A bit of an awkward arc, pacing wise, I got to admit. I think Romulus speech at the end of the Arc 2 hyped people up a bit more than anticipated, at least judging by the comments I got, and then abyssal warfare in my branch is basically gang clashes…Ah well, hope you still liked that part.

I accelerated the pacing to cut out basically anything I felt wasn’t necessary in the moment or later until Lydia was saved. I don’t like dangling plot-lines that get delayed again and again, so it was a straight race to her rescue and then the stakes were gone for John and Romulus was back on the plate so the war ended right there, essentially.

I think some of you may be disappointed with the lack of an actual final fight this season (closest we got was the battle of Warsaw) but the goal here was too show just how oppressive Romulus power is. This may have lead to underplaying the actual strength of one of the supposed big 10, even if it was one of the weaker ones.

Then there was the question where to end this arc. My format kind of limited me there, because I only do a single epilogue chapter. I was thinking about breaking it and making everything past the destruction of Moscow the epilogue, but that would have been pretty weird.

I honestly don’t really have much to add to the previous Author’s Notes about this Season. This is mostly due to the pretty streamlined nature of it. Let’s just show you in data.

Now, as per usual, I will take a moment shill my Patreon. As you can see you have come into the questionable pleasure of reading another 500k words over the course of the season. I am not going to reiterate my usual points about how well you get away in the deal, just know that I would like to be reimbursed in some way.

For my patrons, you are awesome, the Q&A will be a separate chapter after his one. I will have the characters answer to the best of my ability.

Anyhow, back to the structure of the season. As you can quite easily see, the tournament and what directly surrounded it consumed the bulk of the season. Which was planned, as the second arc is supposed to be the longest in this story as a whole.

Because everything in Arc 1 and 2 revolved around the tournament in some way and Arc 3 then dealt with a rather immediate threat, this season didn’t leave me with a lot of wiggle room for stuff. People have been asking quite clearly for more Achievements and Quests to happen and I think the more flexible structure of next season will be a good place for that.

While I don’t have a lot to say about this season itself, I want you all to remember with me how crazy this whole journey has been. This season saw the addition of Lydia, Siena, Nia and Eliza to the waifu pool, last of which I had to bring back from the dead for the occasion. Well, you really like her, so that’s good. It also had the highest concentration of waifu’s in a single room in the whole story, I can promise you that much. Things will break up a bit from here on out and partly already have with Nathalia removing herself from the story in an awkward way.

Speaking of that, if it felt rushed in there for you (have heard that from a few people) I actually want to say that is intended this time around. Sometimes weird things just happen in life. Intended does by no means necessitate it was good though and all that.

This season had a few “odd” events that were intentionally weird. For example, John not having part in the initial battle for Warsaw but instead running underground. The chapter that is literally called ‘Deus Ex Metracana’ also helped.

Yeah…that’s about all I have to say. A bit little, I know, but at least I can promise a more upbeat next arc. Time to de-escalate the story and all that.

______________________________________________________________________

Extended Character Insight - Lydia

People who know me know that I have a hard-on for Prussia and I have gone on record saying that I will have Prussia in some form in any story I feel I can get away with it. I also have a thing for stern girls, bureaucracy and redheads. Granted, Lydia isn’t really a redhead but hey, close enough.

Now I think I don’t actually have to tell you a lot about our princess turned queen. I am very happy with what I put on the screen here, as it is pretty much exactly what I wanted her to be. There are some decisions when writing about Lydia that I think I can elaborate on though.

Let’s start with something subtle: Her speech. I don’t know if you even noticed this but I have a habit of trying to give each character certain distinctive speech patterns. In some cases (Rave and Eliza) those are pretty obvious but with Lydia it was a bit harder. The idea with her was to never use the first word someone would use to describe something when there was a second less used and more eloquent word to express it. Occasionally this would mean that she sounded a bit pretentious, at others it probably flew by most of you. Someone who talks with a bit more finesse instead of grace wouldn’t necessarily be more apparent in a crowd.

Next were her design choices. I have to admit that Lydia’s looks come from a design process I have since discontinued since I find it insufferable in the long run, which is basing a character entirely on a picture. The only time I did this and I was 100% happy with the result was Rave and that is because I actually didn’t go out of my way to find the picture but instead saw it and it just clicked. With Lydia I sought out a picture that spoke the necessary words to me and it all became rather mechanic in feel. It’s pretty compromising on the creative freedom when you limit yourself to the products of another’s mind.

I have done something similar with Nia, but Nia has enough original design elements that I am happy with the result. Then there is Aclysia, but she has several reasons as to why this doesn’t apply to her. Don’t be surprised if I give Lydia a change of attire sometime soon (same for Gaia btw, who is based on Tatsumaki and now that I am commissioning my own art I feel like I should re-do that design to be more original).

Now I did with Lydia a thing that I also did with Rave and Eliza, which is make her eyes change dependant on how she feels in the moment. Like claws and wings, something about changing eyes just speaks to me.

Lydia’s powers actually went through several revisions before I arrived at a simple metal mage. She started out as ludicrously OP in my mind, the kind of powers she had shifting between about a dozen different things, but that didn’t really work out since I can’t just continue throwing OP characters into the mix, especially since Rave isn’t supposed to be outclassed in fighting by just about every new girl that comes in. I couldn’t make her weak either, so I had to place her somewhere in the middle ranks of the people who are good, but not monsters like John, Eliza or, eventually, Nia.

So, I did as author’s like to do when they aren’t sure what to do and just looked at existing sayings. ‘Prussia hatched out of a cannonball’ is something Napoleon once said and just like that I arrived at Princess of Steel.

Then it was backstory time. Originally hers was pretty boring, she just was a princess, end of story. I actually would have been happy with that, I don’t think every character needs an overly tragic backstory, but I wanted to tangle her up with the eventual invasion somewhat more intimately so the subplot with her father rolled around and integrated itself right into the fabric of the story. I won’t claim it happened seamlessly, but it happened quite well, I think.

Lydia also was the actual tutorial guide for the Abyss for most of the story because Rave canonically sucks at explaining things. This led to quite a few lore dumps over the course of this season, but she handled those quite well.

And that’s just about all…Ah, I guess I should address her anal favouriting for a moment. I did it because I didn’t have an anal girl yet. Yes, sometimes I do things just to close gaps.

And now I am actually done.

I hope you all liked Season 2 of the Funatic branch of The Gamer, CHYOA edition ‘Rex in Germaniae’ and will be back for Season 3 ‘Years of Freedom’’s first arc ‘Across the great pond’.