Afterword - Book 4 - Chapter 45 (Patreon)

Chapter 45: Blind Conviction

(Original Chapter Title: Just a Skirmish, Seeing)

Yes, this is another spot where I'm restructuring a bit, cutting the end off the previous chapter (per the OG draft) and stitching some of the next onto it to fix some pacing issues.

This chapter is unrepentantly for my own satisfaction. In any form of media, there is nothing I hate more than the revelation of the villain's tragic past or cause or what have you where they reveal that their motivations are garbage and their goal is repugnant—yet the characters sit back and just let them go on and on and on, as if they somehow had a valid point! Seriously, an ounce of tragedy does not make an openly terrible ambition somehow meaningful or noble! Precious few games let you interrupt the diatribe with more-deserved-than-ever violence.

Fortunately, Ranthia's views align with my own in this instance. Not that the violence she inflicts is quite as thorough as either of us would have preferred.

Seriously though, I hate the trope so, so much. The most recent experience I had with it was Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and it's hard to remember the game fondly without having that insufferable experience come to mind.

If I ever write characters that all dutifully listen to someone's maniacal self-righteous spiel (except, buying time to set up to drop a mountain on them or something), please apply a baseball bat to my face because clearly I've been replaced by a doppelganger. There could be no other explanation.