Comments on the NXE 1:9 MSTing

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It just so happened that I went on SVAM on an impulse yesterday, saw that it had been updated recently, and delved into the update to see its version of the compiled MSTing of NXE 1:9. Completely independent of your post, I decided to send my comments on it to you.

I've been waiting to see the MSTing of this particular chapter of NXE for practically as long as MSTings of NXE have been written. The episode of NGE the chapter is (loosely, of course) based on is one of my favourite of the series, so it just may stand to reason that the chapter is one of the most aggravating of NXE to me. It tears out all of the original but a dim echo of the final battle, and replaces what it's removed with one of NXE's more pointless efforts to say just how terrific DJ Croft is. I suppose his meeting the King of England and getting rewarded with the title that gives him an officially sanctioned victory over the vague threat he had all but laughed off before might have been an attempt to show how he's progressed, except for the little problem that he's perfect and literally can't develop in any way from what he was at the beginning of the story.

But enough about the story you worked on. I found the MSTing itself, the third version of sorts of the NXE MSTing, highly entertaining, a fitting conclusion to the nine-part work. The riffing seemed more sharply focused than some on the feeble world-building and the padded writing, but in a fully entertaining way. Peculiarly, I think I can point to a favourite riff, the "diary" riffs on the first 2015 date, but I particularly liked the entire sequence from DJ meeting the King to the end of the trial, and the "faxmail" sequence as well. There were many obscure references which, in the tradition of Mystery Octagon Theatre, that I didn't get, but in a sense they're outweighed by my getting the reference to Chris Davies and his brief, consciously blatant self-insertion Evangelion fanfic "Scenario No Kawari" (which at least seemed to promise an SI with a little less in the way of casual superiority to the story he's entered than many, but from another perspective was notable mostly for also writing his online enemies and friends into the story as well).

I did notice that the riffs seemed to thin out a little towards the end of the MSTing, although ever since making a similar comment about the MSTing "Enter the Young Dragon" I've tried to keep in mind the possibility that you're letting the fanfic speak for itself. The only other criticisms I would have would be a few non-"plain vanilla ASCII" characters showing up and the final overview of NXE still to come seeming a bit perfunctory. Then again, that's something you're not responsible for.

Over the years, I've daydreamed about adding my own riffs to potential future MSTings of further chapters of NXE should I ever have the chance, mostly commenting on the Anglophilic and (to me) badly out-of-date take on Canada. (Thinking of that, I was struck afresh by this chapter's own dose of feebly justified Anglophilia.) Nevertheless, regardless of rather I see any future NXE MSTings or not, simply reading your MSTing of this chapter was fully entertaining in its own right.



Posted on Jan 4, 2004, 2:56 PM

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