Mystery Science Theater En Masse
Behind The Scenes: The Movies
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M66/SS01 - A Cruel Angel's Thesis
Well, the method that the riffers were being picked were based on a certain process:
Parts One, Eight, Fifteen, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Nine: Writer Select/Editor
Select/Random Select
Parts Two, Nine, Sixteen, Twenty-Three, Thirty: All three under Writer Select
Parts Three, Ten, Seventeen, Twenty-Four, Thirty-One: All three under Editor
Select
Parts Four, Eleven, Eighteen, Twenty-Five: All three under Random Select
Parts Five, Twelve, Nineteen, Twenty-Six: All three under Editor Select
Parts Six, Thirteen, Twenty, Twenty-Seven: All three under Writer Select
Parts Seven, Fourteen, Twenty-One, Twenty-Eight: Remaining two of the main
twenty and Athena
(In Part Sixteen, the main riffers were actually meant to be Cassy, Kyo K., and Miyuki. Since I felt that Kyo K. would be better suited for Part Twenty-One, Axl took his place.)
Now onto the thoughts of the fic itself.
Yes, I will admit it... Kira isn't as terrible as Benji. But when you look at her individually, yes, she still sucks as a character.
Let's be honest, she embraced everything that resembled a classic Mary Sue and ran a freakin' marathon with it. She was a jerk to the people that the author hated (Athena, obviously), she praised the characters that the author liked (and in the case of Iori, made him a giant Gary Stu to boot), her abilities were so broken to the point where she replaced multiple canon characters (see Mai's breakdown of this in Part Eighteen if you need a refresher), and she literally broke the canon just so it could suit her.
And yes, Fubuki was no better, either. He came off as bland... and in one highly uninentional part, accidentally sexist. Even worse was his personality in the epilogue, where he came off as incredibly whiny that he wasn't the Sue's suitor, making him even worse in the editor's eyes. It got to the point where he actually wished that Fubuki never even existed in this fic!
The only OC that the both of us even liked? Raiya. And we both agree that he was only lucky to get that much screentime because he was the Sue's teammate. Everyone else was just an extra.
This fic... felt like a giant middle finger was being handed to any fans of Athena and Kyo. And it was a very unlucky choice, because we are actually big fans of those two characters. It didn't sit well with the two of us when we had to sit through every last bit of Athena bashing along with Kyo's immense loss of IQ points.
Scratch that. If you were a fan of anyone in the canon KOF '97 cast, you got a middle finger in some way.
And if you were a fan of the Orochi Saga, you also had a giant middle finger. Personally, I prefer the NESTS Saga due to all of the what-if and story possibilities, but I know the Orochi Saga very well. So there was no way that I was going to let this fic go unscathed.
This fic was terrible. Yes, it wasn't "Outcast Saga", but it was still awful.
On a plus side, the art for the fic itself isn't too bad. That's probably the only positive thing that I can give about this fic.
M94/SS02 - Sabrina's Adventure 3: The Sapphire Quest
Wow, this took quite a while to finish. Funny thing was that all the riffs were pretty much in place in December 2019.
And then I got sick with a sinus infection that took me out for over a month.
And just to make it worse, 2020 did its 2020 thing and hit me and the editor with health issues of our own on top of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. As of this writing, neither of us have or had it. We're lucky on that front. However... I ended up with a cancer scare that thankfully did not turn out to be cancer (I got diagnosed with a benign and treatable condition in October), and the editor got diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in July.
Again, the riffers were selected by a certain process:
Parts One-Five: The groups that had the most exposure, then narrowed down to the
least exposure. Since nobody from the Riffer Recruits and the Neo Esaka have seen a
single chapter, Tails was the "tie breaker" due to his character being in these
fics.
Parts Six, Nine, Eleven, Thirteen, Seventeen, Nineteen, Twenty-One: All four
under Random Select
Parts Seven, Twelve, Eighteen, Twenty-Three: All four under Writer Select
Parts Eight, Fourteen, Sixteen, Twenty-Two: All four under Editor Select
Parts Ten, Fifteen, Twenty: The remaining four riffers
Regarding the random select... yes, the selection did indeed hate Benimaru and Mai that much for some reason. They were pretty much always picked right after the roster reset. It was incredibly weird. Now, let's talk about the fic.
I hated this fic because it made no goddamn sense.
And then I loved this fic because it made no goddamn sense.
And then I hated it again because the protagonists were just that useless and dumb.
And then I loved it again because the protagonists were just that useless and dumb.
However, there were some chapters that I absolutely hated. The chapters that involved the useless "love triangle" did not need to exist at all. It was useless fluff that only served to anger the editor. It also showed Sapphire at her absolute worst.
While I may have a weird love/hate relationship for this fic... the editor did not share my thoughts. He thought that it was just useless nonsense that tried to stumble into various plot points, and then it just simply failed from there.
On the other hand, this fic had enough padding to fill a pillow. How you'll see the fic depends on how much you can tolerate it. If you like a hot mess, this might be a hilarious waste of time. If you don't like this fic, just remember that there are fics that are worse than this one.
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