James_D_Fawkes

[Hereafter] Chapter XXV: Felling the Sky Demon

I struggled a little with how to handle Fafnir, which delayed this chapter a day or two, and in the end, I'm not totally satisfied, but the perfect is the enemy of the good, and I liked Siegfried's little character moment near the end of the chapter.

Incidentally, "Berserk Saber" sounds just weird, but it's canon, so what can you do? Jalter gets kinda chuuni outside of the main Singularity, so I guess that's just her personal taste.

No, I didn't just forget about a couple of Serva...

Halloween Event Poll

For those of you who haven't seen it already, I shared this in both the story thread and on the Discord channel. Feel free to vote if you haven't already.

Should I do a custom Halloween event for "Hereafter"? 

(CiP)[FRW] Chapter 9: Beyond the Strains of Credulity

Pirates of the Caribbean reference, get. Every time I read that title, my mind goes back to its inspiration: "T'would strain credulity, at that." 

I kept forgetting to post this, geez. Something or another was always distracting me.

Link here.

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter XXV: Felling the Sky Demon

Should tell you how far I intend to get, but it might not wind up getting quite that far, so I might need to change the name.

I actually forgot all about Atalante until about three quarters of the way through last chapter.

Link.

[Hereafter] Chapter XXIV: Orléans

This...not quite filler. It's a bridging chapter to connect last chapter with next chapter. It's not to say that nothing important happens this chapter, just that I didn't want to skip it entirely. 

So apropos of what's said in-chapter, let's give some numbers.

Orléans is about 200 miles from Thiers by road. Straight line, it's 161 miles, but going in a straight line is actually slower, because you have to account for trees and underbrush, so we're going with the roads. By c...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter XXIV: Orléans

I kinda wanted to turn this into a Jeanne interlude, but it feels too soon after Siegfried wasn't that long ago.

Link.

[Hereafter] Chapter XXIII: Requiem for a Queen

I might go back in at the bottom and flesh it out a little bit more. I was exhausted when I penned that last page or so, and Labor Day threw me off quite a bit on Monday, so this took a day or two longer to get written than I wanted it.

I named that town the twins' group went to. Well, it's more like I plotted a route from Thiers to Bordeaux (which is the furthest west node in the Singularity in-game), and Périgueux was the largest settlement between them that was far enough to be "bet...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter XXIII: Requiem for a Queen

Not totally attached to the title, but "Requiem" was a bit too lonely and something like "Lacrimosa (Requiem)" got just a little bit too fancy for this, so I went a different way.

Link is here.

[Hereafter] Chapter XXII: Common Enemy

Picking up from last chapter...

I felt, at points, like that Godzilla movie from back in 2014. Instead of staying directly on the fight, I cut away from it just as the action was getting good to stay focused on what Taylor was doing.

Also, Servant injuries are weird. In the original FSN, getting wounded actually seemed to matter. Servants could have trouble fighting to their best if they had a wound that impeded them, to the point that Saber struggled with the injury from Gae Bolg...

[FRW] Chapter 8: Behind the Curtain

So I wound up doing this one pretty fast, because things are finally moving towards the meat of the story. Not that the other chapters were boring, but that both my and Yukio's plans were finally starting to pick up speed.

Lots of dialogue and exposition, and we start to see the things that Yukio remembers clearest from his "past life."

EDIT: Moving it down all the way.

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter XXII: Common Enemy

I'm not totally attached to the title. The only reason I avoided "The Enemy of my Enemy" is because I think I might want to use that one later on down the line.

Link is here.

[Hereafter] Interlude S: Ally of Justice

This is a little late because it fought me just a little. Between not being entirely sure what to do with Siegfried here and some scheduling conflicts with the editing team, this is coming out a later than I wanted it to.

I hope you all enjoy it either way.

EDIT: Down all the way.

(CiP)[FRW] Chapter 8: Behind the Curtain

We're still in the preparation phases, but we're getting close to the start of the HGW proper. Some of Yukio's plans start to come together.

Link is here.

(CiP)[Hereafter] Interlude S: Ally of Justice

This...required a bit of consideration. I wasn't actually 100% on who should be in this interlude, or rather, whose perspective it should be from. I also considered Da Vinci and Romani, but neither of those two felt like they said anything that was truly worth saying at this point in the narrative.

Incidentally, no, you're not misreading the title. No, it isn't who you're assuming it is. Probably, anyway.

Link is 2021-08-19 13:48:21 +0000 UTC View Post

[Hereafter] Chapter XXI: Divide and Conquer

I'm not sure the ending feels urgent enough to convey how much Taylor feels trapped into this decision. How much she hates having to split the party. I might need to revisit it later and smooth out the jagged edges to make it work better.

For now, though, I'll give you guys this chapter. I think the next one is going to be an interlude. I need to discuss that with the editing team first, though.

EDIT: All the way down.

[FRW] Interlude I: Spiraling Repetition

This particular "damsel" doesn't get enough love, if you ask me. DW has been ignoring her for years, and Nasu has only ever included her in slice of life comedy for most of her appearances since the original FSN.

Let's hope I can do good by her.

EDIT: Down all the way.

[FRW] Chapter 7: Trust Misplaced

4400 words in one go, yesterday. Wow. 

Well, sporadic breaks were had in-between, but 4400 words in one "session" is pretty big, huh?

In any case, things finally start moving towards HGW5. 

EDIT: Moving this down for the rest of you.

Tag change

I added a "Finished Chapter" tag to help weed out the full chapter releases from the CiP posts, make it easier to find them. I only applied this to chapters that don't currently have a public release, so this doesn't affect Chapters I-X of Hereafter or any of An Essence of Silver and Steel.

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter XXI: Divide and Conquer

Taylor is such a mama bear sometimes.

Link is here.

[Hereafter] Chapter XX: Paladin at Thiers

Editor had some real life drama to deal with, so this is a few days later than when I "finished" it, but I hope the surprise at the end makes up for the delay.

This is, so far, a relatively minor deviance from canon Orleans, especially compared to Carmilla's early death. Having said that, the presence of Elizabeth made some sense against Carmilla, but Kiyohime didn't, and frankly, the scenario writer for Orleans kinda squandered the Elizabeth v Carmilla subplot.

Poor Glor...

(CiP)[FRW] Chapter 7: Trust Misplaced

And 7 chapters in, we begin to move towards the start of the Fifth Holy Grail War. 

Link is here.

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter XX: Paladin at Thiers

Took a little bit longer to figure out where this one was going. I've been trying to figure out where I can start pushing against canon's framework a little more, and I think this will work for that.

Well, that, and I honestly don't like Marie and Mozart that much. I don't dislike them, but they felt kind of out of place in canon Orleans. Because they're not fighters.

Link is 2021-07-24 03:55:53 +0000 UTC View Post

[Hereafter] Chapter XIX: Der Dracheblutighelt

An expert on Middle High German, I am not. Also, my attempts at hiding the identity of the Servant in question are painfully transparent, aren't they?

Honestly, considering the forces arrayed against the, I'm not sure how Mash and the crew won in canon. Neither Marie nor Mozart are all that threatening to a woman with a two-thousand-year-old dragon as her Noble Phantasm, and Mash is... Mash just isn't that impressive, pre-Camelot.

I wasn't sure about some of the logical l...

[FRW] Chapter 6: Interloper

It feels really weird for FRW posts to have so few tags. I'm used to decking out posts in, like, a dozen different ones, and that still doesn't feel like I'm covering everything.

So, this chapter is a little bit on the shorter side. I probably could have kept going, but that end point was just so natural an end point that I didn't want to push it out any further than it already was.

I think there's one more chapter of build up, and then we get the first interlude and our ...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter XIX: Der Dracheblutighelt

Perhaps appropriately, one of the first things out of his mouth is, "I'm sorry."

My boy got done dirty in Apocrypha. He had all of, like, five minutes of air time, although to be fair, the fight with Karna in the beginning was pretty cool for what it was. I just wish he'd gotten the chance to do more than fight once and hand his heart over to Cardboard-kun.

Link is 2021-07-17 10:27:51 +0000 UTC View Post

[Hereafter] Chapter XVIII: Dragonslayer

This got long, again. I was tempted to break the chapter up into halves, but the first half wouldn't have reached my 3K minimum threshold, so I just shrugged and kept it the way it is.

Those of you on the Discord would have seen my comment already. For those who didn't, I was looking through Lyon for a castle that would have been around in 1431 to house our intrepid dragonslayer. I figured it would've been an easy thing to figure out. How many castles could there be, in one city?

...

[Hereafter] Chapter XVII: Dragon Witch

It felt a little anti-climactic. It really did. But there was no reason why Taylor would let things go that easily, so it couldn't be help. Taylor never fights fair, so the instant an opening like that presents itself, she's going to take advantage of that.

For 4700 words, it really didn't cover too much, did it? But it was almost all action, and what wasn't action was narrative justifying the action. It just feels a little weird.

EDIT: Mixed up the trigger for Taylor's magic circ...

[FRW] Chapter 5: Ulterior Motives

You guys actually like this story, right?

It gets written a lot slower than Hereafter does, but I am working on it. It just has a lot more buildup to ease the audience into Yukio's circumstances, personality, and character than Hereafter, which by its nature jumped straight into the action.

Normally, with the changes I set up at the start of Hereafter, this would go to the next tier up, first, but I'm going to slot it into the $3 tier, then chapter 6 in the $7 tier, and <...

(CiP)[FRW] Chapter 6: Interloper

Are we still building up, here? We're still building up, here. Geez.

Link is here.

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter XVII: Dragon Witch

And now we get into the meat of the story. Wow, that was a lot of setup to wind our way towards this main conflict.

Link is here.