Oh god oh man oh god oh man oh god.
Oh boy.
This is it.
How will Bec Noir and Spades Slick come out of this? Is Slick going to be the last Jack standing?
---
...
THAT.
WAS.
FUCKING AWESOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeeee !!!!!!!!!
All that FIGHTING.
ALL THOSE CONTRIBUTIONS
THE REVIVALS
THE KILLINGS BUT ALSO THE REVIVALS
KARKAT BEATING THE LUCKIEST MEMBER OF THE FELT!!!!*
I
Wow.
But before I can say anything coherent or even chronological.
I have to comment on...
Dirk?
Heroic sacrifice at the eleventh hour? Or...
Will they be able to revive him? Dave at least saved his head and body (and half his sword)**
But then they'll have to revive Jane some how first, because it sure looked as if Condy gave her the same treatment as she did Aranea. Oh geez.
When Jane went down, it was really down to kill or be killed for everyone.
I can hardly believe it, but Dave found the courage to time travel again.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE that Dave and Terezi's fraymotif apparently consisted of them looking for the most fortunate timeline to continue fighting in.
Kind of a Die-like power, isn't it?
Even if it meant going back in time at several occasion! Hah, and Spades Slick got two cuestaffs due to the time shenanigans.
Spades Slick... Eeeeesh.
I can definitely understand Dave had nothing against killing him. Slick was trying forcefully to secure he kept his "dips" on "Lord English", eesh. Goes to show he'll always be an anti-hero or anti-villain, no matter what.
Apart from the ones who died, I think the most amazing to happen was definitely Dad joining the fight!
Arquiusprite fighting against Cans was already unforeseen but COMPLETELY WONDERFUL. But then DAD joined the fray. Fuckin' incredible how he destroyed that power. I'm sure Arquiusprite could put a number on his power level (or at least, define a certain number as the lower boundary
).
I LOVED the callbacks and aesthetic, both auditive and visual.
Fucking Undertale shoutout! It was like the FRIENDSHIP ANEURYSM that came intermediate of [S] Descend, hahah. I wonder what it was symbolic for, maybe Davepeta trying to find some good in LE to show MERCY to?
Buuuut it failed.
I can hardly believe how epic (TAVROS) was, and how much he could stomach that beating from LE!
And can you believe it, PRE-RETCON ARADIA AND SOLLUX swung by!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE that not only - as Blaperile noticed - Aradia rode LE like Rose the Ogre/Guy Fieri, but what I noticed was she used her whip! Aradia Jones FTW!
I just realized, that means Team Charge TOOK charge against the biggest bad in history!!!
What else?
Oh, yeah, the devilbeasts. Hahahah.
Jade tried to persuade both of them to call down by cutting in the middle, causing them to draw back their swords.
Then PM had enough and was like "I can't KILL the girl but I can sure PUNCH her!" and then it all turned into a callback to pre-retcon Jade being punched out by the Hope field.
And then BEC NOIR WASN'T SLAIN BUT SUBDUED!!! I just realized that what happened to Bec Noir was what happened to Spades Slick at the end of the intermission.
Only now, he got back his eye, got back his lost arm but LOST the other one, pffff.
I do wonder what's still in store during the next forty pages.
This sure as hell didn't resolve everything just yet.
It seems we are in for Intermission 3.
Unresolved plot points (besides Blaperile's list on his Tumblr):
- PM: will she calm down?
- LOTAK, Dirk and Jane: can they be saved? Did Lord Noir's face cause a black hole in the session?
- Green Sun: what do?
- Lord English: what gonna happen?
It seemed as LE was about to power up some more.
Vriska hasn't used the plot hole yet. That's in large part due to Andrew intervening. Gotta love how Vriska stealing his luck turned against her.
All these beautiful ponies though. The COMPLETELY GENERIC HORSE, Dreambubble!Maplehoof, and the Maplebots Arquiusprite summoned.
Talking about summoning reminds me of Casey's grand contribution.
All that friendly fire though. During the skeleton army charge, during the fraymotifs executed by the kids... During Nannasprite's attack on the Condesce, pfffff.
I love how Nannaspritex2 summoned those cookies to calm everyone the fuck down. Well, I'm not sure Jake eating them was part of the plan.
Heh, he loved her cookies, while John refused them (initially at least)!
Crowbar was so done with everything. When Jake got to him, he casually shot him down. When Nannaspritex2 and later the army came by, he was so tired of shit.
But then Jake rose triumphant! His fisticuffs skills paid off! That definitely impressed Crowbar.
Might be that Crowbar, Clover and Cans (heh, the 3 Cs) now have taken a liking to some of our heroes.
Cans though. I didn't know how to picture him joining the fight, but this beat everything I could have hoped for.
The best part must've been him and Arquius landing ON the panel with LOFAF, shaking everything and everyone up there, and later Jade "correcting" the panel to its right position, with the same motions via which she tinified everyone to go through the Fourth Wall. (Or maybe she biggified the Fourth Wall, who even knows right.)
We finally got fraymotifs. We even got a fraymotif for THREE fighters at once. (Love how Kanaya is casually reading and putting on lipstick in that sequence.)
We got Bec Noir and PM fighting everywhere in the session, but cool enough, it all culminated near Jade's volcano, where Game Over took place + where Jade and Dave first fought Bec Noir.
We got to see a Denizen strife, if as symbolic as it could ever get. But the Mobster Kingpin callback was A-FREAKING-MAZING. It took me a second viewing to see exactly what Yaldabaoth's face looked like, but oh man.
Speaking of which, does this mean that "Lord English" now killed another Yaldabaoth, the one in LOTAK?
I wonder if Dirk can be revived through Brain Ghost Dirk? But then, what about Jane? (Spades Slick is definitely a goner, unless retcons would happen.)
Oh yeah, John didn't use his zappy powers at any point.
Gotta love how RPG-like the fights were, especially the ones against )(IC and Lord English. I had Mortal Kombat vibes throughout.
And LE taking off his coat by way of entering the sarcophagus and proceeding to come out to RUMBLE.
It was definitely apparent the non-alpha non-godtier ghosts and living have little to slow him down with.
Also, apparently Lord English saw fit to single out and blast one Mituna and Cronus ghost in particular.
I suddenly remember what the blurry start of [S] Collide (so. cool. a name.) reminded me of, I think it were the blurry zoom-in motions during [S] Act 6!
* Well, Roxy still has a sword that belonged to "a" Dirk, so Dirk if revived could still have one.
** Chances are, Karkat'd be very insecure about only beating one measely member of The Felt, but he doesn't know how fucking INCREDIBLE this feat is.
Who's to say the same thing isn't true for his Denizen - small but the most dangerous one of all!
Wow. I think that's mostly all I have to common on right away.
So. Epic.
It's painful to realize this is almost over, but man, we went OUT WITH A. BANG!!!
The events were much more localized and consice than in Cascade, where whole universes were destroyed, and [S] Game Over, where everything went to shit.
But they were much more personal and upfront, like true end boss battles are.
This is worthy spiritual successor to the Mobster Kingpin end boss battle of Problem Sleuth. I know that description literally means "half of Problem Sleuth", but I still mean it.
18 minutes of EPIC. 18 minutes of a new album, too!
Love the names for Create and Oppa Toby Style, hahahah. So, apparently the last sequence of Eternity Served Cold was a little edited, and on relistening, I think it might be, for one, during the sequence where the fireflies come in to breath hope in the hearts of our heroes.
That was a lovely callback to [S] John: Rise Up and [S] Cascade.
And we got the return of Serenity and saw her reunited with WV, yaaaay!!!
And I NEVER would've thought Heir of Grief would become a canon Tensei song. Hope, yes, but I didn't think it could ever be true.
So much. So very. RESOLVED.
Wow.
At work today, I had a grin on my face at random intervals thinking about the update that Blaperile had mailed we was put up.
I'm sure to have a grin on my face at random intervals tomorrow, too.
It was great to go through this with all you guys.
Have a great future!
---
P.S. Almost forgot to look at the art credits!
I was for sure Jones (J.N. Wiedle) would have drawn some of the Felt (like the one where Crowbar is eyerolling at Jake in the Felt pile), huh.