James_D_Fawkes

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXV: Itsy Bitsy Spider

It was too good a title to pass up.

Link.

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXIV: Queen's Gambit

Not completely happy with how this one turned out. When I went through it line by line, word by word, paragraph by paragraph, it read fine and made sense, but something about the overall direction bothered me.

I'm still not sure what it is. I just can't put my finger on it.

Nonetheless, I didn't want to make this a one for one recreation of London with nothing but our new Caster to differentiate it, so I'm not handling Nursery Rhyme as simply as, "Oh, there she is! Call her Nurser...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXIV: Queen's Gambit

What a loaded title for this chapter.

Link. 

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXIII: Fairy Tale Ending

So once again, a scene of this chapter ballooned a little bit and kept me from going quite as far as I wanted to, but I'm going to leave the title as-is this time. It fits well enough with what happens. 

It really is ridiculous, when you think about it, that Mash's Saint Graph advances just from a little spar with Mordred. But, it's one of those things I don't have much of a better way of dealing with in London. You-know-who showing up at the end of the Singularity might have worke...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXIII: Fairy Tale Ending

This time, for sure, we'll get to that part.

Link. 

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXII: Knight of Treachery

First chapter of the new year. And it's on time, too! Whoo! Taking a two week break did not magically make me forget how to keep a schedule!

This chapter underwent a name change as I got closer to the end, once it became clear that we weren't going to make it as far as I originally thought we were. That fight scene wound up taking up a lot more space than I thought it would, but on the plus side, Taylor got to alleviate some of her frustration about being on the sidelines. A happy accid...

Belated Holiday gift

My original plan to give you guys a gift for the holidays never made it out of the planning phase for no other reason than I decided it would serve the story better if it was in the main narrative instead of a quasi-canon sidestory.

In lieu of that, have this. It's a look at our mysterious Caster from London.

Now that the holidays are over and I've thoroughly enjoyed my two week break, i...

Holiday celebrations, ahoy!

It's that time of year again, and I keep reminding myself that I have not technically taken an actual vacation from working on Hereafter since I started writing it. If you've been paying attention to my schedule, I usually post a chapter, then take a breather for a few days (a "weekend," if you'll pardon that it's usually Sunday that I'm posting a new chapter for you guys and Monday and Tuesday that I take off) before I start writing the next chapter, and I've been doing that without more tha...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXII: Knight of Treachery

Taking this one a little leisurely. 

Link here.

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXI: The Modern Prometheus

In the end, I never found a better title for this one. It's also a little late, but it's a little longer to make up for that.

The real trouble this chapter gave me was the ending. No one wanted to just shut up and wrap things up, and while I could have just pushed that final bit of conversation into the next chapter... Yeah, Taylor wouldn't have let it go. Her insisting made that impossible, so things wound up stretched out a bit.

I know Renée wound up a bit of a surprise for eve...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXXI: The Modern Prometheus

As is becoming something of a theme now, I'm not sure this is a title we'll be sticking to.

Link.

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXX: Artificial Human

I wanted to get a certain length into things and cover a certain something before the end of the chapter, but things went on for long enough that I could only stretch it so far. I at least managed to get more than one reference to the chapter title into the chapter, so even if I didn't get quite as much in as I wanted, I still got enough to justify it.

Maybe next chapter should be "The Modern Prometheus."

So this chapter should make it obvious what I meant when I said London would...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXX: Artificial Human

Had a bit of trouble coming up with a title for this one, and I'm still not sure I'll stick to it.

Link.

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXIX: Sword and Sorcery

Check that Fate/Zero reference near the end of the chapter. I wish we had more examples of alchemy in canon, if only so I had better references for our new Caster pulling off some crazy awesome stuff in his later scenes. Alas...

Are Jekyll's speech patterns too much? I tried to make him sound a bit more like a Victorian gentleman, to distinguish him a bit more as a character, but that might be hit or miss in terms of how well it worked for you guys.

Fun fact: that headline is actu...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXIX: Sword and Sorcery

Whoops. Almost forgot.

Link here. 

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXVIII: The Misty City

London begins!

The opening act is here, and the team is introduced to the circumstances of the Singularity, including the treacherous fog. I actually kind of wanted to push the ending of the chapter out a little bit further, but things wound up paced pretty good as they were, so I cut it off where I did. Ah, to be clear, the chapter was going to end the same way no matter what, but I had originally planned to put a little more space between the end and the events immediately pr...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXVIII: The Misty City

Was originally gonna take this week off for (American) Thanksgiving, but...

Link. 

[Hereafter] Prison Tower Sidestories

The thread over on Sufficient Velocity wasn't satisfied with just having the Ritsuka interlude and wanted more content related to the Prison Tower, so I guess I'm going to do what I said and write some sidestories to fill out what happened.

I'll update this post with every new sidestory. They'll be somewhere between 1-2k in length and cover bits and pieces of the events of the Prison Tower.

EDIT: I think one more, for a total of 6. If you count Ritsuka's interlude that started all...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Prison Tower Sidestories

The thread wants them badly enough, so I suppose I can do a few of these to show what happened while everyone else was running around and trying to figure out how to help Ritsuka.

EDIT: Would help if I added a Link, wouldn't it? Whoops.

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXVII: London Bound

I thought I was actually going to get to push this out a little bit further...but this thing is already past 7K, so let's leave it off where I did.

For reference, the chemical Taylor mentions in this chapter is a part of the cocktail that is the venom of both the brown recluse and the six-eyed sand spider. Nasty, nasty stuff.

What's the upgrade that Da Vinci is talking about? Well, it's...a secret. But there are going to be several people in Chaldea who will be really excited abou...

(CiP)[Hereafter] Chapter CXXVII: London Bound

Off to Jolly Old England we go.

Link.

[Hereafter] Chapter CXXVI: Great Expectations

This...might not be the most appropriate chapter title, in retrospect. Oh well.

We're not quite at London yet, and we won't quite get there next week either, but soon. For now, we need to do some setup and manage some expectations about what it's going to look like when we get to it.

By the way, Ritsuka is getting kinda chummy with Jalter, isn't he? Almost like they went on a life-changing experience together. Fancy that.

EDIT: Moving down all the way. 1/07/2024