Author’s Note – the Great Pond (Patreon)

What a load of nothing, right? I hope it was an enjoyable load of nothing. Well, a few things happened, but let me begin by telling you something about me.

I LOVE slice of life shows.

I find books and basically every other medium that doesn’t relay the everyday life of its protagonists in some way extremely disappointing. As such, I wanted to do something without any real stakes involved for a while. And, to be honest, it was kinda necessary.

With the end of the last season, I was in kind of a demotivated phase. I had written the major scenes I wanted to get to, being Thana’s awakening and the World Soul respectively, so I was kind of just going along the motions. When I decided to just fuck it and have fun with this arc, that helped me get excited for the story again. Recharge my action batteries, if you will.

Still, the 150k words this arc took may have been a bit excessive with how little happened. I got a lot of feedback saying they didn’t really like this prolonged period of relaxation, which is justified and all. I can at least guarantee you that something like this isn’t planned to happen anytime soon.

There will be one more arc about basically nothing of importance happening, but there will be a lot of stuff between then and now.

So what was there of noteworthiness?

Salamander springs to mind. This is another thing I like doing that sadly take the ‘Ooomph’ out of some things: give the protagonist the ability to do a terrible thing in a controlled environment, thus minimizing the risk. You know, do what people with a brain do. I hope Izha was at least somewhat disturbing despite its very short appearance. It will probably surprise nobody when I say you will see more of it in the future.

I don’t have too much to say about that storyline itself. Salamander explained herself quite thoroughly and all I can add is that I laid the foundation for this all the way back when Undine did it to herself, which was shown in the flashback.

Another important thing was the Metra side story. Usually I explain the events of the short story shortly after it so the short story is an optional read, but it will take a while until John gets to find out the things about the end of Babylon himself.

There was the acquirement of the yacht, which honestly was more of a short-term decision. Just like the pirates themselves. A bit of silly fun and a giant reward for all that nonsense.

There are also my Patrons! You guys are awesome, keep feeding me money and I will make chapters out of it!

So where do we go from here? Into one arc with a lot of tiny time skips, some traditional grinding, some not so traditional normal work, some very special work and John exploring the local situation as he establishes his guild as a local power to unite the area. Will I subvert expectations or will it mostly work out?

Find out in the next arc of the Gamer, Season 3 Arc 2, Scarlett Thorne.

(Nope, no extended character insight this time)