Spanner Chapter 6: Teenage Wasteland, Inc. (Revision 4)

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Chaos Angel Spanner — Book 1: Rock City Blues
Chapter 6: Teenage Wasteland, Inc. (Revision 4)

Days 2 through 4 of the 2014 school year are just as chaotic as day 1. In revenge for the murder of the Slasher he sent to destroy the Student Union, SPEC chairman Ross escalates his revenge attempts against the Student Union, and Shira and Jennifer counter by upping the provocation: he sends the Church of America priesthood to pray for Jennifer’s death, and she walks right out into them with neither faith nor clothes; he sends the Dictel Park gangs into his company’s own school, only for him and them to find out just how much damage an entire fight club of nudefighters can inflict...

Following the "pilot episode" (the Intro and Chapter 1), Chapters 2-3, Chapters 4-5. Now witness the escalating series of shocks and disasters that is the second episode of the School Arc...

Table of Contents:

1. The Head and the Tail (August 16, 2012)
2. First Day of Classes (August 17, 2012)
3. Throw the Gauntlet (August 18, 2012)
4. The Death Prayers (August 19, 2012)
5. By Any Means Necessary (August 20, 2012)
6. The School Invasions (August 21, 2012)

Expanded in Revision 4: the “death prayers” and “school invasion” scenes, the roles of Jennifer and Chairman Ross, and the Shira-Leila main relationship line. Moved from Chapter 5: the first-day classes. Moved from Chapter 7: the Jennifer-Willa love scenes and the final scene. Added from the Project Notebooks: the Shira-Debbie fight and the repeated “waking up in Shira’s bed” scenes. The big love-related surprises during the final edit involve Debbie and Brandi, and not those two together (as I’d originally planned in the late-’90s Project Notebooks)...

The original Revision 1 introduction to the chapter then called “Fight for the Right”, then “The Head and the Tail” in Revisions 2 and 3, and “Teenage Wasteland” (from the Who song “Baba O’Riley”) in Revision 4:

One more chapter written during JulNoWriMo 2010 and containing four scenes that originated as scripted manga scenarios in my Project Notebooks from the early Noughts (Notebooks 11 through 14): the bus [i.e., the founding of Team Bremelo], the principal’s office, the five-on-one brawl, the girls’ locker room. I changed those scenes somewhat from the early scripts to refine them and put them in their proper place in the plot, but otherwise they remain fundamentally the same as I when I scripted almost a decade ago. All the other scenes are new.

There’s much more fighting here than in previous chapters (though there’s lots of bombs in Chapter 3), mainly because Shira has multiple run-ins with head boy Bart and his Tournament fighters. As far back as the Nineties I wanted to throw lots of fight scenes into the Spanner manga, and they would have looked too cool for words. However, right now I’m stuck with words, so I guess I’ll have to deal for now...

The title [“Fight for the Right”] is a pun. Bonus points to those who get it.

The final title loses the pun, but it now refers more specifically to the decaying high school owned by a predatory corporation in a decaying suburb in which the final version of the School Arc now takes place.

Chapter 7 →

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Copyright © 2011, 2012 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.