Alright then, this has been lingering in an unfinished state for quite some time now. Between the behind-the-scenes blogposts that have been going up lately and a blogpost featuring a haniwa girl who I am eager to introduce you all to hanging in front of me as a tantalizing reward, this seemed as good a time as ever to finish this off. I should preface everything by saying that these retrospectives are as much me putting thoughts about my performance down in writing so that I can look back on them and hold myself accountable as they are cutting room floor content and peeks behind the curtains. There's definitely some of that mixed in, though!
I won't lie; I have, on the whole, mixed feelings about my own work and contributions in Season 10. I will say, there were a number of unexpected successes! At the same time, however, there were a large number of elements which I felt like didn't work out, which had to be cut, or which simply suffered with my fatigue. I feel that the quality of my writing itself - that's to say, not the execution of ideas, but the words which I put down on the page - was a casualty of 2020's fatigue, actually, as the year neared its end, but that's far from something to dwell on. After all, that can be improved with relative ease. Big ideas and the execution of plans requires a bit more teasing out.
I mention fatigue, and I suppose I should briefly elaborate, since it wasn't fatigue with writing or being a part of ZFRP. No, as I'm sure we're all well aware, 2020 was a draining year, to understate it. There's no need for elaboration there. On top of the usual nonsense of 2020, I took up a major responsibility and leadership role in the other online community I frequent. One thing I will say from the experience? Please, please for goodness sake tip your Chao. Tip him generously. This was my first year balancing those responsibilities with ZFRP, and it was taxing at times. He's been doing it for years. I don't bring this up without reason, though. I mention this because I feel that, even while I cut things and ran out of energy this year, that's not indicative of an absolute limit on what scope I can reasonably aim for. These other tasks I've taken on have a learning curve, too, but that means that, next year, I'll be more familiar with them and more efficient in carrying them out. That means they'll require a little less time and energy, which means additional time and energy for ZFRP. I won't allow myself to get too ambitious, but I also don't feel like I can take this year as indicative of my ceiling.
If I might be permitted to talk about myself just a bit more in this introductory section of these reflections, I truly ought to thank Draco, Goops, JRM, Cornwind, and Chao for being good sports when it came to doing collaborations, some large and some small, with me this year. I admit, I know I've some flaws when it comes to collaborations outside of formal plot events. I'm not proactive enough in reaching out and setting something up if I see a good idea, and I haven't been as firm as I should with certain boundaries when approached with an idea that doesn't really work. I hate to bother people, asking them for their time or asking them to take a different course than they had planned. Yet, I'm working on it! I recognize that all, and I've been making an effort to get past that by arranging more collaborations with people besides Chao. Cornwind, I know I had to shoot down more ideas this season than last, and I do appreciate you being a good sport when I have to say no or offer an alternative suggestion. JRM, I must thank you for being the one to initiate the combining of Aitem and Ravio's plot events, and of course for your willingness to wring emotion out of the death of a peanut candy for the sake of giving a talking motorcycle resolution. Draco, I asked if we could follow up some friendly interactions between Tsubasa and Yoshiko at one point, and he was kind enough to stick with me through a dinner between the two that, as Goops noted, was longer than some plot events. I want to thank you all, deeply, who collaborated with me on scenes outside of plots or even on plots ran collaboratively this year. This is one area of S10 where I can definitively say I feel there was improvement, and I intend to capitalize on that with more collaborations in S11.
Season 10, I admit, was a season where I set out to challenge myself in a few specific areas. I thought that, after finding my footing in S9, I should strive to exit my comfort zone in S10. I did not always hit the mark, but, on the whole, I'm glad I tried. I've lessons to take from what didn't work, perhaps even more than from what did work. Those areas where I specifically set out to challenge myself, however, can be discussed as we get to them. This has been more than enough talking about myself. From here, I would like to go into detail about my plot for the year, and then, since I had but one plot and it was a small one, I'd like to take some time to give some brief thoughts on my cast this year and where I've ended up with them.
The Curious Curiosity Shop
Origins and Inspirations
Needless to say, the first and biggest challenge I set for myself in 2020 was "run a plot." I had run dayplots (I suppose "dayplot" may refer to plot events that take up a single day and are unconnected to a larger plot, but I tend to use it synonymously with "plot event," as in "a single plot often consists of multiple scheduled dayplots," because very, very early when Chao was introducing me to the way RP worked, the fact that single events and the larger stories they build are both called "plots" became confusing and I resolved that by mentally using dayplot to refer to a single event) in Season 9, using the framework of The Curse to give myself experience with that, but I had yet to run a plot. I had yet to come up with a narrative, from start to finish, that consisted of multiple chapters, each one interactive and engaging so that other folks in RP could contribute meaningfully. I wanted to do that this year.
Where was a natural place for me to start? Merchants and scammers, of course, is where I started. I've always had a fondness for merchants in fiction, finding them intriguing, fun, and occasionally infuriating when disreputable and dishonest. Needless to say, a plot about merchants felt like a reasonable starting point, and very soon, I had two merchants come to mind who felt ripe to pluck for a plot.
This plot could be said to have started with Fleur Boland, AKA Eve (which, unlike in canon, is just one of many false names she's used, though we didn't really see that until she fled to Kuwahawi with a new scheme), from Spice and Wolf and with the Curiosity Shop from Majora's Mask. Now, admittedly, the latter had less of a direct, tangible impact on the plot as it took shape, but the basic concept of merchants stealing goods and making money selling them - or selling them back to those they were stolen from - came from that shop, and thus it felt only fitting to grant its name to the shop Fleur and Amarti ran and to the plot itself. The Takkuri, unsurprisingly, given its avian nature, is what drove me to the Curiosity Shop in the first place, and I'm glad that it did end up having a role in the plot. So, the Curiosity Shop laid down the foundations of the plot, the concept, and Fleur became its face. Now, Spice and Wolf is a series about economics and features merchants - honest and dishonest - in abundance, but I felt she worked the best on account of her personality and philosophy. She's a woman who genuinely believes that the value of a life is determined by how much wealth one accumulates and can deny to others, and she lies, cheats, injures, and steals. She felt the most interesting choice for the central role of this plot, though I do admit, in the earliest drafts, there was another. I had Greevil, from Gale of Darkness, in a placeholder role, though I never fully intended to use him as the final character for the role (actually, at one point, I was considering Morlock from Octopath Traveler for the role). He simply filled a role for a "twist" character at the end of the plot, someone who it would have turned out Fleur was working for all along while he kept his hands clean and gained the trust of the Kobbers by dripfeeding them information to help them uncover the scheme... right up to Fleur, who he'd throw under the bus since he would have extracted all he could from her. A good way to punish her? Perhaps, but it would ultimately have required another confounding layer to explain why she, pragmatic as she is, didn't sell him out to save herself first. Besides, once I hit upon the role which Ravio would eventually come to fill, it felt unnecessarily convoluted to have two different characters who weren't what they seemed.
The other major inspiration for my plot, besides Fleur and the Takkuri, was... JRM, actually. To clarify, I mean that I was taken throughout Season 9 by how adeptly he weaved his cast and their development into his plots. Looking at Miyu and Fay, Blasto, and especially Jason-3, among others, I admired his ability to align character arcs with plot arcs, and I wanted to emulate that. It's why, from the outset, this plot was designed with the idea of having a pair of "stars." Two members of my cast who wouldn't do everything - considering, you know, that would defeat the purpose of collaborative roleplaying - but who would drive the plot along, and would grow and develop in doing so. That ended up being Mystia and Myuri, and we'll talk about the outcome of that a bit later, but for now, let's leave it at "I will never again pair up two characters with such similar, easily-confused names."
On top of all of this, I set out a particular challenge for myself with this plot. I wanted to push my writing abilities forward by making something where you'd go revisit old pieces later and go "oh, so that's why this was the case." That's half of the reason why this plot was set up in a series of blogposts (the other half, I admit, is that I was hedging my bets, because I was worried I'd take far too long to introduce all the characters involved if I waited until the season started, and I couldn't gauge how true that was because it was my first plot). You know, if you go all the way back to, say, Tsubasa's introductory blog and you go "oh, so when Aurora called Ravio's business model unsustainable, she was spot-on... he really couldn't have been making it in Olympia the way he was doing things without being propped up," then I did my job well. Actually... well, Ravio became the focus of much of that, basically the whole intrigue of the plot and what I was trying to see if I could foreshadow properly being that he was tied up in this shady business but didn't want to be part of it, only being in it on account of a dear friend being taken hostage. All in all, did I do as well with the subtle foreshadowing as I aimed? That's a bit of a tricky question to answer for myself. It's cheating when you know both the hints and the twist, I'm afraid. I can't call myself happy with it, though. I think I made things too obvious, ended up with cold feet and hinted at certain things too much.
The final major consideration going into this plot was time. Now, I didn't keep a spreadsheet or collect hard data, but I did feel like I was able to attend more events in S10 than I was able to attend in S9. That's encouraging, and I think I ought to be free to attend even more in S11, but, obviously, I didn't know at the outset of the season how often I would actually be available. That was half of the reason I decided on having a spaced-out plot, one stretching over a few months. I would have wriggle room to complete it even if I wasn't around often. The other half of the equation, I admit more shamefully, is that I worried without reason that it wouldn't be a "real" plot. It was a silly and irrational thought to tell myself I had to run a long plot to prove I could run a plot at all, really, but I suppose none of us are rational all of the time. The good news is that I pretty quickly identified it as an awfully dumb thing to think once the season was underway, though I decided at that point to focus on simply making sure I could set out a plot, stick to it, and complete it, saving the task of improving the pacing of my plots in S11.
If we were comparing this plot to a soup, everything I've discussed so far could be considered the broth. Of course, there were other inspirations and pieces that came together to make this plot, but they were like ingredients added for extra flavor, so we'll discuss them as we go through the cast.
Cast
So, who all was involved with this plot? Well, like I said, it started with Fleur. I've already discussed the broad strokes of why she felt like a good fit, and, to tell the truth, much of the other roles arose as I thought about what someone would need to actually pull off such a scheme. The first thing I realized is that there needed to be someone with clean hands. Even the Curiosity Shop owner in Majora's Mask has plausible deniability that he didn't steal your stuff by way of the Takkuri doing the dirty work! Really, just about anyone could have worked, but ultimately I made another pull from Spice and Wolf. Fermi Amarti seemed a good fit for the role. A disarmingly charming young man who is nevertheless ruthless and willing to stab you in the back in any way short of literally stabbing you in the back, he worked as someone who could reasonably be the public face of the operation while being committed to scamming folks. It didn't hurt that I simply don't like the fellow, either. He fancies himself the white knight for women everywhere, and in his attempts to be "chivalrous," tends to objectify women. I will say, a second motive I had in choosing him was to rebuke the idea of granting characters sympathy through their inaction. Towards the end of the plot, he betrayed here and there that he was sympathetic to Ravio's plight, that he didn't wholly agree with his partner's methods, and that he was partially in the plot because he feared Fleur. Yet he didn't do anything. It was easy for him to say he was uncomfortable with these things, but never did he make an effort to change course. At most, he offered Ravio some hollow words of sympathy. I picked Amarti because he's a character who has a personality that falls into that category of "losing a chance at redemption because of inaction." I felt like it was important to make clear that, no matter how he felt about things, he never earned a chance at redemption because he never acted on his conscience, nor did he make the slightest effort to do so.
After Amarti, the next slot I had to fill was a distributor. It struck me as a rather simple mistake, selling stolen goods from the legitimate front you're working out of. To me, that could only work if you assumed that local law enforcement was incompetent or ineffective. It's one thing to have professional career criminals as distributors. It's reasonable to assume they've found ways to get around the law and the cops through years of experience. They wouldn't be around, obviously, if they weren't able to do so. A legally-sanctioned business distributing stolen goods, though? Sure, it happens on occasion in reality, but it felt like doing it here would paint the police forces in Olympia in a negative light. Maybe in S9, when corruption was more embedded in Olympia, it'd be more reasonable, but I'm a firm believer in designing a plot that doesn't require incompetent government and law enforcement to work if it's already been established that those institutions are competent and relatively free of corruption. Anyways, to make a long story short, I needed a shady salesman with a career in distributing stolen goods to add a logical layer of protection to Fleur and Amarti. This is another role where I didn't have many qualifications I needed from the character filling the role, so I decided to go with a fun faceclaim of the Magikarp Salesman and incorporate some of his personality into this character of Koi King. In probably the worst (read: most unreasonably specific) niche reference I've ever made, his frequent use of "amigo" and gratuitous Spanish being an act he put on to endear his customers to him was a reference to the English dub of the Pokémon anime giving him an accent in most of his appearances, but forgetting about it in an instance of Pokémon Chronicles. There's really not much more to say about him, considering he was more about function than form, but, ultimately, the fact that he couldn't... really... do anything... on his own is what led me to give him three thieving birds. I had initially envisioned them as working under Fleur directly, but he ended up getting them when I realized that it would also give her and Amarti more protection if she handed the birds off to him on the condition of getting some share of the profits. After all, it's not like someone would be unable to remember and report a bird that stole from them! If they were hanging out in the Curiosity Shop, that'd be suspect. As far as the birds themselves went, well, as I said, the Takkuri had been there from the earliest planning stages of the plot. Klepto felt like a natural partner for it, and, since I hit two of the three largest Nintendo franchises with those two, I decided to add Honchkrow to round at the trio.
The next role in the plot followed from the previous role. The way that Fleur interacted with Koi King - through anonymous drop-offs at varying locations - meant that she could provide only limited oversight. She could drop Koi King if he didn't bring any money at all, but how would she determine how much he was making? How would she know if he left twenty percent of the profits or fifty percent? A thief assumes a thief will steal from them, so, if you think you aren't sure you're getting your fair share, why not balance that out with an additional avenue for making money? Enter insurance fraud. This fellow named Prokopetz jokes about how he often comes up with TTRPG ideas that are, when boiled down, simply elaborate set-ups for plots about tax fraud, and I think I have a little of that in me... Anyways, I struck upon the idea of someone despicable taking advantage of people's fears to sell them inflated insurance policies while also taking advantage of their connection to the very thieves stealing goods to make extra money selling goods back to the most desperate of the desperate. I picked Lyle to fill this role, and I do believe I've talked about why before. Lyle left a big impact on me in Wild World, and I thought it was such a neat thing for Animal Crossing to teach kids - in the same way it teaches them about the stock market and mortgages in its own, simplified ways - about the basic concept behind insurance (and also suggesting that, yes, you have to be aware that people are out there who will take advantage of you with bad deals if you don't examine everything offered to you with a critical eye). I did keep thinking about bringing Crazy Redd into the plot in some capacity, even considering him for the role of the distributor at one point, but I ultimately decided I wanted to save him for the future, for a bigger role someday if I ever strike on the right idea. Given that Harpy has managed to get good mileage out of allusions to Nook, I wouldn't be disappointed if she, rather than I, was the one to make full use of Redd someday.
With all of those characters, I was almost there. I felt like I had a scheme that, from a narrative standpoint, almost made sense. There was one sticking point, though. Who was going to be in contact with Lyle? Fleur wouldn't contact him directly, because she'd worry he'd throw her under the bus if push came to shove. She wasn't about to have Amarti do it, because he was her insurance chip and he could only be that for her if he could maintain the appearance of having clean hands. I needed one more figure in this plot, and there were three requirements for them. First, they had to be able to maintain a front, conceal their interactions with Lyle by concealing their identity and seemingly keeping their hands clean. Second, they had to be controllable. Fleur had to have some leverage over them that would keep them from selling out. Third, they had to be able to collect information. As long as the birds were also stealing goods, Fleur could steal whatever she wanted, but once they were gone and that revenue stream was reduced further, she'd need to be more selective with what she stole, try and pick targets and items that would lure people into Lyle and that he could make big bucks on by "retrieving" their goods for them.
All of this culminated in Ravio. I've always had a fondness for the cowardly, masked merchant, and he hit every mark. He could reasonably conceal his identity, considering, you know, he's always masked up. If someone had seriously paid attention to him, he might have been in hot water, but when he always wore his mask and robes at work, a casual citizen isn't going to connect the black-haired guy in casual clothes sneaking into Lyle's place to Ravio. Sheerow provided the perfect leverage. Before he came to Olympia, Fleur simply had to convince a struggling, naive Ravio she could be a business partner long enough to get him to leave himself open, and then she kidnapped Sheerow. Here we had criteria one and two filled. For three, it just so happened to work out that Ravio could have a legitimate role renting weapons out to the citizens of Olympia, simultaneously adding a mechanic to RP that I thought was neat and that people did seemingly get some use out of. I'll talk a bit more about my reflections on Ravio as a character later, when I get into talking about my cast, but I will say, it was always important that he ended up being the one to feed vital information to the protagonists driving the plot. I was holding him to the same standard as Amarti. While Ravio may have been too scared to outright ask for help, he actually took action by trying to slowly and carefully give away information to help the Kobbers discover the scheme's pieces.
That's all of the antagonists and Ravio, but there were, of course, two other actors in this plot. Myuri and Mystia ended up being the... I don't want to say stars, because that implies that they were supposed to be in the spotlight at the expense of characters from casts besides my own. I prefer to call them plot drivers for that reason. They were meant to move the plot along, and, as I discussed previously, I wanted it to be tied to their arcs. Myuri was the first pick, because I hoped to show her going from someone you would dismiss as being unable to ever accomplish any complex task to someone who showed a hint of potential as a future merchant. Mystia came second. I wanted to make use of a Touhou character, and, while Aya caught my eye, she caught my eye to such a degree that I didn't want to use her first. I didn't want her to be my first Touhou character because, well, I want to make sure I do her justice if I ever do use her in the future. Mystia being a bird endeared me to her, and her being a trickster and a canon scammer with her lamprey made her perfect for one other challenge I set myself for the year. I wanted to challenge myself to take a character who was a schemer and scammer, and see if I could shape them into a protagonist with those traits. It was a tall order, to say the least, and, once again, I'll discuss the outcomes of that a bit later. Once I decided on her role in my cast, though, it seemed natural to tie her into the big scheme being run, and to have her "redemption" come in the form of truly helping Myuri dismantle it.
And, with that, I believe I've covered everything there is to say about the plot's origins and how it came together. On that note, why don't we evaluate how it turned out?
Execution
On the whole, my impression of this plot was "it was completed, but flawed." I'm happy that I was able to carry through a whole plot, but there's multiple areas I felt could have been improved. First, but actually more minor, among these areas was pacing. I alluded to this before, but it probably could have been a plot done in a month, maybe a month in a half if we were generous with time, rather than a plot stretched over the course of the season. I suppose that's not the worst mistake that could have been made, but it is something to take note of for future plots. After all, if you want to get people invested in a story, it you don't want to have long stretches of nothing happening. Thankfully, that's among the easiest problems to fix, with proper planning and recognizing what parts of the season are busier and which aren't. Not to mention, Roller Derby Plot and Daltonplot existed this year as some of the clearest examples of more condensed plots that I could have hoped for! Quite frankly, I think multiple smaller, faster plots with pacing somewhere between those two might end up being a niche that works well for me, if my plans for next year are any indication.
Partially related to the pacing issues were the, what I felt to be, weak transitions between the plot events themselves. At the season's outset, I had this whole domino effect mapped out in my head where, after Koi King fell, Ravio would be the one to help Myuri and Mystia zero in on Lyle, Lyle would end up wrapping back to Ravio, Ravio would be able to confess his role and find a way to point people to Fleur and Amarti, and that would be that. Unfortunately, I botched it. I found it hard to translate economic investigations to the RP format the way I had envisioned, and then the large gaps between plot events made it... less reasonable to have the falling domino approach. I had to stretch things out, and that ended up feeling unnatural, and I didn't even do that well in showing "oh, yeah, these two are going about and investigating these different leads." I don't like to be relentlessly critical, but, ah, here there's really not much more to say than my execution was weak and, along with improving my pacing, I'll be focusing in on making sure I have workable transitions planned out to a solid state before starting on plots next season.
I said I'd talk about how I felt about Mystia and Myuri a bit later, and, rather than saving them for the section where I focus on my cast, I might as well mention them here. Ultimately... yeah, my goal was to tie this plot to their arcs, and those arcs... never really happened. I feel worse about Myuri than I do Mystia, because a large part of the reason I never pulled the trigger properly for Myuri is because I never did find a way to write Mystia that was... likeable. I couldn't find my mark, to the point that even I never felt great about RP Mystia - and I tend to like tricksters and schemers! I didn't feel like I had a great way to make the jump for Myuri without getting that done first, so they ended up... not having strong arcs. They arguably did have arcs, but they were pretty weak ones that I can't say I'm satisfied with. In some ways, the plot ended up more heavily tied to Ravio's arc, though, so by the end of it, I felt like he was taking more from it than the two of them, and ended up channeling energy towards that side of things. The long and short of it, though, was that tall order of taking a character whose business was scamming and scheming ended up being too tall of an order for where I'm at as a writer, and things didn't work out. I may still try again with a fresh approach someday, but I do think we're years out from that.
My final critique of my plot that I'll throw out there so I can hang it over my own head as I plan for Season 11 like the Sword of Damocles is that the two - arguably - most interesting antagonists in it were mostly hands-off until the end. Now, that itself isn't a bad thing. I mean, generally, the villain in charge of a scheme or organization isn't going to be on the front lines from the start! That said, it occurs to me that Fleur's philosophy and Amarti's own position in and take on the plot weren't really explored until the tail end. It was when things were nearing the endgame that Fleur even began to share her worldview with Amarti, and we didn't have a chance to see it firsthand until the actual confrontation with her. Again, I wouldn't go so far as to say that was an entirely bad move. I think, to some extent, it's natural that you get to the core of a villain at their climactic confrontation, but I do think it would have been nicer to see more personality from the two of them earlier instead of them sitting back and staying in their lane most of the time while everything else unfolded.
For all of the faults I've found with the plot, there is one piece I want to put in the spotlight for positive reasons. The Curiosity Shop finale, was it a flawless event? No. Can I identify and major changes I'd make to it, looking back on it? The answer to that question is also "no". I felt good about it, actually! I thought it was a solid confrontation, a solid fight, well-paced, and had a strong conclusion as folks denied Fleur the ending she wanted. I also have to admit that I... simply felt better going into that dayplot than any other I have to date. My level of planning and preparation hasn't significantly changed, but, at same point in the late portion of Season 10, my anxieties around running dayplots inexplicably disappeared. I should say, I think there's a baseline level of nervousness before running any dayplot, but, by the end of the season, that baseline was all I felt. Where I had, before, gone into a dayplot with this nagging-but-markedly-irrational sense of impending catastrophic failure, this sense that, somehow, my dayplots would lose sense and coherency partway through, I felt nothing of the sort come this event. I wasn't anxious; I dare say I could even call myself confident. It was my last two dayplots in Season 10 which bred this feeling of confidence, and I think it's here to stay.
Ah, but there is one specific detail regarding the finale that I absolutely must point out. My heart soared when J. P. Spamley stayed behind on the beach and I secured JRM's permission to do something special with him at the fight's turning point. Perhaps it's only a simple little detail, but I was not prouder at any point this season than when it worked out that Spamley could play a pivotal role in thwarting Fleur's attempt to seize and attack Mystia. I am overjoyed when I can successfully give a character on someone else's cast a key role in dayplots that I run. That is, after all, my ultimate goal with dayplots. I want them to be good stories and fun to participate in, of course, but it is essential that they are responsive. I don't want the dayplot to be entirely worked out in advance. I want it to be able to adapt to the characters people bring to it and to adapt to the contributions and decisions of those characters, and to do so in more meaningful ways than simply altering the description of the fight. I suppose I'm merely restating one of those essences that distinguishes collaborative RP from solo storytelling for an audience that has been at collaborative RP far longer than I have, but the point I mean to get at is that I regard that spotlight moment for Spamley as a highlight of my efforts this season. Not everything about The Curious Curiosity Shop was bad!
That's about everything I have to say about the plot that I can think of, at least without getting into the dirt and grime of specific dayplots. To that end, I'd like to turn to a brief discussion of my cast this year. I do mean brief when I say it, too. I've asked folks to read enough as is, so I'll try to keep these each down to a few short paragraphs. I'm going to hit on the positives first and move to the negatives over the course of this next stretch.
Cast Retrospectives
Tsubasa Kazanari
RICE.
BALLS.
Have you ever had your fate changed by rice balls and a die?
Alright, joking aside for the moment, I need to lead off by saying that I have been no happier with any character I've used in RP than I have been with Tsubasa. I simply feel that she's been the most successful of any character on my cast in these two seasons, owing in large part to her successfully navigating her Season 10 arc, growing into the dorky sakimori she is deep down, and her tale getting dusted with a heaping helping of RP Magic. She came into RP as a standoffish jerk, and, as Goops astutely noted at some point, you can attribute a good deal of that to her upbringing and her family. Leave her alone with her grandfather longer, and she would have been much worse than she was! The thing is, though... you couldn't, you couldn't attribute that to her family at first. That was very much intentional. It was extremely important, that, though Tsubasa's family situation became clearer as the season progressed, this was a season about her, not a season about the Kazanari family. To echo a theme from earlier, a character needs to take proactive steps towards earning their "redemption," a word I use for lack of a better term here. Had Tsubasa come in with this great big Freudian excuse but not really have made an effort to separate herself from that worldview on her own, she wouldn't have been likeable, would she have? That's why it felt right to send her in alone. She was going to sink or swim on her own merits. She had to realize where she was in the wrong and take proactive steps towards being a better person on her own two feet. That was the meta-level rationale, and, honestly, the narrative rationale mirrored it. After all, it was thanks to the efforts of the few people close to her who genuinely look out for her - like Shinji Ogawa - that she was able to go to Olympia, giving her some separation from the world she was stuck in and a chance to explore herself and her worldview.
So, that was that, right? Tsubasa's job in Season 10 was to grow out of being a jerk and, through the course of the season, to become more likeable and pick up some friends. She was following her arc and on her way there, and-
-oh, right, then there were rice balls. I really do feel like I should give some context to that development. The fact that Tsubasa made rice balls at all was a significant step for her, and one the reflected her breaking with the worldview that she had been sculpted and raised to accept. After all, she, until this year, had the bare minimum of experience with basic household tasks, always told that she was not to engage in such menial work that folks lower on the social ladder were to do. Nor would she have ever seriously considered taking the product of her own labour and offering them to other folks. Plus... I had an adorable piece of art showing Tsubasa being her usual dorky sakimori self (she has this certain... intense, serious expression about her when trying to do something unfamiliar) while trying to make rice balls and it seemed like the perfect chance to use it.
So it happened, and thus, we ended up with a cute interaction between her and Yoshiko in the bar. Draco was such a kind and cooperative fellow when I asked if we might be able to follow it up that he wrote a lengthy dinner sequence with me to follow up on that, one where Yoshiko had such a tenderness that it ended up changing the trajectory Tsubasa would follow for the rest of the season by intertwining her story that much more closely with Yoshiko's. Draco was kind enough to work in more interactions between the two as we went along, sometimes informally in plots and sometimes formally, and things shaped up from there. I wasn't really sure about pressing the "pairing" button. I didn't want to jump the gun on that, but then the Dark Matter finale, with its moment of crowning for Yoshiko, the emotion wrapped up in the liberation of Heart Star, and the, ah, Heart Stars themselves all added up to a moment that felt right. It felt like a moment where Tsubasa would truly want nothing more than to be there for Yoshiko, and... well, here we are.
This is where I'd give you the cutting room floor of what would have happened if not for this powderkeg explosion of RP Magic, but, to tell you the truth, I don't even recall, myself, at this point, where Tsubasa's path was most likely to take her before Yoshiko. I am so glad that those two were brought together, though, and, while next year should see plenty of positive interactions between Tsubasa and other folks besides Yoshiko, Draco has, as he mentioned in his own blogpost, already talked to me about some more ideas for Tsubasa and Yoshiko next year. I, for one, cannot wait!
...must I truly talk about Fudo Kazanari before I move on? Alas, I resign myself to it. We'll talk more about this fellow next year when he shows up to be awful, but there was a brief trivia point worth mentioning. My original plan was for Fudo and his son Yatsuhiro to have one single speaking "appearance," this season, right at its tail end. I had thought over that scene over and over and over again throughout the year, planning it, constantly revising it in my head to the point I basically scrapped it and rewrote it altogether as we approached the last day of rest in the season to better reflect the most recent events. Despite it all, they ended up having two speaking appearances this season. I admit, that's because we dug a bit deeper into the Kazanari content than I had initially expected this season, and towards the start of the final month of the season, I began to worry that if I didn't give them a text color and a couple lines, it would seem as though I was constantly alluding to them with no plans to do anything with them.
Kino and Hermes
Here's some real cutting room floor content! These two were originally my answer to Honoka Kosaka. That is to say, you might remember Chao writing a number of "city exploration" posts in Season 9, where he would write about Honoka's weekend adventures casually exploring the city of Olympia. I thought that a mighty fine idea, so - and I did tell him my intentions, so as not to steal his thunder - I thought it would be fun to do something similar with an outsider. Honoka lived in the city. What would someone far more removed of it think? What would they notice as they explored? I did send these two on an early plot to establish that they could take part in combat plots, but their main role this season was to be my outlet for writing on the city from an outsider's perspective.
I didn't fail at this entirely. We did get some moments when they talked about feeding rats, or met a mother and her child at the mall. That said, these two nearly ended up having a greatly reduced role when time limitations and fatigue caught up to me and I failed to deliver city exploration posts on the schedule I had set for myself.
Then RP Magic kicked in once again. JRM offered a plot where characters could talk with one Paul Serene. A talking plot sounded like a great fit for these two, especially since Kino is the type to be keenly interested in the philosophy and perspective of someone like Mr. Serene. With that decision to send them on that plot, these two - though the naive Hermes especially - ended up tied into the latter portion of the Salvager plot. It definitely invigorated me to see these two finding a niche like that, and of course it led to an odd friendship with an outsized impact, that between Hermes and Yellow! I never would have expected Hermes to break out, of these two, but he did, and he secured both himself and his partner a role in S11. I think they'll strike a good balance. They'll be together often, but now that Hermes has his own driving motivation and a new worldview, we'll see them apart more often, too.
As a final thought, I call Hermes the more naive of the pair, and that's true to an extent, but I think it can't be overlooked that they're really, truly partners. They rely on each other, mentor each other, and guide each other in their own ways. Seeing that unfold in its subtle ways has helped to endear me to the duo more, too, which is why I'm quite excited for their time in Agama.
Ravio
Even midway through the season, the comments that Ravio was already a major character on my cast were being tossed about. I can't deny that those were true, even if I hadn't expected that at the season's outset. To tell the truth, I was planning even right up to the season's end for the possibility that Ravio would be arrested! As much as I like the guy and as unfortunate as his circumstances - having his only friend to that point kidnapped and threatened and all - were, I didn't want to pigeonhole him into getting off scot-free. Then it turned out that no one pushed for him to be imprisoned with even a light sentence. That, we could call a pleasant surprise. I certainly see no reason to complain about that!
Truth be told, I quite like Ravio, both as a character and for what he offers to RP with the idea of weapons rentals. As someone who often uses characters who... aren't that powerful, it helps to be able to have a couple of extra tools available that I don't feel like I'm pulling out of nowhere! In the end, I'd mark him down as one of my success stories of Season 10. He's now free from those awful entanglements that held him back, and thanks to some RP Magic (notice a theme here?), he has a new business partner to play off of next season as he more fully integrates into the ranks of the Kobbers! I wouldn't call Ravio and Saturn a pairing yet, in large part due to the fact that if you told Ravio that he and Saturn were a pairing right now he'd instantly faint (and, well, jokes aside, because they aren't a pairing yet). The ground is fertile, though! They have a cute dynamic, and Ravio is going to be a more confident man next year, both on his own and even more with Saturn by his side, so we shall see what the future holds.
As my final note here, I do think that I didn't do enough with Sheerow once he was freed. I don't want him to seem merely like an afterthought or a pet, since there was a reason that Ravio was so desperately worried about his safety. He'll, ah, have more time next year where he's not in a cage, though, so I'm not too worried about that. I'm very eager to see a more confident Ravio with a bigger business and more freedom to socialize and join plots next year!
Yuka Suzuki
Yuka was low-key among my favorite cast members this year. She wasn't as prominent, I might argue, as Tsubasa, Ravio, or even Kino and Hermes, but she was consistently there and she did have a small arc this year. Where she learned, last year, that she needs to stand on her own two feet and not simply accept that her seniors are more knowledgeable and skilled than she is, she hadn't quite grown comfortable with directly contradicting them and speaking up in opposition to them. Sally and Dr. Professor Doctor certainly changed that! It's not a coincidence that she went from "tortured and tired mother of six" to being more in charge of her team by the season's end. Her growth was less prominent than those aforementioned four, but she did come a long way this season, and that was what earned her a role in the finale on my end. To clarify, I mean to say that's why she was one of the members of my cast who played a role in the final fights of the Dark Matter plot.
I admit that I waffled on giving her another season or wrapping up her story at the end of S10. It felt like a good time to wrap it up, with the progress she made this year now and her successfully navigating the unorthodox decision to put her knowledge to use running a business, but, ultimately, I decided she still has a new direction she can go in Agama without abandoning what she's built in Olympia. Shimmer was an inspiration, in that regard. I do remember mentioning this about Yuka in chat and JRM mentioning that, sometimes, you can simply find new arcs and goals for a character to pursue, and I looked at Shimmer over the years after that and decided, yeah, I do have something more to do with Yuka in Agama. It doesn't hurt that I felt a good energy with her this year, that she clicked and that her team is a blast to write, too.
Speaking of Yuka being low-key, one of my prouder moments this season that I didn't make much out of was the two separate instances we saw of Yuka dealing with a customer at her consulting business. The first time, she failed spectacularly. The second time, she landed a sale. I felt like those two posts highlighted, subtly, the changes she made that helped her to make that progress, really showed that learning to trust her judgement and expertise, even when challenged, helped her to come far in multiple areas this year. I do feel a little awkward heaping praise upon myself, but I would almost go as far to say that those two posts, contrasted and compared, are the best instance I've done of showing and not telling in RP yet.
Alright, then, I do suppose that's more than enough positivity, right? Let's get back to a discussion of what didn't go as well, in terms of characters and plans for the year. I'm going to skip Mystia and Myuri because I feel there's not all that much more to say about them.
Pitohui/Elsa Kanzaki
Well, I'm currently eagerly awaiting the moment that the English translations reach the point where canon Pitohui pins a man to the ground in a mall and drowns him, and RP Pitohui is far from doing anything like that, so we can call that a victory, right? No, joking aside, I do have some serious self-critique to bring up here.
To put it bluntly, Elsa is my single biggest disappointment in terms of my own RP in Season 10. I did not walk away feeling like she was able to do what she could have, able to grow in the ways she could have, this year. I've thought quite a bit about what went wrong, about what failed there. Was it a narrative-level failure, something about the character herself? Was it a meta-level failure, something I failed to do to facilitate character development? The conclusion I reached is that there's a mixture of factors, but the biggest contributor to this unhappy state of affairs was my meta-level failure to adapt this season and to push forward at critical moments.
The year did start off well and promising, I should note. The idea was always there that we'd get some extensive Pitohui and Kanade interactions in the early portion of the season, in large part based around the thought that it would make a good bridge for Kanade integrating more with the Kobbers. After all, Pitohui had been more active with them in Season 9 than had Kanade, and they had a connection to build off of. Yet, the idea was that would be a bridge, not an end. After all, one of the moments I was happiest with when it came to Pitohui this year was her participation in the Roller Derby plot. That was her own thing, and I figured it would provide good opportunities for her to expand her connections. That was an exciting prospect, because it seems to me that one of the best things that could happen for her in RP is to deepen her connections with a wider number of individuals.
Unfortunately, after that... that push for her to widen or deepen most of her connections mostly fizzled out. That was, in part, a result of me being hesitant about reaching out for collaborations. I really did have in mind that it would be fun to leverage the already existing connections to the ZFPD (especially, say, Blasto, Patty Wagon, Frost, and Clawhauser) and deepen those, but to do so would have required asking JRM or Goops for some of their time and energy earlier in the season. They, I'm almost sure, would have done given some, so the blame falls squarely on me for not asking. I'm not happy with myself when it comes to that, to say the least, but, then, that's why I addressed that at the start of this blog.
Not helping myself was my tamping down of ideas for fear of overexposure. That is to say, I had a lot of ideas - primarily related to more of Elsa's backstory leading directly into a less-guarded, more sincere Elsa having some moments - that I ended up not using this season because I kept convincing myself that Pitohui was appearing too much. That is, I suppose, a risk of her being one of my favorites. I tend to overcorrect if I start to suspect bias is leading to too much of her. Something would come up where she'd get focus - I might be asked if she'd agree to go on a monster hunt, I might be asked if there's a way she'd get her blood taken, I might get ask if she'd have a certain scene with Kanade, or I might even have her on a plot event that she felt suited for - and then I'd tell myself to put my other ideas to rest until we went a longer stretch without her appearing. I think the clearest example of the results of this, when I look back at the season, is the over two month gap, from May 28th, when the seeds were planted to explore Elsa's history when Bree provided, through Meiling, a good opportunity for it, to having any real follow-up on that in a scene on... August 3rd. I should have pressed that pedal faster, actually done more with that and kept the momentum there.
When I mention my failure to adapt, I mostly speak in terms of the end of the season. I had gone into this season envisioning that Pitohui would be tied up with the Roller Derby Plot near the start of the season, and with another plot near the season's end. That latter plot, I don't want to say too much about so as not to steal Chao's thunder, but it was tied to those kaiju-related things near the season's end. It, understandably, didn't end up materializing this season, but I should have been quicker to recognize that and should have been quicker to press ahead in other areas with Elsa.
Anyways, I say all of this not to complain or hammer home some strange form of self-deprecation, but, like I've expressed before, to put this in writing so I have to confront it next season. There's still potential for Elsa! There are untapped ideas from this year that can see the light of day next year. The change of setting and other changes for her means we'll see a less disingenuous, slightly more sociable Elsa, too, so I feel good about her path and development next year. Plus, not all is lost when it comes to Frost interactions! I write this all out next year so that if I find myself stumbling into the same pitfalls, I can shove this in front of my face and go "hey, bird-brain, remember what happens if you don't press ahead with the ideas you have or reach out to make things happen."
Jack Spicer
I'm not going to say too much here, other than Jack is a character I ran out of enthusiasm for at some point after the Brawl, especially when I started to think "hey, with all this talk of this next setting..." and had ideas for him more suited to Agama. I don't want to say I lost enthusiasm for him altogether, because that's not true. I just didn't feel the spark for him in Olympia by year's end, though the Great Robot Rumble did help keep that ember burning. I think we'll see its effect more clearly in Agama, seeing as how he's a returning member for Season 11.
The Argyris Sisters
Oh dear, these three suffered by and far the greatest of anyone on my cast in terms of cut content. As the year wore on and time constraints and fatigue discussed before took hold, I had to decide which stories and arcs I was going to prioritize, and, unfortunately, it was the Argyris family that drew the short end of the stick.
This was set to be a year of delving into their family history, hence, you know, positing a world where their family history went differently. I had even asked Goops special permission to go that route, and then I ended up making very little use of it. My apologies to you on that front, Goops. That said, I suppose we did get some information on their family history, but I should say, even the "answers" we did get shouldn't be taken at face value. After all, the gentleman who came from another dimension knows more than the sisters did, but he shouldn't have been so confident in everything he claimed he knew, either.
Had I had the time, we would have actually explored those areas where he was, too, wrong, as the sisters found out more about their links to the legendary birds, more about what their family engaged in, and more about how they ended up in the business of trading. Such was the plan long before I thought about tying another world into their lives; I had actually mapped out some details we were going to explore this year as far back as... preparing for Season 9, to tell the truth.
I don't really have all that much to say in terms of getting into the specifics of what was cut. I may one day return to it in the form of a side-blogpost or something of that sort, to explore and explain it. I did end up providing some resolutions and some hastily-assembled pieces of the original arc accompanying all of this together in what happened in Season 10, but that was in large part because I abhor loose ends, and, after two seasons of the sisters losing momentum, I felt fairly confident that a third would do no good. All in all, I do like the Argyris sisters, but it's time to leave them behind, and I don't have much more worth saying at the moment.
Looking ahead?
I hate to end it off there, though, with this string of "here's what didn't work out," as the final word on the matter. The truth is, I'm pushing through the remainder of this blogpost because I'm so eager for Season 11 and I want to free myself to focus on preparing for it. I've discussed characters who are returning, and the plans I have for them and the missteps I plan to avoid repeating when it comes to them, but I also have a host of new characters I've been cooking up for Agama. I'm quite excited to share them, actually. I'm feeling an energy for them that, honestly, I don't think I've felt to this degree before. Is it the result of growing more used to this and more confident in my plans and decisions? Perhaps so, or perhaps it's merely a number of characters clicking. One thing I'm particularly happy about is how many of my newcomers are Agama natives. After having no Olympia natives (in terms of protagonists) on my cast for two seasons, something feels good about being able to approach a fresh setting with characters who are already integrated with it.
I can say I have a few smaller, faster-paced plots with a stronger framework planned out for Agama, I have a cast old and new I have a great deal of energy for, and, on the whole, I feel confident about coming into Season 11 strong. Of course, no matter how many ideas I have, it will be that intersection of ideas, unleashing that RP Magic, that's going to make Season 11 special, so here's to taking advantage of those unexpected connections and events at every opportunity!
Soon...
