Shift Comments Thread

[Andromeda]

Chapter 290 is now available! After finishing things with Saki, it only made sense that I returned to Yuki. Things weren't completely finished up with them. There still remained what Momoko was going to do about Yuki. However, things did not really play out, at least in a meaningful way. They're all still confused, though relieved. Which doesn't make it easy to write, since it's just a lot of staring.

I did get to do more with his father though. There was the little bit remaining behind. Which is the final step up for the "adventure". Or in this case, that last plot thread. The one of many that will continue on for a while. Since it is not in one place, it is going to take some time to discover the locations.

Everything is still in a pretty big lull right now. But that's about to change pretty fast. The next set up chapters will start getting things into the deep end pretty fast.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 291 is now available! This is the real start of the new arc, The War Arc. Everything before was mostly setup and some after effects sort of things. I laid down some hints on things and put other things into place. This is when you will finally start getting some answers about what's going on in the area, since I make it very clear that there something bad happening.

I've oddly look forward to this arc quite a bit. Part of the reason is that it has some great payoffs that I set in motion years ago. But more than that, you finally get to see Hiroshi again, which is a personal favorite of mine. He's a fun character and I enjoy his sort of personal code that he has. But this arc is also a very dark arc. It is probably going to be the darkest of the series or at the very least one of the darkest. There's another arc later that gets pretty bad as well. So we'll see how far things go. I can only speak on this arc, since what I'm talking about I've already written, though everything in the arc going forward is going to be a really big slide down into the pits of despair. It'll be in tone, but also different in tone with things so far. An upcoming chapter I actually had to think about how much detail I was going to provide on something very dark happening. Since it is not designed to be something that mature in content, I opted not to go all in. Though the vagueness I provide is probably bad enough to give you plenty to image. As I go through it'll only get worse to when you start thinking about everything.

Anyway, enough of the ominous talk. This is a big tease chapter in a way. I setup things that you won't get answers to immediately. There's plenty of bad things happening with no clear view on what's happening. Right now the easy target is the UN as they're causing their own problems in the city. But the arc is nowhere near as long as The Siege Arc, so you won't be waiting on answers for long. The answers just aren't going to be good ones.

The important thing to remember is that this arc is more in tone with the story. The School Days Arc was pretty happy fun times stuff. Even a good amount of The Siege Arc was lighthearted, though it is where I start introducing the gray. There is the corruption, the prejudice and injustice, there is a lot of bad things happening. Not to mention that if you think about it, Yuki's group was in the wrong with what they were doing. They were misled, but doesn't change the fact that they are actually more the bad guys in the arc than Atlantis. Which is some food for thought. But The Siege Arc started to turn the tone around and point things where it is going in the future. The War Arc though is going to be fully embracing the true tone of Shift and one of the primary themes. As things descend into darkness, you'll realize too late that you're already deeper than you thought. It's been a slow carefully guided one. But this is where the real Shift begins.

So look forward to the revelations and twists. The surprises and the tears.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

The next chapter in The War Arc is now available, chapter 292! While Hiroshi's words hinted at it last chapter, this chapter starts making where things are going a little more clear. The fighting between friends and classmates makes it clear that something very serious happened while Yuki and company were away.

You can see now why I say this is a darker arc. This is largely only the tip of the iceberg for the arc. There is much worse. However, the whole friends fighting friends sets a dark tone for things. Explanations will be coming in future chapters, but when the situation crashed into everyone like it did, there is not really time for questions any longer.

One of the things that was hard and took some time to figure out was Hiroshi's power. Like I've done with most of the characters at this point, I decided on what their powers were going to be a long time ago. I went through and just gave them all powers. Since the way that Yuki granted powers was based on things that fit with their character, I wasn't going to specifically design powers as the plot needed them. They were going to have them and I'd deal with it when plot came to them. Which did not make it easy for Hiroshi, since it requires me knowing Japanese children games to make his powers work. It's a cool idea and I liked it both at the time decided on it and even now. It's just not an easy thing to do. It took a lot of research. And I will likely make up some games myself as things Hiroshi invented, but I will also use traditional Japanese children games as well.

The other fun part was making use of Yuki's continued genre savviness. Since he is well read, he can easily make use of that knowledge to make significant leaps in logic that are otherwise not normal, as called out by Yori. It's not the first time he's done it, but I do try to use it when I can since it is an important aspect of Yuki.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 293 is now available for reading! As you would expect, there's fighting! Got to have some fighting. There hasn't really been any in like nearly 20 chapters. Though even still, this isn't the full blown one-on-one type fighting that you're used to seeing. It is more chaotic and a mess. Everyone is doing different things. So I don't spend a lot of time on expanding out the fight. What is happening more the important thing rather than how it is happening.

The friends killing friends is the important part of it that I left on in the last chapter. Fumiko arriving on the scene and taking them out really settles in the tone. She's not fully reached that point of going around mercilessly killing, since she is a third year and they're first years, so they're strangers to her. So that gives her a little help. But she's already shown all of the signs of where she is pushing towards. Which is something that she needs to deal with and I'll be, but right now things are just going to be stacking up on top of each other. If she doesn't have time to think about what's she doing, then she doesn't have to feel the weigh of it.

As probably should be expected, there is the Resistance, though the title gives that away. A large underground base and secretly working for the protection of the city. Though less of an oppressive government thing and more protecting everyone. But it is a classic little setup to push things into the next phase.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 294 is now available! This is where it happens, what I was talking about things getting dark. The last couple pages just descend so fast and hard into the darkness that you don't realize how deep your in anymore. I've sort of gotten you used to a little of it, since yeah bad things were happening before and I had that nightmare fuel with Yumi. But this goes to a completely different level.

As you read, it is still pretty tame in terms of details I provide. I could have easily gone so much worse, but there's not a lot of point since it's not that type of story. I had a point to drive home with the setting, it did it and I moved on. But it is still a very unsettling imagery.

And I of course pull the pronoun game for a little bit to push off the reveal of who is the mastermind until the cliffhanger surprise. This is one of those big surprises that I've been holding on to. I had all of that stuff with Eudokia that I built up over hundreds of chapters. This one I seeded all the way back in the second sub-arc in what you thought would be a completely inconsequential conclusion. I continued the thread with Saki visiting Takako, but then I shipped her off. And now she's back as the next big bad! I hadn't forgotten her and planned this whole thing out all the way back then. So you can imagine how excited I was to finally be able to talk about this big reveal.

The fun thing is that I end tie back to that story line just before the reveal with Saki thinking about to the mental scarring she took for that ordeal. And Takako came out even worse from it, since she was vegetable pretty much and largely no responsive. And now she's doing all this.

And unlike last time, I'm not holding out on the secrets as long. There's still obviously the big question of why still and even more why with Takako's reveal. But this is short arc relatively speaking. So I'm not holding down the secrets until the end. But this is probably the darkest chapter that I'll write few things are much darker than what I wrote there for what I have planned and anything potentially worse isn't coming for at least another hundred to two hundred chapters and a few arcs later.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Now available for your reading pleasure is chapter 295! This is a little bit of a retread, but it helps to fill in a few more details on what happened the previous chapter. It was rather important to cover them since I skip over things as the chapter previously focused more on Saki. So it skipped ahead and this jumps back to answer what everyone else is doing.

A brief thing I brought up in the last chapter, Saki had tails on her and I explain that they are ones from Hiroshi's group. Which is something that would make sense as I have things explained in this chapter. He's not letting them out of his sight and plans to protect them from themselves.

As it's already started to develop, one of the important elements for this arc is picking sides. Hiroshi is very adamant about picking one, though Yuki naturally wants to be his own side. But it is not something that is really going to work out for him. It'll be something that he will realize soon enough that he can't remain neutral and still expect to do things his way. He'll have to make some tough choices coming up and this is going to be one of the big ones.

The other thing is that this settles up the conflict for the next chapter. Since while Saki was off doing her thing, others were also doing stuff as well and getting into trouble. It is actually a pretty busy chapter over all. A lot of fill in things. And there is the big cliffhanger at the end with Saki kneeling before Takako, making things even more complicated. You should see where things are going now.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Now available is chapter 296 for reading! It may seem like it is going on forever, but we are finally getting close. There are only a few chapters left before we're finally fully caught up. The September Shift is closed out and you have now nearly gotten 30 chapters. I blew through so much of the story in that short period of time. So now it'll be going back to the weekly posting on Sunday.

This chapter returns things to what was going on with Yumi and Yori after they got cornered by Yumi's friends Kaede and Katsumi. I didn't really get to do much with either of them, but given the situation it was not going to be easy. Neither are prepared to fight for real against people that they know. Which is what makes the whole thing more difficult and darker. As you probably saw coming, Yumi gets taken as well along with Fumiko. And it is clear with the end of the chapter that Saki is sided with Takako now as well. The genre savvy probably know what's going on, the rest of you will learn in like 6 or 7 chapters.

I finally get to show off the powers of Kaede, Katsumi and Miyako. I gave Kaede and Katsumi powers a long time ago in prep for this. Like I said before, everyone was given powers. I just hadn't gotten to do anything with them. There are some in there that I gave some really silly powers to because I didn't want to be formulaic for all them. Kaede has some fun powers and Katsumi's aren't completely clear right now but will explain themselves in time. Miyako's power is the one that is actually different than what you think. It'll be something that will be explained later, but for now I'm intentionally painting in a misleading light.

Enjoy!