GIFE II was a sexy sweet fic. If it was a woman, I would make sweet love to it.
This time around, it was I who started the story. I didn't know if this was sacrilege or something, since Skul started the last one and I never wrote in the first GIFE, but a new forum (we had temporarily moved to the FUD forum at the time but later moved back to UBB) called for a new GIFE, so I heeded the call.
This first chapter probably had the most diverse amount of authors as everyone and their mother decided to post on it in the spirit of it being a new forum. Of course, the posters later tapered off to being the seven main authors. The funny thing about this chapter is that Giampi tried to end the story several times in the beginning, and then he disappeared, and then later came back to be one of the main authors.
Of course, a lot of weird, wild stuff happened in the first part of the story, all of it pretty much being nonsense, but the great thing is that toward the end of the story we ended up grabbing a lot of the random, wacky things established in this chapter and using them as out-of-the-blue recurring story elements.
Oh, and the part about Pokey being Lavos and destroying stuff in a manner similar to the whole part in Chrono Trigger where Lavos makes Zeal crash to the ground -- this was originally an idea I had for a Halloween Flash movie that I never finished because I suck at Flash and gave up on learning it. I just thought it was a pretty amusing idea.
Also, I tried to get Gauntlet to post on the story but he's lame so he didn't want to post more than once. Oh, and the title which SimonBob made, "In which Fourside explodes for the umpteenth time" -- in a series of fics he and I wrote on in the past called "Gaidens", Fourside always ended up being the main setting and wild crap would happen there, like demons from Hell coming in or crazy uberpowered people destroying it. As Tokyo is to anime, Fourside is to our EB fanfics.
SimonBob decided at this point to take the story into a more drawn out, serious arc. He posted on the forums as "Silver Tyrano", thinking he could fool people into believing he was a new poster who had mods or something. Needless to say no one believed him. In any event, his AC was also Silver Tyrano, who ended up going around eating stuff I guess.
There were still some remains of Giampi and other people being random and weird, but that got squashed. Skulryk's Hobo Mike also got introduced, but unfortunately for Skul, Hobo Mike ended up getting left behind in the story a lot. :(
SB re-introduced Dark Figure as the main bad guy. I don't know why, I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. So Dark Figure appears with little to no explanation.
Ah, my post! The Kyle Gass Project is an inside joke, really. Kyle Gass is half of Tenacious D along with Jack Black, and on one of the old episodes of the Tenacious D Show, Jack starts getting angry at Kyle presumably getting famous as a solo act and says "All of a sudden, I'm at the dentist office listening to the mellow sounds of the Kyle Gass Project coming over the radio!" So really, that's where my post jumps in from. Also, when I mention in that post that I headed off to the fanfics section to read GIFE since I'd never read it before, I was telling the truth. I started the topic without ever reading the first GIFE, so after writing that post I went right to the fanfics section and read through GIFE in one sitting. I didn't post again until after I'd finished. And yes, I made that post right before having to go to work at the supermarket that day (it was during the summer), so I really did get sidetracked. Thought that was pretty funny.
dash tries to jump into the story but does a crappy job of it. Mr. Mani might have been a cool plot arc but we never did anything with it. Oh well.
My AC, Falcon (how convenient) has a little run-in with Dark Figure. They exchange some cryptic words that make sense much, much later in the story. An interesting note is that this Falcon has wings, which is a direct throw-back to the very first IF I ever wrote on, The First Annual Starmen.Net Gathering Fic. For those of you who don't know, the Smnet Gathering was a really, really long IF that went through about five threads because we kept breaking the forum. It happened in late 1999 or somewhere around then, and it was what really brought attention to the IF board in general. Heck, even reidman made a front-page post about it, I think. It was that crazy. In any event, my AC there had wings and talon-like hands and that's what I modeled this character after.
In the beginning, AC Falcon was a lot like me, personality-wise: wacky and stuff, and not making a lot of sense. General comic relief like much of the rest of GIFE 2. When things got crazy and the authors began tossing themselves in as characters, AC Falcon's personality changed to all serious/angsty since Author Falcon became me, essentially. Oh well.
An interesting note is around the time of this chapter, Grandpa made a post. It was his only post in the whole story and it seemed sort of neat. If you are confused about the "Not Appearing in this Film" column on the credits list, two of the characters are from his post. You can check the post in the "Deleted Scenes" section.
Mr. Accident makes the first super long post of the story and re-introduces Joe the Frosty Vendor. Unfortunately, a lot of the elements from the first story (save Dark Figure) got overshadowed by a lot of the new, wacky stuff we threw in. SimonBob said something to the effect of "too many cooks spoiling the broth" and he might be right, I don't know. He made me sad when he said it. :(
Raltise! Raltise Raltise Raltise. Sorry, I get excited because Raltise is my favorite character ever. For those of you who don't know, Raltise is an AC I made up several years ago and immediately propelled him into importance by taking over the first "Gaiden" fic I wrote on (Zenith). The links to Zenith, Horizon and Vendetta respectively are all stories where Raltise more or less stole the show. He's a wacky guy who is sort of malevolent and evil and possesses infinite power, but at the same time he's completely insane. Everyone who knows Raltise either loves him or hates him, and I love him because (of course) he's my character. In any event, I decided to throw him in because the idea of Dark Figure being the sole bad guy in the sequel seemed lame to me. SimonBob went ">:/" at me when he read it, but he got used to it I guess.
Here, SB tries to start up the Paula arc, I think. It never really took off because no one else wanted to write for it. Poor dash, in any event.
Another deleted scene takes place around here, this time from Luna. Luna's another person I tried to get to write on GIFE 2, and she only wrote one post. The thing you need to realize about Luna is that she is horribly lazy and we can never get her to write on anything whenever she joins a story. It's sort of like the running joke of the IF board writers. So in any event, she only made one post and we cut her. Well, most of her. We took a little bit of her first post involving Paula and dash, but cut the rest. You can read her post in the "Deleted Scenes" section.
Another massive post by Mr. Accident. Also, we're coming to the end of the FUD iteration of GIFE 2. I'd say Mr. A's post comprises roughly half of this chapter. Lots of Ninja. I'm surprised that Mr. A was the one who brought in Ninjas, because me and SimonBob are the self-proclaimed Ninja connoseiuer around Sm.Net. In any event, Mr. A's post sort of irked me a little bit because he had Dark Figure in it but completely skipped over Raltise, as if he was trying to push Raltise out of the story. It made me sad, so I fixed it by adding an addendum to his scene at the beginning of my post involving Raltise watching Joe speed away. So, this chapter ends with a little bit of my post, meaning the next chapter begins with the main, meaty chunk of it.
Ah ha! The first instance of something that happened in the earlier insane part of the story recurring as an important plot arc! In this chapter, some of the good ACs are in Winters, which as you may recall had Dalaam fall on it in the beginning of the story. I forgot about this when we first had them go to Winters, so I added this in in my post. Also in this post, Falcon shouts some random kung fu attacks. Once again, these are entirely stolen from the Tenacious D show when Jack Black and Kyle Gass get into a karate fight. Exploding Brains technique is also a made-up technique I made on the Ninja Club forum based off one of my favorite Tenacious D songs. Notice a pattern?
So, Dr. Andonuts and Poo were drunk in my post. When I wrote "I've heard that Poo and the Doctor are notorious drunkards, if they get drunk they can potentially stay that way for whole IF's at a time.", I intended to have Poo and Dr. Andonuts being drunk as a recurring plot point. They'd tag around the whole story with drunken antics as comic relief and would sober up at the end. Unfortunately it never got picked up, as Simonbob swooped in a couple of posts later and sobered them up with a photograph from the Camera Guy.
Again, another recurring plot thing. Remember how Ness had become nothing more than a brain in the beginning of the story? Well, he comes back as a giant brain in space, talking about destroying the Lylat system. Clearly a ripoff of Star Fox 64 when Andross was a giant brain. And of course, Joe comes in in an Arwing and takes him out. Go figure.
Also introduced in this post was the "Fanfic Council of Elders", which is my egoistic attempt of perpetuating my self-importance. The Council of Elders consists of me, SimonBob, Skulryk, Liar X. Agerate, and NeoPaula. Let me explain it a bit -- me and SB are obvious. We consider ourselves the "Two Kings" of writing because we are smart alecky and pretentious. Skulryk is our bud and the original starter of the first GIFE, so he's in there as well. Liar is a mod of the IF board, and I dunno, I like him better than Anthadd (sorry Anth ;D) so we made him in there too. Now NeoPaula -- she was a former mod of IF and a big writer on the Gaiden stories with us. She was a really good friend of mine but then she disappeared sometime around January 2003. So I put her in as a tribute. But of course, since she isn't around anymore, she's just a cardboard cutout. Again, the Council of Elders will figure in very prominently later in the story. If you remember my comment about the authors putting themselves into the story, you'll see where this is going.
Oh yeah, and Skulryk makes Hobo Mike sober up and turn into Michael Washington, but no one really picks this ball up and it kinda goes nowhere. :/
Also, JP makes his first post in this chapter. Hooray for JP!
I didn't write anything in this chapter but I guess I can comment on it anyway. Because I am so awesome.
SimonBob again tries to pick up on the Paula arc but it falls flat. Poor SB.
Mr. A posts and we begin to steadily chip away at the fourth wall. Also, Dark Figure plots against Raltise and that's later realized at the end of the story. Awesome stuff.
Giampi makes a return with his AC, Giampy. He slowly works to become the third most frequent writer on the story.
Flying Zamboni does a fairly good representation of Raltise. I yell a lot at people who misrepresent Raltise but I actually liked how FZ did it, what with the "pale hand waving through the air". So he gets my thumbs up.
Since I don't have much to say, I'll just comment on how SimonBob smells like cheese.
Now here Mr. JamesPicard_007 thinks he is being a Clever Carl with his "Raltise goes to Sears" bit! See, when me and NeoPaula and SimonBob and some other people were writing Horizon, we thought it'd be funny to make a Sideshow Bob joke and have Raltise walk into a rake. Since then, rakes have become Raltise's nemesis, so he harbors much hatred for them. JP thought he was being a SMARTY MAN when he posted this, didn't you JP!?
Giampi comes out of the sidehatch with the Dolewasher, and thus sets the stage for the wild craziness that comprises GIFE's later plotstuffs. Well, actually, he doesn't. He just makes Giampy, Raltise and Dark Figure disappear. JP is the one that later screws everything over. YOU HEARD ME JP
Ah ha ha, the awesome NINJA FIGHT. Silver Tyrano turns back to his normal form and harrasses some Ninjas. We were obsessed with Ninjas in GIFE 2. Then again, we're usually obsessed with Ninjas. In any event, the following had to be one of my favorite posts in the story -- the Mooby's Flip-Out-athon. Mooby's is a ripoff of Kevin Smith's movies, since he has a Mooby's restaurant chain in his movies, and we decided to rip on it. I loved this post because I just got to make increasing levels of violence as AC Falcon and the Ninja Leader saw who could flip out more. The smaller and more insignificant the offense, the bigger the flipout was. In the end, Falcon destroyed the whole Western Hemisphere or something after a plastic ball from the playpen hit his foot. I thought it was pretty fun.
Also, I was hoping Astronaut Jones would become a recurring character, but he didn't. I mean come on, "Astronaut Jones" is such a cool name.
I didn't write in any of this chapter either, but I'll comment on it nonetheless.
THIS IS WHERE THE EVIL BEGINS. JP takes Giampi's post and makes the ACs cross over into the "Author's Home Dimension". The story then proceeds to fall down a bottomless pit of toilet water as we hack the fourth wall to pieces and every author and their mother inserts themselves into the story as a character.
I don't think GIFE 2 would be GIFE 2 without this whole part of the story, but I mean come on. It gets a little overboard. Thanks JP. ;D
This chapter starts out with my post, where I bring the Fanfic Council of Elders back in all its glory. So now we have us authors in the story and meeting our own characters. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I also decided to shove Luna back into the story, because she's hot.
Actually, on second glance, this entire chapter is all me. Wow, that's pretty cool. Sure, it's only about four pages, but still. It's pretty awesome. Anyway, there's some vague innuendo in here involving catgirls since SB is obsessed with catgirls greatly and I am as well to a much, much, much lesser extent.
I like how the laws of physics don't work in this story. How three thousand Ninja can fit on Silver Tyrano's back, even if he is big, is beyond me. It just seemed cool at the time. The laptop which SB uses to fix Silver Tyrano makes an appearance, and the whole idea of a laptop that can change the story universe gets expanded upon. It's very, very neat.
Pancho the Personable Plothole shows up. I imagine him like the Great Will of the Universe in Excel Saga, only male. I made him deliberately very annoying. Around this time, SimonBob and I became mods of the IF board and we changed the AC limit, so I also commented on that.
And then Raltise and Dark Figure attack! Dark Figure is a strange guy, really. I think there's some dispute over what he looks like. SimonBob imagines him as an evil looking guy with a cape and a big helmet (sorta reminds me of Darth Vader really) but I imagine him as a humanoid-looking black shadow that is all wavy and all you see are a pair of white eyes and an evil smile. I like my idea better.
Oddly enough, I didn't write a single thing on this fairly long chapter. Guess that's what happens when you get a whole chapter to yourself. But I think I'm glad that I didn't, because this ends up being the MOST CONFUSING CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER.
Again, JP is entirely responsible for this fiasco. He makes the "Inverted Council of Elders" with all the evil versions of the authors and ACs, and it just gets completely weird and freaky and out of control. Gah.
Also, JP glorifies himself by fighting Raltise. I really don't know what JP's obsession with fighting Raltise is, but he does it twice in the story. Weirdo.
At the end of the chapter, SB does some Matrix ripoff where Dark Figure slams his fist into Simon's chest and makes him "Dark Simon", ala Agent Smith. Unfortunately no one picked up on this until it was too late and in the immediate posts later SB was good again. I fix it later in the story, but still.
Also, it should be noted that Dark Figure really DID post on the thread. Skulryk had the brilliant idea of making a Dark Figure account and having him post on the story as a gimick. Unfortunately, we only ever used the account twice -- once where it says "Posted by Dark Figure" in this chapter, and later on when Dark Figure "edits" a post. So we really never made much use of the forum account. I hear that these days Mr. Dark Figure is a mod on a private forum some where, but you didn't hear it from me.
Michael DePalma posted here. We decided to leave his post in because it'd be pretty awesome.
Again, SB tries to further the Paula plot arc and I think he actually finally succeeds in doing something worthwhile. He brings dash in once again even though at this point dash hasn't posted in ages. That's a fun thing about IFs -- we sometimes carry characters when their authors stop posting. *cough*Luna*cough*
Anyway, the dash beating Jeff unconscious with a blackjack was incredibly funny to me because it reminded me of that episode of The Simpsons when Homer joined the space program and got knocked out repeatedly by that one guy.
And here Giampi tries to end the battle with a fairly weird post in script form. Of course that ANGERED THE GODS OF GIFE namely me because I had plans, so I wrote dash jumping out and clubbing Giampi with the blackjack too. Here's an example of when a repitition of gags actually works.
Still, I wish I knew what was going through Giampi's head when he wrote that.
Oh ho ho, SimonBob thinks he's so clever when he made the subtitle to this chapter. He must have been wearing the sassy pants.
So at this point, Mr. Accident thankfully moves us from the current battle and ends it in an extremely tactful and awesome way (no offense to Giampi, but Mr. A's thing left some room for stuff ;D) Once again, we all end up back in Winters. What fun!
Some really awesome stuff in this here post of mine. First, you have Trez, who is an old old old AC of SimonBob's. Trez is a "Thought Dragon" that appears when SimonBob thinks of him, I guess. I took the liberty of uncluttering things since we had way too many Evil ACs and we just didn't need them. So I reduced the bad guy ranks to only a select important few. You can definitely see how self-serving I am, since Evil AC Falcon serves absolutely no purpose of continuing to exist except to get killed as a plot point later in the post.
The part where everyone is falling and Falcon says "Look's like the ground is coming up pretty fast", and Bob replies with "Looks like it." -- this is a silly little nod to another IF SimonBob and I are currently working on, Duel 2. SB started the original Duel when I made fun of NeoPaula somewhere on some random thread years ago, and he decided to start an IF where he and I fought. So then in recent times, he made fun of the "Christopher Walken Cowbell" SNL skit and I started up Duel 2. In Duel 2 there's a part where we're fighting in the air on top of Trez and I kill Trez and we start plummeting toward the ground, and that dialogue ensues. Anyway, you might be seeing Duel 2 soon since it's almost done anyway, maybe around the same time that this commentary goes up.
There was the recurring gag of someone scowling angrily and folding his arms in this post. I don't know, I like gag repitition if it's done correctly. And who better to do it correctly than me, since I'm so awesome? Ho ho ho.
I just had to comment that the way I write Raltise's dialogue never ceases to amuse me. Referring to the authors in the story as the "Legendary Author Creatures" just makes me giggle.
So yeah, here's where the cryptic dialogue between AC Falcon and Dark Figure from earlier comes in. I always do stuff like this in stories, where I have some vague thing in the beginning that comes back much later to bite people in the butt. So yeah, Good AC Falcon ended up being evil, and Evil AC Falcon ended up being good. I'm so smarty.
Also, I love breaking the fourth wall for some reason. In both GIFE 2 and Duel 2, I make mention of myself in the story as cognizantly knowing what is going to happen in the story because I'm writing it at that moment. I think it's all very funny to have character dialogue go on about how I knew it was going to happen because I wrote it.
There's a tiny Excel Saga gag here. If you've ever seen Excel Saga, there's this weird plot arc in the show with a guy named Pedro who ends up dying and as a ghost goes to see his wife and child. He finds his wife in love with his best friend who ends up being this evil guy in a costume. Also, he falls in love in the meantime with this swirling spherical thing with hands called the Great Will of the Universe, and at one point his wife and the Great Will end up merging together and it's discovered that the same voice actor does their voices. Then the evil guy scoops the hybrid up and rockets off on jetpack shoes or something. Also, every Pedro skit in each episode ends with him shouting "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Well, that's what we did here -- Ness's Brain and Pancho fused together, and Paula runs up and screams NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Pretty big setup joke, really.
Then all the ninjas hit the ground and splatter everywhere. I liked the last sentence particularly, for some reason. It sounded very poetic.
I was getting fed up with the numerous plotholes at the moment, so I made a "Fixer Post" where everyone just sort of broke out of the fourth wall and SimonBob and Falcon explained why a bunch of things didn't make sense. We also brought Hobo Mike back into the story. Hooray.
Also, Falcon and SimonBob start 'fighting' and stop being friends anymore. :~( I like how at this point the two of us have become the central characters of the story. Such fun.
So then I guess people tried to do "group therapy", and Skulryk got to use the Dark Figure account gag again. I have to say that the sentence "BUT THEN, DARK FIGURE EDITED THE POST!" makes me fill to the brim with girlish glee.
Again, I didn't write in this chapter. I think this was my least favorite chapter since it seemed to just go on and on and not really do anything. Nonetheless, it was filled with random GIFE 2 randomness from JP and Giampi so I guess that's good.
This has to be one of the few fics that involves characters sleeping, going to the bathroom, eating, etc. I always think it's funny how in some fics the characters go on without eating or doing any remotely normal human functions.
I have to say that the Chip N' Dale song that SB made up is awesome. When I picture it in my head, I imagine the robotic voice from the "Chip N' Dale's MMORPG" flash movie singing it. It brings me joy.
Another chapter I didn't write in. Wow, two in a row. Anyway, we start getting back on plot, with Raltise and Dark Figure tormenting our poor heroes and causing stuff to fall on them.
Then JP comes in with his "Windows XP: Constantly Crashing Edition" which made me sad because it was going to sort of interfere with a super-huge-major plot point that I was going to introduce. It seems like I only write when something big deal is going to happen. Like I set the stage and everyone else dances on it. Dance, little monkies, dance! Hahahaha I am a puppetmaster like Raltise.
But in any event, I managed to overcome JP's shenanigans. Thankfully in GIFE2 you can always just pull out a plot hole and fix everything (or break everything, whichever you prefer).
Now some more inside stuff. If I do say so myself, my posts always contain a higher quotient of awesome than other people. Ha ha ha I am so egotistical. Anyway, in this post we have several things:
First, we have Dark Simon, whic SimonBob said seemed like a Raltise ripoff, but actually I was ripping off this anime called "Jubei Chan" where one character gets possessed by an evil spirit and he ends up looking all evil-like. That's what I had in mind for Dark Simon, who finally shows up again after his curious absences. Another one of SimonBob's transformations, as SB would say.
Now, Jacques comes in! Some may remember Jacques the Inexorable Tolp Lot from the first GIFE. I decided to throw him in as an exposition tool. He ended up being like Q from the James Bond movies in my mind. Only French instead of British. Anyway, the fact that he disguises himself as Panchette the Personable Plothole (Pancho's sister) comes up later. I aaaaalways think ahead when it comes to this stuff. Bwahahahahaha.
Raltise makes his return to Sears, this time to wreack havoc on lawncare items. This was fun because I imagined the evil authors as little imps running around giggling. Also, it helps because it gave Dark Figure a place to get the Zexonyte he needed to complete his machine, which was mentioned waaaaaaay back in the beginning of the story. Again, another place where I take a seemingly forgotten plot point and kick some life into it. I think if I hadn't done this for like 75% of the stuff in this story, there would have been many more plot holes than there are. :| Thankfully, the other main authors were just as accomodating and awesome with their literary ability so despite the madness it all ends up being very cohesive.
And NOW for the awesome plot exposition that just completely blew my mind even as I was writing it. I like to tie things in to obscure references, so in this case I pulled Horizon out of nowhere. Horizon was a fic that was written during the summer of 2002 on the IF board, and it was about Raltise seeking revenge on Ness for imprisoning him in the Nightmare Rock. Paula, Jeff and Poo were all dead from the previous story, Zenith, so they were ghosts who wandered about until they were revived at the very end. So in that story, Raltise moves back into the real world and has the power of the Nightmare Rock inside him, and it gradually shatters (Passing of time will shatter the Nightmare Rock) and at the end of the story, it breaks, he gains all this power, and envelopes the world in darkness and twisted Moonsidian landscapes, leaving only a thin dot of light on the horizon (clever eh?) untouched. This light on the horizon ended up being the Path of Light Island (and will reveal the path of light), to which they all went -- it ended up being a tropical island with a large mountain in the center and a dirt road leading up to it with a signpost titled "Horizon Drive" next to it.
So we bring this all back in this story. Clearly, Jeff and Paula are ghosts again, so it leads into Horizon since they were ghosts. Then we throw in the Path of Light Island, which due to the power of the Golden Laptop has been twisted into the Path of Darkness island. Lastly, we give a plausible excuse for the Ness/Pancho hybrid, saying that using them as a sacrifice, Raltise could spread his evil through all the GIFEverse (Ness) and all of reality as well (Pancho). Hence my statement that "I'm such a good writer." ;D
Also, we hint on the mysterious sword ______, which again is something in previous chapters that will get fleshed out later on.
Another chapter I didn't write on. Oh well. Win some, lose some.
All I can really say about this one is a couple of things -- I remember SimonBob griping a couple of times because people kept capturing Silver Tyrano when he wanted to do something else.
Also, I loved Giampi's post where they start talking in lamer speak. "hay guys 8-)" is like a recurring stupid joke with us writer dudes so it's just really amusing to picture Raltise saying it. Also, the Weapons of OLDSKOOL were a nice touch, because they were nice food for thought later.
Aaaaand another one I didn't write on. This one was weird, though. Mostly because Naeroon and Flying Zamboni, whose posts comprised the beginning of the chapter, had their posts mysteriously disappear for some reason. They had to rewrite them. :/
Again, Mr. Accident and his Ninjas. I don't know what his obsession is. But nonetheless, the phrase "three times the speed of awesome" is just so incredibly COOL.
Also, Evil FZ owning Raltise did not sit well with me. He pays for it later. Ahahahahahaha.
Aaaand here's where he pays for it. I got to kick Raltise up a notch into Uber Raltise. This is a little joke at my own expense because Raltise is for all intents and purposes a generic, cardboard cutout bad guy who is invincible except for a stupid thing at the end that undoes him. The only difference is that he's wacky, so that makes up for it. He's also very theatrical, which makes me happy.
In this post/chapter I proceeded to set the stage for a lot of things. I had Silver Tyrano versus AC Falcon. AC Falcon's weapons are really just shadowblades that Illidan in Warcraft III uses. It's also a bit of a ripoff on another Gaiden fic, Vendetta, in which one of the main characters (one of mine) Talus summons shadowblades much like it.
Then we have the evil SimonBob, Dark Simon, facing off against Author Falcon, his web buddy. I thought a lightsaber battle would be awesome, but then I remembered how in Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back they fight with Bongsabers, so I thought it'd be neat to just do a variant. So they fought with Lightpens, since you know, they're both authors.
Lastly, I bring an OLD plot arc back and have all the remaining ACs and authors get attacked by a bunch of monolithic beasts. It was almost too convenient that a bunch of things introduced at the beginning of the story were giant monsters, like Homer Kong and Godzilla. So it all worked out. Also, note how I glorified my battles between my characters and Simon's characters while lumping everyone else together. I'm so self-serving.
Then, I guess, JP pulled out a fight between Dark Figure and Raltise. Not that I'm complaining, but Raltise would totally own Dark Figure here. Especially in Uber mode. But it's cool.
In this chapter were some deleted posts by Naeroon and Ryanbomber. Nothing against them, but they were throwing their ACs into an already overly cluttered IF way at the end of the story. So we had to delete them. You can read their arc in the "Deleted Scenes" section.
Anyway, there are some other things I can comment on here but I won't because I'd like to get straight to my post, which has a lot of little juicy nuances and nuggets in it.
Raltise likes to let other people do his work for him, and I like to make it seem like he's just letting people do stuff for some sort of ultimate plan in mind, which is why I had it so that when the Weapons of OLDSKOOL met the Inverted Weapons of OLDSKOOL, they created a plot hole that allowed Raltise to finish his plans and chuck Ness's Brain and Pancho in. It turns out that Jacques, who gave the Weapons of OLDSKOOL to the heroes, was Raltise all along! Ain't that clever?
THEN when it seems like he's won, out steps Dark Figure with HIS ultimate plan, the Sapmotron, for which he needed the Zexonyte for. An interesting note is that while writing this I forgot that Dark Figure hadn't put the Zexonyte in the machine yet, so it goes from him holding it in one hand to him powering the machine up. It was originally supposed to have him put it into the machine, but I forgot. Oh well.
In any event, things get wicked awesome and serious from here, with Dark Figure dying and getting sucked up by Raltise. The dial with their faces on it was pretty amusing, though. In his dying words, Dark Figure mentions the Moonlight Sonata again, which ends up being very prominent at the end. Woot.
Then Raltise warps them all to the deck of the SS Thed. For those of you who don't know, the SS Thed is a massive Titanic-like ship that Raltise "comandeered" from Jonathan Jones (the shark dude from Super Mario RPG) in Horizon. He then parks the thing outside of Fourside harbor and that is where the final battle of Horizon takes place. I made a note to everyone that they should try to have the battle go through various final battle stages of previous fics -- all the ones suggested, coincidentally, being fics that I helped write. I'm so egotistical.
Oh, and if you look closely, the SS Thed is actually a conglomeration of "The D" which is a nickname for Tenacious D, my fav band and also one that SB likes too.
This is another fairly long chapter. I'll just briefly detail a lot of the places that they end up going to during the final battle:
1. The Ring of Fire at the end of Duel
2. Lord Golgothas's Inner Chambers in Hell at the end of Vendetta
3. Fourmoon, the hybrid of Fourside and Moonside at the end of Zenith
Again, for some reason JP wants to fight Raltise. And he does a lot of Max Payne rip-offs, which are awesome. He makes note of Raltise's weakness for key lime pie, which is entirely true -- I myself have a craving for this delectable delicacy, so Raltise goes absolutely nuts for it.
So JP makes some Max Payne and Matrix Revolution ripoffs, and then I smack him down in the end. Heh heh heh.
Then, the final stage is set: everyone gathers up the pieces of the weapons of OLDSKOOL, then Raltise reappears and sends them all off to Germany during Oktoberfest. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense, but it seemed funny at the time. Oh, and the Mr. Saturn and Hitler joke is really, REALLY obscure. Probably only 4 or so people will understand it offhand. See, a long time ago, Tomato had this idea for a small game called "Mr. Saturn vs Hitler" in which you as a Mr. Saturn have to take out Hitler with a sniper rifle or something. Rune did the narrator's voice, Umi did the Mr. Saturn's voice, and I did Hitler's voice. Basically I shouted a lot of random german words in an angry voice. Tomato never finished it though. Last time I checked, Everdraed was trying to revive it, but he's Everdraed so it'll never happen.
So, there was this hot girl in my English class from last year who was a foreign exchange student from Germany. She had a sexy German accent and was very cute too. So I decided to toss her in as being a weaponsmith who would make the legendary sword ______. Seriously. She's REALLY hot.
The mini Raltise dwarves seem kind of scary, I'm pretty sure. I stole the idea from Dragonball Z where Cell shoots out tiny versions of himself. All very creepy.
At last, the rockin' conclusion to this fic. I thought it was neat how, according to SB, the sword said exactly what would happen when you used it on its side, but it was all in German so no one understood it or the hot German girl.
A Duel joke! In the first Duel fic, I had left to go look at colleges one weekend and when I came back I found that the story was done and that in it, SimonBob had "beaten" me. I've never stopped bothering him about his trixy win.
So for a while now we decided to bring back Dark Figure as Light Figure just because it was incredibly awesome in a corny way. We finally got to do that. Also, the Moonlight Sonata is back! Light Figure finally gets to finish it, but SURPRISE, nothing happens.
Here was my commentary on how people improperly represent Raltise: I made No-Nonsense Dark Uber Raltise as essentially a way of saying that everyone was doing it wrong and that if he was written right he would have beaten the crap out of everyone with a flutter of his eyelash. But whatever, I'm egotistical. Good AC Falcon betrays him because it just seemed like the cool thing to do.
The whole final battle is just a complete ripoff of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, when they assault the Death Star. Only instead of a Death Star, it's a giant Nightmare Rock symbolizing all of Raltise's power. A few fun notes about this sequence: Instead of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Light Figure hears the voice of Jack Black, half of Tenacious D and an awesome acoustic guitar player. This will come in later, of course. The acoustic guitar, I mean. Also, instead of Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon flying down from above, it's Dante, the hero of the first GIFE! It just seemed cool to do. And he used the large golden boot that he had in GIFE.
Again, another Andross joke with the "To destroy the Lylat system!" comment by Raltise. This one wasn't as cleverly placed as the one with Ness's Brain, but eh, sue me. Now the acoustic guitars all come out because really, you can't defeat the superpowered enemy of a story without the rockin' sounds of an acoustic guitar, can you?
So you're probably wondering who Talus is. He's another character of mine from the Gaiden fics. Talus was a young boy who was 'killed' by Raltise in the final battle of Horizon, and in Vendetta, Raltise and he are in Hell and as his afterlife punishment, Raltise is bound to him eternally as a servant. So he has to call him "Young Master" etc. The idea we were going to explore in a final Gaiden story (yet to be written) was that Talus was in reality a Giygan Psionic Scout sent to see if the planet was ready for the Giygan invasion -- yeah, Ness and company may have defeated Giygas in the past, but for the sake of continuity, the invasion still takes place so Buzz Buzz has an excuse to go back ten years in the past and warn Ness. I like cohesiveness, what can I say? So that was the final joke: Talus comes to retrieve Raltise like he's a bad pet who ran away.
Very anti-climatic, as SB notes.
Couple of things of notice here.
First, Naeroon made a bunch of dumb posts that I had to delete. So you won't see our back-and-forth exchange here. Check the "Deleted Scenes" section to see it.
Half of the final chapter was written by me, so I suppose I should comment on it, eh? ;D Well, I wanted to tie up a lot of loose ends that we sort of conveniently forgot about, so that's what I did. I started with a complete ripoff of the Tenacious D song "History", which is a great song and you should all go download it. It was a sort of self-glorification thing. Also, Dash hitting on Neo's cardboard cutout seemed pretty funny.
Everything's back to normal in the GIFEverse what with everyone fixing up the Winters/Dalaam/Summers catastrophe. Seemed like a nice deus ex machina. Also, I had Paula and Jeff become human again, and I had Pancho and Ness's Brain return inexplicably after being tossed into that plothole in the final battle. Oh, and AGAIN with the catgirls. Heh heh.
Since I didn't want people to get the impression that the Jacques from the first GIFE was also Raltise, I threw Jacques in there at the end to show that he was just being impersonated. Heh.
The whole final sequence is just one big ripoff of the ending to Chrono Trigger, with Hobo Mike replacing Chrono's cat/mother and the Dolewasher replacing the Epoch. The whole joke with Silver Tyrano not existing in future IFs is a play on how Robo returning to a future that no longer exists might make him no longer exist. I did a lot of silly jokes here and there. The Chrono Trigger script was copied almost verbatum, with slight edits here and there.
The ending seems a little dreamy, to me. All the ACs in Dolewasher blasting off into the night to go after Hobo Mike while Poets of the Fall's "Late Goodbye" from the Max Payne 2 Soundtrack plays (by the way, download that song. It's very good)... all of it just seems very poetic. And then, of course, Silver Tyrano ends the whole thing with his typical attitude.
SB didn't want to help me out on this sucker, so I pretty much made all of these up with the exception of the ones from the last GIFE. It was fun, though. The total count of GIFE 2 characters came out to a little over 100. Phew. You'll notice the dedication to Fortinbras Tyrano -- poor guy. :~( I did the html editing of the story, but it was SimonBob who did the chapter titles because I was too lazy to. They ended up being pretty sweet, I have to say.
GIFE 2 ended up being I think a little over 50 pages longer than the first GIFE. It was a fun ride the whole way, nonetheless. All of the stories I've written here on Starmen.Net have been IFs that were compiled (probably by me). This was a refreshing break from the seriousness of Gaiden stories. I got to have a lot of fun, let my ego run wild, and write with friends and other good writers. I'd like to say that through GIFE 2 I've become better friends with a lot of the other writers. It was a lot of good fun writing with all you guys. Here's to a GIFE 3...?
No. No GIFE 3. NO. Okay bye.
- Falcon24