Origin: Touhou Project
Possible Season: 4
My first idea for another major Touhou after Utsuho was a surprising success, Mokou was largely picked because of possible interaction ideas with Utsuho. She had similar powers, possessing a phoenix's flames and all. My idea was that she'd be sort of a foil to Utsuho - a calmer, more levelheaded firebird who is nonetheless even more nonchalant about her death, due to a permanent resurrective immortality. One idea I had was for her to care so little about dying that she does it as a demonstration. Playing Labryinth of Touhou gave me ideas for Tenshi instead, and I decided to pursue the Celestial over the phoenix. Mokou did manage to make a minor cameo in Season 4, showing up during the horde of dimensional twists in the Osaal plot, but I haven't considered bringing her back since.
Origin: Street Fighter
Possible Seasons: 5, 6
A bit of an odd case, this is where I was basically inspired to consider roleplaying a character because the memes were fun... and then cut it for good because I didn't have any real, solid ideas. Basically my entire reason for putting Bison into consideration was thanks to his memetic, ham-tastic performances in the movie and the cartoon, despite knowing very little about the game's version. While he managed to stick around as a possibility for multiple years, I ultimately decided I wasn't familiar enough with him outside of the go-to jokes to make it work.
Origin: Touhou Project
Possible Seasons: 5, 6, 7
Poor, poor Kokoro. I really do like her! She just has a track record of getting shafted when it comes to ZFRP. While she did appear as a Fite Club opponent for Edea in Season 5, she was meant to be a significant character that season, with a plot revolving around collecting her masks and restoring her emotions that way. I couldn't figure out a way to make it more than Jokerton Again when she was missing emotions, so I put her on the back burner and decided I'd use her in Season 6, especially after playing Hopeless Masquerade and getting a better idea of her personality. Unfortunately for Kokoro, that also inspired Nitori, meaning I had a different Touhou character to focus on for Season 6. I decided to punt her back to Season 7, but by now I've already gotten multiple other ideas that I like more... so at this point, I'm just going to call Kokoro a victim of the cutting room. At least she had more attempts than anyone else on this list.
Origin: Original
Possible Season: 7
An idea that I liked but I couldn't ever carry beyond the basic gimmick. This guy would have been a hard-boiled private eye, inspired by Spy's discussion of a similar gimmick of noir narration and my own rereading of a large collection of pulp stories featuring this type of character. I tossed it around a couple times, but I couldn't ever really work out anything specific, and I eventually scrapped the idea - Goops did a good enough job with Noir, anyway. A few fragments of it have been rolled into a possible future idea, though.
Origin: Original (picture taken from Trillion Starlights)
Possible Season: 7
A character idea based on and subsequently cut by a plot! Nova's concept was that she was the younger sister of Halley Solaris, who had nothing but a good relationship with her sister. She would have shown up the season after Halley's demise in Councilplot, trying to figure out what the hell happened to Halley and why the Kobbers killed her off. She wouldn't have been antagonistic, though; it would have been more about her grasping the change in her sister. ...This was all dependent on the original version of Halley, who was simply undyingly loyal to the Council. When I overhauled the character and turned Halley into someone super evil, I realized that I had cut out Nova's main concept - there's no way Canon Halley would have had a good relationship with her considering how awful she was, and that Halley was established to despise her family for no good reason. Probably the most likely on this list to get picked up in the future, but for now the idea's off the table.
Origin: Touhou Project
Possible Season: 4
Yes, that's right. While Nitori has been a major, significant character in Season 6, all over the place... she was actually considered for Season 4! She was a lot different back then, though, far more focused on the engineering side. She would have likely shown up, drawn by the technology opportunities aboard the ZFS, and used kappa gadgets and science, like she does now. The thing is, Season 4 Nitori lacked the business side or the Kappa Mob, leaving her as... basically Touhou Carol. I didn't want to just do a cheap knockoff of Carol, so I tossed her aside. That worked out well, since playing Hopeless Masquerade let me reinvent Nitori and bring her back as a far bigger success this year.
Origin: A mishmash of sources
Possible Season: 4
Just like Nitori, I had a much different idea for the Alliance circa Season 4! It was going to be the original group - Gallade, Jester Chao, and Axem Blue were unchanged, but I had Commodore Goomba and Eggman-X instead. They were going to crash-land on Ardea and subsequently set up shop, doing incompetently evil things like the canon Alliance did. I even wrote a blogpost once of the five of them in their spaceship, which featured cameos from Ted the Generic Guy and Corporal Guy - I had imported the Alliance whole from their old stuff, complete with Alliance of Evil Consulting. As the season approached, though, I didn't feel confident in the idea (partly due to having no ideas for some of the membership, and partly due to now being embarrassed by the concept of Eggman-X) and deleted the blogpost, scrapping the Alliance's Season 4 appearance. This was absolutely for the best, because it gave me the time to replace Commodore Goomba and Eggman-X with Corporal Guy and Lord Crump, giving us the Alliance we all know and love.
M. Bison is one of those characters I'm surprised hasn't done anything in ZFRP yet, but yeah he's probably best left to someone more knowledgeable about Street Fighter.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of a bad guy relative who isn't as evil is very intriguing (we saw it before with Raezin following Razaan). I bet you could make Nova work with some tweaks.
It was definitely the right call to hold off on the Alliance and Nitori - their Vegas incarnations were some of your best work in RP ever, and the Season 4 versions sound weaker. I think I must have missed that blogpost (it sounds like you actually posted it, then took it down later?). If I saw it, I don't remember it.
lel kokoro