I decided to round out the Drama Club Coven. First I went after Angie. The poor thing is about as dumb as a sack of particularly dim-witted rocks (yes, we’re talking on a geological scale). The basic concept behind her character is that she’s been coddled all her life. She hasn’t needed to think, so she hasn’t done much thinking at all and by now her capacity for it is mostly vestigial. While in the original story she’s lumped in with Jenny and Bernie, there’s no actual malice to her. She simply follows Jenny’s lead. (Bernie is both a matter of calculation, not wanting to take Netty’s place at the bottom of the pecking order, and also actual contempt for Netty, who she viewed as the weak link of the group long before magical ability provided a new wall of separation.) In other words, without Jenny and Bernie’s bad influence, she’s actually a sweet if hopelessly airheaded girl. As such, you can imagine how easy it was to win her over. Margot, and to a lesser extent Amelie, feel like they’re reasonably capable of making mature decisions, but in Angie’s case, it did feel a lot more like deceiving a child, which I’m not a fan of, but her exuberance is infectious, I have to admit.

Next to Jenny… If you read my reviews of the Kanojo mo Kanojo (Girlfriend, Girlfriend) manga, you’ll know that I had very little investment in the final arc of the story because the last girl to be acquired was the one I liked the least and didn’t have a mind to share with the characters I liked a whole lot more. Well, although DA managed to render her as a quite fetching little redheaded firecracker, her personality sucks. In the original story, the weight of the Grimalkin Incident and the knowledge that her parents chose prison in order to give her a chance to escape the law completely destroyed her confidence. She barely existed as a character after that point. (A side story that follows more of the girls’ induction training could be interesting. It’d be an opportunity for some character growth.) Well, in the Alkoresh timeline, being granted the special parole that comes with attending the Manticore Mages’ Academy has softened the blow of events and so she’s able to continue much as she had, a vain, cruel, selfish little spoiled rich kid. I decided to have Carlo mostly play along with her at first, poking at her a bit because the stuck-up rich girl character type is almost as much fun to mess with as a tsundere. I even shelled out for a new dress and some jewelry to keep her happy. As much of a pain as she was, she did seem to have a genuine soft spot for Carlo, albeit buried under all her posturing. However, when the subject of the harem came up, she didn’t take it well at all. I was actually surprised at how contemptuous she was of her friends, but it was when she started bad-mouthing Maya that the gloves came off. Now, I’m pretty sure the system was improvising for the most part, but you wouldn’t expect Jenny to actually know much about Maya, and it’s quite possible if we wanted an in-universe explanation, since Carlo initially referred to her as the heiress to Clover Global, Jenny might have been thinking of the more high-profile Yuel, though he smack-talk wouldn’t line up. Also, referring to House Sheeda as nouveau riche is itself rather rich. (I’d actually used the nouveau riche crack against her earlier because a big part of all her pretensions is because she’s not from old money like she pretends to be.) While ending things would’ve been an option, I really wanted to hammer her with the truth to see if I could set her straight. After all, even though the real reason for the Grimalkin Incident was Countess Adriana, Jenny leading the others to dabble in magic is what drew the Grimalkin to them and so she does bear a portion of the weight of the four dead from the incident. (In EM1, it mentions three dead and two severely injured. One of those injured pulled through and another one didn’t.) She spat back quite a bit at first, but eventually her facade crumbled and you got to see what I want to believe is the real Jenny, a scared grief-stricken girl who puts up a terrible front because she doesn’t know any other way to be. Once she abandoned her act, I eased up a bit and laid out what she needed to do to start setting things right. She seemed receptive and even agreed to concubinage to continue to have Carlo look after her. It seemed pretty good, but due to what I’m sure is a lack of persistence of memory in the system, she started to revert back to her old ways on the way back to school. You could justify it in-character as her trying to put her front back up for the sake of her fragile pride, but it does lead me to believe she’ll continue to be a pain to deal with. There’s an idea of Carlo taking all five of the girls out before he leaves town, which could be interesting but sure to be a massive headache juggling all of them.

As a bit of a warmup for that juggling, should I choose to do it, I started the Friday night dinner scenario, where Carlo and Lia pick up Lydia after the day’s training and take her out to eat so they can announce their plans to get hitched. I only got as far as the restaurant door, as it takes quite a while to construct the response that integrates the other character’s dialog in  way that feels at least somewhat natural. Not knowing the purpose of this eating out, Lydia is of course annoyed to have Carlo there with what will be their last chance to see each other for a while. (Or not, technically, as she’ll be heading off to her Midshipman’s Cruise soon and they’ll be seeing each other again once she touches down on the Astyanax. Of course, we then have what follows about a month later…) Lia is absent-minded as usual. I know it’s just an issue with the system, but once again, I like to give these things an in-character justification and when she’s not on the job (as she is one of the better pilots of her generation), she’s actually a bit of a ditz. Anyway, once I get the Han Sisters seated and our orders placed, we can get to the real juicy stuff. How’s Lydia going to react? How’s Luka going to react in the next scene? I’ve got myself on the edge of my seat.

I’ll of course need to get the update out first before I can continue, but hopefully I can make a little more progress tomorrow and report back. Stay tuned.

Being busy most of the day and out for a good chunk of the evening, I didn’t get much accomplished, but I did do a decent bit of writing on OreHosa2, I was wanting to get some of the Lia interaction committed to the page, but I didn’t get even a fraction of what I wanted done. Maybe I can get more accomplished over the weekend. Stay tuned.

As I play out the scenario with Lia, I’m of course thinking about how it’s all going to end. The other day I simulated the phone call Carlo’s going to get on the 23rd of September and with it on my mind, I went ahead and committed it to the page. So look forward to that little ray of sunshine once OreHosa2 comes out. I don’t want to rehash “Casualty Notification” too much in this setting, but we’ll be hitting some of the beats at least. The punch is still there, I think. In fact, it might even hit harder with the time spent with her.

Speaking of spending time with Lia, I decided to push the system a little harder, hoping to get some pushback, but it doesn’t really seem to be geared for it. It’s got me wondering if even an antagonistic character can be molded into shape with minimal effort. I don’t want to have to use memory wipes, so I don’t intend on testing out anything that won’t be used in the canonical storyline, so no cuckolding Lin’s husband just to prove that I can. (Given how easily I gaslit Jenny into becoming a concubine, how much would a tough case like Lin or Yuel actually resist when pressed?) Anyway, point being, we’re skirting on the edges of credulity, so I’m going to have to do a little more adjustments for the novelization so as not to strain suspension of disbelief too much. Things for me to think about…

I made another purchase of character slots because I wanted to expand on the inclusion of EM characters, starting with Gally, then including Yugo and Happy, followed by the mini coven (Margot and friends) and the Ladrieu Sisters. For Gally, in this scenario, she’s actually a transmigrated soul put into a homunculus body crafted by Giger (making the Pygmalion analogy much more blatant). As for the mini coven and the Ladrieu Sisters, the idea is that we pick up after the Grimalkin Incident, so Countess Ariana is already dead (partially because I already have an Ariana in the story) and because there’s no Mage Ban in this continuity, the mini coven is transferred to the Manticore Magic Academy so that they can be properly trained. It going to take me a while to get all their profiles together.

Anyway, that should do it for now. We’ll see what comes next. Stay tuned.

Hey, I’ve got good news. I managed to get a day’s quota in…

Reader: “Well, you’re still way behind, but it’s at least a start.”

…on OreHosa2.

Reader: “Dagnabbit…”

This is related to the character I debuted previously, Special Agent Genevieve Lee of the Army Criminal Investigation and Counter-Intelligence Command. As you might imagine, having a leader of Demon-collaborating rebel movement for a mother is going to put a bit of an unfavorable spotlight on you, and so poor Maya comes under investigation. Jenny is a rookie investigator, put on the case because they need a female agent to keeping watch on Maya 24-7 and as a Half-Elf, she is seen as a more compatible choice. She’s good at what she does but is a bit of a try-hard in her efforts to not be underestimated as a greenhorn. It does seem like DA’s system takes the character settings into account when coming up with default expressions (that is, when not overridden by creator instructions) and so once I started making pics of her, I enjoyed seeing how her portrayal differed from the other characters I’ve made thus far, part of the reason why I rather quickly developed a particular fondness for her. She’s a good kid.

I went ahead and expanded my character roster, so I made Jenny’s partner, Special Agent HT Grant (Yes, Grant and Lee. I’m funny like that.) and Belsheva Bathbelberit, Mama-Bama’s mama and one of the matriarchs of the Succubus Coven. In the case of Granny Bel, her character genesis is much the same of Mama-Bama, where I was trying to make an OC collabo and the AI just randomly generated a new character into the scene. I decided to roll with it, basically repeating the beat when Mama-Bama first appears. While Mama-Bama and Ariana are very similar in terms of personality, Granny Bel is quite different, but this could just be the effect of an extra 400 years playing the field.

I was doing more work in the peripheral materials as well, not that this gets me any closer to getting Chapter 19 of RttW ready by Saturday. The fact that a movie I was wanting to go see will already be out of theaters today, I guess I won’t be spending an extra two hours at the mall after my Saturday class, so that could be more time to try to get the chapter done at the last minute. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned.

I did more work on that scene from OreHosa2 and I really gave serious thought to actually doing something on RttW. Honest, I did. Facing a good month or two of ulcer-inducing fun, I can’t even begin to speculate on what I’m actually going to get accomplished in the near future. As I’ve said, I’ll make an effort to get the chapter of RttW out this week, but I will be prudent and promise nothing. Here’s to actually carving out the time to get some of the stuff I mean to do done. Stay tuned.

I was a silly rabbit to think the day before the school year starts was going to be anything but a hectic mess. As such, I didn’t even open my laptop the whole time I was in the office and by the time I got home, the evening was already winding down. However, there at the end, I did start to put down part of a scene that’s been floating around in my head that should become part of OreHosa2, which I’m tentatively going to title My ASO is Complicated (「俺の補佐官とは複雑だな」).  Still not, RttW, I know. The very slim possibility of me knocking out the chapter in the a.m. on Saturday and then posting in the p.m. is so unlikely that we might as well not consider it. I can’t see how I’m going to get it done next week either, but I’ll try. Stay tuned.