It's been a few months since monsters entered the human realm, but there's something else biting on the mind of your best friend Frisk - and she bears a lot of history. Whilst you and Chara grow closer together as two young adults on the surface, yo...
Sorry! I don't mean to excite any of you with hopes of a new chapter so soon, but this should technically go here, so I'll just do it very briefly.
How do you all like the new cover picture for the story by the way? I put the old cover picture in the header for comparison.
Arc 1 was a Devilish Bond, Arc 2 was Rising Talent and Arc 3 was A Happy Family to recap. They don't have that much meaning I guess, I just choose a name randomly when I make an Arc part.
Anyways, I went back and edited what I said at the end of 'The Gift (25)' as well as trying to explain it in the comments, and I know there are quite a few people who don't bother with the Arc chapters (which I think I'm saying for the third time, is fine) but I'll say it now: The story is not ending anytime soon.
I know I posted on New Year's Eve of all days, but nobody commented anything for a long while in comparison to every other chapter, including my very first chapter, and the first comment I did receive on 'New Years (26)' was about the story ending soon, so I thought I gave everyone the wrong impression!
Every story does need to have an end, and perhaps a quick ending is better than having none at all, not that I'm saying that'll happen. Realistically, Arc 4 is beginning, which will make some major changes to Toriel, Frisk and Chara. Once that's over, Arc 5 will be... Well I don't know what it's going to contain specifically, but it will set out to close this story as best as possible. That's because Arc 4 is going to make a drastic change in terms of Chara dying and Frisk joining the army- Nah I'm teasing, but seriously, it will be a fitting end in terms of how far they've come since Chapter 1, and what Chara set out to do since Chapter 8. Not that there won't be trouble along the way.
I finished Arc 1 within a month (I was excited), finished Arc 2 in the next 9 months... (I was a little less enthusiastic after the honeymoon period of writing a new story), and finished Arc 3 in the next 6 months (which is better I guess). I reckon you'll have me for about a year and a half, and around 20 more chapters till the end. We'll decide what to do then.
The chapters so far
NOW! I'm not entirely sure why, as you can kind of see below,
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Steam (21) has a higher read count than the 10 previous chapters before it, which were all released many months before-hand. I doubt the title is so explicit that people skipped to it, so I'm really wondering if people went back for the kissing scene. I read it only for the second time quite recently, and didn't like it, even edited it a tiny bit, so perhaps I should find an excuse to write something like that again 🧐
This whole arc was definitely story-driven, I would've wanted to put more relaxed chapters in but I felt like I would've just been ruining the flow of the story. Plus, it'd be weird if Frisk was dying at the end of one chapter and in the next, Chara is all bubbly going out for chocolate ice cream with Undyne. The only real relaxed chapter was Hair (22), and even then it had some plot points like the Locket. It had to! Otherwise it would've just looked like a filler chapter, and I know this book is a romance, but still. I'll definitely aim to do more, especially since Frisk is best buds with everyone again, and everything is calm right now. Girl time between Frisk and Chara is definitely happening. Uh, not in that way.
Question
I didn't have any last time, and I don't have any now. I'm really not that great of a writer at all, I can say that from experience, and it's probably been hard to keep up with the story at times. I can't tell you how many times I've gone back and edited the first several chapters, from the plot to the grammar. I used to not even separate different speakers with a paragraph, not because I didn't know you were supposed to, but just because I didn't like it 😂 So I don't know how some of you even understood somethings. I'm glad you made it here, though!
Statistics
If you have made it here, you probably know how this works.
14% female to 59% male (who would've thought) and 34% of teens with 19% of young adults.
Reads: 36800 Votes: 773 Comments: 1100+
That's definitely a step up from my birthday 7 months back. Now we've got almost over 4x everything!
End
What more to say..? I try to make this story as good as possible, I don't want to cut corners in any way. I try do little things that make it meaningful, such as having Chara say the same dialogue when she goes to get her locket in like, chapter 5 and when she gets her locket again in chapter 24. I also don't want to go all over the place, stories like this are either pure fan service (not necessarily in that way) or actual stories. By that I mean there are stories with purely fluffy scenarios and then there are stories where there is meaning behind the beginning, middle and end. Neither type of story is better than the other, they do different things. You know my story tries to balance both, so that once it's all over, I hope it can be looked back on as an overall pleasant experience. I doubt this will ever be my magnum opus but whatever.
Anjum ________________________________ 2nd January 2019
