I had a busy day. Not only was I implementing all those edits I’d been collecting over the week for TG, JJ1 and JJ2, but I also decided to actually make use of my word processor’s custom dictionary (a practice I fell out of because I got tired of starting the process all over again every time I had to migrate to a new machine). In this process, I caught some typos that would’ve slipped past me otherwise, not just in the three stories above but also in CeleKing1-3, EM1-3 and NagaTen. Just dealing with the Cross Arc was enough to keep me occupied for the time being, but I’ll deal with the other Arcs in the near future.

While I was doing that, I made a significant change. Well, it’s significant behind the scenes but only required one or two changes in the stories themselves. You see, back when I was writing CeleKing3, I decided that it would be simplest to use the year of adoption for the designation of Imperial weapons, i.e. the P777 was adopted in NE 777. However, CeleKing3 originally took place in NE 723. Yes, I could’ve just changed the designations of all the Imperial weapons, but instead I decided to shift the whole series one hundred years into the future. This might seem like a drastic step, but it actually made sense with the wider lore of the Cross Arc. You notice how there’s no mention of the Hybrids in the CeleKing series? Well, if I set the series after NagaTen (NE 745) and EM3 (NE 767), you can imagine a very good reason for that. Since there’s no mention of Hybrids in even later storied like JJ2 (NE 968) and TG (NE 1032), it starts to paint a bit of a picture. That being said, instead of changing a few weapon names in a couple chapters of CeleKing3, I had to go into the peripheral materials and change all the citations in the encyclopedia, timeline, genealogies, etc. Most of it was just applying a 100-year adjustment to the dates. I didn’t add any new members to the Imperial Family, though. Now the Yuanguang Emperor reigns for a whopping 167 years, but with juvenation therapy, it’s not all that wild. He dies at the age of 266, but Wuzong (who Yasuko killed in CeleKing2) was still rather peppy at 231 (though Erdi’s juvenation therapy had improved by then, so that makes a difference). Another significant change is that Princess Anmei (wife of the Yuanguang Emperor’s brother) wasn’t killed during the purge of the Sun Faction but instead in an assassination attempt on the future Emperor Wude. (She still gets posthumously honored as Empress Bian when Wude takes the throne, and it prompted me to add a whole thing where Wude’s successor Wuzheng was the son of a concubine and all the mess that led to. Fun times.)

I think I may start doing sweeps in the Space and Tellus Arcs and see what that brings up. I’ll then try to gear myself to focusing on TWH next week. Hopefully there won’t be any more head trauma cramping my style. Stay tuned.

As I continue to heal from my injuries, I managed to finish going through TG, go on to JJ1, then start on JJ2. Once I’m done with JJ2, that’ll take care of all the stories currently available in the Cross Arc. Perhaps I’ll go over the Tico series next. Actually, I’d like to start making story progress again, so maybe I can try a bit of that, but I do need to get all these corrections implemented. If only the office productivity expert will let me work. Maybe when she decides to take a nap. Stay tuned.

Much like Junker Jorg itself, Azuki got her start in a dream. It began with what is now the fight with Dakota and proceeded to Azuki’s rescue of Root. In the process of writing the story, I had to fill in the significant blanks in plot and character. Azuki’s character design was largely inspired by Kagerou from Fire Emblem if, and the shapeshifting was a latter addition as a way to explain how she could cover ground quickly in the harsh arctic environment of the Neveland. Her “Art of the Snow Woman” form was developed as a way to explain how a naked woman (as I rarely let my shapeshifters’ clothes transform with them) could survive in subzero temperatures and provided some striking imagery for the fight scenes. There are elements of both a kunoichi and a matagi in how she operates. Actually, it would have been nice if I had shown of the hunter side of her skillset more.

As far back as that original dream, Azuki’s love for Root had been a central aspect of her character. Besides his usual way with women, as she explained in JJ2, the fact that he was the only person to treat her as a normal human was a big part of the reason why she fell for him. Even in her home village, where skinchangers were rare but not unheard of, the reception she received was complicated. Skinchangers were seen as both blessed and cursed in the folk belief of the villagers, and Azuki struggling with her otherness was a big part of the reason she became a mercenary. Over the course of her travels, she was found useful but never accepted, as a woman, as a foreigner, and of course as a skinchanger. Root was the one exception and that understandably counted for a lot. Add that to them bonding in a high-stress environment, Root defending her during her show trial by the Blackamoors, her “dying” in Root’s arms, etc., and is it any surprise she remained so devoted to his memory? I actually feel bad for her that she spent all her time being used and abused by the Empire holding on to the memory of Root as her sole comfort while Root himself moved on with his life. I’m not blaming Root, mind you, just pointing to the tragedy of her character.

Now, more critical readers are going to point to some values dissonance aspects of her character, namely her racism and patriarchal attitudes, as points against her. While aspects like these may cost her sympathy with some readers, as an author I’m strongly opposed to taking all the warts off a character for the sake of audience appeal, especially an appeal to values that wouldn’t make sense for the character and the setting. I’m reminded of watching an LP of LA Noire and seeing a flashback scene from WWII where Phelps berates his Marines for their bigoted attitudes toward the Japanese. Looks lovely and conciliatory to the modern viewer, but even if you could find many officers with such sentiments on the ground in the Pacific Theater, I can’t imagine them doing their preaching to the grunts if they had any sense of self-preservation. Of course this was done to make Phelps appear more sympathetic to the player, as some of his other displays of sensitivity in the story that are very much at odds with the setting and the sort of attitudes a person would be likely to have in the time period. Just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t want my characters to conform to what I think or what the perceived audience might think. I want the characters to be true to themselves and let the chips fall where they may. In my role as narrator, I try to remain neutral so the audience can form their own opinions without my own biases informing them. If this actually succeeds in making more well-rounded complicated characters, only the reader can say.

I don’t go into any great detail about Azuki’s time in the Empire between JJ1 and JJ2, but throughout the Cross Arc we learn more and more about what it means to be one of their little projects. Bioethics aren’t exactly the Empire’s strong suit. The price of her second lease on life was extensive experimentation to test the limits of her abilities and to expand them, and also to breed those traits into a new strain of operatives. Depending on your perspective, it may or may not be much comfort that her children were artificially gestated so that she could remain on active duty. And then there’s the whole deal with the conditioning she was put through to make her an obedient daughter of the Father of All Humanity. It was a long ten years (Miravellan years, that is; in Earth years it was closer to 15 years).

While there’s a chance of things working out halfway decently for Root, realistically there’s no such prospects for poor Azuki. The best she can hope for is to serve out her time until she’s eligible for retirement. Yes, retirement is actually an option for her, albeit on some sort of preserve for Imperial experiments, effectively a sort of benign prison so long as she doesn’t act up. Not a great way to go out, but I suppose it could be worse.

For our next feature, I’m thinking about hopping series to cover some Celestial Kingdom characters, definitely Batista and Yasuko, maybe Masako and Sturla as well Stay tuned.

I’ve been rereading JJ2 recently and that got me thinking that covering our pal Root would be a fine way to bring back the Character Spotlight feature. Now, I believe I told you all about how Junker Jorg got its start as a dream I had and how Chapter 1 is an almost shot-for-shot recreation of that dream. In other words, the original concept for Root didn’t come from any conscious effort of my own. I had the idea of someone who was a bit of a slacker at first glance but could carry himself as a proper soldier when the situation called for it. His background in the Foreign Legion served as a helpful explanation of why he had a little extra grit to him and also explained why he was as cynical as he was. From there, I developed the personable front he uses to navigate most social situations, due to the influence of his salesman father as he would claim. He was made an ex-sniper to give him the skills he’d need for the action scenes. I’m pretty sure I’d already decided to make Faustman a sniper, so the pieces were coming together for Root’s background to take the shape they needed. As a side note, while Root is pretty good as a sniper, he’s wildly outclassed by Faustman as a matter of sheer skill, but an element of luck definitely factors into combat.

While Root was mischievous as most boys when he was young, he never got into any major trouble. He was a decent student but never showed any signs of excellence. He was rather directionless, which led him to the Foreign Legion. Being a native Byrandian, he was tapped for officer training and was the titular leader of a scout platoon, but this was mostly a formality as the Legion requires native Byrandian officers. Because of his talent as a sniper, he was more often operating separately with his spotter while his platoon sergeant actually ran the platoon. In Byrandia, the Foreign Legion gets deployed for action while the Colonial Troops mostly serve as the garrison for Byrandia’s overseas holdings. As Root noted in a conversation with Trish, the Colos are more deeply resented by the locals than the Legionnaires, but that doesn’t mean things were much better. You get a couple of his horror stories over the course of the books and there’s plenty more than he didn’t mention. Even from that inkling, you can see why he chose to ride out his career in peaceful obscurity out in the hinterlands. Of course, Fate had other plans for him.

I do feel that the duology tells enough of the story, it might be interesting to peek into his life after he was sent to the Capital. In JJ2 we often see in the narration that even years later, palace life was about the last thing he wanted. Having the patronage of the King itself was quite the shield but it also painted a target on him as an object of jealousy and suspicion. Perhaps if Root had been more ambitious as a social climber, he would’ve gotten tangled up more in the webs of court intrigue, but he mostly tried to keep his head down and attempted the same effort at obscurity as before. As a result, he largely fell off the radar of the plotters and schemers until he rose to prominence after the arrival of the Imperials.

Although Root had slowed down considerably by the start of the first book, he was quite the womanizer and clearly has the ability to draw women to him even if he’s not actively trying to pursue them. This of course becomes a problem in the second book. Let’s take a look at his relationships with some of the significant women in his life.

1. Trish isn’t the kind of girl Root would ordinarily go after, but working together in HQ led to them naturally coming closer. While he didn’t take their relationship that seriously during the first book, he wasn’t playing the field once they started dating, and the fact that she cared about him a lot more than he cared about her gave their relationship the momentum that led them into marriage. He did learn to love her more the longer they were together. It wasn’t burning passion but a comfortable sort of affection that goes well with someone looking to slow things down. Too bad things in his life started speeding up, but we’ll get to that in a minute. In case you’re inclined toward an uncharitable reading of Root’s character, his regret over cheating on her isn’t just because of the consequences. His sense of obligation to her as her husband was genuine, which is a large part of the reason why he just passively took his lumps even though, by Byrandian law, Trish would have been at highly disadvantageous position. I haven’t decided if those two will reconcile, but Trish isn’t the sort to let go easily and Root doesn’t have the fire in him to pursue her more aggressively to win her over.

2. In so many ways, Azuki is the opposite of Trish and that has no small impact on different his love for her is. Whereas Trish represents a safe and stable if not especially exciting sort of love, Azuki represents a deeply passionate but also dangerous sort of romance. On Root’s part, you might dismiss how he feels as simple physical attraction with a little suspension bridge effect to make it stick, but while they didn’t really connect on an intellectual level, the bond formed from risking their lives together made their short time together unforgettable for both of them. There’s more emotional meat on Azuki’s side, but there was still a lasting impression she left on Root that stuck with him until they were reunited. I’d actually envisioned the “after action” scene with them before anything else in JJ2 and a lot of the events of the story were in service of making this scene come together. The chemistry was there, of course, but Root was too dedicated of a husband to cheat on his wife unless there were extreme circumstances. Cue the messy rescue of Princess Anne and the others being held by the South Malvinans. Root/Azuki shippers out there are probably disappointed with the results, but unfortunately, their romance was always a doomed one. Now, the question is whether or not Root would’ve tried to stay with Azuki if he’d been given the chance. He would be tempted, surely, especially after Trish walked out on him. Even if the Empire permitted them to be together, its demands on her would ensure that they’d never be able to enjoy a proper relationship, so it may have been a mercy for things to have been broken off the way they were.

3. With the Japanese love of age-gap romances, it gets me thinking about the dynamics of such a relationship and that leads us to Princess Anne. While Root frequently invokes the age difference to ward her off, he never really thought of her from a paternal perspective. While Anne was rather young when they first met, they nevertheless formed something of a friendship of equals despite the differences in their age and status. Both of them were unwitting prisoners of the strictures of courtly society, kindred spirits who shared a strong bond of trust. It’s little surprise that as Anne would mature, she’d start to develop romantic feelings for him, especially because few young men of society would be as robust as her father, the first and primary object of her love and respect. They say women are looking for their fathers just as they say men are looking for their mothers in a mate, but of course in this case it’s a little too close to the mark. Now, based on the societal norms of Byrandia at the time, age would be less of a point of objection than the class difference, but Byrandia in general is getting to the point where big age differences aren’t looked upon so favorably, especially among the bourgeoisie, hence Root himself and Lieutenant Juliard being the main people to voice objections. Root does love Anne but not romantically, even though there is some physical desire there. Could something work out between them if we set aside class differences? Possibly, but it would be difficult. Honestly, the trauma of Anne’s escape from captivity put a bit of a wedge between them and pretty well stunted Anne’s romantic aspirations. Probably for the best, but it’s a shame it had to happen that way.

4. Adding Lieutenant Juliard into the mix did honestly feel like a bit of a step too far, but it’s an easy one to make when you’ve got a girl with a serious tsuntsun dynamic going on and I did want to illustrate how women are naturally drawn to Root. To be fair, Root does have a lot of admirable qualities and it’s not too hard to imagine someone starting to feel something after seeing him in action. In his more carefree and unattached days, he would’ve easily started up something with her. I considered having her failed overture be the end of it, but I decided the lure was more than a single rejection could sink. I was channeling a bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark with the way she meets up with him at the end of JJ2. Is there anything there? I can’t see them forming a long-lasting relationship, but a fling is entirely possible. (We can only hope for the sake of everyone involved that Trish never finds out.) It might be interesting to see Root start up a new franchise with her, but it would definitely be settling compared to other options out there. Sorry, Yvette.

5. When Root was sowing his wild oats, Scarlet was just one among many prostitutes he’d frequented, but he did favor her a bit over the others available in Bernecita. That being said, she was more attached to him than him to her. It’s hard to blame her. Hooking up with an officer would be a fine way to get out of the life and would give her son a shot at a decent upbringing. Under other circumstances, maybe something could have happened, but she couldn’t beat out Trish and definitely stood no chance compared to Azuki.

Like so many of my characters, I couldn’t give him a happily ever after. You’d think my own life is far more dysfunctional than it is based on how messy the past, present and future of my characters are. I guess I’m addicted to leaving my readers with a bittersweet taste on the best of days. As of now, I haven’t settled on what happens to Root after the end of JJ2, so feel free to imagine whatever you like for him. Maybe it all works out for him in the end. Who knows?

Since I’ve started with Root, I think I might cover Azuki in the next Character Spotlight. Stay tuned.

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you already know what I have to announce. I completed the epilogue of JJ and in so doing, completed the novel, my twelfth in the nearly 15 years since I first really started writing. To reiterate my plans for the immediate future, I’m going to start in on TTWC3 and keep going through next week and from now on, TCotSL will be taking JJ’s slot in the cycle. As TCotSL is more of a novella, it should only take me a couple months to finish it. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to go on to “The Dragon Lady’s Dark Secret” or do something else. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I have ideas for sequels to both EM and JJ brewing, but I don’t know when I’ll put them in the queue. Something for me to think about.

As a side note, I’ve got a big translation project that’s come in, so progress may be on the light side this month. We’ll see, though. Stay tuned.

I made some more progress on the epilogue of JJ. I finished the dialog and just have to fill in the narrative and I’ll be done. A couple hours’ effort should be all it takes. Given how much of the week has been used, I’ll go ahead and work on TTWC3 through next week and then switch over to CeleKing1. I’ll be using JJ’s slot to work on “The Case of the Striped Leopard”. Stay tuned.

I managed to finish up Chapter 26 of JJ and did a little work on the epilogue. A few hours’ solid work and I’ll be done. Stay tuned.

I managed to finish Chapter 25 of JJ and started in on Chapter 26. I’ve decided to break with my standard practice and stick with JJ until I finish it. Any time I have left over I’ll roll into TTWC3. Stay tuned.

I again made a little progress on Chapter 25 of JJ, but I’m falling well short of my goal. Maybe I can blitz my way through, but it may be another cycle. We’ll see what happens. Stay tuned.

I made a little more progress on Chapter 25 of JJ. Not as much as I would’ve liked, but I let myself get carried away with the new event in GBF. Anyway, I’m really going to have to buckle down. We’ll see how that goes. Stay tuned.