Saying Goodbye To Sarah: The Story Behind SarahPlot

Took me long enough to write this, didn't it? But hey, now that the busiest part of the offseason - the holidays - is over, and we enter the long stretch of peace between now and May 1, I figured it was high time I finally get around to talking about my third and final plot of the 2016 RP season - SarahPlot.

This one's gonna be different from my usual plot aftermath posts, working a bit more stream-of-consciousness than a format of characters then events.
  
THE INITIAL IDEA
With my roster enormous going into Season 6, it was high time I do some wrapping up of major characters to make room for others to have their own time in the sun. One character chosen for retirement was Sarah Triden. She's had an incredible run in RP. She was one of the driving forces behind the initial "RP Explosion", and had gotten in on the ground floor for RP's ascendance to being a serious, plot-driven Thing instead of just "a bunch of weirdos talk about ZooFights". She was instrumental in the stories of many characters, whether it was by befriending them or saving their lives, or in one case falling in love. She came back for a second season, then faded into the background before coming back with a vengeance halfway through Season 4, then remained major the next year. As much as I love the little marshmallow, I knew I was running low on stories to tell with her, and her role could be filled by other characters. Helios and the rest of the hospital crew have slowly usurped Sarah's role as the primary healers of the Kobbers, and I've got no shortage of cute, bubbly characters that could be used instead of Sarah for casual bar chat and making friends. But with a character this important to RP, who's been around this long, you don't just snuff out their light and move on. Sarah needed a proper finale, one that built on her history.

It all started in October 2015. Two factors combined to give rise to the beginning of Sarahplot - or, rather, the ending, because as is common of me I started with a final boss and worked my way back until I had a plot's worth of events that led to that boss. The first factor was Undertale's final boss battle, or more specifically its' music. The music inspired a scene in my head of Sarah facing down a terrifying enemy alone and pulling off a miracle win. The second factor was Sine's finale - Cornwind made the decision to demote Sine to a minor/background character instead of one that comes to the bar and converses with others. As befitting a character as significant to our history as her, she got a climactic finish in the form of a pretty damn cool solo fight. I didn't want to totally rip CW off, but I definitely wanted that kind of final battle. Steel Komodo further pushed this view to me when he did a similar solo battle between Sam and Chakravartin. Armed with these two battles and some rad tunes, the gears started turning.

BARON SAMEDI
Naturally, before anything else, I needed a villain. Villains often drive the plot in my work, so I had to figure out who the bad guy Sarah was pitted against in that finale was and what they wanted. I decided pretty quick that it would be a god of death (or at least something that could pass for one) who was upset that Sarah saved so many lives. Generally, the concept of death scares me too much to think about for long, but this was a way to do it in a serious manner that wasn't too punishing to me because the grievance was over something fanciful that isn't possible in real life. That extra layer of make-believe made it easier to do, compared to some other events or conversations in past seasons and plots that addressed death in ways I didn't want to go.

The big fight against the Baron was originally going to be even worse for Sarah, as I'd considered the Baron having a final trump card as he was defeated, draining her of all her magic and reducing her to level 1 as he was destroyed. Sarah would have to relearn all of her magic from the beginning, being left with only a basic Cure. The idea was to show some consequences and a lasting mark left by Samedi. The main reason this got dropped was Fite Yer Mates - I'd considered contacting JRM to tell him that Old vs New III needed to be moved to before my plot, but none of the other fites in the Fite Rush lineup were really fitting to take its' place as the final fite of the year. I also considered having Josephine's miracle give Sarah magic just for the fite, but that felt like a waste of something she's held onto for years. Ultimately I scrapped it entirely, and the fact that Sarah had to use almost all of the possessions she'd built up over five years of RP and many of them wound up spent or broken (including Thor's Hammer!) felt like consequences enough.

MOLLY
The next piece of the puzzle was Molly. For my 2015 Christmas special, I decided I wanted to give a good ending to a famous Christmas story that ends badly, that being The Little Match Girl (and I worked in a bonus reference to a Good End version of The Christmas Shoes, another tale that's far too dark for such a jolly holiday and just brings the mood down). While she seemed to just be there for the blog post, Molly was planned from the start to be the last straw for the Baron, the life that puts him on the warpath to destroy Sarah.

One of the things I regret about this plot is that I didn't give Molly much screentime beforehand and she was basically just a living Macguffin that people were probably saving because small girls in trouble need to be saved, not because they cared much about her as a character. Maybe I'm wrong, but she didn't do much! I'd wanted her to make fairly regular bar visits throughout the season to build her up as sympathetic and then get her in trouble, but my cast was so large and Molly's RP capabilities so limited that she would often go weeks between appearances.

SHIFTY WHODUNNIT
A silly character made to be the "obvious" bad guy in the investigation segment. Generally with these sorts of things (and this comes up a lot in Ace Attorney), you've got this kinda bias where the initial person accused is someone you've met before (like, in AA, a recurring character, or if we're talking RP, an established Kobber) and therefore you already know they're innocent because you're familiar with the character and you know they wouldn't commit the crime, so instead you look at the suspects and finger the guy you don't recognize. I wanted to invert that for the investigation - the initial accused, Shifty, was a suspicious new character who actually had gotten arrested and found guilty before... and the true culprit was a character that had been around, albeit in a minor capacity, for quite some time.

During the CollinsCorp finale, there was a legitimate suggestion put forward by me to sacrifice Shifty to help get the mutant cure when we seemed to be at a standstill. JRM vetoed that idea, rightly saying it would trivialize something we've waited years for, and we instead got the workaround of Yotam's sacrifice followed by our ability to bring him back with the last of the Arceus/Elohim favors from Season 3, Phantomon's miracle. Shifty instead never reappeared after his one plot day, aside from a joke in my wrapup, but at least that means he lived!

DR. BULGRAVE AND DR. WELWARD
I've always had trouble doing much with the steampunk crew besides their usual yearly cameos for whatever plot most suits them, and working them into this plot felt like a fun way to surprise people. The twist was one of the first things added to the plot after the big battle with Samedi, and Dr. Welward was always the one planned to go rogue (the tease of Bulgrave possibly being the villain was added later).

This part of the plot was always going to be broken up into three parts - the fantastic voyage, the investigation, and the battle with Welward. Jumpropeman's years-old wish for a Fantastic Voyage plot was in my mind as I came up with this, and that wish is a big part of why this segment existed. The investigation was originally going to out Welward much sooner, and there would be a few rounds of testimony against him. At this stage, he also had a breakdown planned - he'd spend his testimonies idly swirling around a vial of noxious liquid, and it would blow up in his face when he was defeated in a war of words. I'd even considered MSPainting a sprite of him, Ace Attorney Investigations side view style, and giving it a few simple animations. But then again, I have had pipe dreams of giving pivotal plot moments animation for years - I've envisioned many major RP moments as fancy Paint-animated Youtube videos I'd link at a crucial moment, but I don't really have the time, will, or skill to pull off something like that. The inspiration for such ideas was, naturally, the fact that several Zoofights battles used Youtube videos at their beginning or end. Until the day someone, me or otherwise, actually goes for production values that high for RP, the high water mark will still be simple illustrations and stuff like FV voice-acting some of Razaan's lines in Season 4.

JUNKO
A late addition to the plot, Junko was not added until after it was well underway when I saw a chance to take her "CHANG'E ARE YOU WATCHING?!" joke to a surprising conclusion.

In Touhou canon, Junko hates Chang'e because Chang'e's husband killed Junko's family - both her husband and child. I toned things down a little for RP, making Junko childless so that she only lost a husband. Now, Chang'e is actually in ZFRP, but as a somewhat different being owned by Harpy with no connection to Touhou (at least, no obvious one). To reconcile Junko with Harpy's Chang'e, I first thought about there simply being two moon goddesses named Chang'e, but I later decided to get Salvation involved.

Junko has the ability to purify things. Naturally, Salvation got a little jealous the same way Samedi got upset when Sarah kept reviving people and saving them from death. To punish her and her husband (who, in ZFRP, also had the purifying ability when he was alive), Salvation murdered Junko's husband while in the guise of Chang'e in an attempt to hide her identity. Junko, however, was able to figure out who she really was, so Salvation used her memory wipe power. Salvation's skill with this power was poor back then, though, so Junko would up with scrambled, damaged memories, resulting in her current eccentric, loopy personality. Regardless, though, it worked - Junko now believed someone named Chang'e was the culprit, even though she still recognized Salvation when she saw her again.

This subplot was added to the story to give Junko a role of importance, which I felt would work as a big surprise to people who never thought she'd be more than a joke character, especially this soon after her debut. It also helped give a conclusion to the CHANG'E ARE YOU WATCHING jokes, which I loved but I knew I'd have to stop doing sooner or later to keep them from growing old and to give Junko a chance to become more than a meme character. Junko is planned for now to remain relatively unimportant, but will be closely tied to Hecatia, Clownpiece, and the Planeswardens, so if they have any story events involving themselves in an important way, chances are good she'll tag along.

SALVATION, THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
Salvation had a long road of development. She began as Marzanna, a female spirit of death that would act as Baron Samedi's second-in-command. The plan for her when she was Marzanna was similar to her actual role - she would appear as a benign or friendly figure long before the plot's climax, soft-spoken and offering advice. Then, she would reveal her true nature and attack... only to gleefully reveal upon her defeat that she was just a distraction, and the portal allowing the kobbers to watch Sarah fight Baron Samedi would appear, which would cause everyone to realize that the Baron stole away Sarah while they were all busy with Marzanna.

Later, after flip-flopping on it, I decided that Marzanna and Samedi would switch places. I also changed her design to take her in a new direction - that of the self-righteous god who thinks they know what's best. I drew inspiration from a character type I deeply despise, that of the trollish authority figure who is technically not a villain but torments other characters for giggles and has extremely strong powers but never uses them to help unless forced to. Specifically, I'm thinking of Yukari Yakumo from Touhou and Palutena from Kid Icarus - the former is my least favorite Touhou character and one of the only ones I actively dislike, while Palutena upset me so much she was a major factor in my decision to give up on Kid Icarus Uprising (along with the controls, which I could barely stand). I've seen a few other characters with this portrayal, but those two in particular were the ones that guided Salvation to her final form (Chakravartin, again, was also an inspiration here).

One important decision I made was that I was determined, after dropping the "Marzanna" idea, that Salvation not have a form change into a grotesque, obviously evil "true form". I do stuff like that a lot, and I wanted Salvation to remain angelic and pretty on the outside even after it was revealed she was horrible.

WHAT GOT CUT
There were going to be more transformations for Baron Samedi, including a giant, rotting, floating skull; a towering abomination of bones and flesh; a massive form with huge hands and a dislocated jaw that housed a core in its' chest containing Sarah; and a heavily muscled zombie-esque form. The first and third forms would have been fought in Las Vegas by the Kobbers, and the second and fourth would have been fought by Sarah. There was never a plan to fight ALL of these forms - rather, Sarah would have faced between one and three (including Samedi's Grim Reaper form that did get used) and one of the two other forms would have been the final boss. These forms were dropped alternately for simplicity or for the plot reason of Salvation becoming the final boss.

Gergoth from Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow would have joined Bleigock and Amphisbaena in the Welward event as a miniboss, or alternatively would have joined Dr. Welward in the boss battle as an assistant.

Dr. Welward had Psyche Locks at one point, which would have revealed his heel turn much too early.

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I think that covers the gist of it. It's been a long time since the plot and this blogpost was written in two sittings weeks apart so I could easily be missing a fair bit, so if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments and I'll answer to the best of my ability!

Sarah won't be around when we reconvene in May. She's earned her rest. But expect many adventures from other members of my ensemble as the snow melts and that mysterious and lovable force known as roleplay strikes again!