Shining a Light on Neo Dark Million

With my big plot this year done, it's time to kick back, relax, and start planning for Season 9. But first, here's a big retrospective on the plot!

ORIGINS
This plot's planning all started shortly after we settled on Kuwahawi on our next setting! Sometime early in 2016, I saw a picture I no longer have a link to, of a huge stone golem standing in the middle of the sea. That, and playing Skies of Arcadia with its Gigas bosses, was enough to get the gears turning, and I knew what I wanted for my final boss and how it'd be hidden. Even in 2016, I already knew my golem would be disguised as an island. However, outside of this... the ideas were very scattershot, and a lot of the initial draft never got used! For example, the villain of the piece was going to be an evil archaeologist, who was disguised as a good guy - sort of like what we got, but they would have simply directly heel turned, like Welward or Dr. Gerbil, without wearing a disguise.

The golem itself underwent some changes - according to my notes, the first version was the "Colossus of Mu", and the main thing stopping it from moving was magic being drained by the world, requiring our villain to both fulfill a ritual and to use SCIENCE! to replace the magic. Other prototype ideas that were dropped over time were that the ritual would require the summoner to sacrifice someone close to them (this was even the initial purpose of the spire being hollow, to toss a corpse into), and that the plot in general would have had a lot more focus on Evil vs Evil, with several different villains all gunning for the macguffins and even eliminating each other, as we got in a reduced aspect with the final plot's betrayal pileup. I even thought of using a couple in particular - Leichter might have made a return from Azure Seas, and Colonel Kostra was considered as a villain long before he became a Golfplot character. That one might be worth using eventually, if I can fit it into a plot. But for now, let's move on from what never was, and onto what we got!

THE HUNTERS
The backbone of the plot, and the ones that really defined what it'd end up as - heck, they even showed up in my plans before Black Shadow, which is why they made the in-person appearance during the Thrawn space battle last year. Playing Prime Hunters in June of last year was the perfect inspiration, and I realized quickly they'd make for good muscle, giving me a bunch of villains I could gradually knock off during the year. Originally, they were a pretty unified band, but over time I got ideas for mixing it up by having them turn on each other, showing that when you bind a group of mercenaries together for nothing more than money and desire for showing up someone else... they don't really have that many reasons to stick close. It fit well with the theme of this plot. There's not that much to say about them, but they were certainly good for the main baddies!

BLACK SHADOW/PHOENIX
So! From seeing my plot this year, and my choice of big bad as well as the involvement of Blood Falcon and Silver Neelsen, you might be forgiven for thinking I was actually a huge fan of F-Zero.

I wasn't. I barely knew anything beyond what little came from Smash (Captain Falcon, of course; Big Blue, Mute City, and Port Town Aero Dive) and a few other things I'd heard (such as Story Mode Very Hard being infamous with difficulty), but it was barely a blip on my radar. The change came when I needed to decide the identity of the anonymous instigator, and I had a difficult time picking a true villain. After all, I wanted to pull off a big heel turn, so I'd need someone who could look nice, but at the same time I wanted to avoid making it obvious that the instigator would be a character we knew, which would be naturally assumed if they weren't revealed until the endgame.

So, instead, I went for the double subversion! Of sorts. I was looking up F-Zero out of curiosity and a memory of watching the anime years ago, and I stumbled across Black Shadow on the wiki. When I saw Phoenix as well, an idea began to form - what if I took them both, and did what we came out with - Black Shadow as the big bad revealed partway through, and Phoenix as a surprise heel turn by the end of the year? Revealing Black Shadow seemed to undercut the anonymous instigator's setup (though he was supposed to have more foreshadowing...), and then BAM it turns out it really was the guy you knew! I had Phoenix be a real guy killed by Black Shadow since that way it'd be easy to explain the Space Police record and not have him turn out to be fake on any investigation. Throwing Kotohime into the mix was born of a desire to both exposit on the real Phoenix and potentially give me a method to use the Space Police next year!

As for F-Zero... well, as I'm sure you're all aware of, using Black Shadow got me to watch the entire anime, despite it being somewhat... lackluster in quality, imo. All 51 episodes! On top of that, I played the SNES game for a bit, and did quite a lot of reading and study of the series - there were plenty of things I never knew about before, including a lot of the drivers. And then Goops capped it off by getting me F-Zero GX, and I LOVED the game. It's been a fantastic series to get into! The only downside is... Metroid comes back to life, and I get into an even deader series. Regret

THE GEMS
The MacGuffins of the plot... and they weren't even created until this year! They were born out of a couple things - one was catching up on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and seeing the way five of the Infinity Stones were set up as other objects - the Tesseract/Space Stone, the Scepter/Mind Stone, and so on. That inspired me to have the gems show up in innocuous contexts, such as the crown on display at the museum or the medallion Shion got from the Tourist, and later turn out to have their plot relevance when it came to the main plan of unsealing Talos. Originally, they would have been stray gems, but I thought it'd make more sense to have them get passed around if they were simply seen as trinkets in other objects, like a medallion or a bracelet or an anklet. They were basically my way of simplifying the summoning and activation, and they did what they were supposed to do quite well! For anyone wondering - the pictures came from the five gems in Operation Overdrive, which I still remembered after all these years since I watched it.

GOLFPLOT
Golf!! I've already talked about Golfplot in some detail in the past, so I won't give it much more focus here, beyond mentioning that yep, one of the earlier drafts had Silver Neelsen as a member of Neo Dark Million! He would have been working for Black Shadow to do... something, I don't think I ever decided what. Another draft that came later was Neelsen being legit, but the prize for victory including one of the Gems. That was scrapped because I didn't want to worry about the logistics of getting said gem out of good guy hands and into bad guy hands, so Golfplot ended up entirely its own thing!

EVENTS
10/27/17: Team Spirit
Even if this was last year, it was still relevant to this year, so it goes on this plot! This was born out of my desire for a Mattplot before I retired him, and the idea that bringing back Magma vs. Aqua might be neat, as well as having the Kobbers fight Matt and Courtney. I went through multiple rough drafts I don't really remember, but I finally settled on someone unknown inviting each of them to Kuwahawi in hopes it would spark tensions. I probably forced the battle too much during this one, unfortunately, but... learning experiences. Black Shadow didn't really have a motive for this one, it was more about tricking people into fighting each other. In earlier versions of the plot there would have been more emphasis on stirring up chaos and trickery than in the final draft, but I still got to include some of that with the Yorigamis and the other bounty hunters!

5/31: Balancing Act
The first event of Huntersplot! And... probably the most filler one, in retrospect. It certainly wasn't intended to end up that way, it was more a case of planning from the back end. I worked out various purposes to the other events (transferring the gems or setting up gem transfers) as well as giving them various twists - the extra sides, the bait and switch boss, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, nothing ever came to mind for Noxus's plot beyond "I guess he's trying to make a base?", and thanks to that this event barely mattered.

Sawken and Cyranon were... also pretty filler, yeah. I'd played Federation Force during the offseason, and because of that I thought it'd be neat to include some bosses from it! So Noxus had a couple minions, a big fish and a big orb. Again, they probably would have carried some more weight if they had plot relevance. Ultimately, while it was a fun fight, it would have benefited from compressing the plot and figuring out a way to make it more important.

6/21: The Frantic Four-Way
THIS MATCH IS A FATAL FOUR-WAY! Naturally, it started out only as a simple fight against Kanden, but I decided to play up Black Shadow's "pit people against each other" tendencies, and had him go up against MORE Metroid! Armstrong Houston and Zegan Doh were me going for some resources outside of the Metroid games, taking Houston from the Super Metroid Nintendo Power comic and Zegan from the Samus & Joey manga. Since the former was a glory hound good guy in his source and the latter was a wild jerk, I made the latter actually villainous and the former pretty reasonable in comparison.

As for Jacket, that was an idea I had after Del mentioned he wanted to get Jacket involved in more plots as his own side. I thought my plot was perfect for it, so I asked him if he wanted in, and he did! Placing it outside the museum was basically a way to draw everyone's attention away from the museum itself, and in the original plans, Black Shadow would have swiped the crown from the museum itself! I decided that would be annoying, to have all the security not even catch him on film (since I didn't want to reveal him yet), so I had him break into the transport van instead, which wasn't anywhere as secured. And thus, everyone was happy! Except for the Kobbers.

7/13: Ramblin' Gamblin' Sisters
Jo'on and Shion got a lot of setup and prelude this year, didn't they? It actually wasn't planned that way, but other people kept wanting to do things with the Yorigami sisters, so I let them do so! I brought them in because I read up on Touhou 15.5 after it dropped and it inspired me, giving me the ideas to have them pull some card shark tricks and try to scam people until they got caught out. Tony Valentine's contribution was an idea me and Goops had, since small-time scammers are exactly the kind of thing Tony has to deal with in his own series, and since Goops got me the series I thought it'd be a fantastic cameo.

The plot itself wasn't that special, really, but it served the important purpose of getting the Red Gem into Phoenix's hands and resolving a pair of minor antagonists that had been kicking around for two and a half months. It was a pretty fun event, too - the Touhou pair were clearly popular and people enjoyed fighting them! I had some fun with their powers, too. Poverty aura is easy to weaponize, but I'm personally proud of pulling it off with wealth aura as well. There's honestly not that much to say, really - the Yorigamis were pretty much locked in once everything clicked in my mind, but considering people's reactions... you probably haven't seen the last of them!

7/24: Digging Themselves Deeper
Ah, the classic bait-and-switch boss! This was one I was pretty satisfied with. Spire was always someone who was uncomfortable with the idea of just how lethal they might have gotten, the voice of relative reason in a team of brutal mercenaries. So, naturally, with how this group acted? They promptly decided to get rid of him. Since I wanted Spire to be the guy who spilled plot details, especially at the halfway point of the year, I decided it'd work better if he never fought the Kobbers at all.

As for Diggernaut, that big boy is from Samus Returns, and an incredibly iconic boss. He shows up in Area 3, chases you through Area 4, and has probably the toughest boss fight in the game in Area 6, making for a satisfying defeat when you finally bring him down. So I brought him into RP to represent Samus Returns and increase my METROID content, seeing as I will use as much Metroid as I possibly can during my RP tenure! With how brutal he was and how much he could carry an event on his own, I was almost immediately certain that I'd throw them together and have Diggernaut KO Spire at the start of the plot, allowing me to knock Spire off the board, mix things up, and give Diggernaut the focus it deserved, all in one plot. The Yellow Gem aspect was added a little while later, when I realized it'd be a good way to get one of the Gems without requiring the Kobbers to obtain and lose it. Thanks to Black Shadow delaying Browny, it all made sense! And that left Huntersplot quiet for a month, until...

8/22: Necessary Weavel
Man did I overdo it on this one. But on the other hand, it's really cool to read in retrospect! So in a weird way, I supposed it all worked out? Anyhow, this event was one of those constantly escalating in size ones, the same way that the finale for Kappaplot was! Originally, the plan was simply Weavel attacking Planet Norion - and this was even before I had tied in Black Shadow and the Gems, so originally it was more Just Because, with the core reasons of "acquiring parts for the Black Bull" to show up later. I then came up with the idea of the Steambots to serve as some mooks and explain how exactly it was that one Hunter thought he stood a chance against an entire military base.

On top of that, later on, I added the Federation Colonel and Captain Arjard. Both of them were inspired by me reading old RP and realizing that I'd never tied them up entirely - the Colonel was a more direct inspiration, since I was thinking about how Weavel could have easily gotten on the planet, and realized the Colonel never had been properly punched. As for Arjard, I've actually kicked around ideas for him encountering the Kobbers since 2014! I just never made them work with the plot I had going, until I finally realized I could make it fit here. Blood Falcon was a spur of the moment idea from like a week before the event, because I liked the thought of an opponent that moved between scenes, which he did with the Blood Hawk. He was probably the one that overstepped, but at least I got to do some neat stuff with his interview.

Adding the Black Bull was a way to give Weavel a route there without using his spaceship, so that it would make sense that Sylux still had his craft for the Delano Infinity's arm. Oh, and fun fact: the scene with Weavel's death was in my head going to be the Federation Colonel for a long time! Then you guys killed him during the plot so I rolled with it.

9/11: Without A Trace
Villains vs. villains is a neat idea... and this didn't even start off as that! Originally, it was going to be just Trace holding James hostage on orders from Black Shadow for... reasons. Yeah, I didn't have that well planned out. But as I started to both figure out how the gems would be scattered and brought to Black Shadow over time, I decided that it would be a great way to get one of the gems handled - Trace gets one that Sylux takes. Originally, Trace would have obtained it while on Black Shadow's side, and Sylux would have taken it and left him for dead, after which we would have finished off Trace. Making it full evil vs. evil had Trace not just holding onto it as leverage, but also gave Sylux the reason to take it immediately. As for the plot itself, once the nature was set I knew it'd be just "fight Trace while he tries to go invisible". Originally he would have had James with him and tried to use him as a meatshield, but on suggestions I changed it to what we got and had Team A fight Trace while Team B rescued James. And thus, his hopes of accomplishing anything were gone... without a trace.

9/29: Flying Solo
Every year I have one event that just feels like a complete mess/underwhelming - Engelstein, the Doyle finale, etc. So, naturally, I had to get one in this year! I think the troubles with this event came from two sides, one of which I could have fixed and one of which I couldn't. The former was that I really should have found a way to mix it up - I had basically gone ahead and told people "yeah Black Shadow's going to get the last gem", since I didn't want them to feel undercut... but this just made the event feel like a foregone conclusion. I'm glad I let people talk Solo down for variety, but I still should have introduced some way to make it more interesting, or else just cut the event entirely.

The latter problem was that it was just... a bad day all around on an OOC level, with a bunch of people feeling exhausted for one reason or another. Getting unlucky with the day you pick isn't the kind of thing you can really assume will happen ahead of time, and it meant nobody really had the energy or enthusiasm for the plot either. That's just plain old bad luck. Still, at least struggling through this plot got the setup completed, and afterwards things were fully on an upswing. Plus, at least it was this event and not the finale!

10/3: Exposing the Spy
Ah, the reveal of the big twist. The most satisfying part of writing a big twist in the first place - and considering I managed to hold together without spilling it to anyone I didn't have to, I'm pretty proud of defying my natural instincts to spoil things! Bree got to learn this twist ahead of time thanks to Caprice using psychometry and me having to tell her so that Caprice didn't get a clear image of Black Shadow attacking Phoenix - after all, that was just a fake attack. The event itself went pretty well! I knew I didn't have a full lineup of evidence, so I decided not to go full Ace Attorney, and instead allowed people to pick things out as they went along. The after-reveal segment was condensed considerably - originally, Black Shadow would have done a very dramatic transformation from his Phoenix disguise (which would have been the original usage of the music he got for activating Talos), and would have actually spoken for a round or so to let people get some questions if they wanted. Of course, considering how people felt about him by the time this event happen, I knew he had to skedaddle ASAP. I also once considered Sylux teleporting in and grabbing him, but I felt that if any place would have anti-vrop it was ZFPD, so instead we got him sabotaging the lights months in advance and then making his escape in the Black Bull.

Jo'on, Shion, Armstrong Houston, and Kennedy Wilson all had the opportunity to appear for various reasons and evidence-giving in various planning drafts, but were dropped entirely. I also wanted to build up a couple other potential traitors, but I never really got to make anyone except James a good red herring, and I feel Phoenix was too suspicious by the time for James to work. So it became more about proving guilt! Finally, while it didn't fit in the event as-is, I had this idea of having Kaede shout that SOMEONE IS THE TRAITOR, and then giving a Danganronpa-style "CHOOSE A PERSON!" list of all my characters there.

10/10: To Infinity and Beyond
Good ol' "maybe we'll know more in Prime 4 but we know nothing about that game" Sylux. That's the main reason I gave him an out - who knows if we'll get any more info in that game that makes me want to expand on him? But if that doesn't show up, he's dead. Sylux giving us the equivalent of a boss rush by using a combining mecha with the six Hunter ships was decided really quickly when I was plotting out the finale, to the point where there isn't a first draft of what he was going to fight with. Interestingly, the original version of the plot actually had Black Shadow setting up anti-aircraft defenses on Spire Island when he was preparing for the finale, and because of that Samus would require everyone to go to the docks. There, the Delano Infinity would have attacked, and it would have been man vs. machine!

When the finale was setting up, I felt there was no real place to make it work like that, since people were already bringing aircraft and the like, so instead we got the fight in the middle of the sea. The fact that you couldn't fight from solid ground anymore is what made me introduce the ability to get inside and fight Sylux hand-to-hand, giving people the chance to battle the Hunter even if they didn't want to try fighting the mech in midair or something. It was well-received, so I'm happy with it. One more piece of info - in the original drafts, we would have cut back to Black Shadow working on the ritual in every Chaopost. I could tell by the time we did the plot that that would get on people's nerves so I just had the whole thing crammed into one post! Speaking of which, Black Shadow would have originally claimed he was offering up his life to Talos, but I felt he'd think characters would find that TOO weird, so having it be a seeming accidental death was more in line with his planning.

10/11: The Judgement of Black Shadow
The big finish, and I do mean big. Not only was Talos the first ever kaiju-size boss I did (bigger than that, considering the kaiju were tiny compared to it), it was also my first-ever two-day finale! Honestly, not much about the actual fight itself changed from conception to getting down on the forum. Talos was always planned to be a guy who fought by being two miles tall and made of stone, without much in the way of tactics, and I'd just see what everyone threw at it! And people did NOT disappoint, I liked how many characters were hurled at it and how many were various types of KOed during the course of the fight. It left one hell of a mark, just like I hoped! Oh, and I'll just record it one more - Spire Island was already confirmed to be Talos when it first appeared last year. I set up a lot of things in advance this plot!

Black Shadow, meanwhile... didn't change that much either, thanks to Persona 5 somewhat inspiring the idea of a dramatic sunset final boss on a beach through spoilery things. The Black Bull was originally going to be completely wrecked in the crash that brought him onto the beach, but I decided it deserved to at least get used as a weapon, even if it couldn't be the focus thanks to focusing on Black Shadow himself. Since we know nothing about how he fights except for "has dark magic???" I basically made up all of his attacks as I went along, to what I feel was good effect... except for running out of ideas for his final attack, eheheheh. Originally, it was just going to be James who crashed the Black Bull, and Black Shadow would have pulverized him, be interrupted before a killing blow by a frightened Kaede With A Gun, and loomed over her before getting intercepted by the Kobbers. But I felt Kaede had enough focus this year, so I made it entirely the Federation Force who got to make the big save. As for the Funky Cops, there was always a plan to have Black Shadow try to pull a runner only to get interrupted. Original drafts, though... gave this role to the Yorigamis and Armstrong Houston, gaining revenge for getting tricked by him! But the Funky Cops pretty quickly established themselves as significant ZFPD members with a bigger stake, so it was Ace and Dick who made the second save. All in all, a pretty solid finale, I'm happy with it!

And I'm very happy we finished in style, with a Falcon Punch. What better to finally kill Black Shadow with?

CONCLUSION
This plot had its ups and it had its downs, it had its smiles and it had its frowns, but all in all I think it was still pretty good by the end! I think my number one issue was pacing, and I feel like the whole plot would have been better if I had compressed it into the four months post-Brawl (possibly making Yorigamis first? idk) rather than dragging it out over the entire year. That's a lesson you can expect me to take to heart next year, so you won't have to worry about the plot getting stretched too thinly next time. If nothing else, I'm glad that this year I saw my plot off with a big bang, and I wanna thank everyone for helping me make it as exhilarating as it came out to be!

And this might not be the last you've seen of my newfound interest in F-Zero...