Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 54 (Patreon)

Chapter 54: Feeding Thanatos

(Original Chapter Title: Feeding Thanatos)

I'd always vaguely looked forward to this chapter. I know chapters where the MC loses can be less fun for Progression Fantasy readers, but I felt like this was an important moment—and at least one of my beta readers caught something I was seeding in it.

One of the more common mistakes I see readers of BtDEM make is the assumption that Black Crow // White Dove is the God of Death. They're not, they're not even gods; they're agents of Thanatos. Divine constructs, more-or-less. Which was one of the reasons I took the opportunity to focus on the difference here in this chapter.

Fun fact: in the OG draft I wrote the full dialogue of the three shimagu twins, even though Ranthia understood less than everything. It felt needlessly confusing, so I pared things down to only keep what Ranthia understood. There's not a lot of surprises in what I cut, but I will say that what Ranthia (properly) assumed was flirting was the human twin saying that all humans look alike because she had more of an eye for ogres. Hence the winged ogre doing some peacocking afterwards.

It was neat to explore a slice of shimagu culture (through the most biased of lenses, it'd be like exploring human culture exclusively through a few 'tech bros' in our world), but like I said, it was confusing. While I absolutely abhor the writing hack of having the characters know more than the audience about what is going on, I'm also not fond of giving the audience a significantly broader context than Ranthia has for most things. And not just because it tends to cause the most dismissive comments I see on Royal Road (namely, BtDEM readers using their superior knowledge to disparage Ranthia for not acting using meta knowledge she has no way to possess).

I think/hope people that reread Blind Chaos (possibly once I get the books together) will find something fun with this scene. At the risk of spoiling it: I tried to show that Ranthia's ability to give motivational speeches has steadily improved through the years. She's still imperfect at it (oopsie, got a bit of sacrilege in there, teehee), but I hope this one feels stronger than her prior attempts.

For all that I like this chapter and feel that it's important, I'm also kind of nervous about the reaction on Royal Road. IMO, the sting is minimized since progress in the war is made (thanks largely to Sentinel Mirage), but Ranthia was undeniably losing that fight. And certain voices on RR hate any sort of setback, with vitriolic fury. Still, Ranthia comes out the other side alive and intact; and there will be lessons for her to learn buried in these memories.

And in the end, I think that's the most important thing of all.