Decided I'd do three in one day to make up for the lack of chapters. Thankfully, they're quite short, so it doesn't take long to write these. Chapter 4 will be posted shortly after this. I've also decided to add my reasons for adding sins.
___________________
Chapter 3: The Rescue Camp and Haven

After a small victory celebration, our 4 heroes ran through the rescue camp, looking for a way to go further.
Of course, because you completely nuked a boss with maximum overkill.

"Look! Some sort of elevator." Angie shouted, pointing at the gate entrance.
Was there a gate in the Rescue Camp? Probably not. +1 (inconsistency)

"Uh, That's nice Angie. It's a gate. Well, let's cross to whatever's over there." Vivi replied.
Vivi mirrors my feelings. It's another obvious statement.

As they crossed the gap, Zombies, Silkwings and Wolvers caused trouble for them down the passageways.
Those monsters aren't present in Crossing the Chasm. Granted, this was written before the recruit missions were introduced, but The Final Test didn't have Wolvers in it either. +1 (inconsistency)

As soon as they reached the end, the door locked behind them, and then another monstrosity appeared.
Please be an anticlimax.

Oh wait.

MUSIC LINK: [dead link?] (Yes, I have a liking for RPGs!)
+1 (music link)

The monstrosity dropped down onto the floor. Ender made the identification.
"TORTODRONE!" Ender shouted.
Well, this was a surprise. This was written before the March of the Tortodrones event was a thing, and the only thing I knew about them was from the Preview Event. This will be fun...

The machine switched to attack mode and charged at Max, Ender, Vivi and Angie.
They all got knocked down by the attack.
Learn to dodge. +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

"I'll distract the Tortodrone, while you guys attack it!" Vivi shouted.
Max drew the Blackhawk, Angie drew her blades, and Ender rushed on with the Tempered Calibur.
Considering game mechanics, Vivi's attempts to draw aggro probably won't work. +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

As a counter to Ender frenzying on it, The Tortodrone stomped, causing a massive shockwave, knocking down the machinery around the battlefield.
Grammar + giving enemies attacks they didn't have. Another double sin. +2 (making stuff up & improper grammar: capitalization)

"This thing must has been provoked severely for it to do this much damage!" Angie cried, dodging a Rock Missile.
YOU DON'T SAY.

The Tortodrone revved up the guns on it, firing a massive barrage of Lodged Rock Missiles, All aimed at Ender!
See, Vivi? Your plan failed. At least it makes sense from a gameplay perspective.

As he dodged missile after missile, destroying some, Angie barraged it with strikes until...she hit the two swords on the head!
Incoming deus ex machina.

Angie jumped on the machine's head, and started charging energy into it from the blades, causing it to electrocute and self destruct, blowing Angie off and flinging the blades, both landing on the last two missiles, blowing them up and aiming for Angie, who them prompts to catch them.
BOOM, MARY SUE EX MACHINA! +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

MUSIC LINK: [dead link?] (Same one, using this for every victory against a strong foe.)
Watch, I won't use it ever again. +1 (music link)

As they ran to the elevator, Angie gave a sigh of relief.
As it rose, they reached Haven.
And with that the chasm is over. That was quick. And had very little in the way of stuff getting set on fire.

A tall person, wearing a robe, and hilariously, having small little birds on his shoulders, walked over to the four, saying "Welcome to Haven!"
A Guardian Knight does this in game in Crossing the Chasm instead of a Stranger, although there's a Stranger at the entrance who does that as well, although its dialogue is different. +1 (inconsistency)

"Thanks." Ender replied, then the tall person went back over to a corner.
And Hailoh exits the fic, never to be seen again in this mess.

The town's architecture was like nothing they ever saw before.
Yeah, no.

"Oh Look! Tons of knights are gathered over by that building there!" Angie said, pointing to the Auction House.
Actual references to in-game habits by the community. I'm stunned.

As they ran up to the house, they saw tons of knights, as Angie already said. Many of them were with armors they never saw before.
Okay, fine, this is somewhat justifiable. How would they know about Shadow Lairs at this point? Or the utterly ridiculous amount of cosmetics?

One of the knights was running around, shouting something.
"Selling Avenger and Faust!" The knight was shouting.
But do they have Attack Speed Increased: Very High UVs?

"Hey, I'm intrested." Ender said, walking up to the knight.
A typo! I think that's the first one in this fic. Amazing. +1 (improper grammar: typo)

He was wearing a mysteriously black fur coat and cap.
The cap eyes were glowing red, much like some fabled beast called the "Snarbolax" Ender kept on hearing from Kozma before the crash.
Oh good, this is going to be relevant later. There is no subtle foreshadowing to be seen here. +1 (bad writing: lack of subtlety)
___________________
Total sins for this chapter: 11
Total sins for the fic: 43
___________________
The next chapter is...something. It needs to be seen to be believed.

And if you thought Chapter 4 was madness...you have seen nothing yet. Since I posted these next two chapters in the same day, I will MST them in the same day as well. It only makes sense.
___________________
Chapter 5: The Architect

After walking through to the gate, the four heroes set down into the gate, unaware of what will approach them.
Waaait, how'd they get to this gate from the...okay we're off to a good start with nothing making sense! +1 (bad writing: plot hole)

After descending, a sudden explosion dropped the elevator into the Blast Furnace.
And now I will use this to segue into a tangent on the Blast Furnace and Cooling Chamber making no sense. They're elemental Clockwork Tunnels, but apparently contain a blast furnace and a lot of cooling units respectively. Wouldn't this have an effect on the climate of Cradle a whole? And wouldn't it be dangerous to send knights into, you know, a BLAST FURNACE???

The more I think about Spiral Knights, the more I begin to question the game's logic.

Anyway, here's another convenience. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

"This isn't our first stop. Someone must have made a prank to cause us to appear here." Vivi suggested.
What, you don't want to take the shortcut? It's a warp zone, you probably just skipped a Compound!

"Of Course. I did this to get rid of Haven!" A voice said.
Voices have no sense of grammar. +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

Also how are you going to destroy Haven with a generic elemental level?

"Who's there?!" Max questioned, spinning while holding the Sentenza.

"I am the architect. Now, Roarmulus Twin, GO!" And with that, a gigantic Gun Puppy rose up. It started to fire lasers and missiles.
HI TINKINZAR, AREN'T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE SITTING ON YOUR THRONE AND NOT INTERACTING WITH ANYONE OTHER THAN THE CRIMSON ORDER?

It's also illogical to link Tinkinzar to the Architect mentioned in the Echo Stones. +2 (inconsistency & bad writing: out of character)

(4Shared is being crazy, So I'm using this alternate link for now: [lol dmca'd] It's songfic time! USE IMAGINATION. Song starts NOW.)
Hold on, didn't another fanfic do this...?

IT DID. PAST ME IS PLAGIARIZING OTHER FANFICS. USING THE EXACT SAME SONG. HOLY MOTHER OF VANADUKE THAT IS NOT OKAY. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? WHY? WHY!? WHYYYYYYYYY-
We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.
-YYYYYYYYYokay I've calmed down now. But still, wow past me. That is not okay. +6 (plagiarism, music link)

Five sins for the plagiarism, one for the music link. That is not okay.

Anyway, I'm excising the lyrics since they don't matter. What does, is the accompanying text. To pre-empt us on the madness that adding a sin to every line would do, I'll calculate beforehand. So...31 lines due to the way it was formatted, so. +31 (songfic)

Now let's get a move on.

"No!" Ender shouted.
I share your sentiment.

"They're destroying the place. If they tear it to pieces, the explosion caused will destroy the gate!"
That's a dubious claim.

And with that, they started to run.
They started the run, while the architect, standing on the twin ran after them.
Why is that repeated twice? Also, just the idea of King Tinkinzar standing on top of a Roarmulus Twin like he's surfing on it is hilarious and completely ruins the dramatic mood of the scene. I am so drawing that now.

The group was Dodging Missiles and avoiding falling pieces of the furnace, was what Kozma was seeing through the link.
And Gatrnerd is sitting here in shock at the grammar issues, nevermind the sentence structuring. +2 (improper grammar: sentence structuring & capitalization)

Terrified of what might happen, all she could do is watch.
Why is she now monitoring them? +1 (bad writing: plot hole)

The Second twin came up, and soon, many parts of furnace tore up.
Fighting bosses outside of their intended areas. +3 (inconsistency, improper grammar: capitalization & bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Max, Ender and Vivi ran across, but Angie was afraid to jump across the cut bridge.
Because knights actually can't jump. Unless they dash.

"Jump!" Max yelled. However, Angie wouldn't do it.
You have a dash, Mary Sue. Use it. +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

Kozma began to tear up as she saw the many prompts the link was giving her about heat overloads.
So all monitoring equipment the Spiral Order has also lets them run diagnostics on every knight they're monitoring? How convenient. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

The second twin began firing at Angie. She jumped finally.
You really shouldn't have hesitated. +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

Then the group started getting the hits. Kozma tore up even more, being warned of many errors.
Was there another missing chapter that explains why Kozma would actually care? Sure, her dialogue in game has her caring about you throughout the campaign, but this makes no sense. +1 (bad writing: plot hole)

Energy and heat overloads, Core energy being drained, error reports everywhere.
What.

Kozma just shut off the link after seeing a big part of the furnace fall into the lava and started massive flares of heat.
WHAT.

"Oh, You little mice are running away? I don't think so!" The Architect shouted, commanding the twins to attack.
What, you think they went to the Prometheus School Of Running Away From Things?

Then the link powered up again and started the reports again.
The group jumped over and over, and got hit even more.
Max suddenly collapsed. "NO! We have to drag him on!" Vivi shouted.
Must've tripped. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

They dragged Max, and then the twins blocked the exit.
"Face my twin Terrors!" The architect shouted.
No bossfight skipping for this squad of Mary Sues.

"For, I am King Tinkinzar, King of the Gremlins!" And with that, Tinkinzar teleported out.
For, I am Gatrnerd from the past, Destroyer of Sentence Structuring!

They fought hard, and were taking even more.
Fuel ruptures, armor breaches, error reports, Heat overloads and Energy overloads were just enough to make Kozma speak.
Knights are now robots, apparently. Anyway, what do you have for us, Kozma?

"I can't stand this anymore!"
I SO AGREE WITH YOU HERE LADY. This is dreadful.

She began to run to the gate, and started to fall to the arena that the group was fighting in.
Because that was a smart idea. Now she's going to get killed by the fall. +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

One of the twins went down after a head strike from Ender.
What. +1 (bad writing: character op pls nerf)

Kozma sliced the twin with her Leviathan Blade, destroying it.
WELL THAT IS ONE WAY TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF IN PERSON! That's...actually kind of cool. -1 (awesome moment)

But also godmodding. +1

The next twin lasered the group, knocking them to the floor.
Knockdown. The archenemy of all Tenno. Get knocked down and you get hit with a Bombard missil-oh wait wrong game.

Ender got up and began to slice away, but it was doing nothing.
And then the godmodding becomes inconsistent. Fun. +1 (inconsistency)

Angie got and up and saw what was happening.
"Ender, NO! There's no way to destroy it!" She shouted.
He doesn't listen. +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

Ender began to start fatigue, just from bladestorming it. The twin was also starting to break.
Oh wait, he's still doing damage.
Then finally, the twin fell apart and exploded. The blast knocked Ender out. "I knew that would happen." Vivi commented.
And so he fell into a coma and died in his sleep. Wow. Even past me wasn't afraid to kill off the main character for some evil laughs.

They ran to the elevator, and it began to fall, into the Gloaming wildwoods.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)
...AUGH. Finally, the songfic is over. That really inflated the sin tally to ridiculous amounts. Unfortunately...

Max began to come to his senses.
He got up.
"Wait, where are we?" Max questioned.
"Going to the wildwoods." Kozma responded.
"WHAT?! We're gonna get ourselves ALL KILLED!" Max panicked.
"No, we're not." Angie said.
Mary Sue said it. The Snarbolax is a pathetically easy boss fight, even with the starting gear.
___________________
Chapter 6: Snarbolax
After the lift fell down, the forest was in ruin, burning down.
The destruction from atop the Blast Furnace caused terrible forest fires.
That's what happens when you take a generic elemental level and break it with one deus ex machina too many.

"There's a fast way to the monster now." Kozma said, and with that, they were off.
Of course. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

When they finally got to the elevator, there were more fires.
They had to utilize the beast bells and the globes of water to get through to Snarbolax.
There weren't water globes in the Gloaming Wildwoods, last time I checked. Did they supply it from the surface?

After that, they ran to the arena, and started a fight that would surprise them.
Probably not, because Snarby is a joke.

MUSIC LINK: [ded]
+1 (music link)

The Snarbolax came up from the ground, roaring.
"Fierce. Oh well, he's nothing compared to...." And with that, Max Drew a Barbarous Thorn Blade.
Oh okay, going with the proper overkill approach to this boss. +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

Two of them.
This actually isn't too surprising since Lieutenant Vaelyn uses a pair of Final Flourishes, so I'll give it a pass.

If he drew them, This meant he was very serious about killing his enemy.
I'd bet. +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

Kozma was on bell striking, and Vivi lured him to the bell.
Strategy.

"Here Snarby Snarby!" Vivi kept on calling.
Just the idea of him doing that like the Snarbolax was a big cat is hilarious.

Kozma struck the bell.
"NOW!" Angie prompted.
Angie and Max began to smash at the beast.
However, it resisted, firing a gigantic barrage of spines.
Finally, a boss fight that is properly depicted.

Everyone was knocked down.
"This guy's serious about defending himself." Vivi said, as he got up.
He fired a stun ball to change his color again.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Then the attack kept on happening.
Snarbolax fell.
Finally, this was actually something that was properly depicted.

But as he fell down, he multiplied, and then the miasma began to appear.
Oh wait. Also, plot hole. +2 (inconsistency & bad writing: plot hole)

"Oh no, Now they have rabies. KILL THEM, AS FAST AS MANLY POSSIBLE!" Kozma began to shout.
Oh no, Now they have bad grammar. +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

Vivi struck stun balls, Kozma, Angie and Max slammed the two.
Ender came back to his senses, and got up.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

"Uh, Guys, you really are overdoing it." Ender commented.
Look who's talking... +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

One of the Snarbies fell.
"Ok, now I'll deal with this one." Ender said, as he drew the Tempered Calibur, yet he didn't know of what Kozma did to it.
Oh good, a deus ex machina and plot hole in one! That's new. +2 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina & plot hole)

"That's no longer a Tempered Calibur, It's an Ascended one!" Kozma shouted out.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

"WHAT?!" Ender shouted.
Your feelings reflect mine.

Then he struck.
The impact was so severe the snarbolax died.
Ender withdrew the sword.
I have no words. This fic has become so ridiculous I can scarcely believe it. +1 (bad writing: character op pls nerf)

MUSIC LINK: [ded]
+1 (music link)

"Let's head on. I'll go back." Kozma said. "Be careful!"
Kozma, you are so tempting fate.

And with that, they took separate paths.
Kozma up to haven.
Ender, Angie, Vivi and Max down to the clockworks.

I've been quiet with this mainly because I'm stunned at how ridiculous this actually became.
___________________
Total sins for Chapter 5: 57
Total sins for Chapter 6: 15
Total sins for the fic: 137
___________________
Thanks to that terrible songfic, we are now in the triple digits. Amazing. We are so going to break 200 before the first fic is over. The whole series will probably break 500.

Also, before anyone is concerned I'm going too far with the mockery and not giving enough critique, I'll give my thoughts as a whole once this is over. I'll be doing this kind of thing with the whole series (going all CinemaSins on it, and then giving a critique in hindsight).

I'll have an update later out today, but first, responding to comments:

Jedwell: "At first I was like "What the $@%!," but then I was like "What the #&@%." Seriously though, reading this has to be my favorite thing right now. It's positively hilarious."
I'm more stunned at how this was actually written. Also, watch out on that swearing. IIRC, anything that gets blocked by the profanity filter in-game is not allowed on the forums. Obviously if I did this on my own tumblr I'd be able to curse with impunity (and probably result in EPM's MMBN4 LP looking tame in comparison) but yeah, try to avoid that.

"At least something good came of past you's writing, eh?"
True, that. If only for the over-the-top reactions I give (along with an inevitable and more serious critique at the end).

"Do me a favor and build a time machine, if only to tell past you to write more top quality fics to tear through."
Oh trust me, if there was a way to do time travel that didn't involve pseudoscience and avoid causing the universe to implode, turn us all into dinosaurs and/or cause enough time paradoxes to make the 2006 Sonic The Hedgehog reboot's time travel make sense by comparison, I would totally love to do it. Then again, that's probably why China has banned/discouraged people from making time travel stories, probably because they see that many are poorly-written. Chrono Trigger is probably one of the few well-written ones due to it sticking to its rules of time travel.

"Alternatively, you can just drink what you were having back then. Must have been a potent mixture of shoe polish, WD-40 and whatever was available under the kitchen sink."
Or it was probably just Coca-Cola Zero. Which makes no sense, but okay. Then again, ZUN admitted he was drunk when making parts of Imperishable Night, which probably says a lot about some of the bullet patterns in that Touhou game.

"Also, I am amazed that we have reached chapter 7 and all the main characters still have less personality than driftwood. That's actually kind of amazing."
I'm stunned that we have such flat characters here as well. Almost to the point of being completely unlikable, although we've probably hit that point with too many "character OP pls nerf" moments and general mary sue-ness.

"I wish I still had my old fics saved somewhere, would have probably been ridiculous too. Oh well."
I would so love to MST those. That would be hilarious.

Carbonjinxmesa: "This is frickin' hilarious to read... Makes me want to go back and do the same to my old works from, *cringe*, eighth grade."
Oh no, now you reminded me. I did similarly bad SK fanfics in middle school as well, and the worst part? I actually printed them off and read them to class. And the teacher thought it was good work. If I still had them around, I would tear into them heavily, because holy mother of Vanaduke they were awful. I can barely remember it, but the third one went straight into crossover anarchy.

"Or just rewrite them. Yeah that'd probably be better."
I tried multiple times to rewrite this fic, but it's pretty much impossible to salvage. Incidentally, the first attempt to rewrite everything is on my list of "to do" works to MST.

"Keep it up though Gatr, I'll be watching. 👀"
Thanks. Also, I never knew the forums supported emojis. I'm not sure how to feel about this.

And then suddenly edit.

"Forgot to say this earlier, but (depending on the style, really, with the style you were using this doesn't really apply), in-game mechanics don't necessarily have to be portrayed exactly in a fanfic, and you can take a lot of liberty with them and still adhere to the established lore."
True, that.

"This is actually the point of a bit of debate in lore communities for other games/series', a prime example being the Elder Scrolls."
I'm not too big on the Elder Scrolls (only played a bit of Skyrim), but I can bet this goes to madness fast.

"Is it the lore that the protagonists can go years without eating or drinking, yet everyone else has to? Or that for two provinces that are supposed to be approximately the same size, one is 30 square miles and the other is over 1 million? (And that all depends on the individual game, but I won't go into that)."
...yeah, that's definitely contrarian.

"Holy crap; lore in videogames is a mess."
I agree. This game is a good example of that, actually - you can go through the whole mission campaign and ignore all the lore, even though now and then you have exposition breaks where Kora, Hahn or another character drops a bunch of pages of walls of text, nevermind dialogue that happens in missions. Show of hands; who here actually cared about the SK lore? Anyone who called the Royal Jelly the "Jelly King" shouldn't be raising their hands here.

"Don't really know what the point of this rambling mess was."
I tend to go off on pointless tangents as well.

"Also, I noticed something about Angie being able to just dash across a space. Well I'll save you from thinking not writing that was dumb, because dashing didn't exist when you wrote it. :)"
And in hindsight it's eerie foreshadowing, as the year after I wrote that fic, dashing actually came to SK, but you can't use it to go across gaps.

"...And that brings about another problem with sticking directly to the game mechanics when writing: how do you explain updates, like the bash and dash update, that vastly alter game mechanics? Or the removal of ME/CE, and its replacement by E, elevators costing 10E to 0E, etc. etc."
That would play havoc on older fics (and editing old chapters is actually noted in TV Tropes's Fanfiction Drinking Game) and newer fics relying on obsolete mechanics would be seen as archaic and making stuff up by the new blood.

"I'd like to hear your thoughts on the whole lore/mechanics stuff as represented in fanfics, by the way."
Gameplay & Story Segregation/Gameplay & Story Integration is a huge mess. That's all I can really say on it without going through a long tangent about it that would make this longer than most of the posts I've done already for this fic alone.

"(When the edit is longer than what you were editing)"
That happens.

So, after that trainwreck of a chapter ended on a cliffhanger, let's see what happens afterward...
___________________
Chapter 9: The Swarm

MUSIC LINK: [dead link] (It's back. Repeat this over and over until Ender reaches the end of the Shadowfire Citadel.)
No. +1 (music link)

Inside the core, It was bright white. Anything that moved...was followed by an after-image and sound...simply echoed.
I'm surprised I got the "inside the core it's all white" thing right long before the Core actually opened. Considering it took three years between this fic and the mission to appear, I'm honestly surprised. No audiovisual trickery, though.

Ender slammed down onto the floor. The impact echoed through the place.
"...What? I'm still alive?" He questioned.
No, you are in Mary Sue Purgatory, where you will be judged by Eiki Shiki and declared Guilty.

He ran around for a while, until he saw another knight, but he was just...dead.
Oh no, it's Grantz! RIP. Press F to pay respects.

"Looks like I'm not the first one here." He said.
Duh.

"Guess I'll try to help him...but how in the universe is he gonna get out of here?"
He's dead.

And then he charged energy into him.
Is he seriously going to revive Grantz?

After that, He ran even more, until he bumped into a wall.
Copy editing aside, that sums up how I felt the first time I played Dreams & Nightmares, where I kept bumping into everything because white on white is a very bad color scheme, even though all the enemies are black. It doesn't help I wear Moonstone Rose a lot, which is mostly white. +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

He tried climbing it. "A Ladder." He said.
+1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

"Time to get out of here." But instead of going out, he appeared in the Firestorm Citadel.
WHAT.

The flames were purple. Armored Zombies were everywhere.
HOW DID HE END UP IN A SHADOW LAIR FROM THE CORE?? +1 (inconsistency)

"Looks like I have more to deal with." He said.
A WEAPON TO SURPASS METAL GEAR?!

And then the author's notes strike again. What do you have for us, Past Gatrnerd?

(And yes, that knight there is Codename Max. Sorry if I trolled you Psycho!)
WHAT? WHAAAT? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

MEANWHILE IN CODENAME PART 2 BY PSYCHODESTROYER

Ange stepped out of the lift, weak kneed and teary eyed.

Wiping away her tears, she stumbled over to the ledge that overlooked what should be the Core.

Rom followed behind her, keeping his distance. Even he was upset, both over Max, and Ange’s despair.

Ange wiped her eyes as she looked down, gasping as she did so.

“…..No….”

The Core was sealed.

“…No….NO!” She screamed. “NO! It CAN’T be closed! NO! Not now! Not after all we’ve been through! Not after what Max sacrificed for us! NO!”

She screamed and screamed, pounding the ground as she collapsed, her knees finally giving way under her, and yet she continued to pound the ground, until she was too tired to move her arm.

“…Why…?” She whispered to no-one who would listen.

Suddenly, she had a strong urge to look up. There, she saw a light in the distance.

She rose to her feet, and walked to the edge of the platform, squinting at it.

She gasped. She saw Max, falling, towards the Core, when something both amazing and horrifying happened.

Max’s body began to glow, slowly dissolving into particles of light, as he fell, the light particles descended further and further down, until nothing remained. Nothing at all.

She covered her mouth, unable to speak. Unable to believe what she just saw.

She sank to her knees and cried. No words, just tears. She cried and cried and cried, even as Enzer and Drake finally came to, and as they gathered around her, there was nothing they could do, but watch her cry.

Max was gone now.

BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED MST
-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE YOU SERIOUS. SUDDENLY IT ALL DOESN'T MAKE SENSE NOW!

I now have to add a new sin category just to deal with this. +10 (crossover anarchy: this one will be worth 10 sins because YOU JUST DON'T DO THAT)

Crossovers between fics. Oh holy mother of Vanaduke we are so going to have a wild ride.

MEANWHILE:
Angie watched in horror as Vivi began to inflict massive damage on the Gremlin King.
+1 (bad writing: character op pls nerf)

Vivi had bursted in anger against the king.
Vivi is still in "Miiverse kid" mode.

Max supported Vivi.
After taking enough, Tinkinzar rushed at Max.
Sues are getting there and oh look Tinkinzar things the standard female grab area (the arm) applies to men as well.

"So long, Feeble Knights....but...I'm taking Max with ME!" Tinkinzar shouted.
Alright, I'm going out on a limb: whatever the knights are using for translating Gremlin speech is so badly programmed and rushed that Spiral HQ didn't run it pass a copy editor.

He teleported, still grabbing onto Max. Max's Penta-Heart Pendant dropped on the floor.
How convenient.

On it were the colored hearts of the 5 friends; Ender, Kozma, Max himself, Vivi and Angie.
Improper use of semicolons. Also way to shoehorn Kozma into this. +2 (improper grammar: punctuation & making stuff up)

"We...lost Ender...and now Max....Who knows when Tinkinzar's wrath will be stopped?" Angie said.
Who knows when Past Gatrnerd's bad grammar will be stopped? (improper grammar: capitalization)

Angie dropped on the floor.
Standard DESPAIR moment.

MEANWHILE:
Ender ran through, finding a Divine Avenger and using it to destroy the undead attacking him.
Wait, didn't he already have one before? What happened to the rest of his gear? +1 (bad writing: plot hole)

"Where is the exit...." He would often say....until he reached the room with Darkfire Vanaduke.
Where is the proper dramatic ellipses... +1 (improper grammar: punctuation)

"I can't do it...." He said, remembering the failures he had. The Jelly King....King Tinkinzar....he dropped on the floor.
DREAD! DESPAIR! HATE! WAR! IMPROPER ELLIPSES!! OUT-OF-CHARACTER MOMENTS!! MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE!!! ALLCAPS!!!! +3 (improper grammar: punctuation, inconsistency & bad writing: out of character)

"Can I really.....do this?" Then, a miracle happened.
But the miracle never happen.

Light came in through. He heard the voices of his friends cheering him on.
He must be hallucinating hard. What did...nevermind.

"You can do this. Don't think you can't! Your foe cannot defeat you. Destroy the enemy!" Were the following voices in order: Kozma, Angie, Vivi and then Max.
Good sentence.

Ender got up, and prepared for the fight for freedom.
WHAT FIGHT FOR FREEDOM? WHAT PUMPKIN? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAJFKJLSDFJKLAJSFDKL;ASFDJKLJKL [ERROR +1 (inconsistency)]

LDSFJJSADFJASDFASDFDSFSADFKLJDFAJ;KSDONE. SO DONE. I'm losing it every chapter and I'm pretty sure there's going to be one part later on that will absolutely break me.

Darkfire dashed at Ender and tried to smash him with his Mace, but Ender blocks the attack with the sword and counters.
Good tense. +1 (improper grammar: tense confusion)

"Is that the best you can do?" Ender taunted.
Where is Darkfire Vanaduke's Carnavons and the Swarm Source?

Darkfire Vanaduke slammed his mace, causing chunks of the ceiling to fall to the floor! Ender's attacks were strong, yet Darkfire Vanaduke was stronger.
Again.

Darkfire jumped back and started to cast a spell.
Um. +1 (making stuff up)

"Now to stop him!" Ender said. He jumped up and struck Darkfire in the head, cancelling the spell.
Good. We didn't need to see more weird madness.

Eventually, Darkfire was defeated.
Good job. You killed a Shadow Lair boss without knowing what the real boss was like.

The monster crashed down onto the floor, causing the entire castle to start to crumble.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

"I Have to get out of here!" Ender said, and ran to the gate. After crossing through a passage, he reached the safe haven....The Sanctuary.
And that's all the mention we get of the Unknown Passage. That's lame. That place is cool. :( +2 (inconsistency & improper grammar: capitalization)

(Use Link 1.)
No. +1 (music link)

Ender saw a gem on the floor, and picked it up. It was the Maiden's Tears.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

He went over to the Alchemy Machine...and made himself Almirian Crusader Armor.
Proper ellipses, which is nice, but then we also have the Almirian Crusader Armor, which is also nice. I so want to make that armor some day, if only for cosmetic.

After walking around for a while, he suddenly dropped to the floor, and started to hear the Echoing Stones....
Exposition time. +1 (improper grammar: punctuation)

"I dream...Within my dream, I saw it open the void, felt its endless hunger. You are safe here, Knight. Within this dream, its many eyes cannot see you nor can its many arms reach you. But this dream is fleeting. Use what is here to prepare for the battle to come. It knows of you now. It will find a way out and come for you."

I have a feeling I have misformatted this, but I'd have to go and check. Either way, we get spam of all four echo stones because I cannot make any original dialogue.

"I see your legion, falling to this world like burning stars. You fall with purpose, burning ever brighter as you reach for the heart of this world. Hold dearly this fire in you, for darkness will consume all the night if its stars begin to fade."
"This world was created to protect me. Vulnerable in slumber, worlds were drawn to shield me from the darkness. This world has become my prison. In his madness, the architect betrayed the pact. Twisting his creation into a game of death, it now devours all who enter its iron embrace."
"As I dreamed, it consumed. It devoured the knowledge of time... Memories of the dead... The hearts of kings and the souls of their people... Good and evil... It consumed. It grew stronger, endlessly mirroring itself within the space of my dream. Endlessly mirroring... Expanding... Infinite. What it was before, it is no more. Neither beast nor god, it is a creation unlike all. It is...The Swarm.
After hearing the stones...Ender knew something HAD to be done...he just knew it...

CLIFFHANGER, AGAIN! Oh, and sequel hook.

Let's sneak the epilogue and my final analysis in!
___________________
Epilogue
(I'm ending this right here. You'll have to wait for Clockwork Catastrophe 2: Revenge Is A Dish Better Served Cold. Oh, NO! Now Angie's on a path of destruction and annihilation to find Ender and Max, and kill the Gremlin King!)
What.

FINAL MUSIC LINK: [this one isn't dead but it's SK music so mehhhh] (Music from Spiral Knights? I regret nothing at all. NOTHING!)

> Past Gatrnerd: "I regret nothing at all. NOTHING!"
> Future Gatrnerd: "I regret everything."
> +1 (music link)

Angie and Vivi went back up to haven. Max and Ender were gone...Tinkinzar had kidnapped Max, Ender was thrown into the core...now in the Sanctuary.
Yay, everything is broken.

Angie barely spoke, and when someone asked her what was wrong, she would say "Two of my best friends are gone now....".
Past me broke the Mary Sue and I'm so glad he did. +1 (improper grammar: punctuation)

MEANWHILE:
Tinkinzar made an evil laugh, looking at Max, who was in cryo.
"Soon, the world will face my ultimate death machine...and I will rule Cradle! And the worlds beyond!" He monologed.
HOW OMINOUS. Then again, don't you have your traitor Herex on his way to the Core to open it and let the Swarm in? Also, wow. +1 (improper grammar: typo)

"Soon, the world as they know it will end!" and he evilly laughed again.
> EVIL
I'm so sorry.

AND THEN, UNEXCITING ANIME ANNOUNCER!
PREVIEW OF CLOCKWORK CATASTROPHE 2: REVENGE IS A DISH BETTER SERVED COLD:
Max has been brainwashed by the evil King Tinkinzar. Ender is mysteriously travelling time and space, to look for his friends. Angie is in serious need of revenge against the Mad king, and she wants it Now.
+1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

Can Angie stop the Mad King...or will she die trying?

Find out in the next exciting part of Clockwork Catastrophe!
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Total sins for Chapter 9: 30
Total sins for the Epilogue: 4
Total sins for the fic: 213
Sentence: MARY SUE EX MACHINA (cue over-the-top death)

It's over. IT'S OVER! IT'S OVER!! FINALLY I AM FREE...what do you mean there's a Clockwork Catastrophe 2 that I didn't cancel? And a third I never finished? AND MORE FICS AFTER THAT? NO! NO!! NOOOOO!!

...I'll post an analysis later. Some chapters in Clockwork Catastrophe 2 are very small, so I could do multiple at a time and that will speed nicely along. After that is Clockwork Catastrophe 3, and then I'll do some small misc fics that I either finished or didn't.

For now, I'll drop some comments from that fic onto here, because some of them are kind of funny in hindsight.
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Comments from back in the day
Tevokkia: Speed Story "Wow, this story is moving super fast; I'll give it that. XD"
Looking back at the timestamps...yeah, some of these chapters were posted insanely fast. That's a bad thing.

Isisdelltion: "Again, quite like Codename...You know, Angie/Ange out for revenge and stuffings. As good as ever though! :D"
The plagiarism is strong with this one, man.

Happyapathy: About post #1 "@Isisdeltion You know having that as a cast of characters of a story would be pretty hilarious (and insane) :P"

Oh no. Oh no. Oh nooooooo...

Isisdelltion: Yersh "Happy, you're a genious. *Starts typing*"

I don't want to know what the end result was.

Psychodestroyer's responses, however:
The first response: ...? "I is confuzzled. You actually copied stuff? Or is it: "I made this stuff up, but co-incidentally Psy had it first, so credit goes to him." If the second option is the case, don't worry about it. I don't copyright my ideas at any rate."

Good to know. Although my response muddied the waters, so hilarity ensues after that:

The second response: ?! "CONFUZZLED AS EVA. I no understand wat u say. U copi? Or u make up just so happened 2 b same as mine but u no want me mad? CONFUZZLED."
That deliberate engrish is hilarious. But did I give credit? Probably not and this draft in Notepad++ is already 252 lines long and I don't feel like looking for it even though CTRL+F is, so let's just say plagiarism happened there.

This does make me want to consider bringing him on as a co-commentator for these MSTs or possibly getting permission to MST his Codename series, as a note on his section of the page says: "A/N: The 'Codename' series was one of my earlier creations. There are some massive and very apparent flaws with it's content, specifically wording, among others. I fully intend to rewrite it at some point, and ask that you refrain from critical judgement of mentioned stories until I manage that."
The rewrites are nowhere to be seen, however.
"Otherwise, feel free to read and shake your head in amusement/laugh your guts out at my current attempt, specifically at my over-dramatization of some scenes."
___________________
...whew. That about wraps it up aside from the Analysis, which I will post later as stated before. I should also probably go archive all these chapters of the MST on my Tumblr, just in case the Grey Havens mods decide to break my kneecaps, which I hope they don't do. I'm just trying to have some fun and critical analysis laced with over-the-top reactions and snark. I get that this isn't Twitter where the automated bots will shadowban you for as so much as swearing (yes really) and the mods on the SK forums are presumably more relaxed, but I don't want this to be seen the wrong way.

Anyway, stay tuned next Monday for Let's MST Clockwork Catastrophe 2, where things go even more downhill in really bizarre and rushed ways.

@Jedwell:

"I see what you did there. Now we just need a "retrieve arms" joke."
As a fellow Homestuck fan, I could totally do that some day, but as an aside, considering I went Nostalgia Critic on the last chapter I wanted to reference this.

"Huh, well I wasn't too far off with 250. Although I think someone said 200, guess they won the first round. For the second fic... I'll go with 300."
That was Angel-Girl, so congrats to them!

"You know, I'm actually working on an outline for a fic that is going to be an attempt at tying all the plot events together in a reasonable and interesting fashion. I will admit it is kind of frustrating, though. Every time I think I considered everything and can get to writing, I remember some tiny plot detail that screws everything over. (Recently that was echo stone #3, screw that.) Makes me wonder if I should just go for an AU version, for the sake of telling an interesting story. Oh well, I'm still wondering if I could make this work.

Oh well, I'll stay tuned for more."
That feel when a minor detail messes up everything is one I feel too much. Maybe someday a group of us fanfic writers should make some sort of universal reference bible like what Volition did for FreeSpace.

Considering my plate is full, that will have to be saved for a later time.

Sorry for the wait. Monday was going to be the day I'd post this, but I got sidetracked. Massively sidetracked. Anyway...

IT'S TIME.

FOR ANOTHER MST.

This time, we have Clockwork Catastrophe 2: Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold with even more off-the-wall content.
___________________
I suggest you read the first one before this one to clear up the back story.
No.

Back story
Angie and Vivi survived the calamities that belied them at the core. Max is kidnapped by King Tinkinzar, and Ender is in the Sanctuary, travelling space and time to find his friends. Angie wants serious revenge. Vivi is worried about what might happen. Will Angie die? Or Will she Kill the Mad King? And what has come of Ender? Find out in....
...HOLY MOTHER OF VANADUKE. +5 (bad writing: plot hole, inconsistency, improper grammar: punctuation, capitalization & tense confusion)
We are off to an amazing start when we have five sins in one.

Also, since when was Ender a Sburb player and how did he end up with the Time aspect?
___________________
Worth noting that again, past me doesn't know how to line breaks, so that's going to be a bit of a pain. Additionally, the chapters are quite short, so I'll be doing multiple at once. For this first post, I'll do the first four. It goes back to being normal length after that.
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Chapter 1: The Start of the End
Loaded into the OP, so no link needed. Also, it happened again. +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

Angie and Vivi talked in the garden, where the statue of Monomi is.
There is a garden with a Gun Puppy statue in the Town Square, but I'm not sure if Monomi was ever a meme in the SK community. I'll assume it was, as Nick's current dev studio (which made Slime Rancher) is named Monomi Park.

"I am sick and tired of waiting! Let's just get this over with." Angie said.
I'm sure this is how the thread feels considering my teasing and how long it took for this to get out.

"We need more power." Vivi told Angie.
Because the last time you tried to punch the completely out of character Tinkinzar, he kidnapped one of your friends. Sound logic, I guess.

Angie's appearance had changed - She now wears the Red Rose set as a costume set, with her signature prismatic ribbon. She now posses the Valkyrie set for her armor.
Have fun with the fire weakness. To be fair, at least past me didn't give everyone full Black Kat sets, because that would be silly. +2 (improper grammar: punctuation & typo)

Vivi has also changed since he last appeared - He has the Valkyrie Set, Alongside Angie. Vivi is now wearing the White Rose set as a costume.
...no Chaos? No Divine? What are you even...oh wait, all three first generation Rose sets have been used. +2 (improper grammar: punctuation & capitalization)

He has the following accessories attached the costume: Toasty Vitakit, Divine Canteen, Prismatic Wings and Regal Helm-Mounted Display with Com Unit.
That is a fashion disaster right there.

Angie has the following acessories attached to her costume: The Regal Helm-Mounted Display with Com unit that Vivi has, Divine Wings and Proto Crest.
Likewise. This probably would've worked better if the rose sets were switched around.

They kept on talking for a while...
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
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Chapter 2: It's About Time He Returned
Ender was moving through time...
and space... looking for Angie and Vivi.
And through line breaks. +1 (improper grammar: bad line break)

"Darn it, There NOWHERE to be found!" He said, after returning to the Sanctuary.
Nor are...wait, have I made this joke before? +2 (improper grammar: capitalization & tense confusion)

But this was in the future. He saw 4 knights in the sanctuary. Ender went back to the time he was in.
So, I need to stop for a moment to rant about time travel being done poorly. But first: +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

Now to the rant: Time travel is almost never done right and considering we see it here for the first time, I can smell time shenanigans. That, and now I think I know the real reason why China banned/strongly discouraged time travel stories, because they see so many poorly-written ones that break their own rules and are otherwise filled with paradoxes. The few ones I can remember that do it right are Chrono Trigger which established very strict rules on time travel and followed them, Back to the Future which did the same thing if I remember correctly, and Fire Emblem: Awakening, where the multiple universes excuse is given to justify it.

Enough blabbering. Ender can time travel at will somehow, bad attempt to foreshadow events that will most likely be different from what was seen earlier, et cetera.

Ender No longer has his Ascended Calibur; Instead he fights with the Divine Avenger and Gran Faust. He wears the Blue Rose set as a Costume.
So are we just going to see all the main characters wearing fedoras? I hope not. +2 (improper grammar: punctuation & capitalization)

After a ton of arguing, Angie and Vivi went to the gates, and went down. They went to Depth 23, and decided to fight the Ice Queen.
Cue another dungeon skip. Sigh.

"We can get EVEN more power if we get some more materials and get powerful weapons!" Angie said.
Ahem. You can only craft armor sets at the Sanctuary, not weapons. +1 (making stuff up)

After defeating the queen and passing the passage, Ender suddenly felt the appearing of more knights, so he quickly move to the time before anyone knew the place.
Stop skipping dungeons! +1 (bad writing: character op pls nerf)

But when he saw it was Vivi and Angie...he reappeared.
So did Ender just call the Sanctuary his home or whatever? And is suddenly shy? What?

"ENDER!" Angie shouted, running toward Ender and giving him a great big hug.
Aww.

"I thought I lost you forever!" She said.
It's more mad libs dialogue!

"Ok, That's enough Angie!" Ender said, shrugging her off.
Well, at least I didn't try to force a ship. +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

"Well, let's leave to get more power to get revenge." Angie said, and they left the Sanctuary.
At least she realized there was no weapons you could make at the Sanctuary.
___________________
And suddenly, Psychodestroyer chimes in. I was a little nervous whether to discuss this comment or not since I don't want GH to think (by accident) I'm attacking people, but this comment has some interesting insight about my fics I've MST'd so far.

Just speedread through the whole thing...sorry, no offence if you think I didn't give it full attention.
Going through the thread...yeah past me was an attention seeker and I still am to a much lesser extent. But these days it's more or less just the empty feeling of having no payback for effort, but I still do what I do (draw and do these MSTs when I remember to) because it gives me something to do.

My problem is that I find it hard to concentrate on grouped lines, not your fault by a long shot, so no worries, and I did read through the whole thing, so I have the gist of the storyline. May read it through in more analytic depth when I get more time.
The line break issue is real.

Interesting story! I'm intrigued as to what happens next.
Well, interesting in "how crazy can this get," to be honest.

Just a question, I'm slightly curious...Aside from the characters names which we've already discussed...
Have you been modelling parts of your story off Codename?
I dunno, some parts just sound similar, like the part where you used Simple and Clean Planitb Remix, as well as the dashed lyrics, Ender falls into the Core, sees an unconscious Max (I lolled when I read your explanation of that) and other.
There is a reason plagiarism is a category for my sins here. But that part, yeah I don't know what I was thinking. It's why I went full Nostalgia Critic on it. Had it been Grantz, it would make perfect sense in hindsight (and probably cement me as a psychic) as Grantz was killed in action during Alpha Squad's expedition in the Core, as established by Parma's Scout in Dreams & Nightmares. Considering how far this fanfic went, a deus ex machina revival of Grantz almost would've made sense.

Don't worry, I'm not offended, or even a little irked. I'm just curious, because it sounds similar.
Even the intro to this sounds similar to Codename Part 3; Ange/Angie going on a revenge spree.
The similarities are too uncanny. In some places, it feels like a hollow carbon copy.

As far as I can think, this is one of three things:
1) A really big co-incidence. We just have similar storylines.
2) You've been reading Codename recently and modeled parts from it. (Oh, cool! I think I'll use this.)
3) You were making your story, read Codename, then used ideas you got from Codename in your own story, without really thinking of it as having been in another story.
Possibly a mix of all three as I never really knew what past me was thinking and my memory is pretty much dead.

In any case, don't worry, I'm not mad. Just curious.
Ooooki. Say, Psychodestroyer, if you're reading this, want to hop aboard for further MSTs? Would probably be a blast.

Anyway, back your regularly scheduled MSTing.
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Chapter 3: Missing in the Shadows and Chapter 4: Trouble
These chapters are so short I'm MSTing both of them back-to-back. I told you these were short.

Ender, Angie and Vivi traveled through the clockworks...until they reached Firestorm Citadel.
Okay, I guess this is FSC run #8492 so dungeon bypass is probably justifiable at this point.

They went on through, like average...but then everything average stops.
Vanaduke wasn't there when they hit the button.
CREEPYPASTA MATERIAL! Because most creepypastas are mediocre. +1 (bad writing: lack of subtlety)

"Why is he not here?" Ender questioned.
Beats me.

"Oh well, let's go on through." Vivi said.
They went on.
They went back to the core but.... The site was in ruins.
+1 (improper grammar: punctuation)

A feather from Max's Chapeau lied on the ground. "No...Max couldn't have done this!" Angie said.
+1 (bad writing: lack of subtlety)

When they got back up, there was a lot of commotion about some "Mystery Person" Sabotaging the clockworks.
+2 (improper grammar: capitalization & bad writing: lack of subtlety)

"Now I understand....The gremlin king must have done this!" Angie said.
Sigma...the cause of the entire situation! +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

Meanwhile....
Max had created a blueprint for Project Conquest, a giant mecha. When Tinkinzar saw it, he was astounded at it.
"Of course, this thing is impossible to break! No knight can ever penetrate the armor!" The King said.
And then started the production....
Tinkinzar's brainwashing must've given him master engineering skills. +2 (bad writing: plot hole & improper grammar: punctuation)

Angie wouldn't just stop thinking about finding Max. She would think for hours on end. All she wanted was Max. But she would never know his location....and Vivi got worried and worried by the minute.
Why is Vivi worried anyway? Can he see the future? +2 (bad writing: plot hole & improper grammar: punctuation)

Everyone just knew it.
Trouble would arrive.
Roll credits...oh wait.
___________________
Total sins for the Backstory/Chapter 1: 10
Total sins for Chapter 2: 9
Total sins for Chapters 3 & 4: 10
Total sins for the fic: 29
___________________
Hopefully this four in one post makes up for the wait. We'll probably be done this fic soon. Then we get to the third and shockingly incomplete last fic in this series before moving on to miscellaneous fics before we do another series.

I'll drop Chapter 7 later tonight, to make up for my inability to do backlogs right. We're nearing the end of the second part of this catastrophic (heh) saga, but of course as we've all seen from the first part, it gets crazy towards the end.
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Chapter 6: Cut to the Chase

Before Reading, Use the link from when Ender fought Max. Use this: [No, because YouTube's new interface is terrible.]
No. +2 (music link & improper grammar: capitalization)

The knights, begging for revenge within, chased after Tinkinzar.
What? That sentence makes no sense.

Tinkinzar sent shadow orbs after them...finally knocking Kozma down at depth 27.
It was a race to the core.
Finally, They reached the core, and Kozma caught up.
+1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

"Well then, you've come this far, but not enough to be able to stop me...because I have gained the DNA of every single powerful lifeform on this Planet!" Tinkinzar bellowed.
...I...what...oh great, Tinkinzar is now Metal Sonic apparently. +2 (making stuff up, improper grammar: capitalization)

"Regardless of what you do, You will never stop me!"
And I'm still astounded at the bad copy editing. +1 (improper grammar: capitalization)

MUSIC LINK: [NO WAY? NO WAY!] (Any KSSU Fan will have sudden nostalgia.)
Oh holy mother of Vanaduke I know EXACTLY where this is going. Oh no... +1 (music link)

"Enough talk, I'll prove ANYONE can make a difference!"
And with that, Angie rushed on forward...but there was something that kept her from attacking.

She was worried...Tinkinzar copied Ender's DNA.
Why the dramatic pause?

" No. That would be impossible." She thought, and then Vivi gave her the heads up. [sic]
Unfortunately, it seems that Tinkinzar has become Metal Sonic. Let's hope Tinkinzar doesn't try to do a Metal Madness. Also yes, there is a space before that quotation mark. +1 (improper grammar: typo)

"He's switching to the DNA of Max! Be careful!" Vivi warned. Angie struck fiercely, like a tiger going all-out on it's prey.
That metaphor makes no sense. Also, does this mean Tinkinzar is also ripping off Magus and Lavos? Because they did that as well.

With all she knew about whoever he copied's weaknesses...It's was certain she was going to win.
The typos don't end there. The copy editing is getting worse somehow almost to the point of Mega Man Battle Network 4. Or have we passed that point already? +1 (improper grammar: typo)

Tinkinzar switched between the following: Max, Red Roarmulus Twins, Darkfire Vanaduke, and then...he switched to a form nobody knew.
If the Kirby-related music link and my reaction was foreshadowing...

Vivi even wasn't sure about the name of the form either.
"Who's Magolor?" He questioned.
HOLY. MOTHER. OF. VANADUKE. WHY!? WHY?! +10 (crossover anarchy)

Then Tinkinzar flew up, and started all the attacks.
Dark Homing balls.
IT LOOKS LIKE A HOMING SHOT! BE CAREFUL, SONIC!

Black hole.
Is it an unrealistic black hole like a certain Sirius guy? Whose name lends itself to hilarious puns like Sirius Business and "why so Sirius?"

You name it.
Does he also fire kitchen sinks?

And finally, Tinkinzar defeated Angie.
Knew it! Copying OP characters lets you beat said OP characters. Now I'm not sure how many characters Tinkinzar is ripping off. So far we have Metal Sonic, Mega Man, Kirby, Magus, Lavos and...yeah I'll stop the list there. Let's just say all of them. +1 (bad writing: character op pls nerf)

With a giant laser.
Tinkinzar used Hyper Beam!

He thought Angie died.
It's super effective!

(How did she make Tinky switch out of RRT? Striking back a ball to disable the invincibility field.)
...what.

Except...she didn't. She was still alive, but barely breathing.
Angie fainted!

Vivi took his chance, shooting Max's Sentenza...but he was outsmarted by the same form.
So why didn't you help her before? +2 (bad writing: character op pls nerf & characters acting stupid)

Ender finally got infuriated, and decided to fight Tinkinzar himself.
Oh right, the usual "KO/kill everyone but the lead and make the lead one-on-one the villain" cliche. Got it. Let's pretend Kozma wasn't at this scene, oh no. Can't have HER fighting with the rest of the party like they SHOULD. +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

"You have done enough. Now, have at you, against Cradle's ultimate warrior!"
Who says this line anyway? Ender or Tinkinzar? Whatever. We end on a cliffhanger here.
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Total sins for Chapter 6: 23
Total sins for the fic: 68
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I don't have much more to say other than that the last chapter and everything that happens after this fic will probably leave the thread astonished.

Time for another analysis and this is a short one as well since there isn't much to say...well, not, because past me sometimes says the darnedest things.

Obviously, I tried to be edgy and failed miserably, and also failed at trying to make the characters diverge more (with Angie showing traits of being hasty and hot-blooded for an example).

The copy editing...I can't tell if it's gotten better or WORSE, especially towards the end.

Now for the relevant comments which I'll add on to criticize the bad writing.
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Comments from back in the day
Tevokkia: "Well, you certainly have some interesting ideas here, but I would have liked to see more details, as Angie's conclusion that Tinkinzar was behind everything seemed a bit of a jump without them. I do think that Chapter 7 was your best in this batch, as you used the nicest imagery there."

You're right. That is a plot hole and I'm not sure how I didn't catch it before. All I said when that happened was that I parroted another Mega Man meme.

Psychorazer: "It seems exciting and all, but a bit fast-pace for me really. Don't mind my opinion too much. Like I said a few times before, I'm no expert. Don't get me wrong, your story is really exciting, but there doesn't seem to be any downtime for the characters. No intermission, no chat scenes interrupted, nothing that doesn't involve something blowing up/someone threatening them...is that intentional? That, AND YOU STOLE T3H STATUS LINK!!! I NOT MAD! SO Y I YERRING!? /shrug. Nice to see someone likes my ideas enough to use them for their own lol."

Hi, Psychodestroyer? I'm not sure if this is an alt of his. But yeah, as you might've noticed, there's no intermissions between the action. I'm still angry over the plagirarism

I respond after this and then from there it goes into casual chatter, some exposition from Psycho, me deciding that if I was going to insert his Max into this it would most definitely be an AU, but then comes a bombshell that will force me to add extra sins just for the content alone.

Past Gatrnerd: "Plus a funny part in chapter 2...Angie gets married to Magnus. But then the wedding's crashed before Magnus can kiss the bride. Who does it? Find out."
Wait. Is that a Gary Sue and forced shipping?

No. IT ISN'T.

I used to be friends with him. Long story short it ended due to my opinion over a controversial quote said by a Warframe dev. I'll say no more on the subject, because it's still a sore spot for me.

My jaw is still on the floor that I'd go as far as to self-insert people I knew from the game. I'm adding fifty sins for that. +50 (that's just creepy past me)

And unfortunately, the third part has even more of this happen. Expect the sin count to rise exponentially.

So back on track, the second fic was no improvement over the first. Shocking, isn't it? The subtitle isn't even consistent, constantly swapping between "Revenge Is A Dish Better Served Cold" and "Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold" like I couldn't decide on it. A harbinger of things to come later down the line? I'll leave it to you to decide.

And one last thing. After having read Tevokkia's comment, I've realized I accidentally left out sins. I'm sorry on that. I'll scrutinize future chapters to make sure those mistakes aren't repeated.
___________________
Total sins for the analysis: 50
Total sins for the fic: 135
Sentence: Silver The Hedgehog (IT'S NO USE!)
___________________
I'm not looking forward to this, especially since now I'm at an even higher risk of getting my kneecaps broken by the admins due to the third fic getting way too personal and inserting other players as characters. I'd redact the names, but that would cause confusion if multiple of them are in the same spot and I really don't wanna go and twist words. I'd prefer keeping the content the way it was.

So as an aside to all Grey Havens staff: Please, PLEASE don't explode at me for what might be posted next. I know you're not Twitter (who likes to shadowban people if they so much as curse), but I'm still concerned that I might accidentally set a mod off if they found this and saw what happened with the third fanfic I wrote in this trilogy.

But I'm probably overthinking things.

See you Wednesday.

Jedwell:"I got nothing to live for, I gotta commit seppuku!"
He should've done sudoku instead.

"It wasn't? Oh for the love of- *Throws outline through the window*
Seriously though, you think it wasn't? At least to me, there is a lot more pointing towards it being in there than things being the other way around. I'd love to discuss that, but this is probably not the place for that."
I'm probably misinterpreting things, since in Dreams & Nightmares, Herex opens the Core while the Swarm is already there.

"Looks like I was just slightly off the mark there. Ever so slightly. But since no one else made an estimate, I guess I won anyway? Either way, 175 for the next one."
You'd be surprised how high the sin count will go for the next fic, because that 50-point sin gets used twice in the very first line of the first chapter.

So, I got sidetracked while working on my backlog. The culprit this time was Warframe. Anyway, here's another chapter.
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Chapter 3: Darkness Coming
Way to rip off the title name from a creepy moment in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Angie and Vivi later met Tobias.
The two had switched to breaker sets; Angie was once again with the Blazebreak Set, and Vivi had the Surge Breaker.
Um. Wasn't this already established before? Why am I repeating pointless details?

Vivi now wielded the Voltedge, while Angie had the Combuster.
"So, you two wanna be friends with me? That's very nice, thanks!" Tobias said, in agreement for them all to be friends.
Awww. At least it's not shipping. For once, friendzoning is useful.

Angie gave Tobias the Glacius.
That's probably costing her a fair bit in the unbind fee.

"This will complete the Circle of Elements; Fire, Ice and Lightning." Angie said.
"Of course! I needed a sword to match my armor!" Tobias said happily.
They all laughed.
I'm not laughing at this bad copy editing. Why capitalize "circle of elements" when you could just leave it all lowercase? +1 (bad copy editing)

Ender and Max had ran down through the clockworks, looking for the swarm, and vanquishing it.
The tower's poles were up to something.
HERE COMES ANOTHER DEUS EX MACHINA!

The pixels multiplied, causing many disruptions.
"Look out! The swarm is multiplying! If we hesitate, the swarm will overrun the stratum!" Max said, and then...Void Geysers splashed out of the ground, Thwackers and Lumbers appearing.
DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, THEN! +2 (bad writing: characters acting stupid, conveniences/deus ex machina)

Phantom, Zero and Princess were also doing an expedition, and the same disaster happened.
"This is getting nuts!" Zero shouted, Dual-Wielding Valiance guns.
I won't give this much flak, since as stated before, Vaelyn dual-wielded a Final Flourish and a Grand Flourish, plus anyone can get their hands on a Valiance. +1 (bad copy editing)

He used the blade and the gun parts, but the swarm grew to a tremendous amount.
That always reminded me that the blade part of the Valiance and related guns (Riftlocker, Arcana & Phantamos) were never used and that makes me sad, since it would be pretty cool to have pistol swords in Spiral Knights. Oh well.

Gears and such broke up and warped out, causing another dimension to be formed, and everything on the stratum would fall into the Swarm Realm, a void of chaos and turmoil.
The Swarm got the OP Gary Sue power as well and is now making new dimensions. Wow. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

The 3 friends were also experiencing this, and Tobias was exhausted, and then took a slice from a thwacker, and fell down, hardly breathing.
RIP.

Angie helped him up.
Oh, nevermind.

"This is getting dangerous! If the swarm consumes us, we'll suffer terminal corruption!" Vivi shouted, and began casting a teleport spell.
"We must evacuate!" and then the spell was casted, sending Tobias, Angie and Vivi up to the Arcade.
Is the Swarm now Phazon? What? Whatever, the magic thing is back again. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

"This is troubling. We must teleport out of here THIS INSTANT!" Phantom shouted. They all teleported out, to the Arcade as well.
I just realized that this wouldn't be too much of a deus ex machina as in gameplay you can just get out of a level to go back to your guild hall, the Ready Room or Haven. So I'll stop counting getting out of a sticky situation by teleporting to Haven as a deus ex machina now.

Although this does raise interesting questions about SK lore.

Soon, four of the screens turned into static. The following stratums were each stratum before a boss stratum.
How fortunate for you. At least this can now explain having Shadow Lairs in boss stratums, so that's another plot hole filled I guess? -1 (plot hole filled)

"What is going on here?" Feron asked.
You asked that already in the last fic.

Phantom ran up to him.
"Sir, the swarm is corrupting the clockworks!" He responded.
"No! They infiltrated the clockworks!" Feron said.
Then the static screens turned to the swarm icon.
Is every level in that stratum an Unknown Passage now?

Ender and Max couldn't teleport out; it was too late.
Welp, they're done for. Will they die for real this time? +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

Suddenly, author notes.
(Guess what happens to them. Hint: What happens to Link the first time he enters the Twilight Realm?)
GIVE ME AN S!
GIVE ME A T!
GIVE ME AN O!
GIVE ME AN P!
WHAT DOES THAT SPELL?
STOP!

It ends on a cliffhanger. I'm not looking forward to what's going to happen.
___________________
Total sins for the chapter: 6
Total sins for the fic: 183
___________________
The post AFTER that chapter does NOT help in the slightest.

I am surprised there's so few sins in this chapter though. But I'm probably not scrutinizing it enough.

"also i am not a kat"
[citation needed]

Anyway, posting this chapter now since I won't get a chance to later today. Personal matters are intervening again. Tumblr mirror won't be available at the same time due to this. Sorry!

I do realize things went horribly wrong as soon as we got to the fourth chapter. That number is cursed, especially in Asia where in quite a few languages the word for four is also the word for death.

So, last time, things went to bad. Today, things will go to bad again.
___________________
Chapter 4: The Realm of Darkness

Ender and Max warped into wolvers, with no warning; the change was sudden, but temporary, until they left the realm.
...that happened. We Wolf Link now. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

They could still communicate through mind notes, but that was it for communication.
We also Pokémon anime now! (because in the anime, legendary pokémon or other special cases "speak" by telepathy, except for Team Rocket's Meowth who actually learned to speak somehow)

"So....we get out of here?" Ender questioned. Max nodded.
"Of course, but first we need to get to the end and find the elevator or something." Max replied.
So we also Un-Dimension now? Of all the games to reference, why Mega Man Star Force 2? That game was dreadful! AND IT WAS MY FIRST MEGA MAN GAME...

The two ran off, clawing and biting at the enemies. Soon, they reached a platform, and a dragon flew in.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Their combined efforts tore the dragon to pieces, and caused a portal to form.
+1 (bad writing: character op pls nerf)

"We have to jump in there." Max said, and they jumped in, changing back as sudden as the change before.
That happened. That was... +1 (A BIG LIPPED ALLIGATOR MOMENT!)

They had arrived at the stratum after Ironclaw. They had made it out. But the swarm tower was reforming, causing the gates to shift again, two at the left side, two on the right. The two towers merged, forming a huge tower that rose just up. It was the same height, but different shape.
"Wait, Why'd we go on an expedition? Wasn't our goal to destroy all the members of the crimson order?" Ender questioned.
...that's actually funny as well, that the main characters forgot their goal. Another sin removal, please! -1 (comedy gold)

"Of course. But we should find the gremlin schematics first, to reveal their locations." Max said, and just a few steps away from them, were the schematics.
"Oh look, easy as cake." Ender said, picking up the schematics.
Even Ender lampshades it. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

They'd found the map to the crimson order's many facilities, now they just had to kill the Order member inside.
We Mega Man now. Hooray!

This was only the beginning of an adventure that would take them to the top of cradle and beyond...
Sure.
___________________
Total sins for the chapter: 4
Total sins for the fic: 187
___________________
Well, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

...OH NO. OHHHH NO. I KNEW I COULDN'T KEEP TO SCHEDULE!

So, maybe I'm overreacting too much. This isn't too bad. It's...an improvement over the first two, which is something. You might notice the sin count is getting extremely low per chapter. I'm not sure why that is. Even after scrutinizing the chapters extensively, I can barely find stuff to count as sins right now.
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Chapter 5: The First Signs of Trouble
We begin today's chapter with a sad announcement.

(We shall all take a moment to remember the music links, which are now RETIRED for the rest of my fanfics.)
Just kidding, good riddance. It does mean I have to retire the related sin category.

"Looks like we found our first building." Max said.
"Of course." Ender said, putting away the schematics.
While they planned their attack, a laser cannon began charging up, which neither one knew of.
Then the laser fired just when Max finished saying "Let's leave nobody alive, shall we?" The two turned around to find a huge laser charging towards them!
Not even a few lines in and we start off with a wave motion gun headed at our heroes. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Max jumped away from the blast and Ender created a protective force field around him, nullifying the blast.
Not that it matters, anyway.

"That was close. Now that cannon's gonna pay!" Ender shouted, wielding the Divine Avenger.
How did Ender get the Divine Avenger back? Did he steal it from his grave?

He ran towards the cannon and began hacking at it, while Max charged the prominence cannon.
When Ender's tornado spin combined with Max's cannon blast, the laser canon overloaded and exploded, revealing a secret slot.
Okay, that was pretty cool. Then again, I've been misusing the "overpowered" sin a bit too much, so I'll let this slide. I'm more talking about instakilling people or otherwise destroying them insanely fast.

"A warp slot! But we'd need to insert an Energy Sphere to activate the warp." Max said.
"I can do such a thing." Ender said.
I'll just chalk this up to the Konjuring Kat's upgrade. Still no explanation for how he can do that.

He began charging up energy, which started to cause the area around to glow bright red.
Ender's arms raised up, like he was going to conduct an orchestra, and the orb got extremely powerful and started to take shape.
Giving you my energy, Ender! Because this isn't a Spirit Bomb!

Then Ender lowered his arms and the sphere flew to the slot, activating the warp.
WAAARP ZOOONE!! +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

The two entered the warp, to the find the Sentrymaster Hachkong.
That's an absurd name for sure, nevermind that I can't make any funny puns out of this. Seerus puns were similar to Sirius, but I can't do any Seerus Business with this made-up Crimson Order member. Speaking of which, where's Herex? +1 (bad writing: bad characters)

"It took you long enough, but time's up! The swarm shall take all the members of the Crimson Order to a satellite made by the Guardmaster, where we shall rule all!" Hachkong monologued.
Wow.

"And I'll leave both of you to die!"
Four cannons opened up from the floor, and fired beams at the two, causing them to electrocute and be under full control of the beams.
Well, I guess that's an interesting trap.

"Let's see how well you can survive before I throw you both away!" Hachkong shouted.
He manipulated the beams to make Ender and Max crash into each other.
Actually kind of creative.

The tower charged up to fire a powerful blast. The earthquake caused severe damage.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Then three orbs appeared, then they made a triangle. The swarm bursted out of the portal, corrupting Hachkong to unimaginable power, and then the beams shattered Max and Ender into small sparks, then threw both groups of sparks into the orbs, forming portals, and sending the sparks into the portals.
Um. Wow. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Hachkong jumped into the portal and it closed, being warped to the Swarm Satellite.
The facility was obliterated in the process.
That just happened.

Ender was flung into space, during the time when the skylark crashed.
Max was thrown into an Owlite Keep in the future, about 1000 years after the war started, where the swarm has conquered cradle and is leaving the entire planet to die after the core swallows the shadow tower and is used as a vessel to corrupt the homeworlds of the Spiral Knights.
What. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

The two were thousads of years apart from each other, but how will they ever find each other?

Cliffhanger, again! Stop it with the cliff-oh wait. Is that a typo I spy? +1 (bad copy editing)
___________________
Total sins for the chapter: 7
Total sins for the fic: 194
___________________
And then something interesting happened. The suspense is killing me, what happens next?

Jedwell: "Well, on the bright side, the plot is entirely unpredictable. That's a good thing, right?"

True, but it shows signs of sticking to the beaten path. As I've constantly said, I want to contrast this (which I still believe to be farce) with my newest attempt to write something, in which things fall apart and some...interesting commentary is applied to issues that can be related to recent events. I'll leave it at that since it's an unfinished mess.

"Anyway, at this point I find myself in a perpetual state of "wat." when I'm reading through this. Suspension of disbelief or something, or maybe just accepting defeat in the face of trying to understand what is basically the penrose triangle of story telling."

This isn't a penrose triangle anymore. We've gone full-up Dress on this. But yeah, I can agree, I'm starting to get too lax. Maybe it's because the more blatant errors have disappeared and only the subtle ones remain. I'll have to dissect this thoroughly for an analysis.

Don't worry, recent personal events have made me even more of a broken man than I was before and so you can expect things to get angrier and more explosive on my end if I can't keep my cool once this backlog and this fic in general is finished.

"Who knows, maybe it'll all make sense eventually. Heh. Heh."

To dash your hopes, however: This fanfic ends on a cliffhanger at Chapter 12 due to past me being unable to finish it so the last two chapters will be posted together as one post like I did with Chapters 5 and 6 of the first fic.

Sorry about the scheduling mess. I'll try to get the rest of the fic out of the door so I can work on a new backlog, if I decide on that.
___________________
Chapter 7: Fate of a Hero
Zero, Phantom and Princess were at the meeting room in the Spiral Order's headquarters.
We return to the trio of OP Gary Sues with a meeting and suddenly things begin to make no sense with a huge plot hole.

"We need to find this codex and learn more about almire for sure!" Zero said.
In that Almire is attacking! Or something. Why, again? +1 (bad writing: plot hole)

"Yes, Zero. The Almirian Codex is something we need to learn the secrets of almire and understand why they are attacking us." Feron answered.
"You, Phantom, Princess and Tsuna will go to the necropolis we pinpointed and recover the codex."
Wait, who's Tsuna? I probably don't remember, but I have a feeling it's ANOTHER PLAYER SELF-INSERT. Time to use that one specific sin again! +50 (that's just creepy past me)

"I won't let you down!" Phantom said, standing and saluting. Princess just nodded.
Princesspuff must be like "ooooooooooooki" right now.

When the group got to the lift, they found everyone had left to go down and recover the codex. The four quickly ran to the elevator to get the job done. When it arrived at the Necropolis, they found Desna.
Some of the writing does lead to confusion. "When it arrvied at the Necropolis" could mean any number of things, and one of them is a tense confusion.

"The rest of the recon rangers have left but they never came back! I'm not sure if they survived!" Desna told them.
"We'll find them, right Phantom?" Tsuna asked.
"Let's go bust some skulls open." Phantom said.
He quickly pulled out his Leviathan Blade and darted off.
LEEEEEEROOOOOOYYYY JEEENKIIIIIINSSS!!!

Zero, Tsuna and Princess trailed behind, taking out the bombies and almirian crusaders. When the four reached the elevator, they found everyone dead.
Every last ranger.
Phantom turned on his comlink and told Desna the devastating news.
Everyone's dead, Desna.

"No. This isn't true!" Desna shouted.
Mad libs dialogue.

Zero took a picture and sent it.
Well, at least this is Spiral Knights where dead knights just lay on the floor. If this were real life, such an image would probably be like something out of a shock site.

"Good luck...I suppose." Desna said. The knights went into the inner sanctum, and arrived at a bridge. Almirian Crusaders ran towards them.
"Here they come!" Tsuna shouted, pulling out a Faust.
That's not going to help you, those are Undead. +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

Phantom pulled out his Leviathan Blade, Princess got her Glacius and Zero used his Valiance guns.
See? The rest are acting sensibly. For the most part.

Phantom quickly charged in and began slicing and hacking at the undead.
Zero got too close to a crusader. The two were locked in combat, fighting with close range weapons.
Where is your Z-Saber? Oh right, wrong Zero. Whatever. Get out yo sword.

Zero was struggling heavily.
Princess was too busy fending off the Deadnaughts who kept coming back to life, and Tsuna and Phantom were gaining the advantage against the undead army.
This makes no sense, especially since it would be the zombies that would keep reviving, not the Deadnaughts. +1 (inconsistency)

Then Zero got stabbed in the middle, right where the sanctuary power was.
What.

Zero collapsed onto the floor, his head leaning off the side of the bridge.
He was breathing heavily as the crusader gazed at him, ready to finally kill him for trespassing in the necropolis, when Phantom smashed the crusader.
+1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

The spear pushed Zero closer to the edge. Tsuna came to his side.
"Are you okay Zero..?" Tsuna questioned. Phantom and Princess ran towards him too.
"Tsuna, he can't be saved. Being hit in the heart is very fatal." Phantom replied to Tsuna.
OUCH.

"Th-there's...just one thing I want you to...do." Zero weakily said.
"T-take of my...penta-heart pendant..." Tsuna pressed a button on the back of Zero's neck that unlocked the pendant, and Tsuna took it.
Oh hey, another typo. We haven't seen one in a while. +1 (bad copy editing)

Princess grabbed a Valiance from one of Zero's hands, and Phantom got the other. Then, Zero fell to his demise.
Looting the soon-to-be-dead is probably the ultimate disrespect. Whatever.

He was falling very, very fast, heading towards the core. Suddenly, the orb that contained his power flew out, leaving a gaping hole where it was.
Zero closed his eyes for the final time, and his eyes faded away.
The corrupted core absorbed him very quickly, while the sanctuary orb flew to a concrete jungle, at depth 27.
DEAD!

...I'm surprised NOBODY said "WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOR!?" during that. Then again, it's probably for the better, since the line delivery in that scene was awful. Lucas Gilbertson's version is way better.
___________________
Total sins for the chapter: 55
Total sins for the fic: 255
___________________
Well, that was a chapter.

...but at least we get a filler chapter to calm down.
___________________
Chapter 9: Freezing Winds
The camp at the terminal was moving along steadily, but winter was fast approaching.
We Game of Thrones now.

"This fire won't last forever, Mouse. We'll have to re-ignite it with logs. But where can we find those?" Terrence said to Mouse, looking at the fire.
The fire would burn out in the cold and harsh winter winds. The sunlight began to fade as the darkness of winter began.
Suddenly, a huge gust of wind blew Jenny off her feet.
"Aaaaah!" She shouted as she got flung into a wall by the wind.
PCHOOOOOOOOOO! +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Max was in the gloaming wildwoods, finding any logs that could still be around, and taking them back to camp.
The path to it was a really harsh one, involving the scarlet fortress, an owlite keep, and a concrete jungle.
Haha, no. Those levels are easy.

Max ran as fast as he could, after seeing snow starting to fall.
Storm was also running to get the wildwood logs to the camp too, and found a blue hat, lying on the ground.
"It looks like it's in good condition. Why is it?" Storm asked, then put it on.
And the fedora plague is spreading. Great. How it even got there is a mystery to begin with. +1 (bad writing: plot hole)

He proceeded to head back to camp. When the two arrived, they saw Jenny, against a wall.
"What happened?!" Max questioned.
"Jenny got caught by the wind and was blown into a wall. She needs to be somewhere where the wind won't blow her around. It's crazy out here!" Mouse explained.
This almost feels too soon to be writing this considering the current hurricane season has seen numerous huge hurricanes hit the Atlantic, including Harvey, Irma, José and Maria.

Terrence quickly took a log, and pulled out a tempered calibur to try and cut the wood to make some sort of shelter to keep them out of the wind.
Logical thinking, sort of. How strong are those winds anyway?

Hours and hours went by and the temperature only got colder. The snow lied everywhere and the fire was starting to weaken.
More tenses being misused. Fun. +1 (bad copy editing)

Storm took a log and cut it too. His speed was blinding fast, and then threw the log pieces into the fire, which keep it burning.
What.

"I'm almost done cutting this log...." Terrence said.
The logs were finely cut, and Terrence started lying logs against the wall.
He was going to try to build a shelter.

Well then.
___________________
Total sins for the chapter: 2
Total sins for the fic: 265
___________________
That was a boring filler chapter, but considering things got hyper crazy, a cooldown is pretty much necessary.

It all comes tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down...oh wait this isn't End of Evangelion.
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Chapter 11: The Challenges of The Swarm
The knights ran through the massive labyrinth, and found each other.
We Etrian Odyssey now. Maybe.

Vivi found Tobias, Magnus found Phantomahamachi, Ender found Max, and Angie found Princesspuff.
Interesting duos. Especially since that second pair is broken in real life.

They all entered a room.
The bosses, corrupted by the swarm were in the rooms, and it was Vivi and Tobias VS The Rabid Snarbolaxes, Ender and Max VS The Ice Queen, Angie and Princesspuff VS the Red Roarmulus Twins, and finally, Phantomhamachi and Magnus VS Darkfire Vanaduke.
At least we get a boss rush. No explanation why, though. +2 (bad copy editing, bad writing: plot hole)

If they all succeed, then they will all unite to enter Void's room, where he would finally be stopped, even if it means killing Ender's big brother.
Okay, understandable. We have the standard "final Mega Man stage" model, where you have a boss rush before the final boss.

Magnus jumped to a mace swing, and Phantom took out the Carnavons.
Then, Phantom was struck down by Vanaduke.
RIP.

Suddenly, the spikes on his helmet and suit connected.
The helm's spikes connected to the bag at the back and the suit's spikes connected to the bolts on the helmet.
It's growing? What? Well, that's weird. +1 (making stuff up)

Then Phantom let out a massive blast of electricity, blinding Vanaduke, Magnus and the undead.
When the light cleared, the armor had turned to a bright blue, the spikes' tips white, and his eyes were visible.
Well, looks like we just saw the creation of Quicksilver Man. +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

"Time to die, Vanaduke. Even though Vog cursed you, I still have to kill you to stop Void." Phantom says to Darkfire Vanaduke.
Was that even official lore that Vanaduke was cursed by Vog? ...well, that's a jump to conclusions and considering Vog isn't mentioned much in-game... +1 (inconsistency)

"Is that so? You idiot. You cannot kill our god!" Vanaduke bellowed.
Eight OP Gary Sues against one OP Gary Sue. Hmm...I place my bid on the eight.

Then the two struck blades, and Phantom's Leviathan Blade gained the upper hand, from the high amount of energy applied to it.
The mace went flying and smashed carnavons before cracking, shattering and causing a huge explosion, which mortally wounded Vanaduke, breaking his mask.
HOLY MOTHER OF VANADUKE THAT'S AN INSANE AMOUNT OF POWER! +2 (bad writing: character op pls nerf & conveniences/deus ex machina)

It does remind me of the attack boost Sparks of Life give you when used. Still, WOW.

"Finish him, Magnus." Phantom said, his armor turning back to normal as the spikes withdraw from the slots.
Oh, so it's just some made-up super form like Black/White Kyurem? Okay. I guess that's mildly reasonable, even if the idea is ridiculous to begin with. I don't think withdraw would be the right tense in that case, though. +1 (bad copy editing)

Magnus soared up high and stabbed Vanaduke in the back, toppling the monstrosity and killing him.
How did he do that? Does he have a super jump? +2 (making stuff up & bad writing: character op pls nerf)

"Mission accomplished." Phantom said, the two running to leave the area.
Well, that's one down.

Elsewhere, Princess and Angie were having trouble.
The twins were very fast, harming Angie and Princes, but then Princess emnated an icy aura, forcing the twins to freeze like water.
What. +2 (bad copy editing, bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Her Glacius was powered up and she began attacking. Angie did the same, with the Combuster.
Okay, how? +2 (bad writing: plot hole & conveniences/deus ex machina)

The two fought hard, and the scuttlebots couldn't reach them.
The twins could still fire nukes, and they did that to harm Angie and Princess, knocking them down.
They didn't give up, and once one exploded, so did the other.
"Let's go!" Angie said, the two running to leave the area.

I don't blame her insistence on moving on, because the Roarmulus Twins were boring. +1 (bad writing: character op pls nerf)

Max and Ender had the upper hand against the ice queen, since it was just an ice edition of the Royal Jelly.
That's not entirely wrong. Speaking of which, where is the Swarm Source during this whole time? Shouldn't it be giving the bosses defense boosts?

"My husband told me you would be a very terrible menace. You are what he said." The Ice Queen boomed to Ender, as Ice Polyps froze him in place.
I don't think it was ever said that the Ice Queen had much relation to the Royal Jelly. Again, jumping to conclusions. +1 (bad copy editing)

Monomi began shooting at the ice.
Good luck with that.

"Max, we need some help here!" Monomi shouted, shooting faster and faster.
Max shot the prominence cannon at Ender, shattering the ice.
Not sure if anyone knew already, but if you attack a frozen entity, be it an enemy or knight, it will break the ice. The fact it works on your allies is VERY useful, since Freeze can lead to some really cheap deaths.

Ender jumped, ready to deal a heavy combo to the Ice Queen, while Max powered the prominence cannon to cause serious damage.
The two synchronized as the queen exploded into jelly. Her crown laid down on the floor, shattered.
"Let's move." Ender said, the two running to leave the area.
One left.

Vivi and Tobias were having tough times with the rabid snarbolax, only managing to take one down.
I blame the Silkwing that helps them.

Vivi used his stun balls and Tobias dealt very little damage with the Glacius.
To be expected because they're beasts. Beasts resist elemental. Tobias, don't you have anything else? +1 (bad writing: characters acting stupid)

The Snarbolax turned from green to black, and it began to get simpler.
I don't think it can do that... +1 (bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina)

Then Tobias and Vivi switched and Vivi used a Final Flourish to deal severe damage.
Well, at least they figured out their mistake.

Vivi caused several holes in the snarbolax's hide, and finally managed to kill it.
"Let's go!" Vivi said, the two running to leave the area, and meeting the rest.
Boss rush complete.

"Now, combine your powers!" Monomi said, her shooting a heart to start the power combiner.
The rest used clones of the sanctuary orbs to fill the slots, and the chamber opened.
Now for a ridiculous thing. I don't even want to start on this, so I'll just sin it. Nod along, okay? +3 (inconsistency, bad writing: conveniences/deus ex machina, plot hole)

And there was Void.
But here we go! Confrontation with Dr. Wily...oh wait.
___________________
Chapter 12: Weight of Darkness
"You all came to stop me, didn't you?" Void asked.
Yep. Only one Infinite at a time, please!

He looked like a black and purple trojan, but had demonic wings embedded into his back, and his shield's coat of arms was a swarm symbol.
Edgy.

"Ender, my little brother...you fool. Had you not interfered, nobody would be harmed, but now I'll teach you all those who mess with the swarm DIE in the end!"
OW THE EDGE. My edge detector just went up in a nuclear fireball.

Then dark lasers shot at everyone.
Roll a dodge. I bet everyone rolls 1.

Max and Ender jumped, avoiding them quickly.
The other knights became wrapped partially in shadows.
The floor is edge.

"Aaah! This isn't going very well!" Princess shouting, as the knights caught by the beams were moved towards the wall.
You don't say...

"I'll absorb all your powers and then I'll corrupt the homeworlds of the Spiral Knights!"
And now it's up to just Ender and Definitely-Not-Codename Max to defeat Void and save Isora since there's only one homeworld of the Knights and...oh wait, it ends here. Okay. +1 (inconsistency)
___________________
Total sins for Chapter 11: 21
Total sins for Chapter 12: 1
Total sins for the fic: 297
Sentence: Cliffhanger (it's like Hot Wheels Acceleracers all over again!)
___________________
Analysis time.

Boy oh boy do I have things to say this time.

First off, we start by crossing over with a fanfic series that, at this point, the creator had given up on it and never bothered to finish it.

If that wasn't enough, then we get to the player self-inserts. I know I gave myself a lot of flak for it, but really I must have been overreacting, since rolecasting is popular for Spiral Knights fanfics to do. I guess we could call it unauthorized rolecasting?

However, it's worth noting that despite the blatant errors being excised, the subtle issues never go away. Wasted potential (the Crimson Order gets about three minutes of screentime here total and then dies off, the Swarm never did anything with the Skylark, etc.), plot holes so numerous you'd almost think we were in sinkhole alley, and the numerous deus ex machina moments don't help either. Additionally, characters get introduced and then dropped really quickly throughout the whole fic.

This is the one thing that infuriates me the most. It's unnecessary cast bloat, and one thing that Homestuck was extremely guilty of.

Nevermind that it ends on a cliffhanger.

I do have some theories on how past me would've resolved this cliffhanger:

• Play it straightforward with Ender and Max somehow stopping Void, killing him, leaving Ender to grieve while Isora and whatever worlds the Spiral Order held on to before the Morai Wars are spared from the Swarm's chaos.
• Make it a cruel twist ending that kills Void, Ender, Max and possibly the rest of the main cast, but save the worlds.
• Or, just make it all a foregone conclusion, which then causes the time paradox to make no sense to begin with.

I can at least agree with the readers that this went so far off the wall it went from mediocre to so-bad-it's-good, which is probably one of the best things that could've ever happened here with these fanfics.

...this really went off on a rambling tangent, didn't it. Oh well.
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It ground to a halt here with almost 300 sins. I never finished the third part and now I'm sad. What kind of crazy things would past me have thought up? Would we get an SK ripoff of Descent: FreeSpace - The Great War? Nobody will ever know, although the analysis does have some theories.

I'll be going on hiatus for a fair bit. I need to prepare a new backlog...

...if I even consider continuing this.

You see, I mostly started this at a pet project since I had given up on fanfic writing (if you've seen how most fanfics after this one never got finished, that should be obvious), and to be honest I don't think I'll be doing any in the future.

However, due to most of them being unfinished, I have my doubts on continuing the project, especially since I'd be able to MST most of the fics in a single long post, or a few posts at most.

So, this throws the future of the project into question, nevermind that at least one Grey Havens forum mod has seen this thread and is still considering whether or not to use the banstick on me.

This also means seeing if I could MST other writers' old fanfics is entirely out of the question, since someone might misinterpret my intentions and report it to the mods, which will then pretty much spell the doom of this thread.

I could pass the torch as well, but I'm skeptical on whether or not it will actually work in the long run, since I genuinely only meant this as both poking fun at myself, and a critique of what went wrong.

In the meantime, I'll sift through the fics I have, see what I could bother with, do that, and pretty much wrap it up from there.

Thanks for reading.

Boo! This thread isn’t dead.

Not by a long shot.

I also have a new development: have finally figured out how to format the MSTing on the forums well without hurting anyone's eyes or preventing me from using specific HTML tags. For Tumblr readers, it won't be any different from my usual format.

However, the sin tally is going away. I know people enjoyed it, but to me, it was a real pain to maintain, because I'd eventually have to recount the sins whenever I found a new one after making the post and in general it was a mess.

Sorry. I’ll have a surprise for the next fic I do.

Anyway, I have a new fanfic to riff on. Clockwork Catastrophe: Tale of Five (written from January 1, 2014 to January 24, 2014), an attempted do-over that stopped after six short chapters.

This’ll hopefully tide you all over until I have something better to temporarily revive the thread with. This will also be a test run for my new formatting, so there's that.
___________________

Author's note: This is a remake of my old old old old old *cough* old series Clockwork Catastrophe. I marked all my old stories as old shames and cancelled some projects, so this'll be the new story I'll be working on. Also, I'll be accepting apps for the second story. I'll give details on that in the near future.

So we start with an admission that that series wasn’t very good (although it had plenty of potential to be so bad it’s good) and also a promise for rolecasting, but that won’t happen since this first fic was never finished. Okay.
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Entry 001

My eyes slowly fluttered awake, to find myself cramped up in an escape pod. Around me, burning debris rained down on the planet we were going to investigate. This can't be the Skylark.

It must be a dream.

However it wasn't.

A large chunk of the ship fell near my pod's window and I watched in horror that everything was falling apart. More and more big pieces began raining down until I heard a loud thud. Then I noticed that I was falling to the ground faster and faster than before. A part must've hit the pod! I curled myself into a ball and braced for impact.

And...hold up, is this an accurate depiction of how the Skylark went down canonically? Amazing.

As soon as the pod hit the ground, I blacked out.

And our hero is dead, two lines into the fic. Roll cred-oh wait this continues for five more chapters, nevermind.

"Wake up." A voice called out.

"Oh for crying out loud..." I felt someone kicking me.

"...just wake up already!" I felt really drowsy. I slowly got to my feet and found myself with another knight. It was a female, who seemed kind of irritated.

He’s not dead. Again, that whole escape pod thing makes no sense from a logical standpoint, but hey, here’s a tsundere waifu, because those are about as overdone as loot boxes in $60 games.

"I've been waiting! What took you so long to wake up?" She asked.
"My escape pod was hit by...some unknown object and the force made it hit the ground faster than it should." I answered.
"Hmm, that explains it. I was just going on an expedition and found you here. There was big hole in the metal dome too."

Is she a tsundere or is she not a tsundere? Make up your mind, past me.

"Metal dome? What metal dome?" I questioned.
"This place is all interconnected by big metal domes. I'm not sure what they're made of, but they're huge." She replied. "By the way, what's your name?"

Ooh, using lore from the games properly I see. Good, good. Now, what will our Marty Stu be named...?

"I...kind of forgot?" I guessed.
"Oh, the impact must've scrambled your memory."
"I guess..."

And we have a typical amnesiac hero, who refuses to give his name. Those are also extremely overdone, just like microtransactions in premium games. I should stop shoving my commentary about the AAA gaming industry into these MSTs. It’s probably going to get on everyone’s nerves.

"Well, my name's Aurora." She replied. "We better get going. This place isn't safe for long periods of time."

Hi, Lillie...er...Mary Sue! No, that wasn’t a dig at Pokémon Sun & Moon’s bad writing. (It was.)

"But why?"
"Because there's only a set amount of time before this dome is switched." She warned. "And then we're trapped until it's switched in."
"Then how do we get out of here?"
Aurora pulled out some sort of device. "We're about a kilometre away from the elevator. Once we're there, we'll take it up." She instructed.

Yeah no, when the gate switches out, the elevator just takes you back to Haven. Nice try.

We walked on for a long while until we heard a loud clang. Two big spiked gates, both surrounded in a veil of white mist. There weren't any other exits, and then we heard a loud robotic voice.
"INTRUDER! TERMINATE IMMEDIATELY! TERMINATE IMMEDIATELY!"

Oh no, it’s not a Dalek! Both of you are so done for.

"It's that thing again." Aurora said, pulling out a sword I haven't seen before. It was a sickly green and had a very serrated edge. While she was holding it, a small afterimage followed her. A large robot crashed down into the arena.

She’s using a Dread Venom Striker? Sick. I should craft one the next time I bother to fire up Spiral Knights.

"What is that thing?!" I asked her in shock.
"It's a construct that's stealing knights and battle sprites, imprisoning them somewhere deep in the clockworks. I raided the compound a while ago and rescued some knights and battle sprites. Why is it still active, I don't know." Aurora explained.

Oh hi Collector. It’s kind of funny, I wrote this long before the first Vanguard missions were added, and one of them was a Tier 3 rematch with this miniboss.

"Oh man...I forgot I didn't have a weapon. I'm done for." I said worringly.
"It's dangerous to fight it with no weapon. Take this." She encouraged, handing me a gun. It was golden, with two statues of birds near the tip of the gun. The trigger was comfortably at the exact same spot where I would hold it.

It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this Argent Peacemaker!

"Well, here we go!" I said, running around it, pulling the trigger. It kept gliding at me. Aurora facepalmed.

Come on, the Collector isn’t that hard of a miniboss.

This is going to suck.

My thoughts as well, lad.
___________________
I still can’t write long chapters, so I’ll combine three per post. That’s only two posts. Oh well, better than the spam I did when I messed up my schedule for Clockwork Catastrophe 3.
Incidentally, how is this new format?
___________________
Entry 002

I dodged it's attacks over and over again like a broken record, and I began to get tired from shooting it. Eventually a shot pierced it's eye and exploded it, making it blind.
"SUBSYSTEMS DAMAGED! UNLEASH EXPLOSION!" The robot nonsensically said.

MY VISION IS IMPAIRED! I CANNOT SEE!

I felt like I was just getting warmed up. I saw the robot preparing a weapon of mass destruction, so I kept firing at it to try and prevent it.
"Take this! And that! And this!" I carried on.

Oh no, he’s repeating Robotnik voice spam. Anyone remember that, by the way?

"You're taking it too far. I think that's enough overkill." Aurora said. She then beheaded the robot with her sword, dissecting it into pieces of scrap metal. "Too easy. I know they'll send another, but I doubt it."

Wow. That’s savage. And hypocritical.

The gates veiled in mist opened. I saw what appeared to be lift close by.

I have no comment on the sentence structuring.

"Come on, hurry!" Aurora said, and we ran for the elevator. She pushed a button with an up arrow. Within seconds we were already ascending.
I noticed a lot of large metallic spheres on our way up. Other worlds?
It didn't matter.
I felt the sun shine down on my face and we found ourselves in a large town.

Welcome to Haven, for the 8492nd time!

"This is Haven, where the Spiral Knights are stationed after the Skylark crashed." Aurora told me.
"You should report to Lieutenant Feron ASAP."
"All right then." I acknowledged.
I walked off to the large building built into a mountain at the back.
I saw Lieutenant Feron's station when I walked in and came over to him.
When I got there, I saluted to him.

Incidentally, no (burning) chasm for anyone. Yet.

"It's a good thing you managed to get to Haven." Feron said.
"Basically, the Skylark had crashed a while back. We sent a team of our best knights to scout the clockworks, and they went missing. Then some strange substance appeared and caused some havoc before we imprisoned it to study it." Feron explained.
"So some chaos has been occurring throughout the place since that attack on the ship." I tried to make sense of it.

Exposition and wait what. What? I don’t think Dark Matter does that…???

"Exactly that happened." Feron said.
"We've been analyzing the substance and it appears to have a crystalline structure. Maybe if we run it through a mass spectrometer we can get the full detail."

I think I know where this is going.

"Hmm. I wonder what happens if it's run through a negative mass specrometer?" I asked.
"We'll try that if a mass spectrometer doesn't work." Feron decided.
"All right then. We'll give it a shot."

...yeah I ripped off Half-Life. Nevermind all the plot holes and questions I have right now, which you also probably have.

Feron activated a node on the terminal in his office. It opened up a hatch next to the door leading underground. I followed him down and into a small laboratory that contained a mass spectrometer that took up most of the room.
"This is where we'll conduct the experiment." Feron said as he remove the black crystal from it's prison and inserted it into the pedestal that kept it held in place for analysis.
I'm not sure how this will work out.

That’s not Dark Matter.
___________________
And so we begin the downward spiral into craziness for the fourth time.
___________________
Entry 003

Feron began using the many terminals around the room to prepare the mass spectrometer.
"We are ready to begin the experiment!" He said. Just then, Chief Geo Knight Wegner came down.

Incidentally, is Feron smart? Is he a scientist? Is he even a full-time employee?

"Oh, hello there. So, we're going to begin the experiment?" Wegner greeted and asked.
"We'll do that just when we're ready." Feron stated.

Gatrnerd: Adding random justs and mixing up sentence structuring in writing since 2000.

"I'm prepared for this." I said, standing by the wall.
"Well then, let's begin!" Feron told, activating the spectrometer.

It begins.

The tubes circling the room powered up into blue lightning, and then a bunch of blue lightning bolts began working on analyzing the crystal. I spotted a message on the terminal:
"WARNING: NEGATIVE MASS DETECTED", it read.

I don’t think Obsidian Shards have negative mass?

"Sir, it's saying it detected a negative mass. Switch?" I asked.
Feron switched it to Negative Mass and the lightning bolts turned yellow.
As it was analyzing the crystal, it began to crack. It let out red light into the surrounding area and then shattered into a storm of red lightning.
I ducked to avoid the bolts.

Nor do Obsidian Shards explode. Maybe it’s a crystal of pure concentrated edge. In which case, I will need to buy a new edgy meter because this one has exploded into a nuclear fireball.

"LOOK OUT! IT'S GONE CRITICAL!" Wegner shouted.

Gone critical...snort.

The storm of lightning launched out what seemed to be a completely black wolf creature that died as soon as it teleported as it crashed into the wall with phenomenal force.

Oh no, it’s not Apocrean, it’s a Swarm crystal! Because that makes sense.

I was shocked by the carnage ensuing until the storm stopped.
The single bolt spiraled into the sky.
We followed it and watched as it rose up into the air.
"That doesn't look friendly." Feron lampshaded.

You don’t say.

It then bursted into a huge storm of lightning, striking many points of Haven. Dark clouds circled it as a bright red glowing portal opened. Eventually Haven was shrouded in dark clouds.
"What in the name of..." Wegner said in horror.

I share Wegner’s reaction.

I felt shocked by this too.
I saw Aurora come up to me.
"What's going on?!" She asked in worry.
"The end of the world, maybe." Feron said skeptically.

And so through insane plot conundrums and weird stuff we caused the great Swarmpocalypse of 2014. Just kidding.

The portal simply stayed there, pouring out streams of lightning bolts. Eventually they all converged on a single point and created a huge beam of light.
We continued to watch.
"It's best if you and Aurora take an expedition. I wonder what happens underground while this happens?" Wegner suggested.

I am just stunned at the amount of character stupidity going on right now.

"Maybe." Aurora stated. "But just a little more looking at the fancy portal before moving on."

How do you even know it’s a portal?!

It had already been 30 minutes since the mass specrometer exploded, and me and Aurora were at a ruined city, spying on the Devilites that lived there according to Aurora.

Oh look, a typo.

We noticed an IT worker working very hard.
From the looks of it all the other workers are at home.
We weren't sure what he was trying to accomplish, but it's fun to watch him.

Wow, you are a creepy stalker. Just like...oh wait. Hey, do you have a bow, throwing knives and a scythe? If so, you should go find this guy called Hunhow and go try to stop the Tenno...oh wait, wrong game. This isn't Warframe.

Feron sent me and Aurora off with a choice of a battle sprite. I picked a Maskeraith while Aurora picked a Seraphynx.
We watched and studied carefully while the portal storm continues aboveground.
I wonder what happened up there?

Everything is still probably falling apart up there.
___________________
Yeah, I got nothing. This fanfic is just off the wall crazy from the start. And from what I’ve seen, it gets worse.

...we’re just getting started, going out with a bang instead of a whimper.

As it turns out, I tried to remake Clockwork Catastrophe, dissatisfied with the end result (which was inevitable). It went about as well as you'd expect and I posted the end results here already.

But long before I tried to do that, I wrote something that went on for a very long time before it suddenly died off. By chapter count, it was the longest fanfic I had ever written for the forums, and to disclose again: I never finished it.

I am naturally curious as to what happened. Let’s open the lootbox and pull out A Knight's Tale (written from July 21, 2012 to October 4, 2012 - unfinished), because as it turns out, things get a bit...crazy in here. Like, really crazy.

Also, you know how I said earlier I’d have a surprise? Well, this is the surprise: to make up for the death of the sin counter, I have brought on a very special guest to MST this fanfic with me!

You may know him for the Dungeons & Dragons-styled, Spiral Knights-themed campaign Machinauts, but now you get a double dose of hilarity from not just me, but Doctorspacebar as well!

Doctorspacebar: Yes, that’s right, I’m taking part in this! From time to time, you’ll see “DS” somewhere. That’s not a game system talkin’- it’s a comment I put down on the subject.

Gatrnerd: And so, with this change of format, you’ll either see G for myself, or DS for Doctorspacebar. I figured this format would be better than the guest commentary giver336’s Mega Man Battle Network 3 LP did, where the guest commentary was in bold and that was an eyesore.

Without further ado, let's begin.
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Prologue: Crash Landing

This is the story of a young knight named Sarah as she finds more about cradle, after the disastrous event of the skylark crash. She will have to find a way to ensure the survival of the spiral knights. Just a warning, this is my darkest fan fiction yet. Don't ask why.

G: We begin with an author's note promising Warhammer 40,000-styled grimdarkness. I have a feeling that's not happening.
DS: In the grim darkness of the near future, there are only escape pods.
G: Additionally, let me remind you that the fanfic is titled A Knight’s Tale. That’s one word off from A Trekkie’s Tale, an infamous Star Trek parody fanfic from the 1970s that gave us the term Mary Sue. Yeah, we’re in for a wild ride.
DS: Incidentally, it’s also the exact name of a movie starring Heath Ledger. It didn’t take itself seriously.

Sarah was walking around the Skylark. Other knights were going around, talking and discussing the planet they were orbiting.

G: We begin with a waifu casually lollygagging about the Skylark before, as we know, it gets shot down.
DS: Now, wait. If she was a waifu, there’d be- no do not make a fire emblem joke no one will get it
G: Nobody will get the FreeSpace jokes anyway, so there’s no harm, right?
DS: All right all right. Uh. Supports. Critical hits? I’m drawing a blank actually

"This is a great place to have an infinite source of energy!" She overheard.

DS: not gonna spoil it not gonna spoil it
G: I think everyone knows by now. It’s a bit...late to be treating the opening of the Core as a spoiler now, even though the contents were still unknown at the time this was written (late 2012).

"Of course, with what we have, we need to find a way to create a path from our home planets to here."

G: ...hasn't it already been established that Isora is the only Knight homeworld?
DS: I have to go now. My home planets need me. Yes I have more than one.
G: I don’t want to live on these home planets anymore.
Suddenly, a broadcast came on. "This is your captain, we are experiencing weak turbulence, please stay calm." The broadcast declared.
DS: Oh, weak turbulence, pshaw, no sweat
G: The return of the missing lines. Clearly if there was turbulence, it would be rattling right about now.

"That's a relief." Sarah said, wiping some sweat off her forehead.

G: Watch, tempting fate galore.

Suddenly, the skylark started rocking to it's side.
"Aaah!" She yelled, as she fell down to the floor by the intense rocking. Several other knights fell down.
"Emergency! Extreme turbulence detected!" An alarm sounded.

DS: YOU LIED TO ME MY CAPTAIN
G: CALLED IT. You can’t trust the higher-ups, ever. They’ll find some new and exciting way to ruin everything.

In the cockpit, the pilots were having trouble controlling the plane.
"Stabilize it!" Captain Ozlo ordered.
"Sir, we can't! It's out of control!" One of the pilots said. Ozlo ran towards the control panel and flicked a switch. Beside it was "Stability Engines". The ship activated two jet engines attached to the sides, and the ship began to stabilize.

G: I...just...what. Why is the Skylark now a plane and not a destroyer/corvette/cruiser/whatever? Where is the giant purple laser? Where are the Morai? Where is the SD Lucifer? Where is the GTVA Colossus? Where is the Capella supernov-oh wait this isn’t FreeSpace.
DS: It’s the future. There are no rules!
G: Or, if this was Calvinball, all rules are nonsense because they’re made up on a whim.

Sarah got up and saw it wasn't rocking anymore. Everyone else got up.
"That was terrifying!" She exclaimed. Then, she saw a massive explosion, throwing her to the ground.
A stability engine had exploded from an overload, because Ozlo had increased the output beyond it's capabilites.

G: What.
DS: Nah, it’s Craig, the intern. He kept trying to load the engines with nitrous oxide. Thanks a lot, Craig, you did the Skylark crash.
G: I knew it! The Fact Core was hiding something from us. Maybe we should datamine it and then get hit with a cease & desist from Aperture.

Several knights caught fire from the blast. It was a horrifying sight. She began to crawl away from the explosion and got up and ran.

DS: Be safe and use caution when wearing Mad Bomber and Chaos gear. This has been a public service announcement by Past Gatrnerd.
G: I don't think they're wearing that...

"This is Captain Ozlo. Everyone needs to evacuate. I repeat, everyone needs to evacuate! Head for your rank escape pods!" Ozlo broadcasted.

G: I’ll assume the big laser in the intro just hit. What IS that laser, anyway?

Ozlo and the pilots went for an escape pod hidden in the cockpit. He shut the door and pressed a button to deploy it. The pod unlocked from the cockpit and began to fall.
He prayed for the safety of Wegner and Feron.

DS: You know, I actually wonder. What is Isoran/Sp'Knight-ian religion like? Is it mixed with the Spiral Order kind of like the Knights Templar, or is it independent of them?
G: Let's not think too hard about that. There are just some boundaries you don’t cross. And then there are boundaries that would make a Commissar’s face turn bright red with rage.

Then he saw the two, in their pod, falling.
Sarah ran past the stasis chambers and ran towards the escape pods.
She quickly opened the door and ran in, but then some other apprentice knights ran for her pod too. They got inside. Two males and a female had hidden with her.
"Okay, this is too full, I'm closing the door and deploying it." One of the females said, closing the door and pressing the "DEPLOY" button.

DS: The nameless female or Sarah?
G: Presumably the waifu that gets introduced later. I almost expected her name to be Noemi Laporte.

They watched from the window as other pods fell, and the skylark started descending at a straight angle. A stasis chamber, attached to the cockpit was sheared off as the skylark caught fire. It and the cockpit flew off into space.

G: THAT STILL DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. AT ALL.
Wait. Is...that...a nod to...NOPE! WE DIDN’T NEED A NOD BACK TO THAT! WHERE’S THE SATHANAS FLEET? WE NEED TO BLOW UP THIS STAR!
DS: That is one unfortunate skylark, but what about the Skylark, with a capital S?
G: That kind of spelling debate is what caused me to stop counting it as a sin (and since sins are now gone it doesn’t matter), plus it's already a way to set some writers off, so let's roll with it.

The knights who didn't make it to the pods began to be flung towards the back of the ship, mostly apprentices, recruits and squires, and then the ship began to accelerate very fast. Then it crashed into the ground, causing a very powerful explosion that killed everyone who didn't get to the pods.

G: There goes the tearium core and pretty much everyone else. That’s not a nice way to go.

Sarah felt immense pain, because she felt her mom and dad die in the explosion.

G: I...what...is she a Nagari sensitive?
DS: I mean, I don't want to sound like a horrible person, but... does she have some kind of psychic link with her parents?

The pain knocked her out, as the escape pod caught fire, and began to enter the atmosphere. It caused a gaping hole in a cloud and crashed into a canyon face.

G: We are off to a great start with nonsense that tries to make sense, but doesn’t.
DS: That ended very abruptl-
___________________
DS: -y.
G: So, because these chapters wind up being too short, I’m combining them for extra fun times.
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Chapter 1: The Dream

Sarah felt herself floating in an immense white void. She couldn't move, or feel anything. She saw her parents.
"Don't be down, sweetie. We will carry our love for you to the very end." Her mom said.
"Make sure to take care of yourself in the future, Sarah." Her dad said.
"Now, wake up from your dream, sweetie, and take our love for you with us." Her mom said again.

DS: Aww, geez, I actually had to wipe up some tears. Screwed-up though the sentence structure may be (protip to newbie writers: dialogue from a different character gets a new line), this scene actually gave me some feels-
She watched as a fireball bursted behind them, engulfing them. "NO!!" Sarah shouted.

Then she blacked out.

DS: -DANG IT PAST GATRNERD
G: Past me tried to feels, failed with the sentence structuring and inner TORGUE channeling. Then again, this was made five years ago. I think this is a sign of things to come, since I read through the fic before I wrote all of this and there are quite a few explosions. That's not a spoiler, right?

Crash Site, 7:27 PM

G: I’m not sure what the meaning of this timestamp even was...

"Wake up! Are you going to lay here and sleep?!" A male kept shouting at her.

DS: Why, yes, because stepping out onto a hostile planet without sufficient rest to react to a crisis is a terrible idea. Although I guess there would need to be a watch set up to avoid being ambushed, and- wait, why am I overanalyzing this?

She opened her eyes with a flash and sat up, gasping. The male was wearing a Spiral Pith Helm and Cuirass. The others were stuck in the pod, scared to come out.
"Ariel, stop being a scaredy kat and come down!" The knight shouted at the female.

DS: One: Inside voices, this is Cradle, people are sleeping. Two: You know about Kats? Hau?
G: Don’t remind me of that rival... (word of advice: Gladion was here, Hau is a loser)
DS: Ok, but still, Kats? How’s he know about Kats? Wait, nameless loud dude is a wizard! I figured it out!
G: The plot holes are everywhere. This wizard must’ve done it and destroyed psionics in the process.

Ariel jumped down.
"Are you alright?" She asked.
"Yes..." Sarah said.

G: Clearly Ariel has some relation to Alder if she can jump down from the face of a cliff without a scratch.

"We need to take our pod and hide somewhere safe. The sun is setting." The knight still in the pod said.
He began banging on the wall, causing the pod to fall from the face and crashed onto the ground.

DS: do not make that joke do not make that joke do not make that joke
G: Head-On, apply directly to the forehead!

He fell out.

G: And he’s now dead...oh wait.

"What's your name?" Ariel asked.
"Sarah." Sarah responded.
She got up and looked in the pod. Several kits with the words "Emergency Equipment" on it. She pulled them off the racks and gave them to the others.

G: How fortunate for y-oh wait this would be common sense to include emergency supplies with an escape pod. Nevermind. These conveniences aren’t conveniences, they’re just common sense. Oh well. Clearly the lines are blurry.

"I'm Tristan." The spiral pith helm knight said.

DS: In a few hours, the sun will rise!
G: What the @$#% does that mean!?

"Derek." The other male knight said.

G: I think I remember a Garry’s Mod skit that used this name once. I can’t remember where it was for the life of me, ugh.

They opened the kits. Proto Shield, Swords and Guns were inside.
"Too bad there's no bombs." Tristan said.

DS: In a few hours, the sun will rise.
G: What the #$*@ does that mean?!

Then the sun fell. And night time began.

DS: In a few hours, the sun will- oh wait
G: What the (!!) does that- we made this joke we stole from Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series thrice
DS: That said, ending on “And night time began.” was sufficiently ominous for my tastes. In anything else, I’d be psyched for some crazy stuff to happen!
G: But now everything will change when the Fire Nation attacks.
DS: I’ve read ahead and this comment made me laugh. Anyhow, this is the end of this post, right?
___________________
G: Yup, because doing it all in one post would be unwieldy, hit the character limit and probably annoy everyone with tl;dr galore. So let’s cut it piecemeal like every single game these days. And stow it away in loot boxes.
DS: Take heart, Gatrnerd. No matter how bad this fic gets, it will never be as bad as loot boxes. Loot boxes make me sad.
G: Let’s not say the truth because the mods will probably ban us both if we denounce the game itself for doing this...
DS: I’m not too worried, TBH. I got really salty about the Sun Shards nerf, and didn’t get banned when I honestly got a little too toxic.
G: Still. Better safe than sorry. Anyway, hopefully this new format proves to be just as amusing as the previous. I’m looking forward to doing these more, although they might become more sporadic.