For something that was kind of spur-of-the-moment and not entirely planned, I think this image is the best possible way to summarize how "Margit and the Clovenix Conundrum" went: one goofy Pokemon trainer surrounded by all of her favorite Pokemon. The plot was originally billed as two separate plots: "Margit and the Clovenix Conundrum" and "The Biggest Memory of All" because I wanted to maintain the illusion that this was going to be two separate plots this year before I eventually linked them together as two evil halves of one plot to use magic to rewrite reality. I couldn't find any mention of this in my 2021 or 2022 plot recaps, so I think I said this in chat, but this year's plot was originally conceived of as being an Agama plot for 2022 that ended up getting pushed back a setting. Before I go deep into the history of the plot though, let's talk about some cut content! Cut content is always fun to discuss!
Cut Content
Originally there were going to be a lot more solo posts where Yohane and Big O battled various giant robots from other animes because I wanted to save the actual Megadeuses for plot events! There was some private chatter between me and Chao about trying to make sure we used everything from the Big O anime and by God did I managed to squeeze in everything! Even the car used by Roger Smith, Big O's protagonist, was used by Chris Yukine and Yohane as their car. In hindsight, the only thing off the top of my head that maybe didn't get used was a motorcycle.
Another Big O-related concept that I never really got around to doing was showing Yohane training with Robot Corps commander Nico Yazawa, Yoshiko's friend. You might recall Nico made it onto my 2024 Profiles list and then only made a few cameos during the year. These scenes would have been mostly to establish that Yohane didn't just climb into a huge robot and instantly be a super ace pilot.
The battle against Vyglass at the Team Karma HQ went through a lot of different ideas before I finally settled on Admin Sierra piloting that mecha, which actually does appear in the Pokemon Clover fangame (more on that later). I'd been pulling a lot of plot material from various Pokemon fangames, particularly grabbing quite a few Fusions from Pokemon Infinite Fusions to use as plot mooks and bit roles. One idea for battling Vyglass would have been him using the Fusion technology to unleash one of Infinite Fusion's Triple Fusions of the original three Regis. While a cool idea, I was having too much trouble justifying it in-character: Regigigas made his bros and they were made of rock, metal and liquid. How would Team Karma have been able to make copies of them to fuse in the first place? Another cut concept for the Team Karma HQ battle would have been Vyglass prematurely reactivating the Parasector to summon a horde of brainwashed members and their Pokemon to battle the Kobbers, including Kymmi, but it was a trick that was only going to work once and was better saved for building up to the finale.
An idea that ended up being converted to the scene where Chris Yukine found the kidnapped South American colonel, El Tigre, would have been Vanessa and Chris actually having a fight with the two of them blasting away at each other while arguing ethics. Kirika would have shown up to punctuate a point from Chris about the difference between them: Chris had people she could trust to back her up. With a scythe, naturally. The Kirika part ended up being transferred to solo posts of Chris and Kirika thwarting Novella trying to raid a WRO facility for information.
Doing an FF14 dungeon is neat and all, but I felt I was better able to show off the depths of Delilah's internal workings with the informal "Ask Delilah" plot event where her servitors would escort Kobbers inside of her to talk about her origins. Raiding WRO's HQ was a more productive use of plot events anyway, forcing her to burn most of her resources to achieve as much as she did.
Like the Gigadeus, this particular Big O robot only appeared in the manga. It was never given a name in the story it appeared in and was only described as a blue Megadeus. I have nicknamed it Big TriO due to its resemblance to Big O. Had it shown up in the story, it would have been a side project of Cagliostro's that she would have used to fight against Yohane and Big O, either during the kidnapping of Delilah or at some other point. I also briefly considered having Cagliostro use it in the finale, but decided that after her humiliation that it was better to just have her sit out of fighting during the finale. Its role in the story wasn't necessary since I remembered I had Big Venus I could show off against Yohane. While I had to color the Osrail picture because there weren't any good shots of it in the anime, I had to color this one myself because the Big O manga was completely in black-and-white.
I don't remember if I had any specific plans for R. Dorothy after she was rescued by Yohane and Chris at the beginning of the year, just that she would have a potential ability to sense Megadeuses due to being designed by Cagliostro to track down Archeotech. One thing specific she would have done is stare at the ocean seemingly at random, which would later be revealed to be Cagliostro watching her from Big TriO. I put her in Journey's End as an employee to reflect her role as a maid in the Big O anime, which made her convenient to respond to things in the bar when JRM wasn't available with Miyoi.
HE CAN'T STOP WINNING. I mentioned this to Chao once or twice but Potemkin and 2B were originally going to PREMIERE in Season 14 as less protagonistic characters. They would still have been employees of Whalestrand Recovery Operations (WRO) and would have had smaller appearances in soloposts fighting Novella and the Warriors of Myth and Legend. They likely would have fought the Kobbers at some point to protect a WRO facility just doing their jobs. But then I decided to have them quasi-premiere during last year's Neo Neo Kobber Blood Bowl game and...now Potemkin is one of my most successful Brawl entrants ever.
2B almost served an antagonistic role towards the end of the year by being used to assassinate Margit and prevent her from finding Szilard's Engine; Vanessa would have sent out a sleeper agent activation code that all WRO robot employees would have. Between the Deux ex Machina, the Pizza Plex, and Lovely Frederika's coercion though, it made too much sense for any robots who were Kobbers adjacent to be checked for that sort of thing so a copy of 2B was sent to be able to get close enough for Glinda to teleport in. Potential lead-ins for the plot included Potemkin also being there and being forced to fight 2B/2Copy, G'Day the Goomy evolving to Sligoo or Turbann evolving to a Fakemon called Skulkraken to deflect a sword blade, and even R. Dorothy getting involved. We may yet see Sligoo and Skulkraken in the future though.
The first part of the finale was originally going to have a very different lead-up. Instead of Margit disappearing during the finale of Cornwind's plot, she would have been beckoned to Krakenspine Mountain by Clovenix. On her way there, she would have met up with Garvan and Macka, who would either be in Big O with Yohane or 'driving' the Library after being called by Delilah. Krakenspine Mountain would have been covered in some kind of impenetrable force field that Big O and the Library couldn't pierce on their own, so Garvan and Macka would have combined their powers to fire off a Wave Motion Cannon blast that wouldn't have penetrated the shield but instead lifted the mountain off the ground, forcing Vanessa to drop the shield and send out an army of Megadeus mooks like the one from the 2023 teaser post to kill them. Margit would have slipped in to go after Vyglass while Yohane fought mooks until the Kobbers arrived for Part 1.
One reason this didn't work in my mind was that if there was a huge shield, how were the brainwashed Team Karma mooks going to get there? It would have also been really obvious and alerted EVERYONE that the shit was happening there, so I ended up going with Alexander using a super cloaking device that Clovenix could guide people to. Koakuma as Novella would have also showed up to cover Margit, except the reveal that Koakuma was Novella would have happened then instead of when it did.
The showdown between Margit and Vyglass before Part 2 of the finale also went through some changes on both sides of the showdown. A lot of changes now that I'm thinking about it. While the dialogue largely stayed the same, the actual combatants changed quite a bit. Vyglass, in his arrogance, would have originally had Clovenix conjure Fakemon Primals from the Pokemon Insurgence fangame to highlight his arrogance and belief that Clovenix was greater than the gods. This idea was in place until only about a week before the finale actually happened when inspiration struck me: the first Margit/Vyglass battle was Margit's present team vs her original friends that Vyglass took from her, so when not have the rematch be Vyglass trying to take more friends from her? I think it worked out well.
On the Margit side of things, I had originally intended for the little PokeBall charm that Delilah left for her to do something else entirely: summoning Pokemon to her side! In a nod to Final Fantasy 14, the charm would have allowed Margit to bring all of her Pokemon friends, whether they were caught by her or not, to Mt. Clover to help her battle the Primal Legendaries! The first part of the fight would have largely gone the same, the Primals fighting Team Margit and eventually overwhelming them with the power of "My Arceus shoots Infinity Plus One lasers.". Vyglass would have taunted Margit about who she was sending out next, so she would have held up the charm and gone "I choose you! ALL of you!" as Primal Regigias swung a rock at her, only for the Alpha Klawf to punch it in the face as the Margit Army rushed in. Laser Eyes Margit was part of the plan though too, so I felt having the crystal do one Deux ex Machina kind of thing was plenty, especially because y'all were kind enough to help me with another "Hopes and Dreams" moment.
Even as I was collecting images for prewriting that battle, Vyglass' team changed. It was originally going to be even more of a mirror match, but I couldn't find any Paradox fanart for Inkay and only a Past Paradox art for Clobbopus, so I went with uniformity and evolved all the Pokemon and made them Future Paradox variants, which I feel worked out because Vyglass is the kind of snob who would care more about evolving Pokemon so they're powerful than having cute little cephalopod friends.
Even Team Margit had a bit of cut content as I was writing the battle scenes! After Margit used the power of Faith to become Primal Margit, all of her Pokemon would have been similarly transformed, achieving their own Mega forms (in Trigger the Octillery's case, I would have used a Beta Octillery) but I wasn't satisfied with the art I was finding for the "Mega" forms since Clobbopus and Inkay aren't evolved.
Another finale idea I had cut months ago was having Clovenix change into the final boss from the Pokemon Insurgency fangame, Arkhaos. While it's cool and its PokeDex entry sounds like something a bitter loser like Vyglass would come up with ("It lives between dimensions and hatches Arceus eggs.") I took the better route of paying someone actual money to draw a fantastic Gigantamax Clovenix back in August. Yeah, I had a lot of this stuff planned VERY far in advance. (The same artist drew Macka and Garvan in their white robes.)
The Initial Idea
Take a moment to ask yourself "Why did Draco start this section with a picture of Flannery?" I'll wait.
Okay, I've waited long enough. The reason Flannery is here is because this was originally going to be a Flannery plot! For a quick recap, Flannery's reason for being in Agama was because she'd been suffering from depression caused by losing a gym battle to a single Shroomish, inspired by Harpy's Shroomish-only Gen 3 Pokemon run. At the time, the only solid plot point I had was, oddly, the finale. "YOU AND WHAT GYM BADGES?!" was one of the first ideas I'd come up with, with Flannery chucking a Heat Badge at Vyglass and goading him into a battle. So what happened?
A few things happened. One of them is called Clownpiece, who needed my precious plot time even more than Flannery. The other is called the Creator, the mastermind behind Goops' 2021 plot, who gave Flannery the confidence-building character arc she needed. Clownpiece battled space dragons and Flannery saved the Ruined Regi Trio (also, by the way, from Pokemon Clover!), putting that plot on hold until Clownpiece's arc was finally resolved.
Pokemon Clover, if you don't know what it is, is a very clever and very vulgar Pokemon fan game based on 4chan memes and features an entire Pokedex of original Fakemon with Clovenix as the "Box Legendary" as well as a completely-original story and a fantastic soundtrack. I've never played it, but I've seen enough to know you shouldn't play it unless you're into 4chan humor.
In the game, Team Karma was basically a joke run by Kymmi while Vyglass was running the serious, secret version called Neo Team Karma that was actually going after Clovenix. Yes, the Mech actually does appear in the game and you battle against it with your Pokemon.
It's time for Round 2 of taking a moment to ask yourself something, this time "How do giant robots and this Szilard's Engine thing fit into it?" I'm not waiting as long for you to ask that though, so here's the answer!
Novella
Koakuma and Touhou Lost Word, the mobile game that keeps on giving to my RP. This particular version of her, the Butler Koakuma, has a Last Word spellcard by the name of...Szilard's Engine. I've had the character maxed out for awhile and she's a really good character. After seeing her use her Last Word on so many enemies for grinding purposes, I got curious and Googled "Szilard's Engine" to see if it was based off of anything like a lot of Touhou stuff is and found the Wikipedia article.
The short version of Szilard's Engine is a supernatural demon knows which side of an empty box a single particle of gas is in so it can block off that side and use a piston on the other side to get free energy. Yes, the actual description of Szilard's Engine includes a supernatural demon.
The Szilard's Engine attack itself has Koakuma dropping a ton of gears on the enemy. Very steampunk-y. A lot like a certain Final Fantasy 14 boss with a ridiculously-convoluted storyline: Alexander, who's final boss fight has you fighting Alexander, who summons Alexander as a special attack while you're fighting inside of Alexander. I'd say it makes sense, but no, it doesn't.
As the gears began to turn in my head, I started to develop the idea of Szilard's Engine as more than just a thought experiment. A chamber half-filled with gas became a supernatural engine that functioned by burning memories to change reality. A supernatural demon became a demon summoned to manipulate the power of memories into such a device (Koakuma). The device became a living being in its own right with a divine control of knowledge (Alexander). The next part of it was connecting these two characters and a history together. Mandela Effect played a large role in writing the backstory for the plot as I researched the Library of Alexandria to build my timeline; some of the sources I found suggested the real Library didn't actually burn down.
So why not make them both true? Szilard's Engine being used to induce the Mandela Effect, making the people of Alexandria think the Library had burned down by burning their memories of it to then teleport it into hiding by a demon and a Primal who were afraid of what they'd help make, afraid that they couldn't trust themselves to keep it, and even more afraid that they didn't know how to get rid of it.
Once upon a time in late 2023, Jumpropeman said he thought it was going to be Koakuma meeting with Delilah and it ended up being Novella.
ahu
So what's the deal with "Novella"? Why make it our Koakuma and not just a Heart Star or MALP version of her? Because why would Delilah Prime be hanging out with AU Koakumas? Besides really liking the name for a Library demon, the idea behind Novella was to provide a sort of false antagonist for "The Biggest Memory of Them All" who would be trying to find Szilard's Engine and have a cool stable of henchmen. Koakuma would assume the title of Novella for protection; Vanessa wouldn't be able to associate her with the Kobbers if she used a name none of them knew, preventing the salty villain from retaliation. The disguise also served as a way to keep spies in the bar from knowing it was her looking for the Engine, her not knowing exactly who to trust since she'd been inactive for Agama. If I'd remembered to do more Novella posts, she would have repeatedly said to call her Novella and only say "My name is Novella" in the finale.
People seemed to react very badly to the idea of her being antagonistic after she'd been a hotel manager and Drown Yer Mates champion and Chao rightfully pointed out she should have let Patchouli in on it. In hindsight, I'd probably have done this angle differently.
She was originally intended to maintain the Novella persona all the way to the plot finale, where she'd unmask herself for Margit and reveal her true name actually was Novella for a power-up.
So what's with the name thing? It's inspired by Koakuma being a fan name for the character and is based on the supernatural/Fae concept that names hold power and that if someone knows your real name, then they have power over you. Like the fantasy stories of a fairy going "May I have your name?" and then taking it from you when you say it. Koakuma would stop being "Novella" to keep Szilard's Engine hidden and, as Goops correctly deduced, Koakuma told her name to Vince on their wedding night and accidentally exposed the Engine enough for WRO to be able to start looking for it. Delilah would do the same thing, no longer "Alexander" to similarly protect the Engine from being found, though Vanessa would force her to reveal her true name.
So what's up with the Warriors of Myth and Legend? The name sounded really cool and it was inspired by the faceclaims, Hololive English 1st Generation "Myth". There was a great-looking set of Myth-themed Kamen Riders on Danbooru, so I nabbed the pictures and came up with cool Rider names and some powers for them. They got to make the occasional appearance in posts out of their Rider personas so I could show that Novella was out there doing stuff even if I couldn't directly address her yet. Because I don't want to make you ask yourself another question, I'm going to answer this one preemptively: the Warriors of Myth and Legend are kind of like a blend of Gloria's summons and Parsee's clones, self-aware entities but summoned with magic, though the Rider aspects were, in-universe, designed by Koakuma with help from Vince and Dawn. The Dawn connection never came up on-screen though and I never told Cornwind, so shame on me. There's a chance they could return if need be.
The Library of Alexandria Crew
While I discussed Delilah last year, I did so mainly outside the context of this plot because I didn't want to spoil much of what would happen this year. With her backstory revealed though, I can talk more about her, Garvan, and Macka.
Where Novella was set up to be a decoy antagonist, Delilah was set up to be the protagonist side of the plot, keeping her own secrets and doing what she could to keep Szilard's Engine safe by keeping herself hidden away with circumstances slowly drawing her out of her shell. She was, perhaps, drawn out more quickly than I originally intended but oh well.
So we formally got to learn that Delilah is the Primal Alexander from FF14. Or a version of it. Between JRM's Ingrid lore and what I know of how Primal summoning goes, there could easily be multiple Alexanders out there in the Eorzea multiverse and I wanted to play into that to create some tension. I've said it before (even in-character with Cagliostro) but the ability to just revive characters once a plot is over can kill the tension of a plot; Goops once joked in chat that villains have to plan around Stella's money and I have to plan around a wizard snapping their fingers to bring someone back to life, so I had to make it clear in-character that Delilah couldn't just be revived or even just re-summoned. According to the Final Fantasy wiki, Primals have "continuity of consciousness each summoning" so maybe in FF14 it would have worked to just summon Delilah back, but that doesn't make for much tension.
The FF14 portrayal of Alexander helped to influence Delilah's behavior as a Primal. FF14 hints that Alexander caused a time loop where it caused itself to be summoned and then eventually got itself frozen into some kind of temporal stasis to prevent its power from being used to muck around with time. I wanted Delilah to be similarly self-aware, using agents and giant robots to go out and do things to minimize how much energy she needed to take from the Earth and the people who visit the Library, building golems like Garvan and Macka to go out and collect matter and energy to be used as fuel. It also is why Delilah was so adverse to things like the Neural Parasites from last year and the false gods conjured by the Moon this year; she sees too much of what she could have and could still be in them and wanted them destroyed. The Orbs themselves she just saw as a threat to herself personally.
I would have to say that of my Season 14 cast of characters at least, Delilah is one of the most powerful, second probably to Clownpiece in terms of raw power but she also has the power of knowledge, with a good justification for not just walking out to every plot and giving every bad guy - including Democurus, the Pizza Church Shill - a giant punch. Walking around as a giant mecha is very energy intensive and she's got her foundation in a very comfortable groove. Will we see "Alexander" on plots again? Probably, but hopefully not too often.
When the Librarian is away, the Croation Cat will play! Macka got to do a lot more things this year, though I'd meant to have her doing more stuff as the Big O emissary with Yohane. She got to shine more this year as Delilah's agent, going on plots and hanging out in the bar and touching upon her origins as a failed attempt to make Short Garvan. I would have loved to have had her do some super cool spy stuff like last year, but she served well in the role of assisting Delilah with her projects or going out on the plots far away from Whalestrand and setting up gizmos and stuff. After Chloe gave her the Magic Energy-Absorbing Robe, I had it drawn. It'll probably even get to be her Season 14 Profile Picture while I slowly move away from using Faceclaims for the Library assistants; I'd pretty much burned through all of the Arknights Doctor art that wasn't comical or also featuring tons of other characters.
Furnace Girl might not have had an Idolplot for her to attach herself to this year, but I'm glad I was able to have her continuing with the idol path this year, even if it wasn't a huge focus of her character arc. No, for Garvan, this was the year of meeting people who were around her height and getting beaten up by them. From lording over Zyzyx to getting clawed up trying to befriend the Pale Death to having to fight Mega Maple, Garvan was living the high life and demonstrating that a lot of her combat prowess was "be bigger than the other guy so they can't damage you as much". As the more emotional servitor of Delilah, she got plenty of screentime going out on plots where someone nice was needed too. She was always going to get a big moment in the finale performing an emotional sacrifice, though publicly revealing this picture of her wasn't intentional; I'd just forgotten that I hadn't shown it off yet. As mentioned above, the original version of the finale had Garvan lifting Krakenspine Mountain several inches off the ground, another version had her absorbing a long-range blast from Big Venus instead of being point blank.
If I post this blog before her epilogue, Garvan will be fine. She may potentially get some kind of scene with her 'other mom', Koakuma, in the off-season.
Vortexer will return in Kobvengers: Argogame, along with the rest of the gang.
Whalestrand Recovery Operations and Team Karma
Our villains for the year. Deliberately designed to initially be innocuous and seemingly-benevolent to give no indication that they were going to eventually due for a Kobbering, kind of like Griff Enterprises except actually looking good instead of "obviously awful people but they obey the law so we can't smash them".
The Team Karma of Pokemon Clover was obviously the inspiration for the RP one. A lot of the changes I made to the group were to make it less meme-y than the source material. Within Pokemon Clover, Team Karma was seen as a harmless group that was a bunch of eccentric and not-very-threatening trainers who were mostly in it for the money. Kymmi was publicly the leader of the group and that carried over to RP, but one of the biggest differences I made to the group was that while the group could still be considered harmless and full of bad trainers, it was because the public facade was that Team Karma would help them become better trainers and Kymmi went from being a meme (TVTropes says she's based on the Know-Your-Meme mascot) to being a legitimately knowledgeable Pokemon professor. In RP, she was the team co-leader who helped to develop Pokemon Fusion technology while in the game she was a decoy leader who was being controlled by Vyglass through...*ahem*...unsavory means. You can look her up on TVTropes but be prepared for a very 4chan explanation.
Of all the things about Pokemon Clover that I used, Vyglass got some of the most extreme changes from the source material. For one thing, as I understand it, he's not mentioned in the main story of the game AT ALL. Kymmi leads Team Karma until you've beaten the Pokemon League and the League Champion, making Vyglass and Neo Team Karma, which technically exists in RP, entirely post-game content. According to Pokemon Clover, he actually DID create the game's world of Fochun with the help of Clovenix! He existed in another world with Pokemon but was too immature to actually get a Pokemon partner; this manifested in his complete inability to battle well and his lack of interest in raising his own Pokemon, just studying them. He became a Pokemon Professor though to make him competent enough to start forming a Pokemon organization while maintaining the game version's desire to reshape the world into something more in line with his values.
Instead of completely hiding behind a goofy Team Karma though, he became the public leader of the group to start converting others to worshipping Clovenix while maintaining the not-named Neo Team Karma behind the scenes to perform crimes to fund the group's worship of Clovenix, and instead of Clovenix being his imaginary friend given life (not so weird in Pokemon, when I think about it) it became basically a Primal created by his ancestor with Cagliostro's help. From what I've seen of Pokemon Clover (admittedly, I haven't played it myself or even watched Let's Plays of everything) he seemed like the kind of guy who would build a team to push his own agenda without seeing the members as necessarily being worthwhile outside of their use to him, especially one Margit Rosenqvist who was succeeding without him.
The Mech piloted by Sierra in an event was actually in Pokemon Clover and battled in front of a sleeping Clovenix. With Vanessa and WRO as his partners, it actually made sense in RP for Vyglass to have a giant robot of his own. I even lifted some of his dialogue before battling with Margit from Pokemon Clover.
One thing we didn't get to see in RP that happened in-game is that immediately after getting beaten, Vyglass realizes what an awful person he is and how awful his plan was before banishing himself back to his own world, leaving Clovenix behind. He can repent in the Weavworld Punishment Dimension instead.
Believe it or not, the trio of Team GO Rocket admins from Pokemon GO weren't originally going to be part of the plot. Cliff was conceived of as someone who could appear during Brine's battle aboard the black market barge and later be used to start leading the Kobbers to the dark side of Team Karma. They made for convenient plot NPCs who could either be battled or grilled for information while fitting the theme of being bad Pokemon people. Team GO Rocket being explained in RP as leftovers/holdouts of Team Rocket after Giovanni was arrested back in Olympia was a good excuse for them to be hiring themselves out to Team Karma to help smuggle Pokemon and Parases to the Parasector to manufacture Clovenix worship and Sierra worked as an aide to Vyglass to start showing that there was a second Team Karma that Kymmi wasn't aware of.
Just because you're a bad guy doesn't mean you're a "bad guy". Clovenix was always at the heart of this plot and of all the Fakemon or Pokemon that I could have picked to be the 'Final Boss', Clovenix was one of the most appropriate. Its origin in Pokemon Clover is that it was Vyglass' imaginary friend until one day it became real and helped him make the region of Fochun, being brought into existence in much the same fashion as Primals from FF14, who are conjured up with Faith and energy. The biggest change I made to it was nerfing its power so it couldn't just destroy the world or change it completely without being fed huge amounts of energy.
The Gigantamax Form that it used in the finale was designed by me and drawn by someone else. There existed fanart of it before I got my art, but it didn't feel different enough from base form Clovenix, its biggest changes being some of its leaves turning red.
Without quoting a bunch of Pokemon episodes though, Clovenix at its heart isn't an inherently evil creature, literally created to want to make wishes come true. It just had the misfortune of being created by evil people. Now that it's been captured by Margit, what does the future hold for it? I don't know yet; I don't want Margit to be some Mary Sue who goes "I'm so bad at Pokemon but look at all my Legendaries! I only have three!"
Maybe it will show up next year, maybe it won't. All I know for sure is Vyglass won't get his hands on it again.
Originally, the Pizza Plex was just going to be burned down and gone after the event taking place there, but people liked Sue enough to want her to be happy, so the Pizza Plex was rebuilt and she has her job back even after a successful collaboration with Pete Zaa, another punny pizza chef. She was a good choice for some of the OCGA stuff due to her being a chef and we got some tragic backstory of her being discriminated against for being a robot.
Therein lies a problem with her now: she's got a budding pairing with Dorothy Haze, professional robot, but she also has the Pizza Plex to work at. Will she go to Argo? Maybe. The problem is how to justify her ditching her dream job.
I feel bad that there's only one picture of Lovely Frederika that doesn't have a Youtuber in the corner, but she's a minor character from an obscure game, but I love her anyway. Both a victim and a conspirator in WRO, Lovely Frederika was always intended to be sort of a mole for Vanessa, the kind of character that made Koakuma not entirely trustful of discussing secret plans in the bar itself. Originally built to tell fortunes and thrown away, she literally owes her life to the bad guys who salvaged her for potentially-nefarious purposes. She's laid back and just wants to tell fortunes while smoking a joint when she isn't doing data analysis work.
Her fate following the WRO HQ invasion was entirely in your hands. I liked her but I also knew some folks were getting really sick of my villains by that point and I wasn't sure how y'all were going to handle her. I was prepared for talking or fighting, either she would spill ALL the beans about Vanessa and WRO or she'd board a giant robot for a fight she couldn't win. I was prepared to leave it ambiguous what happened to her until Harpy drew Lovely Frederikaboo, so I had to canonize it. The version here was the original Lovely Frederikaboo; the color version got posted on the forum.
And I always made her to specifically call her "Lovely Frederika", even in the narration, because she knows she's an eccentric robot and needs an eccentric name to go along with that.
Might as well discuss Cagliostro next. Just called Cagliostro in the Symphogear anime, I gave her the first name of Alessandro based on the historical of the same name, made her Italian for the same reason. The idea of Cagliostro being a man who became a woman actually came from the anime too, so in canon and RP, Cagliostro is Trans. Sadly, we never got to hear her speak Italian! She ended up being a lot more important than I'd originally intended, a generic immortality eventually being turned into a Final Fantasy 14 tie-in to strengthen why an Eorzean summon was on Earth. How'd she get to Earth? Doesn't matter. She was always planned to be making robots for Vanessa, but she wasn't really planned to make a lot of appearances, a brief showing during the Osrail event to establish her as being seen by the good guys, give her a bit of mysterious danger.
Then people were actually looking for the source of the Deus ex Machina, so of course they found the mastermind behind summoning it and promptly got blasted by her. This lead to her getting more and more appearances and actual character development! She might have shown up in a few more events as a side show to main events, perhaps fighting with Yohane in a Megadeus once or twice while working to revive Szilard's Engine. Her own event might not have even happened and instead been part of the finale as an antagonist. Not even the main one; Vanessa was always going to be the Part 1 villain. If she HAD stayed an antagonist, she might have tried escaping retribution by faking being one of Bellringer's revivals, using her own creation magic to fake the bell effect. Obviously, anyone who'd ACTUALLY been exposed to a Bellringer bell would have seen through it.
But tragically, she got her character development and made the mistake of being an optional boss. I was surprised when everyone took her up on the offer to just leave and go help Margit, but I had a huge laugh about it too. How different things would have been if I hadn't decided to do them at the same time! It benefitted her character in the end though, forcing her to realize that in addition to Sue getting the sort of recognition she wanted for herself, she was being a really shitty person, so I guess even if Vyglass didn't get that revelation, she did, deciding in the end to give being decent a try by helping Vanessa only enough to keep things from falling apart, literally.
Cagliostro also had her own Symphogear armor thing in the anime, but it was a golden bikini, so nah.
What does the future have in store for her? I'm not sure. Maybe she'll find a role to play next year even if it isn't in Argo itself.
The queen bitch herself, one of the least-redeemable villains I've ever RP'd, I reckon. Vanessa had all of the hatred and spite of any true villain and none of the restraints that would keep her from being absolutely reviled. She's a cute girl, so she could publicly put on the facade of being a nice girl until she was in a position to go absolutely wild. We didn't get to see much of her in a fight, for better or worse, but she got a moment or two to show off her arsenal. The baseline Vanessa had a good backstory that I could adapt well to RP, changing a history as an alchemist whose body was ruined into being a girl who was slowly carved up and turned into a cyborg while at the same time being a foil to good ol' Chris Yukine.
Where Chris suffered having her family murdered and being turned into a child soldier, she eventually overcame that past after seeing the harm she was doing to others, unable to justify 'following orders' when confronted with the harsh reality, Vanessa went down a darker path, using the pain inflicted on her as a justification to inflict it on others, perpetuating a cycle of violence that she wouldn't willingly end because of how strong it made her feel. Employing mostly robots at WRO was also a deliberate strategy, able to treat them as less than human even while pretending to be a benevolent boss to give herself a power high like she imagined her faceless corporate owners having while subjecting her to experiments and tortures.
I'm sure this will surprise you all, but she was never going to be redeemable. She was never going to make sincere effort to surrender or submit to the Kobbers. Even her attempt at surrendering to Chris was an attempt to mock Kobber mercy while trying to get off one last shot. There was never going to be a Punishment Dimension for her, not when she, unlike Vyglass, could still find ways to hurt people. If anything, I wish I'd put her in another solopost or two to fight some characters to show off how personally dangerous she was. Big Venus was another great way to show her as how our good girls could have gone wrong, being basically what would happen if someone unscrupulous had gotten Big O to function.
I really wish there were more good pictures of this on the Internet. There was always going to be an evil Big on the plot, but Big Venus itself was a rather late addition to the plot. Big Fau (last seen in RP back in Kuwahawi) sort of filled the role of a rival Big in the anime and Big Venus tragically showed up in the last few minutes of the last episode to erase the world. I don't 100% understand the ending of Big O, but Big Venus was erasing the world just by walking towards Big O. Meanwhile it had this cool evil-looking Big O design and...um...inverted its colors as it appeared, so I had to do some wacky Photoshop to get it to look decent. It continued to fit in with the overall "Erasing the world to remake it" theme my villains this year had, even if I took away its ability to erase everything just by being near it.
Since it looks like an evil Big O, I decided it should behave like one. Whereas Big O would only accept a Megadeus - the pilot - who had a particular set of truth, the kind of truth Big Venus accepted was based on Vanessa and Cagliostro's twisted understanding of the world, where Might Makes Right is the proper way of the world. The anime didn't actually give it any weapons, so I just gave it beefed up versions of Big O's arsenal, including the Final Stage superweapon that RP Big O never got to use.
The Good Girls
Chris in particular was needed to demonstrate to Vanessa that the way of thinking she grew up with, that you needed to demonstrate strength by subjugating others into obeying you, wasn't entirely forced upon her, that she could have been a heroine if she'd taken the strength she gained from her pained and used it differently. As the oft-quoted Batman says "We both looked into the abyss, but when it looked back at us, you blinked."
They both would attend a few of the OCGA plots thanks to their ties with Lanterby and had a few good scenes besides. I like RPing them both, but now that we're moving to a setting that feels even more...well...fragile than Olympia, I'm not sure how much room there will be for GIANT robot battles. Chris will almost certainly be heading to Argo, because like Peko she is a vampire lel a versatile enough character that she could fit into any setting and find something to do. Yohane could as well, I'm sure, but since Attami is, last I checked, going to Argo I will probably let her pass the Tech Nerd torch to Sage until there comes a time when Meatosaurus is needed once more.
Okay, the Good Girls and their giant robot. Not much to say about Big O itself. It was inserted into the plot to serve as a sort of agent for Delilah and one third of a key to accessing Szilard's Engine (with Big DuO and Big Fau and the other thirds). While we didn't get to explore its character very much, it would have the ability to Read someone much like the Ravenskies do to determine if someone is of a sufficient character devote to Truth to be "Ye Not Guilty". Chao had once asked if Lanterby could pilot Big O, I presume back when his finale plans were originally to have a 2-part Finale. I would have justified Lanterby as Not Guilty because while she's abrasive, she's nothing but honest in her food reviews. I still made sure Big O showed up in his finale though.
What will happen to the Black Megadeus, as the anime was fond of calling it, now that Szilard's Engine is being disassembled? It'll probably go back to Delilah's basement dimension to wait for a time when punching giant robots is needed. I'm not sure how much Giant Robot action I'll have in Argo though; there's about as much potential for calamity to have giants running around an underground city as there was making giant robots fight in Olympia, where a stray blast or something could potentially drop the city from the sky.
Okay, the Good Girls, their giant robot, and one of the many, MANY Beelzebubs to appear in RP. There were numerous conversations between me and Goops during the off-season about his plot for the simple reason that my narrator was a Helltaker character. (Never mind she's technically the most senior one since the others all disappeared after Olympia.) What was her history with Lucifer and Justice? How large a role would she play in the plot? How large a role would she play outside of the plot? These were things I had to consider before the season began, so I managed to whip up some vague ideas of her history and ran them by Goops. Of course, the 'Bub was going to enter the Brawl before anyone but Goops knew about his plot simply because I suspected Burnin' Justice was going to be entering and grudge matches always make for interesting subplots for JRM to exploit.
Using what little official lore existed for Helltaker combined with lots of neat fanart, I began crafting the Beelzebub history, an old school demon who opposed the idea of corporate Hell so much that she launched a one-devil war against Lucifer, taking on all the legions of Hell by herself...and winning. She's a flamboyant demon though, as shown in some of her sprites, and committed a cardinal sin of villainy: she took a moment to boast and brag about it, and in that moment, Lucifer's right-hand devil Justice used the distraction to her advantage. Beel blinded Justice in the process, but she was overthrown just moments after taking over Hell and was banished to what she calls the Narration Dimension for eternal isolation. Centuries of boredom and isolation later and she was able to pierce the veil between dimensions, watching events occur throughout history, eventually finding the Kobbers to entertain her.
Goops and I agreed that Beel would finally get some formal screentime on forum, be an actual character, as part of Lucifer trying to show that she was genuinely interest in reforming Hell Inc by righting some of her past mistakes, embracing the DALI ethos that nobody deserves eternal punishment and releasing Beel from eternal isolation, even though by that point there were certain characters like Clownpiece and Elvira and Gridman who could see and interact with her. Freedom in exchange for help fighting Verosika's new Hell Inc meant Beel could show up on plots and I made certain she attended as many of the Hell Inc events as I could.
She's powerful. I don't normally like making characters really powerful and strong because it tends to lead to power creeping the stakes of plots, but she's an ancient demon who conquered Hell with raw power and Green Lantern-esque darkness powers. She can be powerful enough to stand toe to toe with the likes of Utsuho or Zed, but she'd rather watch things happen though than get involved herself if she can avoid it. In a way, Beel's arc this year is another contrast to that of Vanessa; Beelzebub is evil still and she'd do bad stuff if she had a reason to do it, but her imprisonment gave her a long time to sit back and think about what she'd done with her life, eventually deciding that times had changed and that she could be happy just sitting back and watching things happen, not going out and doing bad things just because she suddenly had the power to. A Bellringer moment of her own, I suppose.
Then she had to go and have a crisis of conscience. What balances her ability to wreck a lot of things is that she now prefers to sit back and make a show of everything, narrating it for the audience that is herself (and us), not wanting to interfere like a naturalist about to see a rabbit get eaten by a hawk. Except when the chips were down and literally nothing Margit could do would stop Vyglass, Beelzebub's time actually interacting with people again put a dent in her ability to be objective and she cheated, changing fate to give Margit the chance she needed to save the world.
Beelzebub is extremely unhappy about this. Fortunately only Delilah knows she did it.
The Pokemon trainer so nice, she made me outright forget that she wasn't my first Pokemon OC! Yes, Chao had to remind me once that Hazel existed. Margit was deliberately introduced last year with the intention of building up towards this year, to help her build up Pokemon connections in anticipation of her big scene against Vyglass, receiving the Faith of her friends to become PRIMAL MARGIT. We got even more exciting Margit backstory along with a few more Pokemon for her, which I'll probably discuss as part of this section instead of giving G'Day the Goomy and Turbann their own parts.
Just in case I didn't explain it well enough in actual posts, here's the rough Margit timeline.
-Margit is born. Very important.
-Margit steals PokeBalls from Vyglass.
-Margit catches six regional Pokemon: Aron, Scraggy, Golett, Charmander, Octillery, and Axew.
-Margit and friends win the Bifrost Badge.
-Margit's parents give her Pokemon to Vyglass. Margit is allowed to volunteer in the lab to keep taking care of them.
-Margit gets Harley as a Ride Pokemon.
-Margit takes up sports like boxing and snowboard.
-Margit, in an act of teenage rebellion, takes Harley to Krakenspine Mountain to climb it.
-Margit dies on Krakenspine Mountain, but is found by Clovenix and brought back to life, being Tempered in the process. Harley loses a leg in the process, getting a prosthetic.
-Margit goes to college and studies Pokemon under Vyglass.
-Margit gets her own Pokemon license and gets her 'first' Pokemon, a Clobbopus she names Apollo after a character from Rocky.
-Margit catches an Inkay, Johto Octillery, and an Omanyte.
-Margit goes to Whalestrand to find Clovenix.
-Margit dies in the fight with Jormungandr. The Clovenix power that had revived her before is now gone, mostly removing her Tempering.
-Margit battles Vyglass, who is using her original six Pokemon, now all evolved. With Clovenix's power, Vyglass makes his Charizard Mega Evolve without Charizardite.
-Margit unconsciously returns to Krakenspine Mountain to look for Clovenix.
-Margit helps chase Vyglass out of Whalestrand and starts volunteering at Team Karma.
-Margit is called to Krakenspine Mountain by an empowered Clovenix.
-Margit fights Clovenix and Vyglass' summoned Future Paradox Pokemon. Vyglass is sent to the Punishment Dimension while Clovenix is captured by Margit after a final showdown with the Kobbers.
Margit's big theme for going on plots was trying to help people whose friends or loved ones were being captured or controlled by others, a desire she stated as something she wished someone had done for her when she was a kid, which eventually lead to her budding romance with Vita aka Vivian. She was deliberately sent on plots where she would normally have been largely outmatched as a way to build up to the moment when she finally got superpowers of her own. The manner of which Margit manifested the Faith of her Pokemon pals might have varied a lot during the early stages of finale planning, but when Gooper wrote his Lightning Round finale that said Margit had ascended to the status of a Myth amongst the Klawf basically cemented the idea that Margit would get powers of her own. Even quoting that post was always in my plans for revealing Primal Margit; when I decided that Margit couldn't get TWO Faith-powered Deux ex Machinas, it wasn't a hard choice to cut "Sudden Pokemon army" in favor of "LASER EYES MARGIT." And then she got to use the "Closet door opening" power JRM joked about in one of his posts by...coming out of the closet and admitting she liked Vita, a romance I hadn't expected from just having Margit call Vita her bestie. I love it though, so I'll let it stay, especially since it worked out a lot better than Margit's unrequited crush on Iono.
In contrast to Margit spending time last year worrying she wasn't a great trainer, she got thrust into the limelight a couple of times in events and eventually settled into a role as a lecturer at Team Karma. I'm glad she didn't end up catching Moltres and Zapdos last year, and not just because HP and JRM wrote great prayers for them, because it gave her time to think she wasn't great just for this year to prove her wrong!
Margit ended up getting three new Pokemon this year: G'Day the Goomy, a currently-unnamed Turbann (the sprite for it is from Pokemon Insurgence and is called Ehgo Shellder there), and Clovenix. The Goomy got added because Goomy is, of course, amazing and I'd either been planning or had started playing Legends Arceus, which has regional Sliggoo and Goodra with snail shells. Meanwhile, Ehgo Shellder has, as mentioned above, a squid-like evolution called Skulkraken. There's time enough next year for those two to get character development.
That section of the Terapagos battle theme was absolutely PERFECT to go with "Margit...USED HYPER BEAM!". It's hard to time music to how quickly y'all read and there was no way I was going to be able to get that animated, so I couldn't include the amazing musical buildup to that moment. When I first saw that moment occur in The Indigo Disk DLC, I knew I couldn't just casually use that theme; I had to have a moment that really matched the sudden release of hope and courage the game had, and I think I succeeded in giving Margit that moment. Fighting with her friends instead of being fought for against an enemy that did everything in his power to emulate the power of her bonds without putting in the work to forge his own was a great way to cap off her journey. Honestly, I got teary-eyed more than once as I wrote that scene in my head and actually wrote it down...in Word so I wouldn't lose it! And I listened to quite a few covers of the Pokemon anime them trying to find the perfect one to use over the climax of catching Clovenix; Jonathan Young does some AMAZING anime covers.
Clovenix will probably not stick around as an active member of Team Margit. Even if Slither Wing and Articuno aren't meta-shattering in terms of Legendary Pokemon, she has more than enough power without adding a literal godbeast to her team, especially when she DOES have the 2024 World Champion Miraidon, who is, according to AstroidVideos, the most winningest Pokemon next to Eternamax Eternatus. Will Primal Margit ever return? Maybe, if circumstances dictate we need a Faith-powered boxer to punch out some jerk's lights.
Regular Margit will return though, along with a lot of her pals, to Argo. She might not get an entire plot devoted to her, but there's plenty of mystery in the world of Pokemon waiting to be discovered!
The Plot Itself
As mentioned, this plot had its roots back in Agama when it was going to be a plot for Flannery and originally it would have just been Team Karma being a bunch of hooligans, still with the end result of waking up Clovenix to rewrite reality. It was a crazy coincidence that I just happened to run this plot in the same year so many other people were doing fake god plots of their own. As Goops said in Chat: "Who had "three god mushrooms" on their Season 14 bingo card?" It's scary how that happened, really, since the Parasector was one of the few things I specifically had planned for the year!
I had a vague outline planned before the season began for how the plot(s) would go: giant robot stuff first and then Pokemon shenanigans occurring at the beginning of the year that our heroines would start to investigate, slowly following them until they converged late in the year when Vyglass was planned to be extracted by Vanessa to somewhere safe for the last arc of the plot when Clovenix would be revived and things would slowly come to a head in a battle for Szilard's Engine. I really have to hand it to Goops: Krakenspine Mountain was such a boon to RP! All kinds of things were happening on that mountain; it was such a perfect place to hide secret things and have accidents happen. I agree with a sentiment he shared in chat, that it was fitting that we had one last plot take us there before the season ended, even if I hadn't planned that specifically! I tried to have a specific gimmick for the first few Pokemon plots, like Paradox Forms, Infinite Fusions, and Dynamaxing to help them stand out from each other.
A lot of the events weren't specifically planned before the season began, partially on purpose and some of it because I wasn't sure yet how I wanted them to go, but I specifically wanted to pace things so there would be a Pokemon plot and a Big O plot each month until they converged, which happened about the time I'd planned. Plans were disrupted by the unfortunate sickness and passing of my cat, Bonnie, but I pulled myself together enough to carry on. Not everything was planned before the season began, but strangely the Parasector WAS one of them. The Robot Rights Rally and the Finale were other participation events that were planned and the Delilah kidnapping was always planned to be adjacent to a plot for participation. Everything else was, I'd say, planned a few weeks in advance.
Dorothy, Dorothy
The first event of mine in the year and the beginning of "The Biggest Memory of All" was intended to suggest that R. Dorothy had more significance that never ended up manifesting while giving a taste of what sort of danger was in store on the plot, having the Dorothy-1 essentially teleport underground to show that WRO's robots could strike from anywhere at any time. A cut idea would have involved Dorothy-1 returning for a solo post with R. Dorothy being used to replace a crucially-damaged part like what happened in the Big O anime, but that idea was scrapped out-of-character when Dorothy-1 was scrapped in-character. Besides, making something happen in RP just because it happened in an anime isn't the most creative of plans.
The Pokemon Expo
This little event was a good way to introduce the concept of "Margit and the Clovenix Conundrum" with three little kids who were enthusiastic and not evil, doing what they thought they needed to in order to become great Pokemon trainers. It was a somewhat-harmless way of showing how Vyglass operated too, giving them a fake Master Ball to try catching what ended up being Gorochu. The decision to have Eeveelutions turning into Paradox Legendaries was inspired by the old theories that Ho-oh turned a Flareon, Jolteon, and Vaporeon into Entei, Raikou, and Suicune; it was also supposed to hint that perhaps Harley turning into Miraidon wasn't just something caused by Tiamat's Paradox machine but was unknowingly an effect of Clovenix' power, though it would have been revealed that it was just Margit's Faith in her friend being used by the prosthetic made by Jade to basically Mega Evolve Harley.
I picked out a bunch of Pokemon Insurgence's Delta Pokemon to serve as Sevii Islands regional forms. I had a good time picking out landmarks from each island and then writing a short PokeDex entry linking each Pokemon to that landmark.
Where Has My Little Ghost Gone?
This was one event that benefitted from being conceived of after the season began. Would it have had as much impact if DALI hadn't been established as an organization? I was able to slowly build up to having this event by making the Whalestrand Wight make a few short appearances and write some in-universe articles about it before we got to the event itself. In a way, I made Osrail, the Megadeus from the event, slightly more powerful than its anime counterpart, by which I mean the RP version didn't just slump over and die after taking one hit. The tunnel base was included to add mystery: what were robots doing in there, why were there weird Pokemon, who was this weird blue-haired woman acting like Kobbers aren't a threat to her? And why was Delilah destroying it after the event?
Gotta Save 'Em All
Kudos to Brine for giving me the perfect opportunity to introduce Cliff, putting his Team GO Rocket group on the black market barge to accidentally meet Margit and sell her a Goomy with a quick showing by Vanessa to be both a helpful person and to establish that she was doing shady dealings. It was here that we got the first taste of dangerous Pokemon dealings and the beginning of the breadcrumb trail that would eventually lead back to Vyglass. The introduction of organized crime also caused the introduction of Inquisitor Alfonso, who comes from Limbus Company, like so many other new characters across RP. Her role as investigating Team GO Rocket could have gone to Chris and Yohane, but at this point I was concerned about keeping up appearances that the plots were separate. I wasn't originally going to have Cliff's Tyranitar Dynamax, but I found the fake card I used in the plot that morning and it was too cool not to. Otherwise, it would have just been a fight with a Shadow Tyranitar, still dangerous but shorter.
Uncivil Disobedience
Another one of the specific events I had in mind. The faceclaim for the Deus ex Machina flipflopped between a few options, but most of them were various Final Fantasy robots. I eventually settled on the Proud Clod from Final Fantasy 7, which I had to check a bit to make sure it hadn't been used already since its creator, Heidegger, had played a prominent role in Cardholders. Cagliostro wasn't originally even going to show up in the plot itself but some characters went poking around; instead, Vanessa would have just watched the entire thing and reported back to Cags that the experiment to force people to worship a god worked when she forced a lot of WRO robot employees to sudden pray for a giant robot to protect them from greedy organic lawmakers and it Tempered non-WRO robots when it appeared. This event also helped Macka convince Delilah they needed to come clean with the Kobbers about Szilard's Engine.
Enter the Parasector
It was here that my "two plots a month, robots then Pokemon" plan went off the rails and I did my best to keep things moving. It was mostly a success, I'd say. As mentioned, this was one of the few specific plot events I had in mind for the year when I thought about what a zombie apocalypse would look like in Pokemon. How would it start? Paras and Parasect being infected with and subsumed by mushrooms was the obvious answer and the idea for a perpetually-Gigantamaxed Parasect was born, one of the few Pokemon actually belonging to Vyglass and playing a key role in his plans for Clovenix worship. In Pokemon lore, Paras and Parasect mushrooms are often sold to collectors, so Team Karma was constantly harvesting pieces of the Parasector to forcibly fuse with other Pokemon - even inorganic ones - for two purposes: a revenue stream and eventually feeding the mushrooms to people so they could later be forced to worship Clovenix. I have had a tab open for...at this point probably close to a year just leading to Parasect Pokemon Fusions. Potemkin was dragged into the event to serve as an unwitting accomplice of WRO to dispose of evidence and so he could be present for, at the time, the second god mushroom of the year.
Security Breach
As much as I'd rather NOT discuss this event, I'm obligated to. I have no doubt in my mind that this was the worst event I held this year and quite possibly one of the worst plot events I've ever had. Even worse, at the time I think it was the most attended plot event I'd had so far this year. Nobody seemed to enjoy the twist that Novella was Koakuma and even seemed to be more confused and insulted that she hadn't gone to the Kobbers for help right away because of her history with them. To make things worse, I'd even ASKED Chao to send Patchouli and Captain Phoenix, which lead to the premature unmasking of Novella. It went badly and the unfortunate timing of Goops' "I need a break" message had me seriously considering for days if I should just wrap the entire plot up in an event or two.
Had it gone as planned, Koakuma would have realized she had been outmaneuvered by Vanessa and would eventually have approached the Kobbers to talk about Szilard's Engine. Without unmasking herself because, at the time, she was still using the "Call me Novella" trick to Rules Lawyer her way around saying her actual name.
It was a bad event and I'm sorry.
Team Karma Gets What It Deserves
"What we deserve" was the motto of Team Karma, based on the belief of Karma where a person's actions and consequences are linked, and it certainly turned out to be true. Vyglass was a jerk, therefore he got Kobber'd, right?
I like to think of this as the beginning of the final arc of the plot, where all of the bad guys started getting exposed for their misdeeds and the good guys started closing in on them, forcing them to flee into the wilderness to try pulling off their master plan. There were a few ways this could have gone as an event, all with the same intended goal of Vyglass being forced out of his nice, comfortable cult and into hiding with Vanessa. Potential plans included him awakening the Parasector piece he kept with him to make us fight an army of brainwashed trainers and Pokemon, but as I mentioned that gimmick was only going to work once. Who would actually expect Kobbers to see a bunch of Team Karma people suddenly sprout mushrooms and go "We don't need to follow up on this, nosiree."? If I'd gone this route, the final boss of the event would have been Kymmi and her team, who would actually have been a tough fight. Kymmi has a banger of a theme too. Another possibility for a fight would have been with a brainwashed Kieren, the Applin trainer who battled with Margit's Goomy, except using Clovenix power to turn his Applin into an Appleton, Flapple, and Hydrapple. Applin evolutions are neat; Appleton and Flapple each need another form though, Game Freak.
The decision to eventually go with the Mech was a pretty easy one, a great way to show just how much support Vanessa was really giving Team Karma that they had their own huge robot. Vyglass would have piloted it if I hadn't remembered that Sierra existed, giving me a great way to throw the last Team GO Rocket admin into the plot.
Another idea related to the Parasector that I had for this was that Margit would have approached Vyglass on her own, barging into the Team Karma HQ and fighting her way to Vyglass with the Hammers of Justice (trademark Batman: The Brave and the Bold). She would easily punch her former professor in the face before he awakened the Parasector piece, brainwashing Team Karma trainers into Dynamaxing their Pokemon for battles all across the city, forcing Kobbers to stamp out those fires instead of going to help Margit. Vyglass would have either escaped at that point or called for the Mech so he could smash Margit; fighting a bunch of random giant Pokemon doesn't make for a great event though, especially since by this point it had happened twice with Shadow Gigantamax Mega Alolan Tyranitar Zen Mode 100% Form and the Parasector.
Whalestrand's Recovery
This was a very difficult event to plan. Delilah's kidnapping was always going to happen on this day, but it was a fixed event so it couldn't be what RPers actually did for the plot, especially after "Security Breach" went so badly. What people actually would do for it though was something I wrestled with. The original idea was that Macka would find a way into the transformed Library to try turning it back into a building and she would need help fighting off swarms of nonsentient, failed golems and book demons that were being used to guard Delilah's soul, eventually leading to an FF14 boss. It would have basically been The Great Gubal Library from Final Fantasy 14; I really like that dungeon but I'd be better off using that as a background for another scene.
The original idea still had a bunch of leftover Griff robots being used to siege the Library but Yohane and Big O would have been lured into a trap by Cagliostro and forced to fight either Big TriO (see above) or mass-produced Bigs/prototypes for Big Venus while trapped within the Arena that Griff used to trap the Scorchbeast for its event back in Agama. There was no way the Kobbers could ignore a giant robot army in the city though if it was the only thing happening and it feels rather unreasonable to assume the bad guys could sneak in with everyone fighting evil robots. Lovely Frederika got the short end of the stick and was the fight focus for the event; I was also able to squeeze in yet another Big O mecha, the Constanze robot.
How things went with Lovely Frederika was entirely up to y'all. Vanessa wanted her to just go nuts and smash and fight and destroy, but Cagliostro - knowing Lovely Frederika was Sue's best friend - altered the plans slightly to basically give the android a chance at surviving the encounter. If people had asked Lovely Frederika questions, she would have answered them truthfully and in detail to stretch things out as long as possible, but people were tired of talking and wanted to break things, so it became a fight. At the end of the fight, Lovely Frederika determined there wasn't anything she could do to delay things and let herself be taken down, though mercy was shown and she was given a new body.
Yohane still had her battle, just being thrown more directly into the line of fire to battle Vanessa and Big Venus after Delilah threw her entire lab at the problem. I didn't mean for Yohane to be absent from RP until the next event though. Oops.
The Big Question
Top Ten Anime Deaths: what happened to Cagliostro in this event.
I'm not sure I need to say much more than that!
Just kidding, of course. There's plenty to say. There are a lot of IRL twists that happened when preparing for this plot. The very original idea for it was just going to be the Glinda part where 2B would be brainwashed into trying to murder Margit with swords, getting stopped before landing a killing blow by either an evolved Goomy or Turbann, whose Steel types would have deflected a sword for at least one strike, or Potemkin, who would finally find room for moderation, without any Cagliostro stuff happening on the side. The original plan was going to be THE plan for the event as far as late September when I struck on the idea of just making it about Cagliostro. I really wanted to do the Margit murder though AND a weird-ass playdate with Cags, and running two simultaneous fights wouldn't be as bad since there was only one opponent per fight unlike EVERYTHING I DID WITH POKEMON. Seriously, next year, you all get one boss per event and you'll TAKE TURNS.
I'm still sure there are characters I missed amongst the various events, especially the finale.
Even with just days to go before this event, I almost grabbed Sunday when one of my friends had to cancel our usual Sunday game due to illness. Can you imagine how things would have gone if I'd actually done Cagliostro and Glinda on separate days?
I was legitimately laughing out loud at how that side of the event went. I'd honestly thought someone would have gone "Wait, she's inviting us to a fight and noone's gonna die and we get stuff out of this? That's...uh...new." and this pre-event opinion manifested in Cagliostro feeling rather smug and self-important, all hyped for a huge fight where she could just go nuts, thinking she was a lot more important than she was. She honestly believed that being an asshole about the Whalestrand Wight situation and just being an antagonist made her important enough to stick around and just fight rather than go off and do something more productive. She got a nice big reality check in the form of a CRITICAL HIT to her ego when everyone just bailed on her mid-life crisis of a battle.
If the Kobbers had stuck around to keep fighting, she would have called it off in a round or two anyway, putting her sword away and saying something about feeling satisfied with the fight. She also would have just walked off to go and do what she already did in RP: go back to Szilard's Engine and make sure it didn't implode before the finale. She just would have been happier about it instead of getting to realize that she's not the main character of the story.
Something I wanted to have Cagliostro do at some point but it felt way too meta was have her reference this Julia quote.
"And believe me...the TRUE thrill is terrorizing other world be terrors. Taking beings that are certain they are untouchable and invincible and can do whatever they want, and showing them that they are very, VERY touchable."
Pardon me if I get a bit Soapbox-y here. I referred to the above statement back when we were having the discussions following Celeste terrorizing Coral. I wanted Cags to mention it because it does feel to me sometimes like the Kobbers have the "invincible asshole" mentality sometimes. Like from time to time someone goes "We're the Kobbers. You should just give up." and that sort of thing inspires me to make villains like Tara Skew who go "Okay, we're following the rules. We're doing things you don't like but you can't Kobber us because then you're the criminals." I don't like trotting out the "We're the Kobbers" banner for that reason, because it makes the stakes seem tame when someone just goes "Don't worry, we're the good guys."
And I know late season there were discussions about constantly elevating the stakes of plots with things like the Moon, where there were concerns about it being a super multi-dimensional terror that couldn't be stopped except for the VERY SPECIFIC METHOD. I admit I've had plots where there are interplanetary stakes in the end and I know it doesn't seem like it this year, but I tried not to have world-ending consequences this time. Vyglass wins? Every Pokemon trainer in the world has nothing but Pidgeys and Rattatas except Team Karma. Awful consequences, but not on the scale of "Jack of Blades is bringing a massive star dragon to Earth to create the EVIL DIMENSION." Unless you hate Pidgey and Rattata, then the two plots WERE on the same scale.
Whew! That's a lot to say about something that wasn't even the finale.
The Clovenix Conundrum
Believe it or not, Vanessa was always planned to be the first part of the finale. She was an actual villain compared to Vyglass, who was still evil but not on the "shoot on sight" level, and she was a more obvious danger with her giant robot, but she didn't have a personal grudge with anyone like Margit and Vyglass had to make her worthy of being the final boss of the season. Certainly, taking her down was satisfying because she was an awful person who, unlike Cagliostro, didn't get the hint to stop being horrible but until she stepped on Garvan and ground her underfoot, Vanessa hadn't done anything so PERSONAL, in my opinion. She was always meant to be the One Winged Angel to Vyglass's Cloud vs Sephiroth story fight and I think it was a good role for her. Sure, Big Venus would have made for a great final enemy, but a Chris/Vanessa conflict hadn't been built up as much as Margit/Vyglass.
There were a lot of different ways the pre-fite stuff could have gone, like Garvan blasting Krakenspine Mountain off the ground. I think that would have been neat for sure, but I liked having her take a bullet and use her most oft-used power, Energy Absorption, to save the day better than the giant gun.
The two big, pudgy robots that showed up during the finale were from the anime Getter Robo Armageddon. They were really spur on the moment picks to have appear, neat disposable mechs for people to crush in the pre-show. Mooks are great for build-up but - and I'm getting on a sandbox again - I try not to throw them in as the main event unless fighting them IS the event. I admit it rankled a bit when Cornwind threw lesser enemies into plots for non-Dragoons to be able to fight just so it'd feel like everyone was contributing.
Civilian cyborgs and brainwashed Pokemon trainers don't make a great army and Vanessa knew that, which was the main reason to keep the Engine site hidden the entire time. A month is a long time for something to just be sitting there where we vaguely know where it is, so I threw in a few mentions that the Inquisition WAS looking for it but Delilah had been hiding from everyone for so long that she was was able to keep it concealed until Koakuma opened the door. And I had to throw in the "Vanessa might blow it up if we just rush in." to give some justification for...well...not just swarming Krakenspine Mountain to find the Engine.
Did I mention that I really appreciate Krakenspine Mountain? That just turned out to be an amazing bit of world-building that everyone embraced.
Fun fact about Pokemon Clover. Vyglass is the final boss of the game and you fight him and his team of some of the game's least-memetic, most serious Fakemon in some kind of interdimensional realm where he intends to use Clovenix to destroy the world. Even more fun is what happens if you lose the battle! Do you white out and show up at a Pokemon Center? NO!
You die. There's a custom cutscene where Clovenix vaporizes you.
You die. There's a custom cutscene where Clovenix vaporizes you.
Where am I going with that?
While the general outline of how Margit's confrontation with Vyglass would go was settled on in advance, there were a few details that were refined as time went on. An early draft of the finale had Vyglass ordering Clovenix to simply erase Margit from existence, only for Koakuma, limping to join Margit in the Engine control room, to use some sort of demonic magic to block Clovenix, forcing Vyglass to fight her on a level playing field and we would have gotten a rematch of their Season 13 battle. Then at one point I had decided that instead of Koakuma showing up, Clovenix would try to erase Margit only for BEELZEBUB to just...come out of the Narration Dimension to block the effect, saying something about how erasing Margit was just boring so be cool and fight her. I prefer the subtler touch I went with, the gentle nudge to get Margit to say the right thing to start a fight, enforced by Alexander citing Fey bullshit where they HAD to fight because their eyes met. Margit would then lose to Vyglass' Primals and use the power of the crystal Delilah gave her to make an army of Pokemon appear. She would have said "I choose you...ALL of you!"
"You and what GYM BADGES?!" is still one of my favorite lines I wrote for the plot.
Alpha Klawf would then have PUNCHED Primal Giratina followed by the Miniors dive bombing it. Why? Because Primal Giratina is ALL types and it turns out if you're every type your only weakness is Rock-type moves.
I spent a lot of time trying to find an entire team of six Fakemon to give Vyglass for a "Primal" Pokemon battle before Primal Margit was awoken, but Pokemon Insurgence only had Primal forms for Arceus, Giratina, and Regigigas. They have a Shadow MewTwo, but this isn't Persona plot, it's Primals plot, and I also considered Origin Form Palkia and Dialga because those guys look ridiculous. Three Primals would have been an acceptable number, but the (by RP planning standards) last-minute change to Paradox versions of Margit's Pokemon was just such a sweet idea.
If I had a big regret about the finale that I wish I could do over, I'd find a better justification for Margit getting to make a wish, or include some sort of build-up like the Engine was activated and needed to be discharged or it'd fall apart. I liked getting that last moment for Margit, showing her character by using the power of Szilard's Engine in the nicest way, vaguely inspired by a random short story idea I had based on the lyrics "All I want for Christmas is you." Margit doesn't want to be given power or friends, she wants to enjoy the ones she has.
Like Vita.
In Conclusion
As mentioned in the Cut Content section, I'd briefly considered throwing in another Fakemon to be the "Clovenix Final Boss Form", but how much better was it that Clovenix was still our final boss? I liked it the way I did it, at least. I really like getting these custom art pieces for my plots and stuff to really just take an idea and make it my own. Stuff like Kamen Rider Poppy 64, Primal Margit, Gigantamax Clovenix...I really enjoy getting to take my silly ideas and share them with you all. Sure, there are things I wish I'd done differently, but overall I'm very satisfied with how things went. I'll try not to end the world next year while still giving you all a worthy story.
I wasn't expecting to be the finale of the year, let alone the finale for Whalestrand. but that's how things worked out. Y'all had some positive comments regarding the worthiness of the event though, so I feel confident that we ended the year on a high note. I've still got some Epilogues to write and hopefully I'll have a teaser for next year before the end of November. As always, let me know if there's anything you want more detail on or if I missed talking about something you're interested in, and I hope you enjoyed reading this incredibly-long blogpost as much as I enjoyed forcing myself to remember details that were years in the making.
