>>32899795Thank you very much for the praise and in-depth review, it means a lot.
I was worried 6 suffered from scope creep but in the end it allowed me to better pace out some things, and I'm glad everything I tried landed, especially things with Marine and further solidifying the idea that "needing and accepting help is okay, regardless of what you can do by yourself".
The "what-ifs" were really fun to make, I think, given how much the dice have dictated everything and more or less brought Anon down an 'ideal' path. I sort of alluded to it with Mio, but basically the worse things went early on, the worse the world state/tendency would have been. The Castle could have been a lot worse, and Anon's 'personality' and world view as a result.
Failing to find the talisman would have lead
to a more melancholic but hopeful ending - Anon *isn't* the prophesied hero, but at the very least there's more eyes on the people trapped there to try and help free them. Of course, he wouldn't have the Emerald Key, either...which may or may not have special uses. As for Prescience, it would most likely have to do with the aforementioned World Tendency leading to a far more aggressive character development where Anon is very much 'slash first, ask questions later'.
Rushia suddenly getting retired definitely threw a wrench into things. I wrote almost all that after the main fallout with everything involved, so it had time to sink in and people had time to shake off the rats and solidify their feelings, myself included.
I'm extra glad the jokes landed. I think comedic relief is important from time to time. I like stupid moments in stories where you can just laugh.
>Word countAll in all HF has been at least a book and a half's worth of content if not maybe two, and frankly I still have a shit ton of fun with it and am glad to have people reading/hopefully enjoying what I put out. I think 6 will be really hard to top if only for the sheer amount of insane shit that went down in it, but that's okay. Thank you again.
