Bonus Reshuffle & Rewrite (Patreon)

The Patreon exclusive bonus parts are convention side-stories with two primary purposes?—being a vehicle to explore aspects of the convention culture experience that wouldn't otherwise be particularly relevant to the main story, and to introduce fan-made characters into the mix as a love letter to those in the two highest patron tiers.

Like with the main story, I've reorganized the side-stories into a schema of Chapters and Parts. A Chapter being in the range of three to five thousand words and generally considered comfortable to read in a single sitting, often focusing on a single POV. I'm considering a Part to be a collection of chapters that share a narrative relationship.

As such, Fetish 101 and Mary the Mastery are now a collection of chapters grouped together in the part Panels and Purchases. This starts us off with the characters we know, but then introduces the sidestory chapters' overarching antagonist, Foxy—a character from one of my largest long-time patrons. He serves as a basic foil to Brian, showing in parallel what would happen when the protagonist of a harem story isn't a well-meaning but reluctant one; an antagonist with a dark harem.

The second completed sidestory, Cosplay Contest, focused on two new characters, the lovely Jordyn and Melanie, as well as more than a half-dozen new supporting characters and cameos. Jordyn and Melanie's story becomes intertwined with Foxy's in the follow-up story Eating Out, which was then combined with Cosplay Contest into a larger Part that retained the name Cosplay Contest.

Order of the Sovereign Swords exists fine as a standalone piece, but may be revised so that Idren is friend of Foxy's who Foxy encourages to stir up drama and feign a sparring loss to him. If there were ever a best place to insert TiAM325's proposed character, it would be here, as a veteran/hobbyist historical reenactor who assists Mara in deposing Idren and Foxy. Likely this would have TiAM325's character subsuming Brick-cloud's, and then I'd write out the Idren versus TiAM325 match in detail (and it would definitely go a very different way, lol.)

Gamer Girls was a clusterfuck of too many characters and subplots clashing, so I'm in the process of overhauling quite a bit. This whole section is being moved from AFTER the cosplay contest to BEFORE, in the timeline of events. The rewrite will predominantly feature Lucas/Luke "M0g" Macrae as a protagonist, with Emily as a supporting character, and Geneva "Gigi" Lemieux as the antagonist and a prospective recruit to the dark harem.

Jordyn and Melanie's characters are being removed from Gamer Girls entirely. Their already written segments are either being assumed by other characters or have already been repurposed for the Eating Out chapters. Fletcher will remain, but have a smaller supporting role; as this is now before the cosplay contest, the Liz and Fletcher subplot is being moved from Gamer Girls to Eighteen and Up where it has more heavy breathing room.

Foxy's role in Gamer Girls has been reduced to a brief cameo to invite/threaten Luke into attending Afterparty, the climax of all of the sidestory sections. Geneva's flirting/antagonism with Foxy is being changed to instead be towards fellow gamer of renown Luke, which makes more thematic sense and fits both of their arcs better.

Rebecca's role is being written out of Gamer Girls and given to Geneva. Previously, Rebecca brought food for Emily (with extra to share), now it's one of Geneva's cohorts bringing her a literal pile of burgers as a semi-serious joke. Gigi decides to set herself up as the Holy Mother of Gaming and pass the food out to her new followers like bread and fish.

Aside from pruning literally half the characters so that the remaining ones have appropriate room to grow, I'm also trying to combine the rule of three (three staple convention games being introduced becomes a pattern rather than a comparison) and a typical three-act story structure.

Super Slash Sisters (Fighting game)—Setup: Exposition, Inciting Incident (Foxy), Plot Point One.

Grail 5 (FPS LAN)—Confrontation: Rising Action, Midpoint, Plot Point Two.

Rhythm Rhythm Rebellion (Dance cabinet)—Resolution: Pre Climax, Climax, Denouement.

Eighteen and Up has been started, and it'll mostly focus on further exploring the different groups of sidestory characters we've met this far. In a sexy way, and in preparation for everything culminating in Afterparty. New characters from patrons can still be added, but this late in the sidestory stuff they'll likely have a part in Afterparty and not too much in the way of character development. We have quite a few already set up whose arcs need to be brought to satisfying resolution, lol.

Additional sidestories after Eighteen and Up and Afterparty may be on temporary hold so that I can focus on concluding AnimeCon Harem's main story. They'll likely resume for AnimeCon Harem's sequel fiction, RenFaire Fantasy, for which I imagine the sidestory roster'll shake up quite a bit.

Alright. That was quite a bit I wanted to explain all at once. Back to writing for a bit, I hope to get several more teasers out and then have a Jan 1st news post / retrospective on the year when I again clean up the teaser posts into proper chapters. Merry Christmas, everyone.