P.P.P.S. If would be grateful if someone pointed me If I failed to convey specific things (see below) There is still time to patch bugs in these chapters.
>I don't warm them
warm or warn?
Ugh
harm. Corrected.
that merely escaping it counts as pay off for the length and difficulty.
First and foremost, they
saved their world by disconnecting it. After that, their own escape is only a cherry on top (though it may feel more important story-wise).
I will add more emphasis on them having saved their world. If this vital point is that easy to miss, it won't do. I will insert ham-handed references into all three chapters.Thirdly, adding a political charge can be a good way of getting a reaction to a story.
It is purely in reply to all that "Nazi Crystal Tokyo" crap. It enrages me.
Provisionally, assuming certain things happen in the sequel.
Oh, they will! That universe is going to play to Ranma's strength, and will have lots of glorious ass kicking!
>Is anyone up to guessing what franchise is it going to be? I scattered a lot of hints around.
Mahouka. Tatsuya Yotsuba's Material Burst is just what The Doctor ordered to deal with the Ahs. /powerwankery
Can't be Lensmen. No Arisia, no Lens, no Lensmen.
A miss
There's a hint: it won't be any anime, nor manga, but a franchise born in the USA.
I'll be frank. This fic, as it is, was an experiment: can I write a story without any antagonist, a pure PVE (protagonist versus environment)? I deviated from that principle a bit by adding minor antagonists here and there. But then, these could be considered mobs, a part of the environment.
I must admit
I am deadly tired of writing such a story. The answer is : yes, I can. But it is not too fun to write, and not as much fun to read.
I am going to cut loose in the sequel. Don't expect anything sooner than at least October, though. I am currently reviving the Cheb's Game Engine project and won't progress in writing unless I get that out of my system.
Mostly, my meager analytical abilities were choking on the big picture.
Overloading the reader's brain was my intent for Ch.40. It is the best and closest I can get to a Gainax ending. Every detail there is important, especially in explaining the sequel's universe, but there is too much -- by design -- to take in one go.
(I think the existence of the USSR was the major root cause of the Third Reich. I also think that a less crazy expansionist German empire might've been able to end the USSR; the Nazis were apparently welcomed as liberators at first.)
Bull. Shit. (forgive me my French) The German nation let their butthurt over the result of WW1 guide them (with a help from H.-man, whose Bard's Fire feat and CHA over 25 were totally misused). They were seeing Russia as nothing more than fertilizer for their empire, USSR or not.At first I thought your A-Asch was modeled off of the version from Legend of Koizumi.
No, roughly his historical self, assuming
A) his portrayal in any media is deliberately inaccurate
B) he got a serious epiphany in the end when everything he strived for was crashing down around him.
In short, he
had changed.
Just that you know,
I read his "Mein Kampf" as part of my research for this chapter. I had to drop it after the first third, though, as it began
subverting me. A sweet poison, indeed.
Among other things, Hitler seems to fit the pathology of a spree killer. Spree killers are generally acting out a murderous dream.
Not a spree killer. Just someone who used to put blame for his (and his Homeland's) failures on a certain social group. After his defeat, this develops into a sort of pathology. Isn't that in the line with Ranma characters?
I do not see a point beyond adding emphasis to the argument that these are bad people, and should be destroyed.
The point of this chapters is to hit the reader with a Lovecraftian-level revelation that they weren't
villains in any meaningful sense. I loathe to state that outright, though, as such ham-handedness would be against the examples of Russian literature I follow in spirit.
They both were striving to make the world a better place. One by ridding it of the corrupting rot of Jews and communists. The other by ridding it of the corrupting rot of capitalism.
This fits the RL facts very well and fits the anime storytelling principles very well.
There are no villains, only misguided good guys. Narutoverse would be a shining example.
Sure, there are inherently evil people. But they never make it to the top.
The fanon Setsuna, being a definite good guy, was manipulating time to protect Hitler. That's just a cherry on top.
, I have a desire to see Ahs destroyed.
That's my intent: you cannot destroy the system of evil without sacrificing a lot of innocent lives (unless the Almighty himself performs a copy-paste operation of its entire content sans metaphysics). That's a cornerstone of some of the best Soviet Sci-fi.
I will add ham-handed references stressing this point. seeing the Man of Steel(who I thought might be Ahs-Ahsh) and his minion destroyed,
Well, excuse me my positive view on S.-man, but for the last years I was mostly reading novels of the "protagonist is time-displaced, lost in the past" sort. Getting into the 1941 / 1942 / years before thee War with a laptop full of historical and engineering data / a whole air-defense division / only tourist gear / a nuclear attack submarine, they then get to talk to Stalin warning Him of the future mistakes and traps. It always ends with USSR Kiiiicking Majoooor Aaaaass! Oh, and not collapsing ever.
I read dozens of these over the years, mostly the best ones. There are hundreds more, but these are mostly trash. The genre is crazy popular, though. I'd say a good fourth of the modern literature.
P.S. One of my favourite ones is when the wholw modern Russia is relocated from 2012 into 1941, just before the Nazi attack. Such an, ahem, large ISOT. Epic ass-kicking commences. It has a counterpart where USSR from 1941 is relocated in opposite direction, into 2012. It's then the pre-war USSR with its pathetic technology level against the modern, aggressive and hateful, Western world. Stalin wins anyway, because he is just
that badass.
I don't find J-Asch's characterization particularly compelling.
Well, I admit my characterization of Him may be affected by these novels I read a lot. (a brutal, WH40K-level of brutal, good guy)
, and having an opportunity to make some V.A. Hitlenin jokes.
His first and foremost purpose (besides the secondary objective of playing a red herring to the mid-tier chapters) was his talk with Setsuna and them comparing notes.
Which is my manifesto in retort to all these stupid "Usagi is a Nazi, she brainwashes everyone".
She is the good guy. But then, so was Hitler. This is to show how easy it is to slip while walking the road to better future. It is pawed with good intentions, after all.
In short, Usagi has to walk the same road as they all were, without stepping into any of the traps.