likely scenario she'd lost Big Bar Brawl 6 thanks to a 3rd Party Feat the GM allowed, even recommended, the use of that allowed DeMonde to bring someone back to life with a sufficiently-difficult skill check instead of some magic power, leading to her RP incarnation being prone to prefer mundane means of medicine and treatment supported by alchemy rather than going magic first like the White Mages did in early RP; Helios has since proven himself capable in non-magical doctoring and we have other guys like Dr. Stegz in the hospital staff, but I like to think that DeMonde was original in her approach when introduced!

It still feels a bit...cheaty to give her a de-aging from Midwich when it didn't any other character that way, but I don't think anyone is complaining. It also gave me the chance to have her go through a rather unique experience in RP: a second chance at a mid-life crisis! Y'all know I'm a bit overeager when it comes to pairings, but even I was caught off-guard when suddenly DeMonde and Game Gear were hooking up over after a snarky, confrontational courtship and they have made for a surprisingly decent couple despite not having much in common. They fit well together, I think, because they don't have unreasonable expectations for each other and still have their own lives. I also find it funny to make Step-mom Gale jokes; just when you think they're old, they pull a DeMonde and are fresh again. I've always tried to portray the doktor as minimal nonsense, grumpy, and intent on doing the right thing no matter how much it annoys her; suddenly she found herself in a more emotionally-vulnerable state of mind with a love interest, hobbies, a bigger family, and potential threats to all of those (Dreamcast, Nobu, probably other stuff) that were mostly in her head, vulnerable to the manipulations of a psychic worm that her troubled daughter had shrugged off.

I'm pretty sure it was obvious that she was the Gene Queen even if I tried to portrayed her alchemy in new ways. That awful generated accent was probably more than enough; even I could barely understand it and I was the one using it and even manually toned it down a bit. Yeah, it made its brief appearances and went away so we could understand her.

A thing I didn't really do well was trying to imply that the Sirenhead was a creature created by the Gene Queen to mimic Kira*Miki long enough to draw some Kobbers into a trap and get rid of a few. It was also kind of vague that the Gene Queen personality needed Mr. Mind to jumpstart it.

One of the most consistent themes with DeMonde is her growing family. Seemed like every year she adopted a new kid: Zeldoten (technically just introducing her), then Oda and Missy and Miu. I guess you could say she 'adopted' Gale and Sumireko too, but that'd be weird. Years of a growing family warming up her heart and making her less of a curmudgeon, all leading up to frankly one of my favorite moments all year long: DeMonde vs. her family in a battle to save her from the Zonders. It's rather hard to have a scene with all of them together though, seeing as that's four other users' characters in the family, so it really meant a lot to me that Brine, Goops, Chao, and Jumpropeman let me write these big, giant family scenes with their characters and minimum oversight. I consulted with their about particular things and the overall tone, but for the most part they let me unleash my terrible evil upon their girls.

Because as characters appear in more seasons, there's less and less for them to do and eventually they'd start getting retired. Hell, Zeldoten is taking at least a temporary break and if not for GaleMonde the doktor herself would be taking a bow. (If you're worried that I'm keeping her around with nothing to do, don't be! Bree's idea to have Medicine learn...um...medicine from her is just one thing to keep her busy.) So before anyone retired, I really, REALLY wanted them all to have one big moment together as a family, risking life and limb to save a woman who had all touched their lives and been touched right back, a grand spectacle of a heartfelt battle to show off as much of all of their powers and skills and courage as I possibly could!

I've mentioned before in chat how much I really, REALLY like Final Fantasy 14: Heavensward and I really LOVED the music for its final boss, Nidhogg, to the point where it had to be the music. The drama and action, the way it built tension over the three acts. The battle against DeMonde was the Final Boss Fight of five years of Zeldoten and DeMonde RP and it needed music to match the scale and intensity of the occasion. Hell, I've been listening to it as I write this part of the blogpost.

I love a GOOD fight in my fiction, one where both sides are evenly matched, honestly trading blows instead of the bad guy inflicting a brutal beatdown only for the hero to, at the last moment, get a sudden power-up or super skill that wins them the battle in a single, undeserved blow, and I did my best to make sure Zeldoten vs. DeMonde was specifically the highlight of the event for me, even if Zeldoten inflicting an irreparable wound on Mr. Mind was the climax. A great to show off their alchemy like I'd never done before; I had the Alchemist formula list open as I wrote, going up and down looking for interesting spells for them to use in creative ways, showing a brutal fight between mother and daughter, two geniuses locked in a brutal struggle with nothing silly to be said and nobody to distract them. Victory not through random chance or "The Power of Friendship", but through cunning and sacrifice, like using an indestructible crab as a hidden shield.

Frankly, if that's the last big thing she does in RP, I can be satisfied. Hopefully it won't be though.

Yoshiko Filia Tsushima and Samson

Yoshiko, the Yohane of Dark Star, noisy martial arts lady, pilot of Getter Robo, Tsubasa's Precious Meatball, and considered by some to be one of stars of the Dark Matter plot!

Would you believe that Yoshiko didn't even exist until APRIL 2020?

...which would be a bit of an exaggeration. Only a bit though.

The first concepts of the character that would eventually become Yoshiko was seeing a lot of neat Skullgirls art. I'd already RP'd as Big Band as part of the Curse and there wasn't much I needed to read on the Skullgirls Wiki, so I decided I would RP her in Season 10. At the time, I had no idea what I'd do with her except what ended up being the first post of The Invasion/War of the Zonders: crash landing in the middle of the city being chased by a Starman. Not much of a role, but then she'd wander around being a talking head (of hair) for awhile.

Meanwhile, Gooper had stated that it'd be okay for people to have their own characters from the Dark Matter universe, just not to the extent that he allowed participation in the Curse or JRM allowed people to have Salvagers. One hero, one villain, and I had no idea who I would pick for either, so any time the subject came up I just shrugged and went "I dunno." And this continued for awhile until I started getting ideas and listened to a lot of super robot anime soundtracks. It didn't hurt that Covid meant I was working from home starting on St. Patrick's Day, giving me a lot more time and freedom to think of RP ideas in-between working on work stuff. Chao had shared with me some of his ideas for his Dark Matter characters, including bringing in an alternate of his Season 9 star, Hibiki, a version drawn from the Symphogear mobile game that was Hibiki but...sullen, moody, withdrawn. The two Hibikis looked alike but were almost complete opposites in terms of personality.

So with ambitions of bringing in more super robot stuff, because honestly Getter Robo Armageddon was a great show, I decided in early April that I'd take inspiration from Chao and...bring in a few Yohane, one who was just as eccentric and weird, but in vastly different ways. It was about the time I wrote my introductory blogpost that I'd made a couple of deals, trading one picture of Yoshiko for a referral in a mobile game and then outright commissioning the picture of Yoshiko's Getter Team. So a couple of weeks away from the beginning of Season 10, I had a second meatball but with one issue: how would I introduce her?

It was a surprising epiphany when I came up with the solution: I had a character with an introduction but nothing to do and another character that had things to do but no good way to introduce her. So...why not make them THE SAME CHARACTER? Filia ended up being Yoshiko's middle name (subtly alluded to when Yoshiko put her initials into Congorilla) and she'd been brought to this Earth by Zonders! A bit of a clumsy origin, but I think it worked out really well.

If I had one regret about it though, it's that I didn't do a great job of providing reasons for her to sometimes be Yoshiko and sometimes be Filia before revealing they were the same person when Gerbera turned her into a Gigantimax Grimmsnarl. I gave some reasons in chat, but they weren't well considered, IMO. Something about swapping identities to keep from being followed, something like that. Oh well.

Another thing I meant to do is make her a bit flirtier overall, chatting up a few other folks as a way to show her being different from Yohane, but this just led to one of the biggest mistakes of RP: Tsubasa x Yoshiko. We might be phasing out tractors for most things, but the day it gave me a 21 for Yoshiko liking the rice balls and Samson a 1 for liking them was a precious gift to illustrate that Yoshiko and her hair are both the same person and different people, sharing a body while each getting part of her mind. This I hope to explore more in Season 11; I feel like I really underutilized Samson outside of events where he helped Yoshiko.

Making my Dark Star villain her friend Hanamaru was also rather spontaneous. Sure, she'd been introduced in the blogpost and mentioned in a couple of other posts, but actually deciding to make her a bad guy to the post where she fought Sanae was maybe two or three weeks apart. Maybe less; not 100% sure on that. But it was a great way to show off how broken Yoshiko was. Sure, she'd mentioned it in the bar at least once, but a great writing tip I hear a bunch is "show, don't tell". Yoshiko needed a chance to show her Survivor's Guilt and just how personally important it was to her to defeat Dark Matter. Big DuO was a pretty obvious choice in my mind too; Chao and I are both big fans of the anime Big O and we'd discussed in private the possibility of one of us using it, bouncing it back and forth like a tennis match until one of us pulled the trigger. We'll eventually get everything from Big O into ZFRP.

Yoshiko is just way too fun to write though sometimes and she'd probably have come back even if Tsubasa wasn't getting her own big plot next year. They're both adorable dorks who take themselves way too seriously and need someone to awkwardly hang out being awkward. Hopefully she'll be able to contribute meaningfully to Tsubasa's Destiny and I've floated an idea or two to Pitohui about it. (Okay, it was a cool one-liner, but it was a GOOD cool one-liner.)

Vincent and Koakuma Simmons

Almost forgot to write about this! I never would've forgiven myself if I didn't say something about it.

So to start: I think it's great that the relationship between the most flamboyant Kamen Rider and a demonic library assistant is quite frankly the most normal pairing I have in RP. Springing from a chance meeting where Koakuma just wanted to talk to someone else who had experience with sentient buildings to fighting strange ghosts in an arcade and eventually palling around enough that Vince mustered real courage and asked for a date. Del put it very well in the speech he wrote for the wedding: they meshed together in a way they could build upon each other and help each other improve without relying on villain attacks or Kamen Rider stuff to push the relationship along.

The day Del PM'd me asking what Koakuma would say if Vincent asked for her hand in marriage was just perfect. If Zeldoten vs. DeMonde was a way to cap off their years together, Vince and Koa getting married was the perfect destination for an unusual friendship and a colorful romance and I wouldn't have had it any other way. Sorry we weren't able to do it soon than the literal last minute, but that's life. Thank you, Del, for collaborating on a fantastic pairing and a great wedding to go with it.

In Conclusion

It was a long, hectic year of awesome action scenes and ridiculously melodramatic people yelling at each other. While I could be more satisfied with how things went, it wouldn't be MUCH more. I'm glad I got things wrapped up in early October though instead of trying to elbow my way into reserving the last two regular days; what I ended up doing would've torpedoed my plans. Another huge takeaway after pre-writing all of those huge battles and events and cutscenes is that Jumpropeman really deserves SO MUCH credit for writing the Brawl every year; I had only a few characters to work with and didn't need to write that much at a time compared to him. I don't know how he does it and, frankly, I'm not sure I WANT to know!

Hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on my plots as much as I enjoyed writing them down!