Chapter 24, Draft 1: DONE.

Yep, not draft 4 like usual; I wrote this bad boy from scratch. And while I did use ideas from later on in the book, (I moved them up a bit) I didn’t just copy/paste from the later chapters.

And why did I do this? It’s because Kim knew that my characters needed to work harder to figure out the ultimate mystery of the book.

See, back in draft 3 the villain just kind of tells everyone: “Here’s the secret you all missed! Wow, you’re all really stupid for not figuring out anything yourselves! It’s almost as if the writer didn’t leave any clues for you to find!” 😅

Yes, I was weak on clues. Kim told me that the heroes don’t have to figure out EVERYthing, but they should at least meet the villain half-way.

I agreed, so that’s what I’ve been setting up: clues; protagonists catching on; and finally confronting the villain.

And this month I wrote so much for the ‘confronting the villain’ part that it became enough to make a new chapter on its own. 😅

It all turned out great, though. Here’s the usual vague poem. Hm, maybe that needs a headline too.

VAGUE POEM:

A piercing denied; a piercing complete.

Flee while you can; chasing friends you can’t meet.

Though the flag’s been brought down and the prizes now claimed,

It is only now that we can start the true game.

Speaking of ‘a piercing complete,’ I saw the trailer for the new Borderlands film today. Spoilers for that, and the end of Borderlands 2 a bit later in the text and pics.

Just a little background about me: I have played and beaten every FPS Borderlands game. Steam tells me that I have 679 HOURS of play time in Borderlands 2 alone. I was excited for this movie. WAS.

Because man… after that trailer, now I know how Roland felt at the end of the ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’ quest. 😫

Such a disappointment. Bewilderment. A super-old Lilith with NO siren tattoos!? Roland being played by some comedian that I see in mobile phone ads!? And this Tiny Tina does NOT sound like she was orphaned and left to fend for herself in the Borderlands! She talks like she just got out of daycare. “Make it rain! With all of your body parts!” Blech. The REAL Tiny Tina would let the explosion itself be the punchline. 😑

It wasn’t all terrible, I guess. Tannis being played by Halloween lady is fine. You’ll have to excuse me; I’m not good with actors’ names. Or taking two seconds to check IMDB. And I did think the part with Claptrap expelling lead was funny. Seems like something he’d do. 😆

Ah well. Maybe Borderlands 4 will be announced soon.

In other news, I have beaten Persona 5 Tactica! Spoilers for the end of the game!

And man, that end of the game got filler ALLLL over the place. The final world has no new story; it’s just fighting the main bosses again with the stage gimmicks from their respective Kingdoms.

Luckily I was quite overpowered at this point, and I could just All-Out Attack to clear out most of the enemies. 😸

Then the final boss is this thing:

That is Salmael, the god of stagnation and ‘peace.’ The final battle is pretty creative for a tactics game: you only have five platforms to stand on, and the boss will submerge certain platforms into toxic goo so you have to keep your guys hopping around. You can’t just turtle up and win.

The boss will also mark the platforms with roman numerals, and you’ll need to move a matching number of characters onto the platforms or else your team gets hit with a massive paralysis attack.

Fun stuff. I enjoyed the ending, and I pretty much forgot about there being a ‘real’ Erina waiting back in reality. So when she finally showed up to meet Toshiro I lost it:

If you haven’t played the game and don’t know what’s going on, just enjoy the rest of my photos taken out of context:

Ha,ha, okay that’s enough joking around. Final verdict! Even though most of the fourth act is a repeat, the first THREE fourths of the game ARE packed with story and emotion. Great game! Man, I love the Persona games that don’t have all that sleeping and sim crap.

See you next time! 😋