Queens of Remnant - Commentary - Ch 43-44 (Patreon)

Homestretch, here we come!

Not only is 2023 coming to a close, but this story is also close to wrapping up.  I must not have started posting the first week of January…it would’ve been cool to end the story at the end of the year and start 2024 fresh, but oh well…

If you didn’t notice my note, I’m going to take a week off before we get to the last 4 chapters because my life is just insane right now.  I keep thinking that it’s getting better, but then new stuff pops up.  It’s mostly just me not having any time for anything, really, so it could be worse.  Work is a lot, family is a lot, the holidays are a lot!

I’m sure everyone feels the holiday craze.  There’s so much to do!  Especially if you’re having any sort of family gathering (I am).  With that said, I need to crank out this commentary so that I can get back to planning the rest of everything.

It should come as no surprise that I haven’t accomplished much writing amidst everything else going on.  I still try as much as I can, but what little writing I’ve done has come in the hour or so that I have free at the very end of the day, before bed.  By that point, my mind’s pretty much wiped, so it’s hard to get things done like I could when I’m less tired.

I have like…2.5 chapters of Click, Click, Boom left though!  The light at the end of the tunnel is creeping closer.  I was actually thinking that I could remove one of the chapters because the last two are both kind of like epilogues, but I think we deserve two epilogues at the end of a long story!  So…I’ll probably keep them.  I can’t cut something just because I’m tired and want to move on.  Even if I finished the story, it’s not like I have time to move on to something new anyway!  So might as well not rush.  It will be finished one day…

I miss White Rose though.  I want to write White Rose.  The only thing keeping me from doing that is this story!!  Well, and my Bumbleby ideas that I’ve had recently.  But I’m sure I have a partially written White Rose story that I’d love to finish.  I try not to think about it too much though so that I don’t get sidetracked.  Finish Click, Click, Boom first, then think about new ideas.  (Actually, it’s more like “Survive the next few weeks first, then think about doing anything else.”)

Before any of that, let’s wrap up this commentary!

Yang’s chapter is kind of a wrap up because the bulk of the finale is Blake’s action-packed showdown.  I was pretty nervous about this chapter because I didn’t know if it would be grand enough.  This is the final battle - the boss fight.  It needs to be pretty cool, right?  (Also, I have a huge insecurity about doing big showdowns because of some…critical?...comments I received on one of my earliest stories.  It’s stuck with me all these years, so please be kind in your comments!)

Since this AU involved these new powers in the sparks, and we’ve seen the characters use them in some limited instances so far, I really wanted to have at least one scene where we see what happens when you throw all of these people into battle.  And add Ruby and Winter to the mix for some extra fun.

Cecelia’s character kind of demanded a big fight, too.  How else were we going to convince her to leave?  It’s not like telling her to leave would do much.  No, she needed to lose on her terms, on her turf, to finally accept defeat.

She’s the one who, essentially, threw down the gauntlet.  She picked the time and place and waited for Blake to show up.

Blake showed up, alright!

My first idea for this battle was actually going to be the Resistance fighting alongside Blake.  In that version, you have Blake leading the charge like the old school generals leading their troops into battle.  Ruby was going to go with them, and then she would chaotically zip from Elite to Elite telling them to stop fighting.  They would be like, “Queen Rose??” and switch allegiance during the heat of battle.

Then I realized that the Resistance - that ragtag group of ex-farmers - was going to get obliterated.  No way could they run straight into Cecelia’s merry men and have any chance of accomplishing anything other than being disintegrated.  So, in the interest of self preservation, Blake needed to be a little more strategic than that.  Despite having fighters, she needed to use the other tools at her disposal - in this case, Ruby.  Much better, right?

Also, there was just something so cool to me about Blake walking out there on her own.  Can you even imagine…she’s facing two armies alone.  And the fire tornadoes…I came up with those when Yang mentioned Vale’s ‘secret weapon’ wayyyy earlier in the story.  (If she even mentioned it…I might have cut that section out actually…lol whoops.)  If you think about it, Vale’s army has an advantage in that their soldiers have two different types of sparks - wind and fire.  Atlas, meanwhile, relies only on ice.

Does that make ice the stronger element since Atlas is able to hold its own with just one spark instead of two?  Or maybe they’re just better trained and better equipped than Vale is…

So it’s just Blake, some armies, some fire tornadoes, and Ruby sneaking around the back going “pst pst” to all of Vale’s troops.  As much as this chapter is about retaking Vale though, we all know it’s mostly about Blake versus Cecelia.  Cecelia’s the last thing standing between Blake and happiness, after all.  She’s Vale’s version of Ironwood - she needs to be vanquished!

Unfortunately, Blake can’t just beat Cecelia down with a superior spark like Weiss could with Ironwood.  Blake has to rely on cunning and just…survivability.  I’ve tried to point out throughout the story that Blake can fight, but she’s learned by being dragged into skirmishes in the Badlands rather than pursuing a military career.

Cecelia pursued a military career.  Even if they were equal in power, she would win by sheer skill and experience alone.  Talk about a bitter pill for Blake to swallow, but I was happy that she accepted it and focused on surviving until Ruby shows up.  Blake doesn’t need pride - she needs to make it back to Yang alive!

I think this is the first time we’ve seen Cecelia and Ruby interact?  It must be.  Ruby was in Atlas before Cecelia returned from the battlefields, but they’ve made references to each other before.  They have an interesting relationship, in my mind.  Ruby knows that Cecelia wants Yang, and she knows that Yang has a strange desire to find the best in Cecelia.  Cecelia obviously recognizes that Ruby is extremely important to Yang, and the one person who’s basically untouchable - as in, Cecelia would never harm a hair on her head.

So Cecelia’s smart enough to recognize that hurting Ruby in any way will destroy any chance of ever getting Yang, but she’s not smart enough to recognize that all of the other stuff she does can also destroy her chances of being with Yang.  Maybe there’s a bit of denial in it.  Or something like, “Well, Yang knows this is who I am, so she must accept it.”  Yang, on the other hand, is like, “Maybe we try not needlessly killing people this time?  No?  Ok, I tried.”

But Cecelia says that she didn’t go rampaging through Vale’s streets clearing out anyone who resisted her.  In that sense, maybe Yang did make an impact.

Imagine what Cecelia must have been like when she and Yang first met…she was probably pure chaos.  Yang was probably younger and more drawn to the chaos.  It was probably her typical princess moment where she gets outside of the kingdom and finally gets to let her hair down and let loose.  Her rebel years.

Thankfully, she matured and reigned things back in.  That makes Cecelia the friend from high school or college who you outgrew but you still hold some affinity for, or who keeps hanging around even though you’re clearly not on the same life paths anymore.

My ultimate goal for Cecelia was to make her complicated.  Like, did she kill people and do some horrible stuff and probably deserve to die?  Yeah, she did.  But did she also have some complex motivations for her actions that were driven by something other than bloodlust?  Yeah, she did!

I wonder how many people will be disappointed that she lived though…but I also can’t imagine writing a scene where Blake killed her.  I never even considered a path where Cecelia dies, actually.  Blake always spared her in the end, showing how far she’s come but also how different the two of them are.  As Yang thinks to herself in the next chapter, Cecelia would have killed Blake in a heartbeat, but Blake granted mercy.  If that doesn’t show how different the two of them are, nothing does!

Plus, I really don’t like having the main characters kill people.  It’s a tad too dark for me.  I’m pretty sure if you count the number of deaths in my stories where one of the main four kills someone, it must be single digits.  Jacques and Adam in this story - though they definitely deserved to die - and then…I can’t think of any others, actually.  I just try to stay away from that type of AU.

More people died in this story than is typical for me, but most of them were nameless or in the background!  I don’t even want to know the results of this battle…which is why I glossed over it!

We finally got to see James’ spark though!  What’d you think?  I don’t think many people questioned what his power was.  Maybe they assumed that he was sparkless like Weiss was supposed to be?  But there was a good reason why Yang felt so comfortable sending Ruby to hostile Atlas with no one but James accompanying her.

Which makes you wonder…what’s his story?  Where’s he from?  We haven’t seen anyone else with a sand-like spark in the entire story!

James was my way of revealing that Vale, the Badlands, and Atlas are actually just one part of a much bigger world, where different kingdoms and even different sparks exist!  Cecelia also, in a way, has alluded to different places, like when she says that the Badlands reminds her of her own home.  What else is out there?  Sounds like something to explore in a sequel, huh.

I don’t think I’ll ever get around to it, but I have thought about a sequel for this story, and it would revolve very heavily around James and his backstory.  Cecelia would also be back to play another starring role (making it doubly important that Blake spare her life!).  Our main four would embark on another adventure to save their kingdoms, but it would take them far away from Vale or Atlas.

As much fun as it would be, I don’t know that I want to put the work into it.  It would probably be another long one, and most people aren’t going to be as interested in a story that heavily involves an OC.  At least, that’s what I’ve sensed from the stories that people really like versus don’t pay much attention to.  I understand it, too.  We just want to see our favorite pairs fall in love!  (for the most part)

But anyway…I hope everyone enjoyed the battle, including James and Weiss arriving at just the right time.  I would be pretty terrified if dreaders suddenly showed up when I’m only expecting to fight people, and I’m sure everyone had their ‘Oh crap’ moment when the Atlesian army spills out of the forest.  Blake certainly did!  Of course, she had no way of knowing that Weiss had arrived.  For all she knew, the army noticed a big battle going on and decided to try to pull out a last-minute victory for Atlas.

In the end, all is merry!  Blake kind of got stabbed again, but she’s fine - more battle wounds!  Weiss and Winter are finally reunited, which I’m super happy about.  And Weiss has a bit of a problem hiding her whole ‘I started dating the Queen of Vale’ situation.

I tried to think of a way to sneak Yang into this chapter - She’s one of the main characters!  She needs to be there! - but it just didn’t seem feasible or advised to put her in that sort of situation so soon.  Besides, if she did make it to the battle, what would I write about in her chapter?

Yang must be so disappointed that she showed up so late to the ‘party.’  But homegirl just almost died.  She can stand to miss out on a thing or two while she recovers!  She’ll just need to get the cliff notes from everyone later on.

This is all part of her growth, in a way.  She’s used to being the person, you know?  She’s the strong one.  The one everyone relies on.  But, in this instance, she had to stay back and let her biggest supporters do the heavy lifting for her.  That will be a mentality shift she’ll need to get used to.

Yang’s chapter is kind of funny because she’s a little confused about everything that’s going on.  Weiss and James are there?  Weiss is kissing Ruby??  There are armies everywhere?  No Cecelia, but she’s still alive?

Obviously, Yang’s most interested in knowing how Ruby and Weiss got together.  I imagine that as soon as they get home, she’s dragging Ruby into the dining room, getting a huge plate of food in front of them, and telling Ruby to spill.  Every detail!

I like the thought that Ruby actually has a billion secret and not-so-secret admirers.  Why wouldn't she?  She’s benevolent and sweet to everyone she meets (plus, she’s a queen).  There will be plenty of broken hearts in Vale when they learn about Weiss.  There will be even more broken hearts with the people learn about Yang’s relationship with Blake, too.  I bet it was a thing in Vale.  Like you were either Team Ruby or Team Yang (or Team Queens!), and you very proudly voiced your adoration for the queen of your choice.

Tldr; Vale might be liberated, but it will quickly fall into a state of mourning.  Yang and Ruby will be thinking…what the heck?  Why aren’t people happier?

I’m kidding (mostly).  Everyone will be happy!  A little disappointed, but happy.

Yang’s chapter is kind of a wrap up and sets us on the path to recovery.  They get a small moment to plan their next steps - basically, do a lot of work - and then get to see some of the relief already spreading throughout the people lucky enough to be the first to hear the good news.

Yang’s never going to stop teasing Ruby about how Ruby’s ‘solidifying their post-war bonds’ with Weiss, by the way.

Winter’s not returning to Atlas right away, which is sad, but I didn’t think she would be mentally ready to return.  She has a much different relationship with the kingdom than Weiss does, after all.  The people view her in a much more negative light - closer to her father, really - so I could see her wanting to stay away for a bit longer and ‘find herself.’  Also, she can do some good standing by in case Yang’s spark gets out of hand again.  Just keep freezing that sucker to keep it in check!

I left ‘the cure’ ambivalent because I don’t really know how it would work with the other sparks.  But that’s where we get some hand-waving magic.  The main point is that they’re ready to test out some dangerous things and it probably works because…happy ending.

Also, I gave Yang her spark back!  At least, a little baby one.  This was another decision that I heavily debated.  On the one hand, it would be so poignant for Yang to lose her spark when Weiss has finally started using hers.  Yang would then get to learn that she doesn’t need all that power, and that she can lead without it - she already found love without it, after all!

That route was so tempting.  I still kind of wish that I’d taken it…but you’ll see in future chapters why I gave it back to her.  Also, when I was more seriously considering that sequel, I knew that I’d want her to have her spark for that.  And she really had a rough time in this story - this was my way to make it up to her, I guess.

But boy was that other route enticing…and probably better.  Oh well.  Can’t change it now!  (If I’d chosen that route, I’d probably be second-guessing myself just as much today.)

It might feel like the story’s over, but there’s still so much for us to see!  Much of which I’m excited for.  The hard part behind us (or is it…) and we get to enjoy the sweet rewards we’ve suffered this long for.  Most of you have waited almost a year for this moment!  I hope that it will be worth the wait.

Until next time,

Miko