What Got Cut From Dark Matter Plot?

A lot.

But no, really. My main 2020 plot was always intended to be smaller in size than The Curse despite the increased stakes, but even with that in mind, the massive plot logjam we wound up with in the second half of the season, one of the most intense ever despite the low overall post count of the season, ensured I had to keep Dark Matter trimmed down to the basics. If it hadn't been for the plot's collaborative nature, Dark Matter might not have left much of an impact, but the events from other users kept the plot going when I was unable to squeeze in any events (I managed just one Dark Matter plot in July, one in August, two in September, and the three-day finale in October.)

As a result, a ton of content was cut from the plot, as I scaled even further back from my original plans. Most of it was Kirby-related content I cut in favor of focusing on alternate dimension Kobbers, as I felt that was on the whole the more interesting angle. Kracko and Miracle Matter were non-negotiable, however - these two Kirby bosses are near and dear to my heart. Let's go into why.

Miracle Matter is the easy one to explain. Aside from the Kirby 64 connection, Miracle Matter was also set up earlier in the year as the method to get Bree to slip in a Dark Matter representative, that being Miracle the Ditto. I couldn't very well cut Bree's only representation in the plot, and really didn't want to, either, considering the status I was planning to assign to Miracle as being the most powerful of the vassals due to the Dark Star Kobbers being unable to keep up with its' rapid shapeshifting. (Side note: We would have had an extra round of combat against Miracle where she turned into various Kirby bosses I'd had to cut from the plot, but I cut that round of battle as well when people figured out her deal early in the fight.)

Kracko is a personal one. On another forum I used to frequent way back before ZFRP took off, I was the author of a Paper Mario-themed fanfiction that, while juvenile and crude by my current writing standards, I will always owe a debt to, because it was how I first got the courage to start writing and posting things online and joining a community instead of being at the fringes. The fanfic was received well by my peers, to the point I'd built up a minor cult of personality around myself. One of the most ridiculous results of this was a user joining the forum with a username nigh-identical to my own, which they took specifically out of admiration of me. This was flattering and all, but the resulting name confusion bothered me, and rather than ask this person to change their username, I did my own change, and shifted from one minor Nintendo boss to another, going under the username "Kracko" for a while in the mid-2000s. As a result of using him as my name and avatar, I felt a connection to this silly recurring Kirby boss, and so when I decided to do a Kirby plot, I knew I simply had to integrate him into the proceedings.

So, about those cut characters... 

While not technically Kirby characters, I think we can agree that Galeem and Dharkon are at least "Kirby-esque", being Smash Brothers originals, and we all know how Smash and Kirby have plenty in common besides both having Kirby characters in them. In early, pre-Season 9 versions of this plot, these two would have been set up as the main antagonists, only for it to be revealed towards the end of the plot that both of them were being used by Zero Two as pawns, and it was exploiting their animosity towards each other to wreak havoc and weaken Zero Two's potential victims, making assimilating them into the collective easier. It was also possible that both of them were just really fancy Dark Matter, or that they were possessed by Dark Matter, but I believe the initial idea is that they were simply forces of nature that Zero Two was subtly pushing in our direction and letting their hatred of one another override anything else. The equivalent of unleashing a bull in a china shop and then sending in a grizzly bear after it.

What's a Dark Matter plot without King Dedede? ...Well, unfortunately he didn't make the cut as I felt so desperately pressed to cut down the plot to its' bare essentials, but he was totally going to be in there. Had his own event at one point, even! It would have been a pretty typical Dedede appearance, with most of his memes and gags referenced (clobba dat dere Kirby, hand me anudda bagga dem chips, The Big Gay Dance, etc) and that was why it felt okay to cut him - I didn't have any ideas that were truly me, it was just "here's Dedede doing Dedede things", unlike Kracko where I got really inventive and weird.

The Mage Sisters! Gah! I've been trying to get these three in RP for literally years but it just never works out. They were initially set to join The Curse in 2019, then when I cut them they were moved to this plot, and they got cut again. They're cute and could have made good face turns, and pitting them against the Argyris Sisters would have been a delight, but when cute girls are a dime a dozen in RP, especially MY RP, the competition is fierce and ultimately they ended up on the chopping block once more. At this point I doubt I'll ever be able to work them in anywhere.

Vividria is another character I've wanted in RP ever since playing Kirby Star Allies but have been unable to actually get her on the forum. Her path was similar to the Mage Sisters, except she would have been a friendly face from the beginning with no villainous ties if she had made her debut in 2018 or 2019 like I'd originally planned. I've tossed around the idea of an "artist-that-brings-stuff-to-life" character in my RP for most of RP's existence, with Adeleine being the first character I considered for the role. At one point, Dark Matter Plot had an artist-themed event where we would have to beat the possession out of Vividria, Adeleine, and Paint Roller, but that got scrapped too.

Zeromus was a possible addition to the big Fiend battle, but that plot was already so overstuffed I just couldn't justify cramming in yet another big boss monster that would lose in one turn due to me having my attention too split to give it its' proper due.

Another scrapped event was "Crisis Of Infinite Eggettes". Dark Star Scramble would have gotten a day to herself. In this event, she would have been trying to alter the Dimension Mirror to allow for a full invasion of ZFRP Earth, only for her dimensional meddling to result in numerous Eggettes based on other Sonic the Hedgehog continuities to show up. The Eggette from the main RP verse is Classic Eggette, and Dark Star Scramble was Adventure Eggette. This plot would have added Movie Eggette, SATAM Eggette, AOSTH Eggette, and Boom Eggette, and they would have been a bunch of squabbling brats. Dark Matter wouldn't even bother possessing them - they were all just natural little shits that Dark Star Scramble would unleash on the Kobbers.
 

The plot would have also included Dark Star Tron Bonne as Dark Star Eggette's sidekick. Ultimately I cut the event and had Scramble get dealt with during the big space battle in the finale, which meant the end of this alternate Tron and all the bonus eggs.

Here's Dark Star Dolby. A major theme of Dark Matter Plot in the early concept stages was that it would be Nerd Club's final bow. A lot of early planning, then, revolved around the idea of Nerd Club facing the alternate possessed versions of themselves, with the alternate Sumireko being one of the major antagonists. Ultimately this concept was dropped - we didn't see any Dark Star nerds except Twomireko/Semirenko Salami, who wasn't even possessed, and although I retired most of Nerd Club at the end of 2020, the club is still alive and well with Rachel, Mega Drive, and Game Gear forming its' new core.

Another concept dropped from the plot was a gimmick I thought of later on. To celebrate the milestone season, I imagined Dark Matter plot featuring exactly ten main antagonists, with one representing every season of RP and all ten of them being Dark Star versions of villains I had used in the past. A decent amount of them actually made it to the plot, including the Season 1 rep (Tiamat), the Season 2 rep (Saber), the Season 4 rep (The End), and the Season 8 rep (Scramble). However, this evil Plague Knight representing Season 7 didn't make the cut, and neither did the Season 6 rep (Salvation) or the Season 3 rep (Overgrowth, a re-imagining of that weird plot I did in Season 3 where Auto was hijacked by a nuclear treant). My Season 5 rep idea didn't go any further than writing "A Neo Kobber?" in my notes, Season 9 would probably have been repped by Masher if he had survived The Curse, and Season 10's rep was of course Sectonia/Zero Two.

Another character that was dropped from the plot was Dark Star Rinoa, who would have been a completely played-straight version of the character I used in Season 7 who turned out to just be an alter ego for Angelica von Buxton. This was an idea I had to give something nice to anyone who happened to unironically like Rinoa and was sad she wasn't a real character. I'm not sure Rinoa has any fans, though, especially this long after the fact... but I maintain that even if they didn't appear in the plot, most or all of the Dark Star counterparts I've put in this post are "canon" and live on Heart Star now, we just didn't see them. So if you missed Rinoa? Well, there's a Rinoa! Forsooth.

Here's a few other things I was going to do in Season 10 that I didn't have room for...

The aforementioned Dark Star Salvation would have been one of Sectonia's most elite generals, and would have combined aspects of Salvation and Garland to be a winged armored valkyrie lady who would have been super intimidating and dangerous. Her role in the plot was replaced by Golbez.

Rexy was to star in her own event not connected to Dark Matter where she faced off with THE EVIL RAIDERS! The Evil Raiders were a trio of villains from the old 90s Jurassic Park toyline by Kenner. Unique to the toys and never appearing anywhere else, the group comprised of a handful of nasty poacher-type guys who wanted to capture Rexy but with far less benevolent intentions than Zia. The two most likely to make it to RP were Skinner and Dr. Snare, and they would have attacked Rexy with some ridiculous contraption, most likely a mecha Tyrannosaurus Rex for a Real Rex vs Fake Rex battle. At one point I also considered giving them Dino-Tank, from Ultraman, as their weapon. As you might have guessed, this plot was planned to be a bit of comic relief, played for over-the-top Saturday morning cartoon silliness instead of an epic dramatic battle - probably a welcome sight in October when most plots are intense and climactic.

Another dropped Jurassic Plot event was a battle against a group of Arthropleura, a giant (over seven feet long!) prehistoric millipede I've been fascinated by for a long time. One of them would have been mutated by InGen to be murderously dangerous, more like a centipede than a millipede, while the others were more benign, and the Kobbers would have had to help Zia save the normal ones and destroy the anomaly.

My old idea for a "Gang Wars" plot, once part of The Curse, rose up again for Season 10. The idea was to do a pre-Brawl plot where we squashed some of the evil resistances popping up that were trying to take over the gaping power vacuum left by The Curse's demise. The blogpost I did that spring before the season started was meant as the lead-in to this plot, and it would have revolved around fighting some Curse rejects, as well as a scrap with Nattie and a battle against Pink before climaxing with facing the Y Syndicate. This plot eventually mutated and split up into several branches - Nattie acquired Daz and Gina and we wound up with The Valkyries. The Curse Rejects aspect morphed into the Mr. Hippo/Sir Ffuzzy-Logik miniplot that later turned into a real plot and got pushed to Season 11 after we defeated Ffuzzy-Logik. Finally, the rest of it was merged with Dark Matter Plot and Skeiron and Isotope were added to it for callbacks, Streets Of Rage references, and a way to give the robot duo something to do in Season 10.

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Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is a deeply personal video game for me. While not the first N64 game I ever played (that honor goes to either Pokemon Snap or Super Mario 64, and I couldn't tell you which of the two), it was the first I played on my very own N64, the others having been played on other people's systems when I visited their homes. Considering Kirby 64 was one of the N64's last major releases, yes I was a late adopter of the system. We couldn't afford the latest whiz-bang console generation at the time, but the N64 was several years old and had been discounted accordingly, so it was my pick over, say, a Sega Dreamcast. Pokemon was a major influence, probably THE defining force getting me to jump ship from Sega, ignore Sony, and join up with Nintendo.

I owe a lot to Kirby 64. I played it inside and out, trying to 100% it, but there was one shard I simply couldn't figure out how to grab (the infamous Rock/Cutter shard that requires you to know that the Rick form Kirby can make with his Rock/Cutter can wall-climb) and I eventually realized that if I looked online, I might be able to find out how to get the shard via the power of the Internet. This search led me to GameFAQs, which became my online home for the next several years... and, through a series of circumstances, forum drama, and other developments, it eventually led to me meeting my best friend Chao. While it was Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door that proved the direct link, without Kirby 64 to get me to GameFAQs in the first place, I might have ended up joining, like, Neoseeker or something instead, and I might have never met Chao.

Kirby 64 itself is loaded with personal nostalgia to me, enough to make Dolby pass out. Like Streets of Rage 2, Sonic 2, Pokemon Gold, and Banjo-Kazooie, it's a game that is engraved in my mind. It turned twenty years old in 2020, also marking the twenty-year anniversary of me playing it for the first time. And that final battle music against Zero Two, the music I only heard because of the Internet leading me to that final shard, carries tremendous emotional power. I chose Kirby 64 as the headliner for my ten-year anniversary plot because originally this plot was conceived as the way I would end my time in ZFRP. The plan was to face Zero Two either in our final year together or in our tenth, whichever came first. ZFRP has proven to have much more staying power than I think any of us realized - even as recently as seasons 5 and 6 I could barely imagine us making it to 10 without petering out to nothing, but the community has remained intact and even picked up a new face in the form of Hooded Pitohui. I'm delighted to be able to continue to associate with you all and thrilled that our creative juices are still churning out content for RP that is both entertaining and engaging. Season 10 may have had its' issues like scheduling pileups and plotmasses and so on, but for it to turn out as good as it did with 2020 being as stupid a year as it was, I think we did pretty damn well!

Season 10's conclusion has often been said to feel like the end of an era. While many characters from the past will still be appearing in Season 11, it does feel like a new chapter in our history. The first era was 2011-2012, the second was 2013-2020. Now the third era begins. What does our future hold? I'm no fortune-teller, but I expect plenty more fun plots, epic battles, and awesome characters from all of us. Here's to 2021, and Happy New Year to all!