I think that’s a nice note to leave that on.
HELLO!
Funatic here, bringing you his usual complaints of “this arc turned out so much longer than I thought it would!”
At 267’064 words, this one is more reasonable though. We’ve managed to dodge enormities like the Flow Riding Arc for now... although I fear that the next arc will change that again, since I have a bunch of side stuff to clean up again...
Before I get lost talking about the future, let’s talk about this arc itself.
And before I do that, I want to thank all of my paying supporters! My finances continue to be on a good trajectory thanks to all of you and I can continue investing my time and thoughts into this and other projects.
That being said, I wouldn’t say I have reached a truly comfortable wage yet, so if any of y’all have some money to spare, I’d much appreciate it. (/Funatic or https://subscribestar.adult/funatic)
This arc was primarily born out of the popular request to spend some more time on the Kingdom Adventures mechanic. I wouldn’t say the chapters that previously were dedicated to them were wildly popular, their like numbers were sometimes even below average, but they usually drummed up more verbal support than was usual. I would consider myself more of a stubborn bastard than a people pleaser. No harm in giving people what they want every now and again.
So, I got to planning.
The realm was always going to be quite straightforward. Villains in my work are typically not that simple. By that I do not mean that I haven’t written my fair share of malevolent bastards in my day, just that I like to give dispatching them a lot of weight and that things aren’t typically easy even if they’re right.
With the Iron Domain, I threw all of that out of the window. This was going to be a very clear, unambiguous, “There is no way fighting the Ironborn will not be the right call” situation. There was a very clear rank order of enemies, with a big bad evil guy on top that could only be dealt with using fisticuffs. Basically, I wanted to reconstruct the simplicity of a Shounen Manga story.
Which I obviously failed at in almost every aspect. Because I like “realistic” chains of events, the conquest was a meandering path of dodging enemy engagements and gradually diminishing fighting power. This was, like always, not helped by the fact that John is a smart boy who does not want to ever face an enemy without stacking the deck first.
In the roughest possible terms, this arc ended up in four segments: 1. Entering the Iron Domain, 2. The Prep Grinding, 3. Widespread Conquests, 4. The Final Confrontation. Let’s talk about them in order.
Entering the Iron Domain was simultaneously the easiest and hardest part of it all and also where I immediately realized that this could not play out like a Shounen story. They land, they find a city of misery, they get familiar with the situation, then they start throwing their weight around. All around simple stuff, laying out the groundwork for the world and the relative power of our heroes in it.
The problem I had was made manifest when they first ran into Reetha: our group is very powerful. Shounen stories typically get around the problem of having several strong members on the good side by giving them some code of honour (or sheer stupidity) that makes them unwilling to intervene in one-on-one combat. The only way I could have gone about the group not utterly dominating basically everything they ran into was by filling the Iron Domain with people of absolutely absurd power. Basically, I would have needed to break the power scale of the universe and that’s something I am VERY much against.
This was a nice opportunity to bind this arc back into the larger universe. Because the story unfolded on a different plane of existence, the plotline was disconnected from the rest of what was going on. John gathering support not only sets up some future stuff, as he now has a lot of new and strengthened ties, it also gives a tangible example of the world’s interest in him growing over the course of the season thus far.
The fight(s) against Arkeidos are structurally sound. That’s the best I can say about them from my perspective. I have a hard time ever considering my action scenes more than mediocre. In part this is because I know they could be even better, even if they are objectively above average, so it’s just useful for me to categorize them that way. Moreso it is that I think action in writing rarely ever leaves the realm of mediocre in general. Words just lack the necessary bandwidth to have the multi-layered or swift engagements I like from my combat.
At 20 chapters, 17 PoVs, spanning over 55’000 words, the final fight against Arkeidos and his subordinates is the most ambitious action sequence I have written so far. While the action bits themselves were not to my liking, the overarching strategies employed by the different combatants were interesting to spell out. It also gave ample opportunity for a lot of bombastic scenes.
In order, we had: The Entropy Arena, Nathalia’s dragon form in action, Maximillian Quarter Fusing, the Sin Elemental, Rave and Moira pushing against a laser beam, and the combo of everyone helping John survive until Arkeidos gets blasted to oblivion.
There were also a great many “lesser” moments, like the Horned Rat tearing off parts of himself and, later, fighting Arkeidos.
My favourite fight was certainly Metra’s. There’s something so honest about her and it was nice writing the difference between her going full berserker and her engaging in a more skill-focused fight when the Entropy Arena disables the power boost from anger.
My favourite moment was almost certainly the final combination of all allies coming together.
At this point I’d like to give a special shout-out to Omnius, one of my proofreaders, who gave a lot of feedback on me brainstorming this whole engagement. Second, but definitely no less, thanks go out to DraMr who continues to make all of this readable with his dedication to grammar.
And then the arc wraps up fairly quickly. You would know, you just read it.
So, this arc is a showcase of what happens when I actually focus on a single story thread... it bloats out of proportion until it is just as long as every other arc. Fantastic. Complaints aside, I had a lot of fun with this one. I was incredibly happy when I was finally done with the action sequence and will probably stay away from those for a little bit. With the Overclock cooldown, John won’t fight anyway.
If you have the time to give me some feedback, please leave it /forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEjKkcVuWWD617g5cPJPLCiYbOJlavl4GsRU0pfJGxiP_Bxw/viewform
Next arc will focus more on the slice of life aspects of this story. Primarily because we have 3-4 waifus to properly handle. Lorelei deserves more attention, Claire needs to be shown a world that isn’t worse than hell, Delicia needs to be cured, and Nightingale is owed some courtship.
All of this will combine with some other issues. What happened with Fusion while John was gone? What lessons did the volunteer forces draw? How will John repay the favours he now owes? How quickly can Maximillian organize a wedding? Will Rave poke her man relentlessly that Max and Irielz got hitched faster than they did?
The answer to the last one is definitely yes.
For the other answers, you’ll have to return for the next arc. I’ll now take my two week vacation, then the Gamer will return with Season 3 Arc 9 “Maid in Heaven”.
Until then.