I suppose with this epilogue Kim’s edits are all done. Good work, Kim! I’ll see you for the sequel!

Kim also has no major qualms with the ending, so let’s get started with her FINAL notes.

Summary:

Hardpan city has been destroyed. Mackaba crawls through the wreckage and rain, dejected and defeated. He realizes that the Lord Leys aren’t coming back, and that he has been abandoned.

A man reveals his presence to Mackaba, a man inside a mobile glass cube. He relates to Mackaba’s situation, and proclaims how lucky Mackaba is to meet him: He is the hero Pinada. Continue reading →

Zounds, can it be? Are we at the end of Abandonment Party? Continue reading →

Only a couple chapters left! I tell ya, Kim’s no-holds-barred critiques are taking my writing to a whole new level!

But before we move on I’d like to revisit my little discussion about plans from the previous post. Specifically, how much fun it is to have the hero with no plan defeat the villain who has an elaborate one. In fact, I found a discussion on reddit the other day where people were celebrating this very thing:

One Piece: Chapter 974 – Official Release Discussion
byu/AutoModerator inOnePiece

It was in the One Piece forum, where people were discussing chapter 974. Yes, there are that many chapters. And in this chapter the protagonist, Luffy, shows up to ruin the villains’ plan. But Luffy never has a plan. He just runs ahead and starts wrecking things. And I love it. It happened like this in Dragon Ball, too. That’s probably why I don’t give my protagonists plans; I think it’s hilarious when the meticulous villain is dumbfounded by some schmuck that shows up with a bunch of improvised nonsense.

And I’m glad that other people love that way of storytelling, too. Why, just look at these wise quotes from the thread:

• “Everyone has a plan until Luffy punches them in the face.”

Poetry.

• “Ki-woo, you know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all. No plan. You know why? If you make a plan, life never works out that way.”

This right here is how I live my life.

• “The enemy can’t know what I am doing if I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Faultless logic.

• “He didn’t follow Snart’s 4 rules of making a plan: Make the plan; execute the plan; expect the plan to go of the rails; throw away the plan.”

This line is spoken by Captain Cold from The Flash, and I love quoting it. I usually get the last line wrong, though.

• “Do you think Cairbou has the rest of the prisoners hiding in his body?”

Uh, whoops, not sure what that one means. But enough fooling around! On to Kim’s edits! Continue reading →

Summary:

Mean and Parlay are still battling inside the floating cage, with the portal between worlds raging above them. Mean uses her gravity power to tilt the cage upside-down, escaping from Parlay’s grasp. The cage corrects itself. Seeing that vein alone won’t be enough to stop Mean, Parlay takes out another plant from his collection: the dream lily.

This plant covers the floor and emits toxic gas; Mean is disoriented and takes several hits from Parlay and his vein that is now fashioned into a scythe.

Mean rotates the cage around twice more, battering Parlay and killing the lily. She uses the last of her energy to drag Parlay across the floor before she crashes into the wall, unable to stop her own momentum.

Parlay gets up and realizes that his tooth just fell out: he no longer has the power to release the Slate virus from its dormant state. He moves in to kill Mean. He hesitates when he sees that she only has one heart, unlike the four smaller ones that all Jesians have.

But there is no time to ponder this: Three strange men appear in the cage. They are from Parlay’s past life, and the cage transforms into an arena surrounded by spectators. All of them panic and are vaporized out of their clothes, including the three men that were taunting Parlay.

Mean looks up to see that the hall has been encircled by a chain-like wreath. It was all a vision. Hellzoo has returned. Continue reading →

Three chapters remain, plus the epilogue. Let’s do this.

Summary:

Tecker and Hatchel see the hall in the sky that Error made. They call for the lord ley express jet so they can fly up and close the portal between worlds.

Mean and Parlay battle inside the cage as it flies away from Hardpan and towards the hall. Parlay reveals an amulet that houses vein, a magic-nullifying organism. The gelatinous substance reacts to his command: forming pillars, crossbows, and sharp projectiles. Mean busts out a hidden talent of her own and flies around the cage to dodge Parlay’s attacks. If she can damage him enough, his static magic will fail; but she can’t let him directly touch her or she’ll be at his mercy.

The chapter ends with Mean ensnared in a vein web and Parlay’s hand around her throat.

Will this be enough to impress Kim? I think you already know the answer to that…. Continue reading →

Another solid chapter critique by Kim. However, she was a bit upset with me over last week’s post. You see, she felt that I left out TOO many of her hilarious margin edits because I spent all that blog space talking about Piccolo.

So this week I’ll make more room for Kim’s hilarious gags! I’ll just toss out this ‘Justification of Frieza’ essay. It took me five minutes to write. -_-

Summary: Mean and Dark reach the top floor of the Dhaston building. Dring comes running down from the roof. He tells them that Parlay is sending the city of Hardpan crashing into Jesice. Mean calms him down and tells him to escape with Dark.

After Dark and Dring leave through a hex door, Mean finds Parlay on the roof. She confronts him inside a large cage, and the entire thing blasts off from the roof toward the hall above.

Parlay explains how he’s going to saturate Jesice with magical energy. Then he will release the Slate virus, which will be programmed to inflict a ‘static’ effect. He will create a world of people that never change, never get hurt, and never die. And Hardpan city will fall on them, so they KNOW they’re saved.

Mean is reminded of the story of how Pinada saved Overland from a comet. She realizes that Parlay is trying to re-create the same favorable circumstances that made Pinada a hero. Continue reading →

The finale begins, and Kim is fired up to maximum snark-ness! She was so snarky in fact, that I couldn’t squeeze in all her hilarious edits. I apologize. :'(

Summary:

Dring meets Parlay on the roof of the Dhaston building. Tyle is critically injured. The model, Error, has been destroyed. But Parlay’s master plan is still in motion. He is going to connect the two planets with a permanent hex door: the hall! A massive hex door opens above Hardpan City!

Darrow and Vornis are outside the city of Hardpan now, and they witness the next phase of Parlay’s plan: the entire city, foundation and all, blasts out of the ground and starts to float toward the hall in the sky! Holy crap!

The lords ley on Jesice are worried as they see the city fly through the hall at them. Everyone else that lives on the cliff-side city is also upset and screaming from the rooftops.

Dring doesn’t know why any of this is happening either. It looks like Parlay is going to kill thousands of people for no reason. However, Parlay is ready to fulfill his promise to heal Dring’s throat damage. Once healed he can finally have the confidence to speak to Mean in person, and he can forget about Parlay and Jesice. Dring refuses and runs away, crying.

Kim’s big problem: Now before I start with the edits I must address a most pressing concern. Kim sent me an email. She told me that ‘hall’ is a dumb name. “Please rename it to something cooler” she said. “It just sounds so small and generic.”

Kim probably doesn’t know this, but I made a post on the hall’s name before. I talked about all the names people have used for spacial gateways in fiction. Portal. Wormhole. Or for you Witcher fans, “Conjunction of the Spheres.” I just wanted to build on the ‘hex door’ theme. A door opens and closes. A hall is always open.

But I don’t think something is cool just because you give it a cool name; I think something is cool because you MAKE it cool.

I’ll use a Dragon Ball example, since Kim has watched that. The character Piccolo. Without knowing anything about him, you might scoff. “What a wimpy name! That’s a kind of flute, isn’t it?” But he starts out as one of the strongest villains. A demon king, even! The hero Goku fights Piccolo and beats him at great risk to himself, but he allows Piccolo to live. Then Piccolo is forced to team up with Goku years later when a greater evil arrives. Piccolo even trains Goku’s son and teaches him how to fight after Goku dies. He learns to care about the boy, and realizes that humans aren’t so bad.

So when Vegeta and Nappa show up and murder all the other characters, and Goku’s son is about to be blasted into pieces, what are you thinking when Piccolo jumps in front of the oncoming beam to save his sworn enemy’s child?

You’re thinking “Piccolo is the coolest name in the universe.”

So I’m not changing the name. 😛 Continue reading →