Afterword

And that is a wrap! Thank you all for sticking with me on this long journey.

I started working on this project three years ago with the intention of creating a tournament story, not just any tournament story but a massive one, and most importantly one with a conclusion. Because of this, I did not start publishing until two years into the process. By that point the whole story was already written from start to finish.

My word document back when I first reached the end of the main branch was 494 pages long and I expected it to get maybe to 800 to finish up everything

….

It currently sits at 1572 fucking pages.

With 3424 likes and over 440k views, Subjugation Tournament has become my most popular story by a wide margin so I am immensely happy with the reader retentionship I got out of it. With a story going 160+ chapter deep that is by no means a guarantee.

Subjugation Tournament is my most ambitious story yet, easily doubling my prior record holder, Hard Candy, in chapter depth and that’s not even counting all the bad ends, heroine branches etc.

Is it my personal favorite story as well? That’s a difficult question. I think it is my best work yet but generic body control story and Hard Candy will always have a special place in my heart, even if the writing in there is way rougher. Read them if you are interesting in something from me that is quite different.

Yeah, this is just me shilling my other stuff lol

So, is this story over and done?

Well, not quite. You might have noticed that some plot points are left unresolved in the main path. This was intentional and they will be addressed in the various side branches that sprout out from the day before the finals and lead to various girl specific ending. As was already teased, the goal is to give each girl a unique ending. There’s of course also the Beatrice and Sylphid branches that will go on for a while and some various chapter here and there. Maybe an extension of the Aiju and Cassandra branches as well. Then there is that special battle royal finale...

So yeah, lots of stuff still left to write! I haven’t decided yet if I will take a break from it however, I do have a sizable amount of other projects after all that remain in a much more unfinished state. And then there’s plenty of other projects I have in my backlog.

That said, there is one heroine branch that I consider essential to the main branch, which I will tackle right away, so I hope you stay with this one a little while longer

In addition. Now that the story is finished, I finally decided to take it public! If you are interested in starting your own branch please check this Writers Information chapter out. The rules are somewhat strict, so please give it a good read before committing.

Anyways, now that we are done with all this some dev info:

Mari Beta was initially named Mari Banks, a name I hated since the day I came up with it. I eventually changed it to Beta for numerous reasons.

Rasheul used to be Alhustra which is such a generic fantasy name it made me want to vomit. Rasheul is an actual city in the continent lore, although I pretty much came up with it’s own history and layout.

Fisti started out as Vesta and was one of my main headaches. She was needed at first to counterweight Cassandra but Sanakia more and more supplanted her role. I tried my best to make the girls as distinct as possible. The scottish accent thing and her breasts leaking were all later additions to the character, so was her penchant to write smut.

Beatrice and Hebi-san have the same issue, btw. They share the same archetype

Our final villain Minerva got the biggest glow up of the entire cast. In the very early draft, she was supposed to be nothing more then a worf against the Golden knight(who then would lose against the Dark Lord...who would be defeated by Valkyrie)

Her ultimate fate changed quite a bit too! Her initial dead scene had her willingly give up her soul to Asmodeus in a pretty badass way. It was more awkward then badass though since Minerva was just chilling with the group for a bit. Mari killing her in disgust made just way more sense, besides, she still got that final scene of badassery, so I think it works out.

Incidentally, resident douchebag d’artagan did not start out as a scumbag at all and was initially supposed to be a good guy. He also initially got away, pretty much scot free before I decided to add that tower scene.

Valkyrie was initially supposed to be the last boss. She was still not a villain back then and the final would be more of an honorable duel. But that would have been a pretty lame climax

Late stage character bloat was an absolute nightmare. I noticed it too late and tried to course correct with which I like to call the Sylphid girl exodus.

On that subject, remember Ozaru? That one rando from Sylphid’s slaves? She was originally joining the Mari crew too! Her one meaningful contribution was to help Sylphid climb Minerva’s tower.(which was later scrapped anyways)

Poor Aiju, I did you so dirty. There was just very little room for you. If this would be an animation Aiju would be the type of character who got up to antics in the background while the plot unfolds in the front. Unfortunately that does not translate well to text.

Fun fact: It was initially Aiju who cheered up Beatrice and made her regain her spirit, which while cool, made fuck all sense. This was just way more a Cassandra thing to do.

Cassandra was just a gigantic missed opportunity. It occurred to me during the publishing phase that it really would fit her to have lost an eye(coming with a cool eyepatch!), that would have of course been done courtesy by Minerva. I ALMOST retroactively put it in but it would have been too massive and jarring a change, so I relented.

I also regret not making her a Kalar. That would have allowed for a lot more interesting dynamic with her sisters and generally tie into some more plot points, but obviously when I thought of it it was way too late for such a massive change.

That said I did actually do some smaller, sneaky edits behind the scenes. NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!

Femto was just supposed to be a placeholder name that for some god awful reason stuck. I apologize to all Berserk fans.

The cover picture for the story has absolutely nothing to do with it. It depicts a Sour getting bullied by her arch nemesis. In hindsight, I really wish I made the picture a tournament battle. I actually did just that by sneakily editing the first round recap while nobody was looking.

Favorite main girl: Beatrice. I really tried to turn my favoritism of her down as much as possible, but yeah. I have a thing for haughty brats. Especially if they get their comeuppance via humiliation. Which is probably very, very weird.

Least favorite main girl: Probably have to give that to Aiju. Which I would have never thought of when starting this story. I’m sorry, I wish I gave you more agency.

Biggest let down: Lucky, I feel like I could have done so much more with her. I like her on a conceptual basis but at this point the cast was just so huge that it was hard to give her time to shine.

Should have written her out: Uni. Look, everyone wants a cute horse human hybrid as a pet but for fucks sake, just send her on her merry way with Mindi and Estelle, but noooooo! What the fuck was I thinking with that one? What did she even add beyond saying “Unniii” periodically?

Hardest part to write: The Hebi-san branch. That one was just a complete bitch. I think it turned out ok, but just getting that ok needed multiple rewrite

Most annoying part to write: The Sylphid fight. Good lord what possessed me to go with that? There are some genuine cool moments in there but I doubt many people will find them. (Like there is one chapter where Mari jerks off Ben, that’s pretty cool, right?)

Hardest part still left to write: Cassandra Heroine branch. There’s a reason I abandoned the bloody thing halfway through. It is pretty much finished, and I like the plot direction it takes, I just hate the actual writing. Already rewrote it a ton and I wager I will have to do so many times more before I can publish the rest of it.

Biggest oof: The Beatrice toybox. I was sooo hyped for that part! But it seem everybody hated it and it killed off about 50% of the readership. At least Beatrice would be proud.

Biggest surprise: Chapter 98 (Good Morning, Master Beta) has for some god damn reason roughly double the likes of it surrounding chapters. I have no idea why.

And I think this is about it.

Thank your for all the likes and comments. This is the type of stuff that gets writers going, nothing feels more crushing then writing a chapter and getting zero likes on it. So, if you like something, LIKE IT! It might just make the difference between an author abandoning the story or not.

My next story will be considerably smaller scale(I hope) It will also be considerably different, so uh...see you there, maybe?

Until then.