[unspeakable]

Gentlemen! BEHOLD!

[Ozmodeus]

Only thing that was oddish (zomg spoiler!) was the nin'ki going off with Nicodemus at the end. You missed a golden opportunity to create "Rat-man, the Legendary Adventures." It would have been epic, but you FAIL sir. We may never hear the rallying cries of "Ratman why?!" and the disapproving "I EFFing hate ratman!" now. We just have to live with our memories. How dare you. How DARE you. HOW dare you.

I also want to call shenanigans on you for using the word commingle--not because I don't like the word but because one time *I* used it in something I wrote and you called me out on it. HOw daRe yoU.

But that all aside I think you did a good job closing up this story, although I'm going to be a little nitpicky about the parallel language between Nicodemus and Diyn. It was a little too close together to have the ironic effect you seemed to want and came off as more flourish or, worse, repetitious than anything.

But enough of my mourning the loss of potential Ratman epic adventures and bitching about poofy stuff. Nicely done, good payoff at the end, and it did, in fact, leave me wanting more WtSP and soon. I think anywhere you put the story timeline-wise or geographically will be awesome because this world, and your ability to write about cool shit that happens in it will be groovy enough. I wouldn't mind seeing throwbacks or references to stuff that happened in the first "season" but that doesn't need to be the focus at all.

I shall once again quote our Lord and Savior, Yoshimitsu: "Well done!"

[Usurper]

I had to go back and reread a bit of it because Nico got stabbed the fuck up, then walked out. I'm still not sure why he's alive, because he should have at least one lung full of blood and a bigass hole straight through his body at some other unspecific location.

You have a verb tense switch-up with crawl being present tense on page 3, first sentence. And the line "it filled his office and rattled the cobwebs" I assumed to mean the sound of it, but you were just illustrating black rot crawling out of the amulet a second before, so that might not be real clear.

I was surprised Nico didn't absorb a shitload of souls to use for healing or assorted badassery, and I was surprised he didn't whip out the tail at some point in that last fight. But I was very pleased with the action and the way everything turned out.

And if I wanted a ghost to talk to, it'd definitely be the one that helps me cheat win at cards.

[unspeakable]

Usurper, on 07 February 2010 - 10:57 AM, said:

You have a verb tense switch-up with crawl being present tense on page 3, first sentence. And the line "it filled his office and rattled the cobwebs" I assumed to mean the sound of it, but you were just illustrating black rot crawling out of the amulet a second before, so that might not be real clear.

Fixed.

Crazy trivia about WtsP and word tense: The notes and outlines I make are all naturally in present tense. While present tense is sexy and exciting, I have to go back and rewrite the text in past tense for continuity. Fun times!

[Furor Thompsonicus]

I have BEHELD! Now let me critique all this free entertainment.

The first page didn't come off as your style, I thought. It wasn't smooth and it had lots of needless paragraph breaks that were covering the same topics. Rather than saying you suck, I'm trying to say that the battle scene of Page 1 isn't worthy of the quality of those found in the series.

I also had a problem with Nick getting that mauled and then nonchalantly healing it up after the fact. Diyn has been an awesomely threatening character this whole time, but now he does his worst and it's no big after a quick Heal spell. Nick should have been carried off the field by zombies.

The payoff of the ending was mostly missing, I thought. Yay research! I started the intro assuming that Nick would attain a different level of existence, or become some hideous mix of life and death energies, or something befitting the might of the V. Shard. I do love that Ratman was the only other survivor, because that's how it actually happened in real life. Nick is lucky he paid the man in full.

That having been said, it was good to read another SP, because they always have great villains, grim tone, and Tremali was a memorable setting for it all. The finale had all of that too, so congrats. I love this idea of next season being set much later on, mostly because it would let you enact the sea changes that can easily come from a gifted necromancer wielding the best artifact ever.

[unspeakable]

Yeah, the first half of page 1 is like that. I don't know if it was me reconciling a brand new character POV, me trying to get back into the action after so many months, me trying to justify the pacing dilemmas of previous episodes, or me just going for page-length symmetry. Whatever it is, I'm not sure how to fix it at the moment.

Looks like I'm 0 for 3 when it comes to Nick's battle wounds. I'm definitely rewriting that scene within the next day or so; I think I have a satisfactory solution.

Payoff: Yeah. Altogether, WtSP is around 100 pages, give or take. If a novel, it would still be in the swing of the beginning third. But, as a web series, maybe it needs an episode 18 epilogue? Not sure what I'd put in there though without spoiling too much of what's to come. If it's nothing but teasers for Season 2, it doesn't really need to exist. Maybe alter the end of episode 17 to just be the end of the battle and leaving Tremali, where episode 18 is the "aftermath" stuff and the dialog between Nick & the nin'ki? Again, I'm not sure.

[Usurper]

You could just do random inner monologues and philosophical introspection, then do a "real ending" later in which everyone turns into goo.