Collide Gamer

Man, that took way too long. About halfway through I realized this might have been better split into two arcs, one speaking to his mom and the other with the whole Maryland situation, but I like having things running parallel. I am not really unhappy with how things turned out, just stretched a bit here and there.

Let’s talk about the end first, since that’s most likely on everybody’s mind right now.

John’s winning streak had to come to an end eventually. The meta reason that there is no tension if the story never makes him lose aside, logically there are just monsters in the Abyss that he isn’t strong enough to face yet.

There was no Romulus to come and save him this time, so the wrecking crew that is Sigmund had to come for John eventually. It fits even better that he is the arrogant brute to John’s proud schemer. I like to think of Sigmund as what John could have been under other circumstances, and I think their initial meeting illustrates that point quite well.

I also understand that many of you will be surprised that this is even the final turn it took, of all the possibilities. Normally, I build up to the final bosses quite heavily, at the very least I make sure you know who it is well in advance, which is a trend I aim to continue. It wouldn’t be life, however, if something unexpected didn’t hit you over the head and cast all your successes down into perceived insignificance. I am unlikely to pull this trick again as I find it generally distasteful in stories myself. Given the scope of this tale, I felt it appropriate once.

Back to Sigmund, he was actually a spontaneous addition made up a bit into Season 3 Arc 2 (Added to the Epilogue of Arc 1 in time because buffer). I plan most of my story, but sometimes new puzzle pieces fall into the picture quite neatly. The last time something completed my plans by suddenly popping into my mind so thoroughly was Nathalia.

Originally, this was just planned as a pyrrhic victory for John without the loss of his eyes. He would fight Abraham, win through great efforts, but they would wreck the White House in the progress and what John wanted, the land and the army, would be greatly diminished and splintered. He still, arguably, got what he wanted.

So, why the eyes? Well, for one, because I already “sacrificed” an arm once and I don’t want to get repetitive. Then because it’s something that simultaneously nerfs him heavily and is also solvable with John’s toolkit, as pointed out with the whole Possession thing. A skill that was becoming increasingly problematic as John got the mana regen to abuse it and its range.

“Fun, nerfing it this way is REALLY lazy writing!” you might say. Not sure I agree, but to try and convince you, I didn’t do it primarily for that reason. It was a supporting reason, for sure, and ultimately made it triumph over other losses (the other two considerations were a massive scar or the loss of his voice), but it wasn’t the main reason. I am just bringing this up so people aren’t uncertain when discussing this. I was aware that this would act as a direct nerf to his abilities and it was part of why I did, but not the main reason.

Now, if I really wanted to make this whole thing hit home, I would have murdered someone in the main cast as well. Beatrice and Gnome both got into situations where I could have murdered them quite easily. I am going to guess that the latter would have hurt a lot more.

I will fully admit that I chickened out of that… in this case. This story isn’t a place where I plan to murder the waifus. Not saying I won’t ever, but you can be relatively sure they won’t drop Game of Thrones style. That makes this story a bit less attractive to those of you that like some real weight to their consequences, I know, but as I often say, this story is meant to be happy overall, even if we dip into misery sometimes.

I hope the loss of vision at least appeases you lot on that front.

For the fight itself, it was… very difficult to write. I will avoid ever doing a ‘One versus Many’ styled fight like this again, with a lot of named and powerful entities. It’s just too hectic for the written medium were things only ever happen in sequence. I think I got it done MOSTLY well; a notable thing that bothers me is the complete lack of mentioning Nia in the first part of the fight (just couldn’t fit her in).

On the positive side, I think the fight on Roosevelt island worked quite well, with the perspective changes and all that. First time I did that, felt very much like doing a shounen anime finale and I liked the way it played out. You can expect more of that to happen in the future. I generally avoid doing perspective changes in the Gamer as I try to stick as closely to third person limited narrator as possible, but for large scale, high stakes fights like this, it feels appropriate.

Now, for the two main parts of this arc, the visiting of his parents and the Maryland conflict. I… don’t have particularly much to say on either. Even though I have no plans of adding Brenda to the harem, as other branches and the trunk have done, his mother not having any screen time ever would have been a bit odd. Also introduced his father while I am at it. I think I am the second or third branch to do that, although they are all different people. There is a bit of wiggle room with John’s family outside of his mom.

Anyway, that whole thing was nice times and exposition. Lord knows I am fond of both of those.

The Maryland conflict played out basically as I planned it. I added some stuff here and there I would have actually liked to extend in hindsight. For example, I would like to write a proper talk show appearance at one point, taking like 5 chapters, just because I think that would be funny. Didn’t really feel right to buffer out the action any further though, since the tension had been a bit low for a while now.

Hope the politicking and the action were equally satisfying. That’s all I can really say.

So, yeah, that’s all my thoughts on this arc. I am hoping for next arc to be a lot shorter, since it has a pretty clear through line. It will be called “Separation” because life isn’t as gentle as intentions are.

This was “A merry Land” I will now be taking my in-between arc break. Normally I take one week off (or two between seasons) but this one will be a little stretched because I want to have the end of a release week coincide with a chapter that ends on 5 or 0 (it’s just much easier to keep an overview that way), for the first official releases, those being for the 10$ Patrons.

The break will therefore run until Friday the 7th of June for the 10$+ Patrons, Monday the 10th for normal Patrons and Friday the 14th for everyone else. That’s 11 days instead of the usual 7, but we’ll be right back to 5 chapters a week after that. Hope you aren’t too bothered.

I’ll use the extra time to pursue some side projects, so if you are fans of those, you’ll still get something at least.

Shout out as always to my Patrons, who make it possible for me to keep pursuing this story with relative certainty that I might be able to live off it one day. If you haven’t yet, consider joining them please; pumping out daily chapters is actually quite a job!

Also, if you’d be so kind, go give me feedback with the questionnaire below. It’ll give me a good breakdown of public opinion, what you want and what you don’t and will hopefully better this story and my writing in general.

That’s all folks, thank you for sticking with me for over 1,3 millions words already!

Oh! Actually, here is a thing I forgot. This arc’s side story! Its coming over the next three release days and THEN I will take my break. This time around there was no proper place to get in during the run of the story, so I am tagging it onto the end.