Of Love and Death.

Part 100: One Year

Wow, oh wow,  oh wow. 

I don't think I actually knew that this thing would still be going strong for a year when I started it. But here we are! 39 chapters, 13 for each timeline. And 100 parts on the perfect day. I literally couldn't have planned this. I just realized "Oh wait I can do this perfectly" a few days ago. And I did it.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about this book, for this. I've got a few things I want to do. So maybe stick around? And if that doesn't interest you, which is fully understandable if it doesn't, I have art, memes, and sappiness at the end. Yes, you read all of those things correctly.

First of all, there were a lot of things that changed from the very first version of OLAD (That's what I've been abbreviating Of Love and Death to for ages). Here are some of the biggest changes.

-Shu was going to grow wings. Instead of getting his fire powers when he battled Valt, he was going to just manifest the same wings he had as Fire. And, yeah. I changed this at the last minute, when I was first telling this story to someone IRL, long before writing it down. I guess I thought it was more "realistic" or "made more sense" this way. 

-Cold was going to be a guy. Now this is something that I changed basically with writing the first chapter of the Past. Or at least around when I started writing this. I'm not gonna go into the reasons for why I did, but I did, and I think it works well.

-Jamie wasn't going to turn into Minerva/Athena. Now I'd planned on her being the Masked Blader since the beginning. But, originally, the whole thing with her becoming her bey was just going to be a red herring. Bel was going to freak out for nothing. But then I realized that might kind of be a lame pay off, so I changed it. Created some cool chapters if I do say so myself. 

-Venus literally was not going to exist. I was watching a Youtube video that pointed out how Valt was the first main character to have his bey used by someone else Rashad and Azure Eye. And I was like "Yup, that works. I needed someone for his sibling anyway." This is the video BTW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmsPJcj4SfEb   

-Blood and Form weren't going to date. When I wrote Never a Tale of More Woe, I just made them a couple on a whim, and it carried over. Also don't go and read that now, it will give you spoilers for the next chapter of the Past

-Free wasn't going to be Talent, and he may not have even existed in the story. But in a chapter of Tales of the Multiburst by Inky_Kuro (sorry if that tagged you annoyingly) she pointed out how Free had very dark eyes. So thank you for the inspiration, Inky.

-In a highly similar vein, Zac wasn't going to be mentioned. But I knew that I wanted Count Nightfell to be a shadow, and when I heard he had a brother who was themed around the Sun and who was his opposite I was like YES!!!!!

-Okay, here's the big one. Shu and Valt weren't going to get their memories back. Instead they were just going to be told about who they used to be by the Five and company. This one got changed because I wrote one paragraph that I didn't want to delete. (Don't worry, I actually thought it over about whether or not they should remember)

-Last but most certainly not least, Shu was going to be dead in the Future. I think this was mainly because I didn't know how to write/deal with him and Valt being husbands. It was pretty early on in my journey of shipping them. It was going to be coupled with something where Valt was dying because he couldn't live without Shu. I think it goes without saying this is a really good change to have made. You can thank the person who heard this first IRL for this. And please do.

There are of course more things I changed. But these are some of the biggest. 

Okay, what do I want to do next? Heartfelt confessions of joy and such are at the end. So it's not going to be that. Ummmm.....oh, I know! Let's talk a little bit about how I got the idea for this whole endeavor.