Leon
Resident Saint Seiya fanboy

Well I do plan to convert Shift into a manga eventually. It is just that it is very time consuming. Which is why I have been seeking someone else who has more time than me, to draw it and I'm the writer.

I did say it was not obvious. So if you weren't looking for it, it was going to be pretty easy to miss. It is something that would have been easier to notice drawn. Because in The Inner Man the house was one of the most common locations in the story and pretty easily identified. So it showing up in another story along with the couple of hints in text, would have made it pretty easy to pick up. It is an easier visual gag than an text one, something I understood already. Especially since, I wanted to have Chiko and Mashiro make cameos in Shift as background characters, but that would have only worked in a visual piece. About the only thing I could have done in the story was describe a young man and a child with the child kicking the man in the shins and him complaining about always being kicked and worrying about his driving leg. Which would have worked as well. Would that have been easier to pick up on?

Considering that you're reading more of Shift now, ahead of my blog postings. How tempted are you to skip ahead to the end to see what I'm currently writing?

Well I did not go out of my way to make it obvious. It was meant as a reward for people that have read both stories, while not being something that detracted from the main story at hand. So I did not want to make it something that would be beating the reader over the head. For those that notice it and realize it, then it is a special reward for their attentiveness. Everyone else isn't really losing anything, but not understanding the reference. Just a layer of complexity. But no, Shift and The Inner Man don't take place in the same universe. Though because of what you'll eventually discover, there is a possibility that I unintentionally created a plot device that would put all of my stories in the Shift universe. It's just a joke that I tossed in, since I've written enough stuff I wanted a little self-referential joke.

Yeah, not like you know what happened in the 4 things that I posted in any sort of sense. >.>

I said it was haunted, because I was making reference back to all of the fighting and deaths that happened in Chiko and Mashiro's house. That's why Yuki was saying that the ghosts of Yakuza are rumored to be there.

Yeah, I'm going to be posting them. I'm late on them because I had other things going on.

I didn't provide a strong image for either, so visuals wouldn't have done it.

Well Seiji wasn't happy about how he was fighting either.

It's okay, it's not a big point. But since you've passed the last time I mention it and I said I'd tell you what it was if you missed it. The house Ayumi is living in is Chiko and Mashiro house from The Inner Man.

Well you can look forward to that happening again. There should be a lot of fun things like that for you. Oh, did you figure out the reference?

Yeah, Yuki's power has a life of its own. So it should not be too surprising him creating different things.

You'll see it. Then we can talk about it. The benefit of it now, is that I'm still knee deep in it. Even four years later, I'm deeply involved with it. So my memory and experiences of it are significantly more clear than the other stories. Plus, it's not complete. So I do still have to withhold what I haven't written yet, but planned for already.

Well it'll be fine either way. When you're free you can read to your heart's content. And then you will see that you're catching up. And you'll see all of the stuff I'm working on right now that I'm withholding from discussing with you.

It is all about pacing. Just keep the big picture in mind.

Well keep things paced. Revealing is good and it is not always a bad thing to reveal a small piece of something early. It is all about how you want to pace.

If you end up reading more on your days off, then yes you would able to get through it a lot faster.

There is a lot of stuff to reveal. The entire second arc is several big reveals drawn out over the entire arc. But you have a lot of stuff still to see before you get there. The first arc has a lot of things going on. So you can see how it goes.

A start and an end is good places to start. It is difficult to know where you're going if you don't the direction of things. But if you have that much worked out, it sounds like you have a good plan going.

I haven't even scratched the surface of Yuki's past. You only know one tiny detail. You've still got more things to learn even if what I've written thus far. And some very emotional stuff too.

Yeah that is why planning is a good thing. Planning things out allow you to know where things should be based on what you want to do in the future. It'll let you see things at a bigger picture. So you know what will work. It is not easy, but it helps out a lot.

For Shift, so much of it is character driven rather than solely plot driven. So I have to figure out how the characters move the story. It also helps me develop new plots for it.

Yeah, I needed some of the characters fleshed out so I can build in plot seeds for the future. There are things in the story now that won't bare fruit for hundreds of chapters. So forward planning is important.

When I get sometime I'll be sure to do what I can.