Season 1 Author’s Note

HELLO!

I have no stupid reference for the start today.

I thank everyone who has been reading Season 1 of my branch. To my readers: Thank you for taking interest in this mediocre shitfest, I know my typos are sometimes horrible and that I may not be the best at storytelling overall, but a lot of you stick with me anyway.

A special shout out goes to the ones of you that decided to join the Discord.

Thanks to DraMr for posting corrections for my typos and being overall helpful ^^

Thanks to sasori86 (who now has his own branch) for the memes

Thanks to TheHanyou for proofreading my stuff

And finally

Thanks to Kyonchi for keeping my girls safe, may you handle Thana with care.

Of course, my thanks also go to TheDespaxas for creating this story in the first place. Keep up the good work, mate!

With that out of the way let us move on to the Arc and then let us talk about the Season as a whole for a bit.

There were three goals to this arc that I set out to do:

Number 1, Introduce extended I.D. rules. This way I won’t have to deal with any of that in the future, although I might introduce one or two more mechanics in the future the groundwork is now made.

Number 2, Evolve the elemental girls. For a guy that set-up to build a harem at the start it sure took a long ass time for John to get one. Welp, now we are 4 girls richer (5 if you count Mono, but she has yet to get a real spotlight).

Number 3 was, of course, the Thana confrontation. John clashing with one of the stronger beings in the Abyss marks the change from John as a noob to John as a pro.

There were a few more things I got done along the way, the Nathalia Side Story and a couple of other chapters extended on how godhood works in my branch. Gaia got her face out there for the first time, that was a fun bit of sass blasting.

With over one hundred thousand words this Arc was easily the longest so far. A shitload of grinding. I hope I didn’t overstay my welcome here but I don’t seem to have lost readers, so I think you guys will survive. I skipped some stuff towards the end (namely Mono getting stuff) because It was about fucking time we finally get to Thana.

Speaking of her: I am sorry but anybody who thought this would have a happy ending for her is naïve or overly hopeful. The Arc is literally called “Shadow of the day” after the song from Linkin Park. The only outcome ever possible was for her to die, because that is how I set up the rules. More about Thana later tho, let’s talk about the season.

Season 1 started off with the prologue where I had no idea where the fuck I would take this story. This is how I usually start off though. I just throw shit at a wall, see what sticks and then I start constructing a narrative around it until my brain does its thing and suddenly I have the whole story planned out. Which was effectively the case once we reached Arc 2, where I first mentioned the Blood of Thana, as from there the event sequence that would lead to Lydia coming around was in motion. Now, of course, I also set more things up for the future, like that prophecy of the Horned Rat for example, but most of these are hidden. Wonder if anyone will spot them and combine the dots.

Just because I can: here is some data

So, yeah, seems like I am making progress as an author.

If I had to point my greatest regret in this season were two things: A, overusing Rave (I know most of you love her, but she has been on the screen too much) and B, underusing Victoria. I have come to the conclusion that I should have done more with her. With that I don’t mean that I want to make her more sympathetic so that you are more saddened by her but I simply should have fleshed her out more.

With the end of the season we also hit the end of the extended tutorial. John is now an actually capable fighter with an extensive toolkit and I am happy with throwing him into the abyssal political landscape, represented by Lydia rearing her pretty head at the end there.

Extended Character Insight: Thana

Was Thana made just to die? No, no she wasn’t. Unlike Victoria, who was made for a purpose, Thana was a character that grew through several convoluted stages until she finally arrived at what she is today.

There were a couple of unchanging factors: Thana was always bound in some ways, Thana would always be fuckass crazy in some shape or form and Thana would always be accidentally released by John.

In her first iteration Thana was actually more of a biblical figure, an angel nailed to a cross that John would bail out, they would have dandy time until she would fall under the stress of John almost dying. I found that I would need to invest too much time on her in that storyline (also the angel figure felt less fitting). Next iteration was just bad, basically, hyper yandere with godlike blood magic. Scratched because I felt that it was bad. Also I would have needed to constantly write around her murdering everyone else in John’s party.

Then we finally arrive at Nazi-Experiment Thana. That angle worked, mostly, with the Nazi’s and Soviets already in place I started constructing a narrative. Then I found her theme song (In case you are still not aware I create most characters using songs) in the shape of Lindsey Sterling’s ‘Shatter me’ -specifically the night core version – and thus the course was set. As the pieces came together I eventually ended with the conclusion that the only way for Thana’s story to logically end was to die. Yes, I could have introduced tools to make it different but I dislike doing so. Believe me when I tell you that the person most saddened by her demise is me (I actually cried writing her chapter, fucked up stuff).

Moving on to less sad stuff: Her appearance. The pale blue/white colour scheme was in contrast to her very red powers. Also, because I fucking love white hair. Making her short was a later decision, apparently people think my girls are too tall, after making a spreadsheet…

(Yes, I do have spreadsheets for a lot of stuff)

…I decided that they had a bit of a point (I, myself, am 1,92m so I am not the best to judge). Therefore, she was shrunk to the second smallest girl in the story (#1 being Sylph).

I had a big consideration for her eyes and teeth, using them to show that she was decidedly inhuman but also perfectly human. The contrast was made with her eyes being like shattered glass and with the two rings inside that give it a slightly mechanical feel while her teeth were described as ‘perfect, human teeth’ to show that she is just a “perfect” human. I like details like this.

Now, I do have a picture once again, but I do want to exclaim that this time Thana was not based on the picture, but the image just happens to fit very much. If you are (like me) more of the type that prefers imaging the characters on their own, know that you don’t have to take the picture as the word of god. Whatever you imagine is just as valid.

http://konachan.com/post/show/201374/

I don’t have much more to say all things considered. You will get another chapter, that being a Q&A for my characters with questions asked on the Discord and then we enter hiatus. How long? Two weeks minimum. I have a few things to change (patching the character sheets for example) and also another something you will hear off shortly.

This was the end of the fourth Arc of the Gamer “Shadow of the Day” as well of the First Season “Untitled” I hope to see you all for the Second Season’s “Rex in Germania” first Arc titled “Old Blood”.

Funatic OUT