#i had to reread (x4) the whole series when putting this post together to like. double check things and! it! made me have emotions again!

[skcirthinq]

So, to make this post, I reread all the parts of the Archer Au to try and find something to quote, to say, to show everyone how amazing and beautiful and heart-rending this story is.

And then reread it again, and again, and still couldn't pick out one passage over any of the others, because every word and every drawn line of it is a masterpiece!

Which everyone* involved in making the Archer Au fucking did an absolutely phenomenal job on, Holy! Fucking!! SHIT!!! And also ow!

*The Amazing Creators who've contributed to this series (whose other works I also highly recommend)- @goodlucktai , @remedyturtles , @klunkcat , and @soldrawss

This second set is kinda more like. An idea I had based off the text, rather than explicitly stated, but like. Neutral Mikey sent what he could of himself with Gio, so he wouldn't be alone, to protect him. Neutral Donnie poured over a decades worth of himself into the bolt to kill Krang Prime. And I couldn't leave out Neutral Raph if the other two got to make an appearance! So. Art! Visual representation and shit!

[megamanxfanfics]

Did the Risk pay off?

Did you enjoy my little April Fool’s Joke? Did anyone even notice it??

Sorry about that. It’s not usually like me to joke like that, but the reason I did so was because its probably the last time I’d have the opportunity to ever pull an April Fool’s Prank about this project again.  That is to say, I am very confident that by next April Fool’s Day - 2022, I’ll be long done with Season VI.

It’s a little sad to say that, but mostly triumphant on my end. There was a little truth in that 4/1 post. I Did go on a Marvel bend and rewatch the entire MCU for funzies, and I was taking a long ass time on getting out Ep. 13, but believe me. I wasn’t over or burnt out from X at all.  I just needed a little time to figure out how to execute what I wanted to do properly.  I’m mostly satisfied with the turnout. =D

For those of you who haven’t read S. VI - Ep. 13 yet, I highly suggest you do so, because there will be Massive Spoilers ahead.  Since the tail end of Ep. 11, I set X up for a risky fanficky side-adventure.  And now that I’ve committed to it and it’s officially out there, the only question that’s left to ask is... Did the risk pay off??

First, I guess I should admit that my planning for the 2nd Arc was always hazy, even after finishing up Ep. 7, when X defeated the Nightmare Zero.

I knew in Ep. 8, we were going to have a lot of Zero getting reacquainted with the gang and that I was going to have to resolve the plot hole of X5′s Bad Ending, lining up with the way he acts in X6 - as a Zero fanboy.  So the returning Memory thing factored in big time.

Ep. 9 was Zero’s first mission out while X recovered.  My plan was to always have X get in that portal and face Dynamo.  But what would come after was a giant mystery to me.  

I didn’t want X to keep bumping into to Dynamo every time he got in a portal.  And I also didn’t want him to keep bumping into High Max either.  All of High Max’s dialogue and interactions thus far indicated that he wants X dead, and based off of the rules I set up for the Portal Dimensions, X couldn’t just leave in the middle of a fight.  That’s also not his style.

So in a way, I kind of wrote myself into a hole.  I’d either have to end High Max early, (which I didn’t want to do), or I’d have to get creative.

Then something clicked out of nowhere.  Something that could be very Nostalgic and Special, but would it work??  When X gets to the Fire Portal, he could face a Nightmare Vile from X1.  Then in the next portals, he could face Nightmare versions of his other bullies from the rest of the games. X2 - Violen & Agile, X3 - Bit & Byte, X4 - Double...  It could be great!  But what purpose would it serve other than Fan Service?

It’s a great question that I’m still asking, but ultimately - my alternative was to have X face High Max prematurely and lose [where it would be very hard to have High Max spare him.] Or to have X prematurely defeat High Max, which again I really didn’t want to do.  And Dynamo was way too injured to just keep taking beatings from X.  That’d get very boring and annoying very fast.

So I went for it.  It took 2 episodes to get there, but in Ep. 11 X took on Nightmare Vile...  And honestly, I thought it was great!  While he was doing that, Zero was facing Blaze Phoenix, which was equally exciting to me.

Honestly, in Ep. 12, I wanted to get right to it and call that one Nightmare Lane, but X & Zero needed to recover and I already had planned on them talking everything out, which I was putting off again and again.  That episode named itself once their conversation about X5′s encounter in Antarctica really got going.  I also really kinda loved that ending with X’s failure in the Inami Temple portal.

This set us up for Ep. 13, which I wanted to be an Action-Packed showstopper. So that was the plan all along for this episode, once I committed to the Nostalgic Nightmare idea.  My goal was for X to get to Double, and I made it there. It worked out.  But this is admittedly a very dense chapter.

Part of the point of these Nostalgic Nightmares is to show X’s growth after all this time.  He’s been whining and complaining this whole time about how the Nightmare is too tough, but guess what? He’s already so much stronger than he ever was to previous threats like Vile, the X-Hunters, the Nightmare Police & Double.  I felt like this could be a much-needed confidence booster for him, but also serve as a dual purpose for the bad guys to wear him down, psychologically.  Any excuse I can have to make the villains banter, I’ll also take.  I really like how this is all build up to Metal Shark, but will it pay off is the question?  Will I be able to stick that landing?  Time will tell.

I'm looking forward to writing Ep. 14. Honestly, I wanted to have a whole fight with Double and then some aftermath planned as the true closer to Ep. 13, but upon rereading, it was already dense enough.  [Frankly, it probably could’ve ended when Zero was about to set off to the North Pole Area, but that’s fine.]

Also, I really surprised myself with how good X’s meet up with Phantom was. [His Rescue Reploid name in the game was the ONLY reason for these MMZ Easter eggs.] But now I’m so happy that I’ve been including them, because I’m feeling a bigger picture coming about for when I end this Season.

Levy was just this flirty inclusion to spice up the Alia & X dialogue at first. Anything else with her would be a bonus. Fef became a very necessary device to keep Hal & Kassy safe, while they’ve been stranded in the Magma Area for so long.  Making him a junkie derelict was an interesting choice too. And of course, Phantom was in the Portal at the Central Museum revisit.  I always had this vague sense in my mind that X was going to have a very harrowing rescue mission that kept failing at every revisit, but then he’d bump into Phantom who was holding his own and he’d get this giant sense of hope. Boom. Grainy Effect. Episode ending right there on Phantom.

But of course, in execution that couldn’t happen with the rest that I had planned and that’s fine.  Still, I was surprised at their dialogue with each other. Phantom was really impressive and cool.  Just the premise of this exhausted warrior, whose resigned himself to protecting himself for days, only to bump into X and consider him a fool for getting stuck here with him.

But no. Now, Double has entered the Portal.  And X knows there’s a way out.

[I also never thought about the fact that Phantom would be stuck in the room with him during the fight, so now I’ve got some thinking to do.] lol

Harpy’s save will be next and I don’t mind spoiling that he’ll be in the Recycle Area.  [I did my best to keep to their elements, but the X6 stages didn’t really lend for that.]

Phantom was always gonna be in the Central Museum, because that is game-dictated. Levy could’ve been in the North Pole, I suppose, but the Inami Temple is ridden with females, so it made the most sense to me to make that her domain. Fef being in the Magma Area was spot on. I love that it was his old hangout spot - Dark Haven.  So teen-angsty/broody.

Harpy being in the Recycle Lab is kind of just a circumstance thing, but we’ll talk about it when we get there.

I wanted to go over the writing process to this one, but this is already getting quite lengthy.  I guess I can say that it was straight forward, writing through X’s battle against Violen & Agile. I always wanted Isoc to come in right after, to give us the hint that he’s Serges 2.0. But then, that revisit to the Amazon Area got draggy...  I did my best, but I had to make cuts.  I liked what I did once he got in the portal. His refight with Bit & Byte was pretty cool.  Bringing Marty into it was a fun choice. I did like, how X got his moment of catharsis after all.  [I know there’s a real lost-opportunity with not including iX, but honestly that’d be too much.  If I ever write iX again, I think it’s best if I save him for the Mega Missions series.]

This thing fell apart when I got to the Central Museum revisit. I didn’t want to write that at all... In my script, I had marks at the bottom of the doc for what he’d say in the other totems IF he revisited.  And here we weeeeere.   Yet again, I was in the same position as last year at this time, when I wrote out Ep. 3.  I handled it better, then!  Playing over and over again to find right parts of the stage I wanted to write was annoying.  I bet I missed out on Rescue Reploids too, or Zombie Reploids at this point, but it’s fine.  It’s been so long, they probably just died.  I could always edit that in post, that X passes a bunch of dead bodies.  That’d make for some spooky atmosphere.

At this point, I re-analyzed the entire chapter and decided it was high-time for Zero to wake up and go about his original directives.  Time to add to the layers. It brought parts to life, for sure.  It even cemented other transitions, which was really cool.  I liked that I gave Douglas something else to do other than just, be there...

Once I was actually writing Zero’s stage, it did start to feel like a different episode, but I had a goal to reach and damn it, I was gonna get there! lol What’s good about this is that it moves Zero along in the stage without it being a real pain in the ass.

And that basically takes us to where the episode left off.

For the broken Central Museum part, I wrote X’s interactions with Phantom first. Then, with every Totem, I caught up to it as I could.  Once the Zero layering came about, things pieced together.  Same goes for any extra Villain narrations. The episode definitely started a certain way, and I wanted to keep that up as much as possible.  While also having Alia commentary, when appropriate and necessary.

I like this one. There’s a decent balance amidst all the nonsense I set up for myself.  And I definitely think that all these Portal Revisits are more interesting for X’s Nostalgic Nightmare encounters.  It spins the premise around that they didn’t just create a Nightmare Zero, but also a Nightmare Vile, a Nightmare Violen, a Nightmare Bit, a Nightmare Byte and now a Nightmare Double.  The possibilities are endless.

Yes, X’s mission is a complete side-quest, but guess what?  It makes you think that if he didn’t do this, the Nightmare would be that much worse for everyone later, down the road.  It’s Preventative Action.  It’s pretty neat.

Also, again - every Investigator thus far has been relatively good, but mislead in thinking that X was the enemy.  So once he’d explain it to them, they'd be at a standstill, and pretty much at a loss for motivation.  Go figure that Zero actually battles the evil ones with Infinity Flea and Blaze Phoenix.  But he’ll get a real taste for the good/mislead dilemma soon enough with Blizzard Wolfang.

Then we’ll see how I handle Metal Shark when I get there.  I’m looking forward to it.  I can’t believe I’m almost up to the 3rd Arc already!

But that’s exactly what I was getting at at the beginning of this rant.  This is definitely gonna be my last Season.  [Unless we get an X9 that suddenly ends all cliffhangers.] So with that said, I think the Nostalgic throwback was the right thing to do.  Show us that growth and remind us of where he’s been in a short time span, before we end things proper in MMX’s final season.

I’m getting misty eyed thinking about it already. =P

I’ll see you next time for Episode 14.