The Manhattan Project II

[Mattias]

I do agree on the James and Saber point. While I could see them together in the epilogue as a couple, during the war always seemed a bit too rushed. I enjoyed having them as Bro's as they had been since the end of GD and while that could eventually become a relationship, I can't see them going from 'I hate you so much in going to wander the desert alone', to 'I can't live without your love' so quickly. I can see how it was needed to get James over his issues, having someone care for him who is incredilby strong herself to be a solid rock in his turmoil.



And now I've lost my train of thought.

[Five_X]

After finishing this, I went to check the date of the first post, which surprised me a great deal. You don't realise how long 'four years' is really, until one sees the 'August 22nd, 2011'. I can only imagine what it must have been like, traversing such a journey over that period of time.

Here's the perspective of someone who discovered the existence of this fic a couple of weeks (and some nights of 'I should sleep, but like hell is this a good stopping point') ago.

Obviously I liked it. If I hadn't stated it so plainly before, the fact that I did slog through its entirety is proof of how I believe it was worth slogging over. On the other hand, it was definitely a slog. There were many times where I did want to drop it and the feeling of 'I spent this much time on it, dammit, I'm not going to drop it now' was the strongest reason of me staying. If I had been reading this whilst it was still being written, there might have been a greater chance of me abandoning it entirely, especially if it felt that there was little to no chance of this having a conclusion.

Yet here I am, typing my thoughts after the end, and any regrets are too insignificant to mention.

To be perfectly honest the thing that made me decide to read this in the first place was Caesar. Genderflipped Caesar, but Caesar nonetheless. Throw in other seriously cool dudes like Hannibal and Napoleon? Sign me up. Those characters, their values, and how they interacted with each other was the selling point for me, and still one of my favourite elements of this, if not my outright favourite element. Another thing I liked was the relationships between Master and Servant, and how said relationships shift as the war goes on.

As I'm typing, I feel that this fic has two halves, and I can recall one half much more clearly than the other. A side effect of reading so much in a relatively short amount of time, I guess, but also I feel a lot of it had to do with 'The Invocations'. As stated before, I was drawn to this fic by the identity of many of the servants and was actually looking forward to the General Dialogue bit. However, much like the Generals themselves, the arc itself was very much a disappointment to my expectations. It was the start of the slog, if you will.

And then slap bang in the middle of the slog I was told to read Invocations, which involved multiple characters that I had not read about nor cared about.

So the fic kind of split in two; the 'West Half' involving James, Caesar, Nigel, Hannibal, etc. and the 'East Half' involving Demon-girl, some Russians, and Ilse, whose name I remember because she's hot. [Aside: I have no idea how you made Gil/Ilse as good as you did, but well done for writing a lemon between two characters I don't particularly care for that was compelling to me.]

Seriously though, it was far easier to read and care about the 'West Half' because those were the people I'd been reading about for a while. I can only imagine how much the effect would have been compounded if I had been reading along when it was posted. Maybe forcing me to be patient would have made me appreciate the 'East Half' more. I don't know.

Things did pick up considerably after the General Dialogue though, and Eleanor's death is quite possibly my favourite bit off the top of my head. Eleanor and Monty overall were extremely enjoyable. Eleanor is to Alexander as I am to Genghis; she, as a character, surpassed my expectations the most.

Francois' fall was also something I enjoyed. Well, maybe not enjoyed, but the tragedy was convincing to me. Fit the whole 'character with admirable traits brought down by his fatal flaws' to a tee.

Now to James and Caesar. I didn't enjoy them as much as I feel I should have, and I think it's because their falling out in the General Dialogue arc was long enough to make their making up and falling in love afterwards to seem rapid? Rushed? Maybe. Despite this, they were enjoyable characters in their own right.

Huh. Thought I had more to say. I guess the last thing I do have to type is well done. Congratulations for finishing such a large project where so many others have disappeared into the aether. It always is a bit depressing to be enjoying a story, only to end abruptly and finding out it hasn't been updated in years. But you've finished! If you haven't already, put your right hand on your left shoulder, your left hand on your right, and give yourself a big hug.

All the best on your future endeavors.

To be completely honest, when I started writing this story I had no idea what I was doing.

I began MPII writing some fun fanfic that people would like, and that idea is compounded by the first dozen or more chapters; they're very... fanfic-y? I guess you could say. It's not until at least halfway through the whole story that I sat down and wondered about MPII as an actual, serious novel instead of something I was doing for fun that was cool to write. I'd always imagined it with themes and deeper meanings than what was just on the surface, but there was no initial dedication to that. I started out not knowing even how it would end; it took me about a year to nail down the general flow of things, and even then I made changes along the way.

Spinach had a bit of back-and-forth with me while I was writing GD, talking about his disappointments with the direction of the story and what was happening. That, I think, is when I had my very first real thoughts about where the story as a whole was going, and because of that I considered the overall arcs and themes of it more. I couldn't change GD much, because the damage from that was done, but I could alter what came after - and so I did, which you might be able to see with the first arc after GD, the arc with Nigel and Enrico chasing each other around the city. Invocations was finished around that time, too, and if you read that one closely you can also tell that I still wasn't putting as much thought into it as I could. Katalin and Alexei, to begin with, were simply meant to be side-characters, hardly important in their own right, mainly as 'villains' to oppose Johana and to contrast with her.

Johana herself was a late creation, too; I'd always intended for there to be another Master introduced, and Johana went through a bunch of character profiles before I settled on what she is now. When I did, I realized that her character arc would not work at all on its own, and she needed to be placed in the story as though she was also central to it. Then Ilse got roped in, and I started thinking more about Alexei and Katalin, and things escalated from there on. Unfortunately, I just don't think I did them all much justice, except perhaps for Alexei. I like him; he might just be my favourite character. And to think, he started off just supposed to be a more or less stereotypical Russian...

I always wrote MPII off-the-cuff, save for the run-up to the end, which was fully planned out with only some minor changes here and there, with the biggest by far being the addition of James at the funeral. That was a scene I felt needed to be in the story for its thematic purposes, and also to put the capstone on James' character development.

And on the topic of James - while I get why you feel that there's not enough to the development of their relationship, I feel that it works the way it is. Or at least, I feel that way right now, who knows what I'll think in a few months, or a year, or more. Just consider that James really has little else in his life, and he needed someone to support him, someone who understands him in a way even his father couldn't. War, and stressful situations in general, lead people to draw closer to each other than in normal life, really, and that's what happened with James and Caesar. She, too, had always been wanting someone to trust and to be there for her, and had always been interested in James as the embodiment of that - in her perspective, this was all a confirmation of what she believed, which maybe is why she kept being critical of his views and opinions.

Or, you could interpret things even differently: did James really love Caesar, or did he desperately want some kind of happiness when he was losing so much, feeling like his life was falling apart around him? Perhaps to him Caesar was someone he could hold on to, and while he was warming to her, those feelings got confused, and he saw himself as needed to overcome his failures, regardless of what he genuinely thought about her.

And at the end of the story, she's the only person left who can genuinely understand what he suffered through. In the end, I think, their love is honest, rather than something created by themselves to create some happiness in the dismal world that the war made for them.

Thank you, though, for reading all of MPII, and somehow managing to complete all of it! That, in my books, is impressive. I'm sorry it was a slog, and that some parts didn't catch your interest as I hoped - but I'll say honestly that MPII didn't exceed my expectations, and I definitely could do better if I was writing it now, rather than four years ago. However, the practice was good, and though it's not perfect, I'm happy with MPII. It's a good story.

The next time I write something, though, especially on this scale, I am going to plan it out fully from the beginning. The greatest mistake a writer can make is to think they can make a story out of whole cloth. It's possible to do that, like I did with MPII, but in order for it to be something spectacular, then you need to know the story inside and out before you put pen to paper - and then change whatever you need as you go along.

I do agree on the James and Saber point. While I could see them together in the epilogue as a couple, during the war always seemed a bit too rushed. I enjoyed having them as Bro's as they had been since the end of GD and while that could eventually become a relationship, I can't see them going from 'I hate you so much in going to wander the desert alone', to 'I can't live without your love' so quickly. I can see how it was needed to get James over his issues, having someone care for him who is incredilby strong herself to be a solid rock in his turmoil.

And now I've lost my train of thought.

I guess I summed up my thoughts on this above, but it's worth saying again, I guess: it's up to interpretation whether or not James truly loved Caesar during the story, or if that developed afterwards. It's definitely possible that he was simply wanting someone to be there for him, truly needing something to assure himself that he hadn't lost everything in the war. From there, it would be easy - if not expected - for someone like James to confuse those feelings with actual, romantic love.

Now, that's not my big post on MPII's history and all the juicy tidbits about it! No, I'll write that when I can, but now I'm just too tired. This was enough writing for now; I need a break.

[Leftovers]

Well, here I am caught up as well - or rather belatedly crossing the finish line - trying to consolidate four years and 150 chapters' worth of thoughts into a farewell suitable for this story. Probably affected by the poignancy of the endgame's events, but also because it's fun to look back at what has changed and what has remained the same throughout and to give unnecessary sombreness to writing a review for fanfiction on a porn forum.

I think that MPII can be indeed separated in two halves, though not on the basis of limelight distribution or plot progression. In revisiting my first post in this thread, and before that the impression and expectations I had reading the very first handful of chapters, MPII for me is divided into the half where the War is enacted through the characters, and the half where the characters exist against the backdrop of the War. A shift in focus, or maybe the sign of solidified purpose about the direction the story would take beyond the rails of the HGW.

For example, "LEGENDARY HEROES DUKING IT OUT" was definitely my draw to this story, and I think it's fair to say that it'd still hold well into the story, into the General Dialogue arc; but looking at the end, it's not nearly one's final impression, right? Somewhere along the way, the Masters stopped being defined solely within the context and the confines of the War, Servants acquired purposes beyond cool matchups and fight scenes, and they both began to fight for more than a wish, a couple of good duels, and even the War itself. Grandiose battles gave way to desperate struggles, lavish and drawn-out fight scene descriptions to relative terseness, and post-battle boasts to Archer ganks. And of course, those that died were no longer names to be struck off a list.

Going from memory, the turning point for me was definitely Invocations and its cast, and what cemented it was the gradual exploration of Enrico and Nigel's conflict. I'm not sure if calling it a shift to a human focus is fair, considering that ideological clashes and Saber lectures on the subject have been ever-present elements, but there was definitely a point when I thought "I don't think that hankering for Cool Guy X to meet Cool Guy Y and duke it out and then argue about (down)wanking if our favourite lost and then wait for the character sheets to get posted is going to happen anymore"; incidentally, it feels like the actual point where the War truly became an afterthought was Eleanor's death. (That being said, Sigurd had been getting so much of the short end of the stick until his ascension to Saber that him getting the Ramesses treatment was frustrating, though I guess at that point in the story there were neither great heroes nor a place in the story for him to shine.)

I don't know whether it was that shift that made others stop following this story, but I feel that for all the goodAlexei, Nigel, Eleanor and Moctezuma, the Invocations crew and the not so goodfor me, General Dialogue's tedious pacing, Napoleon's ultimate role in the story, James and Saber's character flip-flops and emotional roller-coasters, RODERICK FONTAINE GOING OUT LIKE A CHUMP, the story's transformation from the grand scope of two-dozens-plus Servants and the painstaking descriptions of their battles, the landscapes they fight in, and occasionally every single minutia for every one of the 6 armies that are simultaneously clashing, to the subdued, introspective conflicts of the latter parts was graceful. It helped me appreciate characters I had overlooked and feel investment even in the ones I disliked, and there are few characters whose stories I feel weren't told. That's a job well done.

Ultimately, MPII is big, and not just because of its length. First the research, the dedication to the smallest of details, and their organic implementation to the story made it something more than a run-of-the-mill fanfic, and then all of that was pushed to the backdrop when the story became something more than a Holy Grail War fanfic altogether. I'm not sure if it's proper to call it a reinvention, but in a sense it exceeded itself.

tl;dr this is the most fun i've ever had reading a million-word story containing lavish descriptions of roman army logistics, godspeed and i look forward to any anniversary lemons
































Oh, and see you in Manhattaraxia.

[Highwayman]

In revisiting my first post in this thread, and before that the impression and expectations I had reading the very first handful of chapters, MPII for me is divided into the half where the War is enacted through the characters, and the half where the characters exist against the backdrop of the War. A shift in focus, or maybe the sign of solidified purpose about the direction the story would take beyond the rails of the HGW.

...

I don't know whether it was that shift that made others stop following this story, but I feel that...the story's transformation from the grand scope of two-dozens-plus Servants and the painstaking descriptions of their battles, the landscapes they fight in, and occasionally every single minutia for every one of the 6 armies that are simultaneously clashing, to the subdued, introspective conflicts of the latter parts was graceful. It helped me appreciate characters I had overlooked and feel investment even in the ones I disliked, and there are few characters whose stories I feel weren't told.

Learning that the story progressed in this direction (and that the Caesar x James ship, which was all but sunk in 2013, would sail triumphantly after all) makes me regret not keeping up with MPII. It seems that those who did were treated to something special.

[Five_X]

Well, here I am caught up as well - or rather belatedly crossing the finish line - trying to consolidate four years and 150 chapters' worth of thoughts into a farewell suitable for this story. Probably affected by the poignancy of the endgame's events, but also because it's fun to look back at what has changed and what has remained the same throughout and to give unnecessary sombreness to writing a review for fanfiction on a porn forum.

I think that MPII can be indeed separated in two halves, though not on the basis of limelight distribution or plot progression. In revisiting my first post in this thread, and before that the impression and expectations I had reading the very first handful of chapters, MPII for me is divided into the half where the War is enacted through the characters, and the half where the characters exist against the backdrop of the War. A shift in focus, or maybe the sign of solidified purpose about the direction the story would take beyond the rails of the HGW.

For example, "LEGENDARY HEROES DUKING IT OUT" was definitely my draw to this story, and I think it's fair to say that it'd still hold well into the story, into the General Dialogue arc; but looking at the end, it's not nearly one's final impression, right? Somewhere along the way, the Masters stopped being defined solely within the context and the confines of the War, Servants acquired purposes beyond cool matchups and fight scenes, and they both began to fight for more than a wish, a couple of good duels, and even the War itself. Grandiose battles gave way to desperate struggles, lavish and drawn-out fight scene descriptions to relative terseness, and post-battle boasts to Archer ganks. And of course, those that died were no longer names to be struck off a list.

Going from memory, the turning point for me was definitely Invocations and its cast, and what cemented it was the gradual exploration of Enrico and Nigel's conflict. I'm not sure if calling it a shift to a human focus is fair, considering that ideological clashes and Saber lectures on the subject have been ever-present elements, but there was definitely a point when I thought "I don't think that hankering for Cool Guy X to meet Cool Guy Y and duke it out and then argue about (down)wanking if our favourite lost and then wait for the character sheets to get posted is going to happen anymore"; incidentally, it feels like the actual point where the War truly became an afterthought was Eleanor's death. (That being said, Sigurd had been getting so much of the short end of the stick until his ascension to Saber that him getting the Ramesses treatment was frustrating, though I guess at that point in the story there were neither great heroes nor a place in the story for him to shine.)

I don't know whether it was that shift that made others stop following this story, but I feel that for all the goodAlexei, Nigel, Eleanor and Moctezuma, the Invocations crew and the not so goodfor me, General Dialogue's tedious pacing, Napoleon's ultimate role in the story, James and Saber's character flip-flops and emotional roller-coasters, RODERICK FONTAINE GOING OUT LIKE A CHUMP, the story's transformation from the grand scope of two-dozens-plus Servants and the painstaking descriptions of their battles, the landscapes they fight in, and occasionally every single minutia for every one of the 6 armies that are simultaneously clashing, to the subdued, introspective conflicts of the latter parts was graceful. It helped me appreciate characters I had overlooked and feel investment even in the ones I disliked, and there are few characters whose stories I feel weren't told. That's a job well done.

Ultimately, MPII is big, and not just because of its length. First the research, the dedication to the smallest of details, and their organic implementation to the story made it something more than a run-of-the-mill fanfic, and then all of that was pushed to the backdrop when the story became something more than a Holy Grail War fanfic altogether. I'm not sure if it's proper to call it a reinvention, but in a sense it exceeded itself.

tl;dr this is the most fun i've ever had reading a million-word story containing lavish descriptions of roman army logistics, godspeed and i look forward to any anniversary lemons

Hmm... that's probably the most succinct way to sum it up, really! Because honestly, when I began writing MPII, I genuinely was writing a Holy Grail War fanfic set in the Cold War and nothing else. I didn't really have any grand ambitions for it beyond what I hoped would be an interesting story to tell. As I've mentioned, I really had no plan for this - even somewhat past General Dialogue I wasn't sure where I was going with this, and that was maybe halfway through already, if not farther! And you hit the nail on the head there, too: the fight between Nigel and Enrico marked a shift in the story from flashy conflicts to character-centred drama - ironically, what General Dialogue could and should have been.

I'm not sure where and when exactly I realized that MPII couldn't continue to just be a bunch of battles strung together by character dialogue - and that's really how I divided it for a long time, usually having "dialogue" chapters and "fight" chapters - but I think I know when it had changed for good.

See, for most of MPII I had no trouble at all envisioning the fight scenes. Some of the early ones were rather bland and uninspired, I'll admit, but later on I'd refine them and make just about every single one into its own action-packed, vivid scenario. These were fun to write and exhilarating, and it was the dialogue scenes with characters just interacting that kept me down, and yet more and more of those types of scenes kept happening as the story went on. At some point, already past Eleanor's death, that completely reversed. It was after the battle against the Ancient Mariner, the last "big" battle of the war, held on a large scale. It's actually incredibly funny in a way, because in the narrative it's said a number of times how this would be the last battle of its kind, and so on and so forth. I was just writing that for flavour; I didn't actually think that it would come back around and reflect on the story itself! But, as it happens, the battles that went on around the Ancient Mariner and his trust ship turned out to be the last old-style battles of MPII. After that, I found it very difficult and sometimes even boring to write fight scenes, so I took out the vigour and wordiness from them and simply due to not enjoying them as much made them shorter, less prettily described.

On the other hand, all the chapters with characters talking and musing about the war got a lot of attention, because all of a sudden it was those chapters I was good at writing, and enjoyed writing. Towards the end of MPII, you really have less fight scenes in general, and the ones that are there tend to be a lot less big and flashy and spectacular.

I had honestly thought this story would be done at 500,000, maybe 600,000 or so words. To go past 800,000 in a single story, not a collection of stories within a series, is pretty amazing for me. I have to admit, it's even a little slower than I could've managed! In four years, I wrote an average of 200,000 words per year. Based on what I've done before, I know I could manage twice that - 1,600,000 words total - but I think there's just a point where things finally stop, and MPII at last found that point. If I ever wanted to turn this into a serious, published book, then I'd have to completely rewrite at least the whole first half, and that would be a monumental task.

Ultimately, though, for however poorly-written and unfocused MPII may have been, I'm glad to have written it. The practice made me a vastly better writer than I used to be, and you can contrast all this to my actual original fiction novel, written four years ago, titled Cool Winds. For me, when I wrote that, it felt like an achievement at the time, and it was: a 200,000 word novel written from start to finish within six months, without any notes or planning. MPII is so much bigger than even that, and it attracted more attention all the same.

In a way, it's similar to how Hannibal felt when he was dying, after he had defeated Napoleon: all these things seemed like mountains before I climbed them, and now that I look back, they're more like hills. I've done what I thought was impossible, and now I'm left wondering where to go.

Being an author is something I've strived towards for most of my life. Only now, looking back at what I've accomplished, does it finally seem like a dream I can truly achieve.

Oh, and see you in Manhattaraxia.

You're supposed to forget about that!! >.>

someday... someday...

Learning that the story progressed in this direction (and that the Caesar x James ship, which was all but sunk in 2013, would sail triumphantly after all) makes me regret not keeping up with MPII. It seems that those who did were treated to something special.

Haha, you should come back, Chacho! I still remember - I remember your old, grand posts. Read, drink it all in, and enjoy the spoils of four years of my work. I really couldn't have done any of this if not for the people who read all of this! Honestly, 800,000 words. It's still amazing to me that some people managed it all! I guess even that, however, is less daunting than a story which seems to never be ending, which was still the case only a few months ago.

[Five_X]

Epilogue

It ended with a flash and a roar.

The cameras snapping all at once, nearly blinded him, and the surge of the crown nearly made him deaf. He wanted to raise his arms to the sky in his own, triumphant cheer, but his whole body was aching and exhausted – the race had taxed him heavily, just as arduous as it was famed to be. But he had conquered it, he had done the impossible, and through this one act he would enter the realms of history.

“This one's for you,” he whispered between ragged breaths, his fingers barely able to grip the handlebars of his bicycle anymore. He just wanted to tear off his yellow jersey, let it all go, and return home now that this one deed was finally done.

On all sides he was surrounded by a vast crowd filling the stands of the Parc des Princes, the thunder of their applause like nothing else he had heard since the war. It was hard for him to take it all in, his head light, feeling like it was ringing, and his heavy, rough breathing almost drowned out the noise around him. His sweat had dripped down his forehead into his eyes, his jersey soaked through, and when he raised his arm up briefly to wipe his eyes dry, they only got wetter.

As soon as he'd stepped off of his bicycle, a microphone was pushed up to his lips, the crowd only growing tighter about him – he was the centre of it all.

“Not many at your age think of entering the Tour de France, let alone winning,” noted one reported, who beckoned for his cameraman to come closer for a better shot. “Sir, may I ask, what was your inspiration for riding?”

It took him a while to think about his answer – not in the least because he was so tired that he feared he might drop to the ground at a moment's notice.

“I rode for the memory of a friend... a very old friend,” he said with a weak smile.

It pained him still to think of what he had lost – of who he had lost. But his one, true friend had, even in death, inspired him to do something great with his life. He began to think about it for a moment, the significance of this, but then another reporter, an American, stole those thoughts right from him and turned them into words.

“Now, many would call what you did impossible: an Englishman in his forties winning the world's greatest race. This is the first time this has ever been done. What do you have to have to say about that? Did you ever worry that what you were trying to accomplish was impossible?”

He almost wanted to laugh, pulling a wry smile that creased all the wrinkles in his flushed face. Taking in a deep breath, he slowly shook his head.

“If you say that something's impossible, then someone will always go on to prove you wrong. The greatest feats in history, they were accomplished by men who looked at things that had never been done before and said: I will either find a way, or I will make one.”

As he said those words, a pang struck him right in his heart. It was that old pain, the memory of things that no longer were. He could still remember – he always would remember – his old friend, and all those who had fought in the war, no matter which side they took. Too many hadn't survived; too many good men and women suffered when they didn't deserve to suffer in the hopes of accomplishing the impossible. Did this mean that they weren't great, that they were somehow less than those who had done great things before them?

Of course it didn't. Perhaps to inevitably fall victim to fate is merely the consequence for striving for incredible things. Everyone's life is a story, and every story has an end.

That honourable German, who loved nothing more than his beleaguered country, died only months after the war ended. He had tried to return home one last time, but he was discovered and sent to court for what he was – and he was declared guilty, his sentence being death. He had a good life and had seen his country in triumph and disaster, but ultimately he, too, faced his end, meagre as it was.

James was still bitter over the passing of that good man, Dietrich.

Nigel, too, remembered still how the papers in America and in England had, for a short month, been in a frenzy over the discovery of a relic from a past that could never be forgotten. Hardly anyone now remembered the man's name or his face, merely recalling that he had been on trial and died a criminal, like one last, victorious echo of the war against Germany reverberating into the future.

The story of a young Italian man from a wealthy family lasted longer on the headlines: it was a tale rich with intrigue and suspicion, starting simply as the death of a prominent family's eldest son in a motorcycle accident in Sicily, transforming into a conspiracy of filicide.

For almost a year countries in Europe and the rest of the world were caught up with this man no one had known anything about previously, his name simply appearing as though it had never existed before the papers got a hold of it: Filippo. Some campaigned for 'Justice for Filippo,' and others brought attention to domestic unrest in southern Italy, and still others tried to mine supposed evidence for his family's bloody past. He'd done little with his life, even during the war, but in death it so happened that he was vastly more notable than he had ever been in life. His story, or what it was believed to be, captured the imaginations of millions.

And then there was one other, someone who wasn't even mentioned by name or nationality in any newspaper in any city in the whole of the world: a Spanish man who history would ultimately forget, even as his untimely death still weighed heavily on one man's heart.

As the crowds stood in a sustained ovation, covering up the endless questions of the endless reporters in the stadium, he knew that he had sewn his name, his story, into the tapestry of history. He had done the one thing that his old friend had wished he could achieve, and now he could live his life fulfilled, his story not needing any more chapters.

Years and years into the future, he would be remembered, if even by a few. Those people, people who never once could had met him, would sustain his legacy, carrying his tale on, being inspired by him just as he himself was inspired by the great figures of the past. In his own life he had come face to face with history, and it was nothing like he imagined it to be.

Whether people remembered him for his impossible victory, or for his story about a war that had never been, he would be remembered. As the river of time flowed out to the sea of history, he would stand amidst its waters, not to be washed away.

Closing his eyes, he swore that the smell of distant, exotic airs came to him, from a time and place he had never known.

He looked up and into the distance, not at the thousands who cheered for him and called his name, but across the Mediterranean, to somewhere far off in time but nearer to his heart than even his home.

“This one's for you, Hannibal,” he whispered, smiling faintly.

Somewhere, far off in time, that smile was returned.

------------------------------------------------------------

I always do something special for Christmas, don't I?

When MPII ended, I intended to write an epilogue going into a bit of detail about what happens to everyone after the war, but I couldn't quite come up with a good way to frame it. Now I've settled that, and here you have it. I think I also said something about posting a few plot elements and such that didn't make it into the story, or were changed over the course of MPII's writing. Here's a few of them, as I can remember:

-Johana was originally going to be Belgian, but then I noticed a lack of representation for the Warsaw Pact side, so I made her Romanian. Then, when I read some things about Slavic myths, I opted to make her Czechoslovakian instead. Her role was always intended to be the Master of Lancer, who was also always intended to be Godfrey de Bouillon (a Belgian himself, hence Johana's original nationality)/Lohengrin. As an aide, Johana isn't actually Czechoslovakian; her family is from around modern Croatia, but over the centuries migrated to near Bohemia. I wanted to fit this into the story somehow, but just couldn't.
-Originally, Alexei was going to kill Johana by bringing a satellite crashing down on her. I was this close to actually implementing this idea, which you might notice by my inclusion of the scene with him and Katalin in which he explains that his family's mace allows him to communicate via satellite with the Kremlin. In the end I thought the whole satellite crash thing, while outrageously awesome, was also perhaps a bit too silly.
-There's not actually a Master from Belgium. With Johana kicked out of that slot, there was no one to really be there, and by the time Johana was important, I had no extra Servants to give Masters. So, I twisted things around a bit, and you have Jacqueline (the protagonist of the MPII side story adventure that may never come to be) as the intended Belgian Master who opted to never enter the war in the first place.
-Eleanor was initially created as a sweet Southern belle that James would fall head over heels for, trying to make her a better person, with her socially-ingrained racism and all. Having multiple American Masters didn't really make sense, so I instead decided to make her Canadian. Yay Canada!
-There was supposed to be a bit more between Eleanor and Francois, with Eleanor admiring him as a magus, and then realizing the kind of person he was. I didn't really know where I could take that, so I cut it out. In the beginning of GD, you can actually see the vestigial beginnings of this axed subplot.
-Similarly, there was supposed to be some hints of romance between Katalin and Francois, with Katalin attracted to the younger man. As both of their characters developed, however, I realized that in order to actually implement this into the story would just be too forced, so I got rid of it. I even thought of keeping it for that potential MPII side story, but in the end my final concept of Francois is gay, so that fundamentally wouldn't work now anyhow.
-Especially with Dietrich, I wanted to tie in more with the Third War stuff, past the sneak peek you get in GD when Dietrich gathers everyone around and tells them his grandpa stories of the war he was in. As MPII drifted farther anf farther away from fanfiction territory, though, I gave up on that, because it would just be a distraction. Going forward in the story, references to the Third War were intentionally downplayed, being reduced to more or less a previous experience that Dietrich and George had during WW2 that made them come up with the idea for the Manhattan Project.
-Being a terrible Ilse/James shipper, I really always wanted to put that into the story, but unfortunately it just didn't work out. In the end, for the narrative as a whole, James/Saber made more sense. Sorry, fellow Ilse fans.
-I'd planned for Odysseus to do more philosophizing in the bar along with the story's themes, but that ended up being a little obnoxious and hard to make sense of. A few scenes of him in the bar worked, but lots more just didn't, it was hard to fit them properly into the flow of the story. That's kinda why he disappears for so long. Oh, and if you're wondering, he survives past the ending. After the war's over, Odysseus decides to travel the world on his own, occasionally going back to say hi to James and Saber.
-Genghis Khan was supposed to survive GD and hang around a bit longer, smashing stuff to keep his energy up. He would've been killed later on either by Gilgamesh or by Ardem and Hayk.
-The battle between Saber and Rostam was supposed to be much more epic, as far as I originally conceived it: Saber going crazy with Crocea Mors, Rostam being a super fast swordsman, all that good stuff. It would've taken place on a railway bridge, and the fire from Saber's cape and Crocea Mors was to have melted the railroad, causing the bridge to fall apart as they were fighting. This ended up being too cool and fancy for the mellow ending I had in mind, so their battle got toned down a lot.
-Katalin's disciples kind of get tossed under the bus and never mentioned again. I meant to expand on them, but there wasn't really any opportunity to, to be honest. In truth they're her students, and she's inspired them to extreme devotion to her cause of justice and revenge against her ex-husband in order to find her son. At some point I realized that I never entirely thought them out as much as I should have, and so the grief that Katalin felt at their ultimately meaningless deaths got downplayed.
-The deaths of Francois, Ilse, and Hannibal were three of the earliest scenes I conceived for MPII, and three of the earliest I'd written, despite being so late into the story itself. In contrast, the death of Enrico was always one I wasn't sure how to pin down. I think that turned out well in the end, though, so it's just as good as the other three.
-Plenty of Masters never got fleshed out, or even really mentioned all that much, due to both a lack of time and an interest in conserving the size of the cast. One of the unmentioned Masters is a Portuguese man from Goa, who despite being Indian-born, views himself as Portuguese and doesn't identify with India. He was to fight for Portugal in the war, but I never worked on his character that much, even though I find his character concept really interesting. If I ever do the side story thing I've talked about a few times - and which I've actually put quite a lot of thought into! - he would definitely have a part.

And there - that's all, at least for now! All the little notes I can recall about things that were changed or never made it into MPII. I guess that doesn't really leave much, then, does it? I suppose that leaves me with one last thing to do for Christmas, as is the tradition: fanart! Enjoy a couple pictures I got Phearo to do.

Lohengrin

Moses

Now, MPII is finally ended. Thank you all, again, for reading; I hope you had a very merry Christmas, and I wish you a happy New Year.

[SeiKeo]

“Now, many would call what you did impossible: an Englishman in his forties winning the world's greatest race. This is the first time this has ever been done. What do you have to have to say about that? Did you ever worry that what you were trying to accomplish was impossible?”

lance fuckin ballstrong

[Leftovers]

You know, putting aside things that were later changed in development, the listed omissions would all easily find a cozy place in a HA-style side story. :3

[Five_X]

You know, putting aside things that were later changed in development, the listed omissions would all easily find a cozy place in a HA-style side story. :3

Indeed! Too bad that project will (probably) never come to be ;_;

[Mattias]

So that's what Ody got up too after the War, what did Julia? Juliet? Caeser end up doing? I doubt she became James' demure housewife. Also, I assume she would avoid politics, mostly in order to avoid Senators.

[Five_X]

She's a lawyer! That would've been clearer in the different version of the epilogue I was going to do, but I prefer this one.

[Historia]

Oh, excellent. I can read the whole thing now.

[SeiKeo]

god bless

[Five_X]

It's kind of a silly thing to celebrate now, but today is the fifth anniversary of MPII! I'm very sentimental and so this is still important to me, especially because this also means that it's also been a whole year since I finished writing the story. I hate to disappoint, but I've got nothing to contribute in terms of new content, not because I strictly don't want to, but because I don't have anything written and anything I could come up with would be half-hearted at best and that isn't good. MPII, as a story, is finished and in the past. However, the experience I gained in writing all 800,000+ words of it have been invaluable to me in improving my skill as a writer, as have been the comments of everyone who took the time to actually read the whole thing. Just the writing itself felt like a massive ordeal; I can't even imagine what reading it front-to-back must be like! I guess I sort of owe an apology for that, in a way, hah.

In the year following the end of MPII, I haven't written nearly as much as I ought to. Though I've started two different novels, I've only actually written three chapters of the first, and half a chapter of the second, which is nothing compared to the blistering output I somehow managed towards the end of the MPII days. Everything I've written in the past year for my new novels, in terms of wordcount, I wrote in about two days last year. To be fair to myself, I was doing a lot of planning and research, and that alone took a lot of time; but I also can't exactly use that a crutch or an excuse, now can I?

Unless I'm struck with an improbably amount of free time, it's also unlikely I'll go back to writing any fanfiction, besides a few small things here and there, maybe. That old, happy dream of Manhattaraxia is asleep; dormant, like a quiet volcano, but certainly not forgotten. It was a fun idea to think of, so maybe I might do something with it, sometime in the future, but that all depends on what happens with my "serious" writing. Currently I've got two stories in the pipeline: one more current one, a fantasy novel based loosely on the wars of Alexander the Great's successors, so a topic pretty close at hand coming off MPII; the other, something I'm very personally passionate about, is a science fiction novel about humans in the far future rediscovering and reclaiming Earth after re-settling on another world. In the coming year, I'm really hoping that I put a lot more effort into both of them! But, you never know - I just might need a nice little distraction on the side to keep me sane and in practice while I stress out over things that are supposed to be published eventually...

Thank you one last time, everyone, for reading! The time of MPII has passed, but it will always remain in my mind as a very fond memory.

[Mattias]

At least you finished this story, even if the books haven't really clicked yet. FFN and AO3 are filled with writers who stopped writing halfway through fic to concentrate on novels and neither end up complete. So you've got a leg up on 90% of the internet, already.

[Five_X]

Indeed, and thank you! MPII was really fun, even if it was hellishly hectic towards the end. I'm not sure if I'd say I'm in that top 10%, but I'm quite happy with where I am and where I'm going right now - I just need to get to business and write more!

[Muke1995]

Where do i start.... i know i'm late to the party for.... 6 years, but i have finished reading this and it had left such an impression on me that i simply have to get my thoughts out. I've noticed this fic on TV Tropes page, as i've started to check out the works that F/SN community had to offer. This is the second fic i have read so far (the first one wasn't finished) and i have to say the first things that attracted me to it: The title, and the premise. Deciding against spoiling myself, i wanted to go in 100% blind. I have to say, this fic is not a fan fic. It has transcended that. This is a work that transcends any and all canon and fanon estabilished so far. Anyone could say (jokingly) that this story is actual canon, and i would believe it. This has a lot of positives, and there are some gripes i had with the story, but i will start with the good stuff first. As i have said, one of the first things that attracted me to this story was the premise. Just as the 3rd War happened in the shadows of WW2, i couldn't see why shouldn't there be a HGW in the shadows of the Cold War. Nuclear war can ruin your entire day, people want to solve this in a conventional manner, while still away from the public eye. The unofficial HGW with the promise of solving the Cold War in sway of one side to the other would be a tempting offer for many mages, especially for those more inclined nationally (like James and Ardem, for example) . Explanation of how Washington DC and surroundings recover after combat actions was good, considering the ruckus people would have rose if they woke up and saw Capital Wasteland in front of them, which Servant battles tend to do with the enviroment when the combat.... goes out of hand a bit. There would be not enough pages to write everything i liked about the characters, so i will try to describe that by sentence. For James, i like the emotional rollocoaster as he develops from a idealistic nationalistic daddy boy to a man who found his true happiness, and fought for that to the end. For Saber, even through her flaws and arrogance made her really unlikeable to me at various points, she persevered and also found her happiness, while letting go of her wish that would, let's be fair, be unnacceptable in today's world. For Nigel and Hannibal, their friendship and mutual understanding made a perfect foil for James's turbulent relationship with Saber, and it showed. Even after i wished that Hannibal would have finished Saber off in that one chapter, but... can't have everything i guess. As for Nigel himself, his character is old, battle-hardened and thus mostly developed, but i can safely say, he was the "Old Guard" that the NATO team needed in the mix with the young inexpirience, kind of like Alexei on the Warsaw Pact team, but i will get to that later. Nigel's conflict with Enrico has proven that just like everyone else, he has skeletons in his old beat up closet, and as much as he wanted to let the past go, he couldn't. And he did, but not in the way he expected. (Question on that matter.... while he brought Enrico's body to Spain and buried him there, did he bring any proof to the Association that he was really and truly dead? i don't expect them to be lenient on that matter, considering 10 and some years were spent hunting him down, killing him but then turning out not killed) For Francois and Napoleon, they had the war fairly easy from the start like James and Saber (Unless you count Boudicca's death as the first hardship Francois had), but unlike those 2, Francois and Napoleon had friendship and understanding on par with the Nigel/Hannibal.... until the nuke. In various down points of James/Saber relationship, i always knew that one way or another, their relationship would be fixed. As for Napoleon, the line in the chapter afterwards "Just call me Archer", then i somehow knew their relationship was FUBAR. Francois's alliance and "Inevitable betrayal" by James(thanks for nothing Saber), being confronted by the fact that his wish was only AND truly his, and not Amelie's, things happening and his spiral into madness were all written well. I didn't expect him to go the way of Hitler at the end though, shouting betrayal to everything he knew before blowing his brains out. But unlike Hitler, Francois at least admitted in the end that he was wrong, but he was too far down the road, and like many, he had to die. I wanted him to do a sort of "Last stand" against James, but the loss of Napoleon made it impossible. (Second question. When Francois used the command spell on Napoleon in order to mind-wipe his memories of Amelie, wasn't that the last one? The first one being used to heal Napoleon's arm when it got cut off fighting against Sigurd, second to briefly get out of Alex's Reality Marble to drag that nuke cannon in, the last one being this. Wouldn't have Napoleon turned to Francois and cut him down on the spot since he had no control over him, or was Francois's magic THAT good?) Ilse, one of my favorite characters. When she was introduced, i thought of her the same as James, being a idealistic nationalist without expirience to back it up. I was proven wrong. Most of her development happened before the war, so she was pretty much set in her ways, kinda like Nigel. That nationalism stemmed from wishing for revenge, family wishes, and because she had nothing else to fight for. But those reasons turned out just to be Internalized Categorism, more a result of bad decisions than anything else. she realized it far too late, and the only choice she had was dying. Johana was a great foil for Ilse, since they are basically the same, but fighting for different goals. Those goals didn't necessarily conflict, and they would have made a perfect alliance. But Ilse had other plans.... Speaking of Johana, also one of my favorite characters. At first i thought of her to be like Kirisugu, if he was 10 times more brutal. The reveal of how truly fucked up (pun unintended) her mind is and her circumstances show how far from Kiritsugu she was. Masters usually aren't supposed to fight against Servants, but her style of fighting and demonic background would bring her up to par to most Servants. I didn't know the tale of Lohengrin before reading this (or the myth about Morena) but after reading his legend, it made sense why he was so hell bent on protecting his identity from everyone, Master included. The de Bullion appearing, replacing Lohengrin with explaining his ancestry to Lohengrin puts a good use of All Myths are True(something Fate works tend to do anyways). The team sounded good on paper, and with Ilse would have been unstoppable, but with Ilse dying that chance was gone, and i don't think Johana's body could handle the demands of war anymore, demon or no demon (relatable side note, massive inbreeding that Johana's family did would have brought a bucketload of illnesses and genetic defects... one of them being sterility. Johana mentioned that off-handedly in one of the chapters. wheter because of her being a demon incarnate or the aforementioned defects, who knows) . Dietrich, i would say, was one of the coolest characters. Taking in all the events of the war with a pinch of salt and calmly solving the situation. Not that it would have helped him with Alexander in GD and the later events.... but his expirience, alongside Nigel's, was crucial to James's development. While he might have done.... things that everyone would hate his guts for, but he was just an old man who wanted his home (or what is left of it) back. Even if it meant entering a war fighting for the side he was taught to hate. But all wars are cruel, reality is cruel and there is no such thing as a simple wish, as he could only go back home only in death, with his body on the gallows. (Third question. in WW2, was Dietrich the member of the Heer or the Waffen SS? Both branches of the army had it's fair share of Panzer formations, and this would anwser the question of wheter he was just following orders, or was he a devoted, fanatical Nazi before the Germans started losing and defending homes started taking precedence)

George looked like an older versions of Kotomine, but unlike him, his intentions to end the Cold War through this looked genuine, and was content to watch the war from the sidelines, intervening only when needed, to ensure the war would go smoothly. But just as war is cruel, it's not simple either, and was constantly forced to put out fires, play favorites and do everything but the role he was asigned to. taking in the fact his true identity, Nigel's griveances and the sort, he probably knew that this war was a fruitless endeavor, and that he would most likely not survive the war, no matter how much he claimed neutrality.

I would have written more about the characters, but they are either minor notes or i was not really invested in them to begin with.

But now.... the other side of the medal.

The weakest aspect of this fic, and most people would agree, was the General Dialogue arc overall. It was simply too long and overly detailed, sometimes unnecesarrily so.
This arc's more appropriate title would be "All Is Quiet In The General Dialogue" if you catch my cold! (atchoo)
Was the arc supposed to be an analogy to World War 1? Only the beginning and the end were interesting, with the middle seemingly filled with pointless slaughter, save for Saber's character development, whatever other bits of important events that happened in the meantime. I did gather that the fic had an anti-war message to it, and if the cruelty and pointlessness of war meant presenting it like the attrition warfare that one certain conflict had, then the mission is accomplished in that regard. The sheer length of the arc would discourage most people, but i am not most people... I also wanted the battles to be shown in a more strategic manner, considering the armies are composed of a lot of people and not just one man. Servants tho, would eliminate all armies of the world by themselves and not break a sweat, and describing the battle in a militaristic sense is impossible without turning it into an AAR.
Also, just as Genghis Khan, Alexander and Bowie had subordinates, generals who were under their command, why couldn't Saber, Napoleon, and Oda do the same? Montezuma is excusable since the knowledge of who lead their armies into battle is unknown, but the others had well known generals, and in psychological battles would do wonders. I feel like there was an opportunity missed there. It's just that the Generals wanted to do battles in their greatest glory (A bit of why i liked GD, sort of, is having characters fight against each other in circumstances that they wouldn't do otherwise, reminding me of F/Z when Diarmuid wanted to do a proper battle against Arturia, before Kiritsugu's antics made that impossible) and then lost interest when 2 generals gatecrashed the party and suddenly waging full scale war was no longer attractive. Recreating famous battles in Total War games is tougher than you expect....

Moving away from GD, one major pet peeve i had was the.... language. It was estabilished that NATO members mostly speak English(except that Dutch lady, even though 90% of Dutch people speak fluent English, but let's not split hairs) , some Warsaw Pact members speaking English, with others barely knowing it or not at all. Yet all the members speak English fluently. I wouldn't have made an issue out of this, since i think that suspension of disbelief has to do it's job in order to save you the pain of translating. And let's face it.... Google translate sucks, especially with Slavic languages. It would have been fine... if it wasn't for... i don't know, one of the first 40 chapters, where Francois introduces Napoleon to Amelie.... in FRENCH. untranslated. This raises so many questions... if that part was written in native French, then why the dialogue between Katalin and Alexei wasn't written in Russian? Why wasn't the dialogue between Johana and Lancer written in Czech? Why weren't the rest of the interactions between Francois, Amelie and Napoleon written in French? And if the translating was no longer viable, why wasn't it edited? You can argue that earlier parts were unsalvageable, but still.... that chapter would always remain an oddity in this otherwise perfect work.

I would write more about the writing style and how everything has improved since the beginning, as well as some disrepancies in some of the servants and NP's, but i am running out of words and this post is turning into a wall already.


Also, a minor glaring error, from the Invocations-side arc, chapter 12: "She only barely remembered Bratislava; naturally, the capital of Czechoslovakia could hardly compare to the illustrious centre of the United States of America."

The capital of Czechoslovakia was Prague.... and that is how the cookie crumbles.

[RoydGolden]

Holy crap buddy, use proper spacing. Also if you have opinions of a fic that's been dead for years, maybe just PM the author rather than bumping the whole thread.

[Leftovers]

There is nothing wrong with bumping a completed fanfic, even less so if it's with a review of it.

[RoydGolden]

There is nothing wrong with bumping a completed fanfic, even less so if it's with a review of it.

Fair enough I guess. The lack of proper formatting just kind of bugged me, so I probably viewed it more negatively than I otherwise would've.