Season 3 Arc 11 – Author’s Note
This arc is 240k words… WHEN?!
Y’ello!
I’ll just come straight out of the gate with the admission: yes, this arc entirely exists because I wanted an axolotl woman. Deal with it.
Continuing from there, I actually think that, as a focused story, this is among the best arcs this season. Much like the ‘Another Kingdom’ arc, this one existed less to drive the overall narrative forwards and more as a specific campaign that John embarked on. Of course I still did pull on some threads, the home issues being one example, the Lorylim another, but overall, this arc was about John and harem chasing down a potential threat, finding it, and eliminating it.
That same focused nature leaves me with relatively little to say about the overall plot. It was a pretty standard narrative. I did take great joy in messing with the simplicity by throwing all of these competing factions in the mix though.
There were a couple of themes and mechanics in this arc that I simply wanted to use. First off was the utilization of a disease as the primary weapon of the antagonist. I have slightly overdone it, I feel, in the usage of the word ‘purple’ but otherwise I am quite happy with how all of this went down. It's difficult to catch John off-guard, but I feel this was a justified way to do so. It also provided a ticking clock.
I also wanted to use the Aztecs one way or another. My first plan for this arc was another Kingdom one, but I did not know what reason I would have for him to seek something like that out. I also would have robbed myself of all the fun factions that I threw in there, so that plan was discarded in favour of ‘ancient realm hiding in a scarcely visited corner of the world’.
The core of what I wanted to do with the Aztecs was the whole “their gods died and so they made their own” bit. Now, this was originally a much larger plotpoint. That would have led to the original idea for Arkan, by the way, but those ideas have completely diverged since.
I also wanted to show off more of Remus’ influence on history. Not much to say there, just know I did it.
Atlas was honestly more of a spontaneous thing.
Illuminati, Azure Tribe and Lorylim being there, I don’t have much to say about.
For the Grim Reaper, there’s a little more to share. The Grim Reaper being the Wanderer has been intended since the name was first on the map. I had another first appearance originally in mind, but this one worked much better. I wanted him to be a True Neutral kind of guy and I think I have succeeded at that.
Of course he was also the second most powerful entity in the arc and handed John an unequivocal loss. It’s important to do that from time to time so the world stays dangerous. John is not at the peak yet, and even when he gets there… well, even Zeus had to share Olympus.
Now, as for the villains this arc, the three that are important are Macuil, Xipe-Totec, and Huitzilopochtli (who I place in this category with hesitancy, but I will get there).
Starting with Xipe-Totec, the Flayer Lord is the hedonistic henchman. That’s not all that he is, but he isn’t much more. The implied backstory for him is that he found Macuil out after the god of gluttony had taken over, but, like many others who did the same, decided to side with the shadow ruler over aiding civilization. Macuil got an extra dose of nihilism after realizing that his whole civilization was essentially planted by Remus. Essentially, he’s the ‘angry at the whole world’ kind of character.
Xipe-Totec was there to introduce Macuil before Macuil actually came around, since the two share many character traits, being leader and henchman. He was also there to act as the face of the horrid side of Aztec civilization. He was also there so there was more space for final fights.
Macuil, the main antagonist of this arc, was a little bit of a break from the norm. The intention with Macuil was to write someone who got a lucky combination of very easily stacked powers and one scheme that worked out perfectly. Since then, he has been coasting on his success without any real challenge and so he was pretty pathetic when it came to his actual fight strategy.
To that end, Macuil was simultaneously the most and least threatening enemy that John faced in a while. From start to finish, Macuil behaved within John’s expectations. The only reason why they almost lost was that he had just so many resources stacked up in his favour. He is sort of the anti-Arkeidos, where I went for a villain that has everything he wants with barely any work put into any of it. He had none of the presence, grace, or willpower. Macuil was strong because Remus made him strong.
As for Huitzilopochtli… as much as he was a victim of his fate, I also want to underline that he was a villain of his own right. Rather than the outright evil of Macuil and Xipe-Totec, Huitzilopochtli is cowardice. His little acts of undermining the two of them never amounted to much. He could have tried to launch a coup at any time. He would have failed, of course, but that’s not a good excuse when aiding the god of gluttony for several thousand years. He was a thoroughly broken man that, at the very end, managed to summon a spark of virtue to sacrifice himself for the girl he had raised.
And beyond that… not much to say. Good amount of hype scenes this arc. The elemental evolutions are completely done now. No idea how I could come up with anything more for them at this point.
Yeah, I think that’s it.
Oh, right, one more thing: the fights.
An express goal I had this arc was to give every present haremette (bar the individual elementals) their own POV fight scene. Some of them were a bit filler (Metra vs Xipe-Totec springs to mind), others were pretty pivotal (Elementals vs… Xipe-Totec). I think I did fairly well on this altogether. It’s definitely a manifestation of increased POV switches being something I decided to do.
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And that’s about it for me.
Next arc, things will calm down a little bit, if only because John has to keep his feet still. There’s politicians to appease, a debuff to wait out, a demigoddess to console (she’s only just begun putting herself back together), a redhead`s complaints to listen to, and the general harem stuff to enjoy. I’ll try not to put up another lewd wall. There will be some Slice of Life focus though.
Nathalia, Nightingale and Eliana deserve a bunch of cuddles for waiting. As do Lydia and Lulu.
Maybe some Layla?
I shall call next arc… ‘Superb’.
And now I’ll take my 2 weeks off.
Until then~