Character Musings: Sonder at the Cheap Shop

I first designed Mary Bishop in 2014. I wanted another OC after creating Silence, and Mary was the next at-bat after the character I called "Violet" had turned into Viola and ceased being a full OC. Similar to Silence, the concept was for a "normal" human character without any superpowers. Unlike Silence, however, Mary was designed to be a non-action character primarily used for dialogue.

I've talked a bit before about how urban setting fascinate me, and how a city lit up at night is one of the most gorgeous settings I can imagine, which is a major reason behind why I suggested Las Vegas as an RP setting - this city is famous worldwide for its' presentation and lights, and it seemed to be one of the few cities that even the real-life version of is crazy enough for the kobbers to call home. Now, obviously a big part of that glitz is the big stuff - casinos, novelty hotels, carnivals, concerts, and so on. But there's more to a city than that.

If you're not familiar with "sonder", allow me to introduce you. The term, as you can see above, has deep implications for a big city. All those individual people living their own lives in the same place, but experiencing completely different perspectives. The term was coined as a negative one that induces sadness, but I personally find it beautiful and inspiring. Mary was birthed from my own sonder daydreams of life in the city as I romanticize it. She is a mere convenience store cashier. She sees hundreds of people each day, and is a tiny part of their lives, and they a tiny part of hers. She is a small but important piece of machinery in the colossus that is Vegas.

I imagined walking down the streets of Las Vegas on a summer's night, a neon sign leading you to Grab-N-Go, Mary's store. It's a small shop, but it's packed to the rafters with all kinds of odds and ends. The stock is designed to appeal to people who suddenly find themselves in need of some small something-or-other. A snack. A small tool. Batteries. The daily paper. And so on. And then there's Mary - small yet cool as a cucumber, not necessarily friendly but not rude or intimidating. You'd feel safe around her, even if she wouldn't easily be a close pal. Then you Grab your item of choice, pay, and Go, back into the neon world outside, leaving Mary to her little shop.

I know this is probably hard to get across, and it could well sound stupid, but I really feel like magic can be made out of little everyday things like that if they're given the proper atmosphere. I've always heavily touted "atmosphere" as being something I treasure - it's what sucks me into a video game or a story. When it happens during RP (usually when someone posts a really good blog post or a satisfying forum post with lots of text), I get excited. RP is at its' best when I can read it slowly, imagining it playing out in my head. This feeling more than any other (except perhaps the adrenaline rush of reading an intense Fite) is what I cherish about roleplaying the most (not counting the friendships I've made, naturally - I mean in terms of the actual RP itself).

So, uh, Mary! Aside from my own daydreaming, Mary was meant to be a down-to-earth ordinary non-Kobber-type whose main draws were her deadpan-ness and her normal-ness. No matter what ridiculous situation you gave to Mary, the most you'd get in response would likely be a raised eyebrow. Of course, this meant I could use "Mary actually emotes to something" as a way to add impact to special moments.

Speaking of special moments, how about that family tree reveal? (Several people LOVED it and that made me very happy.) Mary was originally not related to Silence at all, but I thought of the idea early in Season 5 and eagerly canonized it, especially since it gave me a surprise reveal I could do. While they had similar-colored hair, Mary and Silence were otherwise very, very different - this was ideal. It kept the reveal plausible without giving it away blatantly, so when I started teasing hints that there was a connection between the two of them, people noticed - but weren't sure exactly what the connection was. It was a great way to add depth to both characters.

Later in the year, Mary began going on plots once I figured out a way she could meaningfully contribute - as a stats buffer! Mary took her selling on the road with a backpack and pop-up stand, selling tractor-boosting items. In Season 6, I plan to expand her product range a bit to include non-food items that could be of use in certain plot segments - she could navigate a dark place with a flashlight, mess with a machine using a screwdriver, distract a dumb guard with thrown patchisaurs - there's plenty of options!

Silly aside - I associate Mary with the Scott Pilgrim video game. That game is full of tiny little convenience stores you can buy stuff from, and the music track used there does a fantastic job of conveying the feelings of enjoyably browsing a store like Mary's, so I naturally made it her character theme. Additionally, her simple, short design looks vaguely like the SP sprites and she'd probably translate to that style fairly seamlessly. Kim Pine and Kim Pine's deadpan expression may have been a subconscious design aid, too.

About Jinako... It's ridiculous to think that two girls could run Grab-N-Go all by themselves. That works out to 12-hour shifts seven days a week, since Grab-N-Go never closes. So in case you were wondering about that... there are other employees. But, for the sake of conservation of detail, simplicity, and not having to use a bunch of interchangeable minor employee characters, Jinako is the only other one we ever see, and the default one to appear if Grab-N-Go becomes the center of attention at a time Mary is busy elsewhere. She and Mary are close friends, and the two of them are the real brains behind the store and its' success.

I've very happy with the little group of Silence, Blade, and Mary - or, as Chao called them in a PM to me, The Power Trio. Not since the Sarahkin have I made a character group I was this satisfied at the reception and development of. I've considered having 2016 be their final year, and it would make sense for them to stay in Vegas as the kobbers move on to new adventures in another part of the world, but... I can't rule out their returns for sure, because the three of them presented interesting new opportunities and challenges for me, and I've grown very fond of all three. It's also possible that someday Mary could pass the torch to Jinako, and she becomes the important one in a future season. Who can say for sure? Given the way RP changes over time, not even me.

Character Musings: Expose the Esoteric

Fite Club graduates are not a foreign concept to the community. You know how it is - you play as a character for Fite Club or maybe even the Bonus Boss Pavilion, and you wind up getting attached to them and suddenly they're a regular character. So it was with Sumireko Usami, my contribution to the big Touhou bandwagon (while I had earlier played Letty Whiterock and Rin Satsuki, they were both minor characters with little to no future prospects).

And that's how I wound up with this dork as one of my central characters.

It all began the day Urban Legend In Limbo, the game Sumireko debuted in, was released. Chao, our resident Touhou expert, pointed out the intensity of the series' fanbase by showing artwork of Sumireko on Pixiv that was uploaded shortly after the game's release despite her being the final boss of the game, meaning people had IMMEDIATELY purchased it, then IMMEDIATELY played through the entire game to the final boss (not as hard a thing to do as usual, since this one was an arcade-style 2D fighter instead of a bullet hell shmup), saw Sumireko, and drew fanart of her. The below picture managed to be the very first one uploaded, save for a couple of "speculation" pictures that were what people thought Sumireko would look like when all that was known was her name.

The design immediately caught my eye. Cool hat, cool cape, cool hair, glasses (rare on a touhou character), and a pose that radiated confidence. This girl thinks she's a badass. But, at the end of the day, I ultimately considered her to be nothing more than a neat idea for a Fite Club. Specifically, a magician-off with Kaito. Sumireko is not a magician in canon, but I went with it for a few different reasons:

1: Her outfit makes her look like a magician

2: It made her fit in to the setting better (Las Vegas is famous for its' many magic acts!)

3: The personality I envisioned her with made "stage magician" a career choice she'd be likely to pick

And so ZFRP Sumireko was born. She was still only going to be a Fite Club opponent, and made only one brief cameo after that before Harpy began her oft-talked-about three-event Touhou plot that invited everyone with a Touhou character to send them. I went ahead and sent Sumireko to the first event, and as I tried to feel out her personality, her hamminess got emphasized. By the end of the plot, several people told me how much they enjoyed her, and on the spur of the moment I decided she would attend every other event in Harpy's plot as well. Then I decided she would also attend every event in the larger plot that Touhou Plot was part of. And she also attended every Alruthine event, because by that point I had researched Sumireko a bit more and found to my delight that she was an amateur paranormal investigator with a deep interest in the occult. Not only does the same subject fascinate me, I already had Viola, who shared Sumireko's interest, but approached it in a different way and had different focuses within the category. This was an easy hook to get Sumireko in with my other characters, and resulted in the forming of the Chaoservice Contingent thanks to Gloria also sharing some interests with Sumireko. Overall, the three of them just felt like a perfect fit to be friends.

It took a while, but Sumireko eventually managed to develop into a full and proper character after the initial "test run" of only sending her on certain plots. She began making normal appearances in the bar and also popped up on plots that weren't part of her initial scope. By then I knew she was sticking around for the long haul, but like a lot of my debuts, she didn't get her own plot right away. She's getting it this year, though, and I have grand plans!

You know, one of my favorite things about RP is when I manage to really make people happy with my writing. I've gotten a lot of you to smile or laugh with Sumireko, and that's just great. I'm happy I could entertain you with this nerd.

Neo Kobbers: Behind the Scenes

And so my biggest plot yet - and quite probably my biggest plot ever - has come to a close. Tackling the nuts and bolts behind this one is going to be difficult simply due to the sheer size, but I'll give it the old college try. First, I'll review each and every one of the "official 25" Neo Kobbers, going over their creation and also including some backstory notes that give a little more depth to why each of these characters joined the Neo Kobbers (much of this material was never mentioned on the forum, and a lot of it is being made up here!). Then, I'll go over all of the events and talk about them and the cutting room scraps associated with them.

Character Musings: Reading Rainbow

Today we're going to be looking at Gloria Encarta, everyone's favorite summoner librarian.

Like Josephine, Gloria was initially designed to kind of just be there in the background to show that Sarah's sisters were "making it" with their own identities. While Josephine was built around being "average", Gloria was built around being "boring". Quiet, studious, uninterested in pairings, and considers sitting all day while looking at books to be an ideal way to spend an afternoon. It even extended to her physical appearance - I wound up designing Gloria as such that almost any question about her looks could be answered with vagueness, like so:

Is she short? Nah, not really. So she's tall? Ehh, guess so. Is she chubby? Mmnh, not particularly. So she's skinny, then? Wellll, I wouldn't use those exact words. And so on. Gloria was just kind of... there.

Gloria wasn't completely dull as dirt, though. She actually managed to acquire a bit of characterization early on - very early on, when she was still "White Mage 1" - that she has held onto ever since, that being that she is the "leader" of the four sisters. Individually, Sarah, Josephine, and Ariel are competent but flawed. Add in the eldest sister, and they become a cohesive unit that is much more difficult to break down than any of the girls alone. Gloria was the closest thing to a parental figure the other girls had when they lost both parents as teens. Even today, the others seek out Gloria for advice on occasion.

Then, as so often happens with my secondary characters, something happened to make Gloria more important than planned. In this case, it was The Tractor. Gloria went on a hot streak in her first few battles in Season 2, and her reputation as a tractor goddess was cemented in a fight against some of Cornwind's Mavericks, where she rolled multiple 20s and 21s in a single fight, including her finisher, in which she teleported using Exit and reappeared next to a Maverick (Earthrock Trilobyte), calculated so that her staff would materialize inside the Maverick's head. Later, in Season 3, Gloria went on another streak during my Castle Crashers-themed plot and utterly wrecked a bunch of mooks in a cave with rolls ranging from the high teens to 21, including a moment where she rolled a 1 and a 21 back-to-back, just to fake them out. Since then, Gloria's luck has not been as good, but her early runs left a lasting impression.

Gloria has something of a following, now (though all of the sisters seem to nowadays with the possible exception of Ariel) and when I asked Chao one day why he likes Gloria so much, he gave a pretty sensible answer: Gloria is down-to-earth, grounded, and multifaceted. She quietly became one of my most well-rounded characters, with unique aspects to her rarely seen elsewhere. Her and Chao's shared love of books doesn't hurt.

I put a bit of myself into each of the four sisters. Gloria reflects my childhood obsession with books. Although I certainly have nothing against books today, when I was a child they were incredibly important to me. I had and still have a seriously big library of books, and I had dozens of favorites as a kid that I read over and over. In a broader sense, Gloria also embodies my love of nostalgia. I'm a nostalgic sort of person who often reflects fondly on days gone by, and Gloria's loves of tradition, old books, and museums and distaste of any new technology that replaces an old standby is part of that (Widow Maker's love of retro video games and Sarah enjoying old Garfield comics is another aspect of said nostalgia).

Like virtually everyone else covered in these Character Musings posts, Gloria is going to return once again in Season 5. How much she'll do remains to be seen, and I actually have no real plan for her right now, but she's already shown up in Vegas thanks to my "The Very Best" blog story, so she'll be doing SOMETHING... I just don't know what, yet.

Character Musings: Dangerously Genre Savvy

The Sarahkin weren't always my "signature" characters. In the first two seasons of RP, they shared this distinction with another character - the one responsible for this blog's name and logo, Widow Maker the giant praying mantis.

Wids was born in 2010. Major Failure was taking time off from the final battles of Zoofights in order to get married and go on a honeymoon. To help fill the gap, people began holding mini-Zoofights with underpowered Zoofights rejects. I recall "Vuvuzebra" in particular, a zebra with a vuvuzela for a mouth. Just beautiful. Anyway, I wanted to join in, so I submitted some crude sketches and character profiles for two quasi-Zoofighters that would go at it while the Major was away.

When trying to think of monsters, I considered animals Major Failure had never used. The first one to come to mind was a marlin. From this, Marlin the Magnificent was created. Marlin had drills in place of his front fins, a jetpack on his back, and a reinforced snout to make for a devastating battering ram.

For Marlin's opponent, I went with one of my favorite animals, which had never been used in Zoofights - a praying mantis. I made the mantis female, as female mantids are known for being bigger and stronger than males. She received nails on her claws, an invisibility cloak, and a rear-mounted gun that shot black widow spiders. The resulting creature was named Widow Maker and given high intelligence but low defense.

Voting was a landslide in favor of Widow Maker, but Marlin kept it reasonably close when someone drew fanart of him. I ran the tractor upon voting's end and Widow Maker was the winner. The resulting fight was crudely illustrated but pretty good in terms of action, I felt, and ended with Widow Maker decapitating Marlin and piloting his corpse into Ourobouros, the tournament's villain, in order to make her escape.

The following April, Widow Maker resurfaced for the final Zoofights tournament. Initially wearing a cloak to hide her identity for a big reveal right before the tournament began, Widow Maker was a rare sight in the bar early on. I wasn't too comfortable with roleplaying yet, so she spent her time on the sidelines and was very heavily focused on discussing the tournament and the fighters, hanging around The Betting Corner and lamenting her luck as one monster after another lost after she bet on them.

Then ONE VOTE happened (see Sarah's Character Musings for details), and Widow Maker began making more frequent appearances after her release from the hospital. After the Big Bar Brawl, when roleplaying began to truly take off on the forum, Widow Maker became a fixture of the place and one of the most common sights. She was also a baby.

You see, for the first Big Bar Brawl, Widow Maker entered with a weapon given to her by Sine, who felt that Widow Maker could channel her frustration over never winning a bet into an arena win for herself. The weapon, a swordlike thing from the Devil May Cry series, seemed "off", and I decided this meant it contained dark energies. Jumpropeman, in the BBB1 preshow, expanded even further on this and made the weapon outright hostile. After Widow Maker began attacking with it during the Brawl, it began possessing her, and halfway through the fight Widow Maker went on a killing spree and allowed the darkness to consume her completely, becoming a towering nightmare I named "Widow Colossus". Widow Colossus became the first ever Big Bar Brawl godbeast, adapting a long-standing tradition from Zoofights. Fortunately for the Brawl, Alex was able to put Widow Colossus down.

Now for the weirdest part. When Widow Colossus was destroyed, emerging from the remains was a little baby Widow Maker. I adapted this into Widow Maker's abilities - when she is killed, she respawns, but she doesn't come back as her usual self - she comes back as a baby. To return to normal, she had to "gain experience" - either through winning Zoofights bets or winning RP fights. After enough victories, she was restored to an adult body, this time without any nails in her claws or guns stuck to her butt, leaving her a mostly-natural giant mantis.

Baby Widow Maker has all of Widow Maker's intelligence but very little combat ability, and she also cannot fly. In later seasons Babby Wids was something of an inconvenience, but in the very dialogue-heavy Season 1 she had lots to do no matter her current size, and she wound up returning to baby form a second time later in the season.

Wids' most famous trait is her genre-savviness. She seems to be aware she is in a roleplaying forum, or at least is really good at recognizing cliches, tropes, and stereotypes. Any antagonist that acts too stereotypical around Widow Maker is sure to get interrupted and shut down. Wids sometimes seems utterly fearless, and very little fazes her. But that wouldn't be true all of the time...

Widow Maker, despite being a very important character in the first season, never had a proper plot of her own. She almost got one when Marlin the Magnificent returned, given a new head and new weapons by World Creature Wars, but that plotline was scuttled when Cornwind started a new, significantly bigger-in-scope plot on the same night. Widow Maker managed to get "New Marlinnium", as he was now called, on her side to help fight the greater menace, who wound up permakilling New Marlinnium by disintegrating him. Marlinnium later made a handful of cameos in the underworld.

So anyway, since Wids never got a plot, my plan for Season 2 was to craft a large one for her. I decided I wanted the normally stoic Wids to feel fear, and the best way to get her to fear an enemy was by making it personal. I introduced Dr. Bulgrave, a mad scientist who was one of the people responsible for creating Widow Maker in the first place and subjecting her to the horrors of a Zoofights tournament. I'll go into detail on Bulgrave more another time, hopefully, but suffice it to say that merely seeing him triggered traumatic flashbacks in Widow Maker, forcing her to lean on others for help.

After Season 2, Widow Maker mostly vanished from view, but she made returns in seasons 3 and 4. In Season 3, she reappeared for one more crack at the Big Bar Brawl, and in Season 4, she returned as Gloria's "secret weapon" after an overwhelming influx of plots forced Gloria to take a break and return to Manhattan for a week or two.

Widow Maker began life as one of the Zoofights "talking head"-type characters, used pretty much as an avatar to let me discuss Zoofights in-universe. But with the help of the RP Explosion, she became her own character, making friends, going on adventures, and developing a following - and becoming quite fun to RP, especially when there's a logical misstep or cocksure villain for her to tear into. Her returns are always met with positivity, and as Harpy once said, "Nobody keeps it real like Widow Maker". I'm always very happy when a character is a success!

Widow Maker is set to return in a limited role once again in Season 5, this time because of one of the Neo Kobbers - Spitfire, another giant mantis. Widow Maker and Spitfire have been planned to meet since 2013, and at long last the two of them will go head to head in Las Vegas.

Character Musings: The Queen of Sweet

Where do I even begin with this girl... Might as well start from the beginning. The very beginning...

Long, long, LONG ago - over ten years ago, in fact - I first became aware of Final Fantasy 1's white mage through 8 Bit Theater-inspired flash cartoons. Not even 8-Bit Theater itself - just Flashes done with the same sprites, given similar characterization. Back then, I was much more into Black Mage, preferring his design over all the other classes. White Mage was second. Time passed and I read the original 8-Bit Theater strip, wrote the two mages into early fanfics and other such things, and began drawing them, eventually culminating in me getting a copy of Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls for Game Boy Advance. Eventually my interest flipped and White Mage became my favorite while Black Mage was secondary.

An early prototype version of Sarah rose from these initial depictions. The original character, named simply "White Mage", had a number of differences from Sarah. She was more assertive and less "cute", as well as taller, and I paired her with Black Mage in a relationship that started off just as one-sided as in 8BT but slowly developed into a sort-of friendship over time. This mage did however have Sarah's trademark appetite.

Flash forward to 2011, and the infamous "ONE VOTE" incident. I'll repeat it for the folks who weren't around for it: In the first round of Zoofights 6, a giant praying mantis competitor was revealed and pitted against a lobster driving a giant robot lobster. Widow Maker, who had lost all three previous matches, went all out for this one in support of her fellow mantis. The mantis ended up losing the fight by a single vote - if the RNG had been just a little off, or if she had gotten just one more vote, she would have won. This heartbreaking result led to Widow Maker getting hospitalized due to a grief- and shock-induced heart failure, and I roleplayed as Hella Jeff for two weeks while she got fixed up. Her attendants? Four white mages - prototype Sarahkin. They were originally simply referred to as White Mage 1 through 4. This was initially done because they were minor characters (and also because I am historically bad with names). And why four? Because of that old influence, 8-Bit Theater, and its' famous gag. "Four white mages? It will never work!"

Next, after Widow Maker's return, a Fite Yer Mates battle took place that left several characters in need of medical attention. I brought back the white mages for a joke, but three of them got scared off, with a single mage staying behind. I randomly decided this was "White Mage 3". This mage healed the hurt fighters, and then stuck around. For the last week of the first round of the tournament, White Mage 3 was Widow Maker's goofy sidekick. She was cute, naive, and provided the CSI "YEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHH" every time Widow Maker made a pun. Her main reason for existing was that at the time Zoofights was a bit more dark than it is now. There were no fluffy relationships and the vast majority of our interactions were centered around watching bloodsports, be it Zoofights itself or the earliest Fite Yer Mates battles, which were pretty brutal. Because of the darker tone, I thought it would be funny to see how a very cute, childlike character would react to it all. And it was all very innocent, silly fun for a while.

Then the first Big Bar Brawl happened.

Harpy entered Alex into that brawl, but JRM had asked for good pictures of the entrants for help with drawing them, so Harpy exchanged her sprite pic of Alex for the official character art of Ramza from Final Fantasy Tactics. I happened to like this design and art style quite a lot, so I reacted with a joke - White Mage 3 used Widow Maker's vote for the Brawl on Alex, with no reasoning beyond a picture of her with hearts for eyes. Then Alex followed up on it, asking 3 for her name. I flailed for a minute in panic before throwing out "Sarah".

And off we went. The pairing developed quickly and simply, as befitting the first pairing of ZFRP. Over time, Sarah developed into the character she is today - sweet, kind, caring, bubbly, and a bit ditzy. Despite using her constantly in the most active season of RP, I've done my best to keep her fresh by using her in different ways. Season 2 focused on Sarah without Alex, as Harpy largely sat out that year. Sarah got time to be on her own, most notably getting involved with helping Morgana and Kayle accept one another again after their severe falling out. In Season 3, I gave Sarah a break and she did very little of importance, only showing up in person at the very end of the season. And in Season 4, Sarah was meant to remain a rare cameo, but she once again defied expectations, this time thanks to the Tractor, and became a regular for the second half of the season. In the Season 4-Season 5 offseason, Alex finally popped the question on Valentine's Day, and ZFRP's original pairing is getting a wedding in Las Vegas! Rest assured, there will be all sorts of grand plans to make this wedding as adorable and full of sweets as possible.

One of the things about Sarah that proves to be the most fun to roleplay is when she does unexpected things, and sometimes those weird things become regular parts of her character. Her drinking contest participation was among the first of these, and her tendency to ride motorcycles, her shutter shades and feather boa won in a bet from Delmond, and her sudden transformation into a theme park owner added to the fun. With our Season 3 setting change, many of these traits vanished - there was nowhere to ride her bike and Tridenland was a poor choice themewise compared to the Star Festival's fairgrounds. We return to urban America this summer, so look for old Sarah habits to return as well.

I really enjoy roleplaying as Sarah. She's a ray of sunshine, always eager to help people regardless of whether they need encouraging words, white magic, or a tasty snack. She gets mocked every so often for her height or her weight, but she refuses to let the haters keep her down. As one of the two "founding mothers" of my roleplaying, Sarah is an important character to me. I hope I can continue to find ways to keep her a fresh and fun character to interact with.

Character Musings: I'm-a Livin In A Box

Ace Attorney is one of those video game series that I just knew I'd have to crib from at some point. Not every series I enjoy is good for roleplaying, but Ace Attorney provides strong, multifaceted characters, and I've been tempted to use several of them. Of the rejects, Franziska von Karma got the closest, as seen in my last Rejected Characters Depot, but ultimately I went with Myriam Scuttlebutt.

Now, you may notice that when I pick characters to roleplay as that are from existing media, I pretty much never choose the main protagonist or lead. I might choose a character that is very important to the original material, like Edea Lee or Browny, but they aren't the star, they aren't the dude that's front and center on the cover. I didn't pick the Warrior from FF1, I picked the White Mage. I didn't pick Ultraman, I picked his archenemy Baltan. I didn't pick Axel or Blaze, the Streets of Rage leads, I picked Electra and the bikers. And so instead of roleplaying as Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth, or even Athena Cykes, I went with the relatively minor Myriam.

I think that generally the lead characters don't have the fun personality quirks the side characters do. They're usually somewhat "everyman" and have a minimum of personality, or are kind of generically heroic. Meanwhile, I do my best work with unlikely heroes and quirky characters with appearances or shortcomings that aren't often seen in the heroes of an action-packed story. Plus, lesser-seen characters often feel like they have more to tell, as they weren't the focus of the initial story. We've seen Phoenix Wright in a half-dozen different games by now, so we know his deal. Myriam appeared in one case as a secondary character. She got a little arc to herself, but it was nothing compared to the series mains.

So on to Scuttlebutt herself. I initially considered her for a less heroic role, but instead of writing the tabloids, I decided to make use of the character development she received in the game, where she goes from a snoopy, annoying little git to a pitiable shy girl. After she got the courage to make friends in a more normal way, she swapped classes from Judge to Journalist and began a real pursuit of the truth. This is the Scuttlebutt I wanted, a character that fought for good with the printed word instead of with physical attacks (particularly because, an inch shorter than Sarah and with Ariel's body type but with neither Sarah's magic nor Ariel's physical ability, Myriam was the smallest, weakest human I'd ever roleplayed).

Myriam had two main roles. The first, her uncovering of rumors, was rendered unimportant quickly as I rarely found the time to interview other users' characters and (aside from Samus) couldn't think of much material to use anyway, so most of the onscreen rumors she debunked were related to my own characters. Instead I focused on her newspaper in general, and she had a nice little arc with Janet where the two eventually joined forces. The second role was her intelligence gathering, which generally consisted of her tagging along on adventures and then doing her trademark Box Park and sitting in the corner doing nothing while everyone else fought. She did get active a few times, though. While her attempt at The Hermit's hermitage didn't end well, she was able to fend for herself in Looney Land and during Wheelerplot. She even tried the Fite Club right at the end of the season, and won the match!

Myriam and Viola seemed to make a natural pair, so when Viola wasn't around Tenshi, I often had her team up with Myriam instead. While Viola initially disliked Myriam, I imagined that after breaking Viola's Psyche Lock, Myriam and Viola would gradually start working together. Both share a passion for information, and they are both shy and socially inept, but in different ways. Plus, it gave Viola something to do besides cling to Tenshi.

Myriam wasn't hugely important, and her planned return in Season 5 isn't going to change that. And that's fine. She's not supposed to be a major player. Myriam is on the sidelines, rooting for the movers and shakers and helping them with good press. She may not be able to suplex a train or punch a god in the face or nuke The Warp, but she has her niche and she does it well.

Oh, and for those of you unfamiliar with the source material: Myriam's hissing laugh and the choking "khak-khak" noise she makes when surprised, flustered, or nervous are both direct from the game and I have no idea what inspired those quirks. *shrug*

Character Musings: Dead Again, One More Time

Thanks, Obama.

My initial idea for Ariel's job change was to make her a soft-spoken Dark Knight, purely due to finding it funny that the smallest, most waifish member of the mage family would be a tanky, tough class (sort of a proto-quasi-Tenshi, if you will). I ditched this idea due to the job class being exclusive to Final Fantasy Tactics' PSP remake, and therefore being both less familiar to me and less familiar to readers at large. Instead, I perused the FFT job list for a job that would be unique and interesting and picked "archer". From there, Ariel's tree-hugger side was an easy addition, as archers, hunters, and other similar job types are frequently associated with forests and nature.

At the same time, in 2012, I went on a sort of political kick and took a serious interest in politics leading up to the big US election showdown that November. However, I made a few missteps in conversation with friends due to getting too invested in the topic. This added two elements to Ariel's character. First, I expanded her being a simple nature lover to being an outright activist, pushing for change on multiple fronts. Second, my negative experiences with politics warned me to not turn Ariel into a moral-spewing agenda-pusher, so I worked hard to make her non-preachy and non-offensive. Ariel's two main desires - a wish to see less blatant pollution and a wish to see people treated fairly - are not very politically charged in our community and have therefore been safe bets. I've also indicated she's passionate, but not hardcore - the most notable instance being that Ariel isn't a vegetarian and doesn't criticize people's food choices. I knew she'd be a walking buzzkill if she got too caught up on what people eat.

As part of the concept of each of the four sarahkin having different builds, Ariel is the fit one. It fits really well - while Sarah and Josephine are big eaters (so they're chubby/curvy) and Gloria is less so but sedentary with a job class that lets her summons do the work (so she's average), Ariel's job, personality, and her work at places like parks and nature preserves means she's naturally the thinnest and most agile of the four. The tradeoff seems to be her infamous frailty. We need to talk about your Defense stat, Ariel.

Unfortunately for Ariel, her constant jobbing in Season 3 makes just as much sense as her physical fitness. She is the worst of her family at white magic, unable to perform many of the strong spells her sisters are famous for. And once an enemy gets through her underpowered Protect and Shell spells, her tiny frame isn't exactly going to offer much resistance. As a result, Ariel was frequently taken out of commission, especially because Ariel's participation in Season 3 largely revolved around an extended war with The Society, and practically every member of the group was more powerful than Ariel and threw around their superpowers with impunity. She was KOed again and again, and I began buffing her out of desperation to have her survive more than one attack in a feasible manner, but the tractor didn't cooperate until the final week of the plot, when I was finally able to make Ariel look like a reasonable threat and to gain some measure of respect back.

While I'm talking about Ariel, I'll also talk about Penny. Penny isn't very important - she's mostly just 'Ariel's friend and partner in activism' and has no role beyond helping Ariel. Activists work best in groups, however, so I chose Penny to represent the people Ariel has teamed up to fight alongside her in Manhattan. I enjoyed making the two of them derp around in Gloria's library, but with my roster as massive as it is, I have no plans to feature Penny as anything more than an Ariel satellite character who appears whenever she needs a second pair of hands. We all know what RP can do to plans, though. On another note, I actually have more than once considered making Ariel and Penny a legit couple, but decided against it due to not wanting to enlarge the sarahkin family even further and to keep Ariel open in case she somehow gets roped into a "real" pairing with another user. They're just good platonic friends, and shall remain so.

Ariel sat out almost all of Season 4, only appearing for Wheelerplot and a background joke plot about her and Penny mismanaging Gloria's library. She's likely to get more screentime in Season 5. Will Ariel be able to shake off her jobber reputation like Samus did hers?

Character Musings: Too Spooky

One day in 2013 I came up with the idea of roleplaying a gothic-type character. From this idea, Viola was born. She began life as Violet, an OC inspired by the MySims character of the same name, but with a different design and a giant scorpion familiar. While I would eventually select DJ Candy to represent my interest in MySims, Violet lost that aspect of her character and became Viola when I played Pokemon Y and discovered the redesigned Hex Maniac trainer class, and the scorpion familiar was swapped out for Pokemon. I thought the design of the Hex Maniacs was pretty great, and apparently a lot of people agree as Hex Maniac appears to now be far and away the most popular generic Trainer type in Pokemon - a big change from the class's original overlooked Hoenn appearance.

I waffled a bit when trying to decide whether Viola had legitimate supernatural powers or was just a huge dork, at one point even considering revealing her to be a ghost. Ultimately I went the dork route - she has a very strong interest in the paranormal but possesses no paranormal qualities herself. Her personality has also shifted a lot - initially more of a snarky, anti-establishment goth chick, Viola was much quieter and more mysterious in her first few appearances on the blog and at the very beginning of the season, and soon after she was introduced a side of her that had been hinted at previously - a deep-seated, enduring fear of socializing and bullying - came to the fore as Viola's Achilles heel and the cornerstone of her character.

Viola is quiet and withdrawn. Many of her attempts at making friends ended in failure before ZFRP. She was bullied for most of her life, and has spent many a night wishing for strength and confidence that she doesn't possess. With the help of ZFRP, she has improved noticeably, but remains an awkward introvert that has difficulties understanding the complicated ins and outs of friendship. And she's a lesbian, and we can all be thankful the bullies never found that out.

But the real reason you're reading this post is to hear me talk about Tenshi. Like so many things in ZFRP, it was an accident. Viola wandered into a conversation between Tenshi and Richard initially just to make a joke about the portal that connected Sheryl's Diner and The Drunken Gryphon, but Tenshi stuck around and kept saying all the wrong (or right) things, making Viola more and more interested in her. The stalking phase was brief but memorable (Viola pretending to be Myriam to get photos of Tenshi is one of the times I've laughed at my own RP) and the comedy gave way to feels when Tenshi, Apollo, and Myriam broke open Viola's Psyche-Lock. Like Lily taking interest in Sonia, I found there was a surprising amount of evidence to point to that showed the pairing was a valid idea, and so Viola and Tenshi began influencing each other and causing character development.

Late in 2014 I realized that Viola had become too attached to Tenshi - she almost never did anything that wasn't Tenshi-related, and rarely interacted with other characters. As fitting as that is for an antisocial introvert with a grand total of like three friends, I didn't want to pigeonhole her as a Tenshi satellite character, so I plan for Viola to do more things that don't involve Tenshi in the future.

Viola will return in Season 5 - she has a plot hook already set in the form of Clair, and despite what I said in the above paragraph this particular subplot is custom-made for Tenshi to get involved. Will they ever be more than just friends? You can never say anything for sure in RP, but I think you can count on something changing there one way or another...

Character Musings: Celestial Body

Before there was Buttsephine, there was Celestiass.

The literal Mother Of All Sarahkin has definitely been one of my more unique characters to play. Her origins are unique, too. One day in 2011, I was bored and doodled a female black mage in MS Paint with no specific plans for them in mind (I don't know why I gave said mage purple hair other than that it just felt right). Later, Alex visited Sarah's house, and I had the opportunity to develop Sarah's family (an opportunity I have milked for all it's worth :V). Originally Celestia, not Helios, was to be the deceased family member, but plans changed. I eventually wound up with her working for Tiamat as an elite guard with a specialty in mechanics. She was then fought, converted, and joined the kobbers as a semi-regular (reminder that Celestia was a villain goes here).

At first Celestia wasn't good for much besides constantly repairing the group's robots (especially Zephyrus, to the point it became a running gag), although she had a few cute moments with her daughters and told some embarrassing stories. Late in the first season, a few jokes about her attractiveness came up courtesy of Wall, but it wasn't a major deal.

Season 2 was the season Celestia came into her own as a real character, thanks in part to Dirk and his failed attempt at hooking up with her. It was here we firmly established the gag that Sarah's mom did, in fact, have it going on, particularly in the lower half. She also faced several other conflicts and challenges, from Sarah entering a game show to her family's nemesis Garland resurfacing and nearly killing her. Essentially, Celestia became a fully fleshed-out (no pun intended) and multifaceted character. She's a mechanic. She's a doting mother. She's a strategist. She's a great chef. She's ZFRP's Team Mom, always ready and eager to help with a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, and a warm cookie or twelve dozen.

Celestia holds a very rare distinction: she has never been killed in ZFRP. Considering she's been around since Season 1 and made regular appearances in every season but the third, that's saying a lot. She stayed out of trouble pretty frequently in Season 1, but she made numerous battlefield appearances in later seasons and just always managed to get away. It also helps that although she's entered several Fite Yer Mates matches, only one of them (vs Rafflesia) had lethal KOs as part of the equation, and it wasn't particularly likely to happen, either. Celestia just seems to have a knack for survival.

Celestia and Helios have a relationship that is very "sitcom parents"-esque, without the usual bitterness and hate. Helios tends to play straight man to Celestia's over-the-top inventions and bombastic business ventures. I knew it'd be likely Helios would be revived to rejoin the family if I dwelled on him too much, but I went ahead and did it anyway because I felt Season 2 and early Season 3 had wrung all the sadness out of Helios' death that I needed it to, so I might as well give the Sarahkin a happy ending. Of course, just like how "Final Fantasy" keeps churning out sequels despite the name, the Sarahkin's major plot arc coming to a close didn't mean a thing for their own appearances, and the whole group of them still regularly find ways to get involved in battles and plots.

Will Celestia appear in Las Vegas? I seem incapable of keeping the sarahkin out of RP, so probably, yeah. Will she do anything particularly important? Well, it's all about the hook. I'd need a good hook for Celestia to join in a major plot thread.

I may or may not already have said hook.

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SteelKomodo: ...oh, goops!
SteelKomodo: 60 posts in your blog are tagged with#Butts
Gooper Blooper: it's a butt milestone
SteelKomodo: and also the 60th post featured Celestia!
Gooper Blooper: oh god
Gooper Blooper: it's a sign
SteelKomodo: guess it's time to celebrate!
Gooper Blooper: celestia opens new vegas bakery, advertises with a banner saying "NOW WITH BIGGER BUNS THAN EVER"
SteelKomodo: hahaha
SteelKomodo: maybe add a "60th BUTT MILESTONE" in the post somewhere :U

Character Musings: The Sound of Silence

My thought process for making new characters is a bit different depending on whether I'm adapting a character from another medium into RP or if I'm making an original character. If it's the former, I start with the character and consider what I could mold them into and what they would do. If it's the latter, I start with a concept I want to roleplay, and then build a character that lets me try that concept.

Silence accomplishes two things. Firstly, I wanted a character that fought with sheer brute force instead of fancy weapons (Widow Maker, Kauket, Dr. Bulgrave) or magic (the sarahkin). Additionally, I wanted to try writing a major character that couldn't speak. Silence was just what I wanted - there's nobody else like her on my roster.

Silence was, as I've mentioned before, inspired by a couple of real-life wrestlers I've seen here and there on YouTube and whatnot, those being Kane and Jessicka Havok. I bring it up again because of a little cutting room floor: Silence's initial design had a lot more black clothing and she wore a gas mask instead of a leather mask. This, however, made her look way too much like Havok so I swung the pendulum more towards Kane. The red mechanical eye is my attempt at giving Silence something neither of her inspirations possessed.

Normally in the world of wrassling, people like Silence are the bad guys. After all, if you took Silence and placed her amongst the "Divas" of WWE, she would be by far the tallest, heaviest, and strongest. She's more than twice the size of the most successful girl on their roster, AJ Lee. When you have such enormous statistical advantages over your opponents, of course you'd be the villain. You're the odds that have to be overcome. But that's where the magic of ZFRP comes in. Silence is an ordinary human with absolutely no special powers. For all her height and muscle, her opponents are monsters and aliens with guns and magic. In a lot of fights, she's actually the underdog, and it's suddenly easy to make her sympathetic and someone to root for.

Silence was originally supposed to be more rough around the edges, as befitting her appearance, but she revealed herself to be a big softie pretty quick. She makes friends surprisingly easily for someone who can't properly communicate with them. Although she is rather rough-and-tumble, there are plenty of people in ZFRP who love a good fight, so that's not a huge barrier either.

I wanna mention Blade here, too. There are a lot of things in ZFRP I don't see coming, and when I came up with the idea of Blade returning as a regular to be Silence's manager, I was surprised at myself for digging him back up from his relatively minor role in Season 2. Blade helps Silence communicate, which I felt was important. I didn't want a cop-out on the "silent character" idea, so I had even gone so far as to make Silence illiterate so she couldn't just write her thoughts, but she still needed some way to help get people's attention and announce her intentions, and it made sense for a wrestler to have a manager anyway. So instead of a new character, out comes Blade. I think the idea of Silence being "normal" made him a great fit - the Storm Bikers' plot in Season 2 was all about the concept of "normal" and how the kobbers could so easily disrupt the lives of normal thugs.

Silence hasn't yet had too much of a chance to really develop in RP, as she took a sort of hired-gun role in Season 4 - instead of having stories happen to her, she simply joined in on plots whenever I felt like using her. She's on tap to get some development this year, though, mostly in the form of people finally uncovering her past. It's taken me a long time to iron out the kinks, and I still don't have everything, but I finally have some form of backstory for her planned that I think is acceptable, unlike last year where I didn't know what my own character's deal was. All you Silenceamaniacs out there can find out for yourself this summer.

Character Musings: A Whole Lotta Sephine

I remember when I first introduced Josephine. She wasn't supposed to be anyone special. In fact, that was the driving concept behind a lot of initial design decisions. She was a chemist, a very plain job that, in FFT, has the claim to fame of... the ability to use items. She wore plain dull-colored clothes. I gave her the height and body type of "the average woman". She worked a nothing job in a mall. Her text color was brown. Everything about Josephine was meant to say "This is an average girl with an average job living an average life. She is not exciting". The most she contributed in her earliest days was to play straight man to Sarah's ditzy, bubbly antics.

And then ZFRP happened.

First, the body insecurities. What started as a simple joke about Sarah's "Magical Weight Gain Prevention" became a significant part of Josephine's character, and when I realized I'd given the girl that worked in a clothing store a body image problem, I thought to myself "Welp, looks like I accidentally made perfect sense again". Then, Ariel started her "Rally For Reality" campaign and all of a sudden the joke wasn't a joke, it was a serious inner conflict. But with help from Ariel and Dirk, Josephine slowly but surely grew and changed.

Now Dirk, there's another fine example of character development. Dirk and Josephine played off of each other throughout the third season of RP, gradually growing closer as I worked on my first "slow burn" pairing, wanting to make this couple distinctive from Sarah and Alex falling in love quickly. It paid off, and the long-awaited big moments - Josephine's hallway confession of desperation followed by Dirk's reassurances, and then the climax on the Ferris wheel - were definitely worth the weight wait.

I love the contrast between the two pairings. Saralex is a fluffy, sweet pairing with very little lewdness to it, built around lots of small cute moments and dramatic rescues. Dirksephine, too, was built on a foundation of saving the girl (this time courtesy of Sir Periwinkle) but the slower development really helped it work in a way a quick pair-off wouldn't have after RP had seen so much. It's also a lot more "racy" than Saralex ever was, which of course led to taking Dirk's already-well-established love of butts and it leading to Josephine becoming a confident gal with a backside to match her newfound attitude.

Now she's heading to Las Vegas, where a side of her character that often doesn't see as much attention - her greed for cash - will no doubt take center stage. I initially added this bit to her character to try and make her more multifaceted, and it's been seen here and there in RP but has been more of a Chatzy gag than something that saw a lot of time in actual play. But this year, no doubt, Josephine will be able to make her pursuit of riches loud and clear.

In sum, then: Plain-Jane, meek, shy, self-conscious, yo-yo-dieting everygirl becomes brash, curvy, confident, gunslinging treasure hunter. Thank you, ZFRP. You do us proud.