Collide Gamer

First things first, for those of you unaware, I write this way ahead of the official release. As a rule of thumb, I am 25 chapters ahead of the CHYOA release and 20 of the 10$+ Patrons. It is the 18th of June as I am writing this, chapter 4 of the arc has just released, titled Apologies, it is a day of thunderstorms and humidity here in northern Germany. My sleep schedule is utterly fucked, my mood is quite good and my food is standing next to me. Life is not the greatest, but I would say in the upper quarter of what I want from it.

Dunno why I went that wide on the description. Point being, I am generally 5 weeks ahead of you in terms of written chapters.

The first thing I want to address is the end of the last arc. Not to re-open any of the discussions, I am sick of those, but to express my general thanks towards those of you who didn’t decide to go rabid on me and more to those who defended me. I am not a particularly emotional person, although my tendency to rant can give the opposite impression, but that was nice to see. Never been on the receiving end of such a concentrated push before. Although there was a similarly “unpopular” decision in Drip-Fed once, that story has less readers.

As of the time of writing this, I don’t know for sure if there was actual damage to my popularity. I usually write down the amount of likes and views my chapters get after seven days. Well, a week hasn’t passed since the first chapter of Arc 4 has been released, so I don’t have the complete image yet. I won’t have it until the arc is at least halfway out, I reckon.

Initial readings seem good though. Around 80 likes and 1200 views is what I estimate to be my “average” and the initial chapters are well in that ballpark. Data therefore indicates that everything is fine? Really hard to gauge these things, especially for long-term impact.

It’s not a doomsday event though, so I am okay as far as that is concerned. I can work out small dips here and there. Didn’t expect this to be one, but I don’t know everything.

I’ll close the chapter, therefore, on a largely positive note. Things are moving forward, my Patreon is doing okay, and most of my readers stuck with me. Let’s move onto things actually related to this arc, shall we?

But not before I shill my Patreon! Here is a reminder for you people: I want to do this as my main job. Although the current amount of money I get is fantastic, it’s not enough to justify continuing for the next decade or even five years. Every dollar helps, so if you enjoy my writing, I would be much obliged if you could make your way over to  and send a bit of money my way. You get three chapters in advance and access to the high-res waifu pictures (There are like 12 by now), even in the lowest tier!

Now, Separation… might be the worst Arc I wrote this season so far, in my honest opinion. Start and Finish line are pretty strong, I think. The Arc starts with the entire emotional stuff, which is pretty hard to write from a balance stand-point. If I dwell too shortly on it, it doesn’t give it the proper impact and seems like an issue is just handwaved away. Too long and reader’s roll their eyes saying, ‘I get it already, it sucks for him!’. Doesn’t help that I am one to try and actually give bad happenings their space in the timeline, while readers mostly experience time as “Words spent on happening”.

I solved it this time around by having Lydia deliver the smacktalk that dragged John back up. Can’t wait to have my favourite princess back on the actual screen. Lydia is my personal best girl in this story. I have a thing for stoic women. Pretty sure I mentioned this plenty of times before, especially if you are on the Discord, but no harm in restating it.

The final stretch is something that A LOT of you probably waited for. As a matter of fact, I know at least a few who wanted this specific thing to happen. Granted, everything was built so you would want that, and it was pretty easy to see coming, but I hope that didn’t retract from the curb stomp-satisfaction.

The way Sigmund got to fight Thana is a bit contrived, I can concede as much. Less so that Seminaris didn’t know about her, I think the human error explanation works quite well there. What I mean is him getting there exactly when he did, with Thana weakened enough that there was a bit of a fight scene and them knowing where but not what the gravesite was. However, I don’t think it’s so bad that it falls under handwaving yet. I’ll leave it to each of you to form your own opinion.

Eliza action was something requested basically since the start of the season. Since Thana’s awakening, the blood mage has been delegated to a speaking role. She does quite well there, but I can sympathize with wanting to see the crazy little bundle of murder do her thing again. Well, wasn’t quite herself, but she was about half responsible.

Would it be more satisfying to see John beat Sigmund? Perhaps, I personally say no (because I am a sucker for schemers that don’t get their own hands dirty), but this was the way this threat was supposed to be ended by my own designs. Well, sadly I couldn’t fit one scene into the segment where Thana finally unloads into Sigmund. I wanted to have her use Seismic Step. Didn’t fit, sadly, with how the guy was already totally beaten. I will get to use that skill another time.

So yeah, those two segments were pretty strong, the middle of the arc though was… I don’t want to say bad, but it didn’t quite feel like I delivered the best it could be. Part of this is because I wanted to write the Hidden Tradition as nice guys and I don’t think I write JUST nice guys particularly well. Everyone important always wants something greater in my stories, resulting in those convoluted schemes I am so fond of. Which is not accurate to reality in my experience, lots of people just want to do something very immediate. Like, get the next promotion, eat something nice tomorrow, get a girlfriend, whoever that turns out to be. Even more people are just happy to stop somewhere in their ambitions and maintain a level.

I have those people in my story, I am just saying I don’t feel like I do them quite as well.

Anyway, so the middle is a bit below the curve. Only thing I really want to get into that happened during it was the three-part sex scene, which is something I aim NOT to repeat. Not only does my main proofreader () not like my overly long lewds, having it concentrated like that leads to me counterweighting by skipping a long time until the next one happens. As evident by that triad of scenes being the only proper lewds in this Arc.

Oh, that and the Tamara situation, but that’s mostly set-up for part of next Arc and things beyond that.

What this Arc also has is a name with multiple meanings again! Been a while since I got to do that one, so lemme explain! Separation relates to: John’s separated eyesight (both in the blindness and individual lenses thing), Eliza and Thana, John’s plan to separate Seminaris from Sigmund, Sigmund’s flesh from his bones and John’s group scattering for different missions. Quite the list, ain’t it?

Unsurprisingly, the next arc will deal with all of those different things coming to their conclusions. Unlike this one, I expect next arc to be immense. Lots of smaller stories that need to be told over quite a stretch of time. You will get a taste of one of the missions in the next couple of days as I, again, attach the Side Story of this Arc to the end. We’ll follow what Aclysia is up to.

There will also be a bunch of things at the side that I desperately want or need to get to. John has quite a few things on his hands. Getting back into grindable shape, diplomacy, the war with the Lake Alliance, finding Nia again, Siena’s Tier 4 Evolution, keeping his allies safe, all the while expanding Fusion’s territory and own power.

And despite all of this, the next Arc has a bit of a silly name, one that I expect to tip many of you off where it’s eventually headed (geographically speaking).

This was Season 3 Arc 4 ‘Separation’, I hope to see all of you again for Arc 5 ‘Flow Riding’. The branch will be back on the third of August for high-tier Patrons, the sixth for normal Patrons and the tenth for everyone else.

If you have the time, please give me feedback via the following form, improvement is vital!