Nimbus Child I: Games of War

REWRITE NOTICE

Now, if you've read Arpeggio of Hurt Steel, you might be thinking “Again!?” and yes, gang, again.

I'm going to give you the most important info in short since I know that many of you won't be reading the entire thing (which is fine!):

This will probably be getting a rewrite. I can't yet say when or if this will actually happen, but it is most likely that it will.
Rewritten chapters will be added after this note (like it’s been done with Hurt Steel)

Sequel, short comics for individual characters & master document might follow at some point.

Now, the QNA part:

Why?
There's a lot happening behind the scenes. What you need to know is that pretty much every part of the Try Series was rewritten at least once, most of them at least twice and a lot of them even more. For Games of War this means that the published version is the version after the first or second rewrite. When I wrote and published it, I was not fully happy with it but it was OK and I finally wanted it out of my drafts. I thought “This has its strengths and weaknesses, but overall it’s strong” and was proud of it.

So I started working on the other parts of the Try Series, found my “voice”, aka my writing style (you might have noticed the change of style when comparing Hurt Steel & GoW with Nimbus Try III) for serious stories, started planning out a sequel for GoW and through that fleshed out the characters and general worldbuilding more.

While that happened, the characters and I obviously aged and their story – or rather its shape – started… bothering me. It started bouncing around in the back of my mind constantly, not stopping even after I had reread it and deemed it “Not as bad as you (I) remember”.
So I decided to change something, because if this is still bothering me after a year at this point, then that is probably a sign.

In more detail that means,

- characters aren’t really in character.
They are in character with the character that was given to them in the story, but they are not necessarily in character with the character they were supposed to have, if that makes sense. For example, Kongō kinda turned into a self-insert character, which was not supposed to happen.
If anyone had to be a self-insert OC, it would've been Bismarck, who originally was partially self-insert, before she became her own person. Both her and Tirpitz, actually, which is why you might recognize / will recognize some of their traits in the Mitemo Twins or TryMaster.
Kongō in the flashbacks is OK, probably won't change much, but Kongō of the present displays traits she shouldn’t have anymore

-Bismarck and Kongō meeting while Bissi is still a child even by their standards.
My original plan still stands: they become friends after their death, stay friends for ~50 years then need another 30 years to fall in love (numbers taken from memory, I didn't look up what I wrote). However, something about them meeting while Bismarck is a kid bothers me.

I know Kongō doesn't fall in love with a child, I know she barely sees child Bismarck and adult Bismarck as the same person, but it still bothers me. So we’re changing it.

- Change of writing style.
My old writing style (and self-inflicted word minimum of ca. 1.000) “forced” me to write scenes in a way I might not have otherwise. 1.000 words is a good length so I will keep this, but combined with the old style it resulted in me putting in fillers that have no other sense than getting close to that number – and that is noticeable.
The new style allows me to put in more scene changes (= less or no fillers) and makes it easier for me to concentrate on the feelings and thoughts of characters, which is something I noticed I can work with better. It also potentially allows me to drop more lore in the main story itself, meaning you won’t necessarily need to read the bonus comics or the master document I'm preparing to have all the info (though this style might not always outright explain things).
The cringy ass cheese scene will most likely vanish (thank God)

Like we did with Hurt Steel, the rewritten chapters will be added here, after the “old” chapters and this note. If you want to see those updates, I'd recommend subscribing to the story or staying subscribed so that you automatically get notified.

I hope you will be there with me to watch/read which way the story goes.