Aaaand there we go, finally went back through and fixed things up. I wound up making less blatant changes than I expected overall, mostly just fixes to the phrasing and paragraph structure; even sleep-deprived as most of the last section was written as, I must have been doing
something alright. Still, changes were made, and I actually went and added a bit of extra detail to the Murakumo meeting, and made the Nagato scene at the end a little more concise and natural. Fun times and all. Now I can feel free to shift my focus properly to the next chapter, which again, I expect to be shorter overall.
I wound up already saying most of what I had to say about the chapter in the post up above, but for a few other stray thoughts - this chapter, particularly the tour, is
packed with foreshadowing, some of it subtle and some of it less so. It may not be hard to spot some of it, especially the stuff referencing events that are already in the anime
, but I'm still hopeful that whenever I (eventually) finish the story, going back through here should be a goldmine of "Oh, so this was leading up to that,
goddammit Lazarus." If at least one person doesn't want to slap me by the end, I will have done a poor job indeed.
Also, as a note more related to the anniversary than the chapter itself... Back in October of last year, when I was still in between Episodes 11 and 12 of the anime, yes
before I even knew the ending, was when I wrote the first two pieces of prose that would become this story, neither of which have actually been posted here yet. The first was just a sort of prologue snippet thing that I haven't included on account of spoilers, but I may throw it in as an interlude between Act 6 and Act 7, as a nice lead-in the the finale. The second piece takes place deep in Act 5, and is probably one of the darkest points in the story. (Though there will be plenty of contenders.) By this point it's already outdated in some ways as I've tweaked the details since, but the broad idea remains the same, and marks the point where the anime and this story will have diverged in full. Oh, and
this was the song I was listening to at the time and that heavily influenced the scene. In particular, the section from 2:00 to 2:28; just to give you an idea of what kind of happiness, cheer, and joy are waiting in the wings.
(Again, though, I want to clarify that I'm not approaching this from a 'dark for the sake of being dark' perspective. I believe very much in the idea of "earn your happy ending," not "there is no happy ending." The intense blackness of the abyss serves only to make the light at the end of the tunnel shine even brighter.
But that's a
long ways off yet. For now, let's just look forward to the introduction of the final member of our primary cast, and the shenanigans of Fubuki reenacting every Rocky movie ever.
