Blade: I refuse to bitch about Rei this chapter, because she actually had good scenes!
Epsilon: Yeah, pretty much everyone had some wonderful scenes and lines in this chapter. About the only questionable scene was the Ami duel scene. It was a very experimental attempt to capture the feel of the Utena duels, which for some people worked out very well and for others was just a unreadable confusing mess.
Blade: In fact, "experimental" is definitely a good way to describe the whole chapter. Not that we are by any means the first to do a timejump like this, but the simple fact is that timejumps have a tendency to crash badly, something we knew coming into it. And it's even worse when the main character is completely absent, and would only be returning as a villain the next chapter, while three previously second-string characters (one only being introduced in this chapter!) took the lead. To say we were worried about the possibility of a massive negative backlash is a bit of an understatement.
Epsilon: Thankfully, it seems about 99% of our readership loved this chapter just about as much as we did, and it was claimed as the favorite by many people. I think that can entirely be laid at the feet of how strong our secondary cast is. Also, while this chapter served mainly to say "and then this happened" a bunch of times, we actually snuck in quite a bit of profound exposition and character development throughout the whole thing. I was personally surprised at how well we managed to sell Angel. We actually had people questioning whether or not she had killed Mihoshi right up until like chapter 28/29 (the one where she admits it to Akira).
Blade: This was important, since Angel is basically the lynchpin that ties the chapter together; only appropriately since we used this chapter to build her up into a primary character for chapter 22. In a sense, she was almost a "do-over" for Ukyou, specifically the problems we had selling Ukyou to the audience in the first book. She follows a very similar character arc, in a sense; starting out heroic, committing some horrific sins, struggling with her conscience for a long time, and eventually being redeemed (but not without scars). In Ukyou's case, many readers rejected Ukyou during the crucial "fall" part of her arc. With Angel, we wanted them to stay with her for the whole ride and cheer when she eventually turned her back on Chris, and to a large extent that succeeded. No small part of the credit for this success is due to how she was introduced in this chapter, I believe.
Epsilon: In addition, Angel was of course introduced primarily because we needed a viewpoint character for Chris' team, so to speak. She allows us to easily introduce what Chris is doing, without neccesarily having to give Chris (or even Link) a perspective scene. It allowed us to play fast and loose with the facts, since Chris is (despite his word) essentially lying to her in a very roundabout way. Witness how well Chris manipulates her into buying wholesale into his philosophy. Chris doesn't float around like a god because he likes it, he does it because it impresses people. The notion of creating a ritual of loyalty, making her feel important by letting her "in" on his secrets and his carefully controlling her exposure to him so she only ever sees him being successful; and it becomes even worse once you realise that Angel was a truamatised child and he was basically brainwashing her.
Blade: Or was he? Angel would argue otherwise. He did legitimately give her chances to back out no matter how much he weighed the choice against her. But more on that when we get to her spotlight. In a related note, Angel and Rei serve as the vehicles to introduce Washuu and Yosho, an almost unavoidable introduction but one that would go on to vex us more in Book III than nearly any other character or subplot. And not just because we had to watch Tenchi OAV3.
Epsilon: It was hard to believe there was something we would hate more than being forced to watch Sailor Moon SuperS. We were wrong. But despite that, I felt that even if they were colossal pains in the necks pretty much from the moment they were introduced, they actually worked as characters very well. It was actually fun to write them once we realised that they meant well but were massive assholes.
Blade: This also gave the first real mention of Sailor Galaxia, a character who would be very important symbolically and by inference even though she had little screentime. At this point we hadn't watched Sailor Stars and weren't that eager to, but we guessed that we could justify her being formidibly powerful based on the fact that Chaos would be enormously swelling in power in the Hybrid Theory universe. Later we did watch Sailor Stars, and found out that it was shockingly quite good, and that Galaxia is practically a DBZ character and would have been fine anyway. So... yay her?
Epsilon: We also used Washuu to finally and literally tell the readers how the Hybrid Theory universe works. One of the first things I wrote for the story was the "laws of physics" document which basically spelled out what Washuu says in this chapter. Some ideas were refined a little (for instance, the nature of the Third Circle changed slightly sometime between chapters 15 and 25; see if you can tell when!) but they remained essentially true throughout the entire series. Washuu is always valuable for infodumps like this, but even so her character sadly does not work as well without the actual visuals.
Blade: Meanwhile, we continued to notch off our Standard Fanfic Cliche list. Right below a sympathetic Nabiki: rejuvenated Cologne!
Epsilon: Ironically, if Cologne had gone with her original plan (sic the Quartet on Chris) she probably would have remained an old crone. As it was, she only decided to become young again when she realised she would have to take matters into her own hands. Which leads us right into the Amazoness Quartet. They are awesome. They are the funnest characters to write. Ever. Period. The scene with Nabiki basically led to us deciding they needed a character arc in Book III. It probably added about a chapter's worth of material we didn't technically need, but it was all fun as hell to write.
Blade: Luckily for us, unlike Yan, the readers agreed with our assessment of their entertainment value. On a similar note, the rather flukey introduction of Street Fighter EX character Cracker Jack (primarily because we knew we'd need a Shadowloo perspective in Book III, Balrog wasn't going to be it, and we didn't care to do more Dolls) proved a hit both with us and the readers; he's probably our single most popular minor character.
Epsilon: So much so that he basically gets away with being a villainous asshole. Ah, affable evilness, is there any viewer you can not win over?
Blade: Angel's not the only character introduced this chapter. Also coming finally onto the stage is SHINGO! We had a lot of fun with him, which was probably obvious, and all the more fun in presenting the sinister figure that gave him powers and turned out to be a massive, panty-stealing red herring. He also gave us an excuse to use Sakura Yamazaki more, which is always good.
Epsilon: In case you aren't familiar with the King of Fighters/Fatal Fury/SNK backstory (which a lot of you weren't) the bit at Terry Bogard's funeral where Blue Mary talks about Terry never wanting to get close to her is a reference to the famous tendency of Fatal Fury anime and manga to introduce a love interest for Terry and then kill them off by the end of the story.
Blade: I think this chapter is also where we should give poor Ryouga some credit. We've bitched before how static he is, and that's true; but it's also worth mentioning that within his role, he does a very good job. His scene in this chapter is good; in fact, all his scenes tend to be good, and he works superbly in the role of advancing Hotaru's story and also lending her a lot more sympathy value than she would have had on her own (a good thing, since some readers were very unsympathetic as it was).
Epsilon: Yup, Ryouga had a sort of interesting charisma to him that the readers responded to even though he was essentially a third wheel. It helped that we kept building up his role as important and he served as the primary viewpoint character in pretty much all his major scenes. Though speaking of things about Hotaru that never got off the ground, the Oblivion Cult we mentioned gets lipservice here and in a number of later chapters but then is basically dropped. To be fair, I did have plans for them. In fact they were going to serve as a major antagonistic force in the final few chapters (basically to give people other than Ukyou something to do). As you know if you read the entire fanfic, this quickly turned out to be unneccessary. We had so much for people to do that we often had a hard time making our limited (but massive!) cast able to do it all.
Blade: Other introductions in this chapter include Donovan and Anita, who then depart just as quickly because we just weren't destined to have Darkstalkers be relevent to this fic, and Kiima, who was pretty cool in her one scene and then amazingly never came back again, even in the giant chapter 28 Gyro kerfuffle that brought everyone else in the fanfic except Tsubasa back. A bit more interestingly, we have the France crew of Area and Remy (and later Natalie, not to mention Agito), whom I quite liked. Though they didn't get much spotlight time, they (and the also minor-to-the-plot Vatican-backed Italy) were important in our conception of the balkanised Hybrid Theory world, which we'd been thinking about since quite early on.
Epsilon: I felt this chapter did a good job of world creation there. All the readers immediately got how dangerous and at odds the world was. One of the things that worked especially well was how we managed to take a large number of series with essentially black and white morality, and by combining them in interesting ways created a very morally grey world. Portraying each of the major factions with both good and bad elements was harder than it looked.
Blade: I think this is exemplified in the chapter by Purgstall - and by extension Chronos - and Akane, not least of which because the chapter both starts and ends with his speech in front of the Pillars of Heaven (which, as minor note of curiosity, were built in New York in the original series). We see through the chapter that Purgstall is largely a decent person who cares a lot about the Quartet and Cologne, but we also see the atrocities Chronos commits and we see why Akane is fighting them. Moreover, we see Purgstall directly countering her resistance's moves. Ultimately it's hard to quantify Chronos - they have elements within them that are utterly vile, and they're based on a lie, but they do deliver on their promises of peace and stability, and they have decent and honourable people at both the high and low levels. This was precisely what we were going for.
Epsilon: Also, as a note here before you get into later chapters: We spend a lot of time later on ragging on Akane's resistance and how ineffectual it was on the whole. But as Akane points out in this chapter, it had a far more profound impact than anyone was willing to admit. While Purgstall was able to counter the resistance's every move, the only way he could do so was by being a nicer ruler to his people. Akane never succeeded in her goal of unseating Chronos or turning everyone against them, but she did something which was far more profound: she turned Chronos Japan into semi-decent overlords. It's the kind of thing that is only obvious in retrospect and which nobody was able to point out (least of all Akane when confronted by Chris). It plays into that whole grey morality thing and the theme of Hybrid Theory in general that sometimes you can't change the world totally, but you can make it a better place in small ways.
Blade: And finally, this chapter sees the introduction of something truly profound: Ranma's catchphrase!
Epsilon: We actually seeded that deliberately so that Ranma could later use it in his big fight against Bison as his ultimate crowning moment of awesome.
Blade: Yup. So let it never be said we always don't know what we're doing!
Epsilon: Except by us. Frequently.
Blade: But not in this chapter. To bring this back and wrap up, this is our favourite chapter for a few reasons. The huge, balkanised Hybrid Theory world was something we'd looked forward to exploring since midway through Book I and this was where we finally got to bring it forth. We shone a lot of spotlight on our supporting cast (and added new ones), which worked well because we had a very strong supporting cast and it was not even remotely as frenetic as the last few chapters had been. Finally, we had several very definite aims for this chapter: introducing Angel as a strong primary character, setting up a sense of direction for the plot going into Book III, and defining the world and the players in it. We felt this chapter admirably succeeded in all those aims, and is still just damn fun to read.
Epsilon: So it's all downhill from here, folks!
Epsilon: This chapter was extremely important, because it was basically setting up Akira as the hero for the next few chapters and it really, really needed to sell her to the reader. Everything in this chapter was designed to enhance her credentials as a protagonist. Specifically, it was designed to avoid the same problems we had run into with Ukyou. Notice how Akira does not dwell on negative things or wangst, and how she prefers to be proactive and is inherently trustful, rather than passive and manipulative.
Blade: In other words, sort of like what the last chapter did for Angel. Surprisingly, it worked! We didn't get a single complaint about ditching the main cast for two Johnny-come-latelies, which is awesome. But not undeserved: I really think some of the best Akira writing is in this chapter - even the recap really comes across as her voice. It's the only recap we got direct commentary on.
Epsilon: Indeed. I really felt I captured a good voice for her in this chapter. It came across as distinctive, heroic, but not too tough. Her utterly non-standard reactions are a big part of it. I really went out of my way to add bits like that. Dismissing Angel's carefully constructed explanation, reacting violently to VesVes hurting the innocent, and so on. I really wanted her to come across as non-standard shounen protagonist.
Blade: Still, into every summer some rain must fall. We decided to have Akira have had a Mysterious Connection to Tethys during the seven-year hiatus. This wasn't a bad thing per se - it made Akira seem less of the inhumanly dedicated superwoman, and also tied Tethys into the plot of the first half of Book III where she had otherwise been rather quiet. The slight problem is we ourselves didn't actually know until later precisely what had gone on between them or why, and figured we'd wing it where it seemed appropriate. Alas, it turned out that winging it didn't work nearly as well as it had in Book I due to the density of the Book III plot, and the Tethys/Akira relationship never quite shook off a slight stench of being tacked on and not fully developed.
Epsilon: On a slightly related note (that is, something hinted at but never developed), we planned on doing a lot more with the Martial Arts Hunter Zoa-man! thing. It was going to be this whole subplot that, unfortunately, never got to go anywhere because we just didn't have ROOM for it. Plus we were so busy we forgot about it.
Blade: I still love the concept, though - it's another of those little touches that tie together the vast Hybrid Theory world. It also let us make the joke about Akira's brother Daigo looking so scary even Chronos propaganda didn't have to caricature him, which was (to us) hilarious.
Epsilon: Speaking of establishing qualities in this chapter, one of the things we needed to do quickly was set the power level of the time skip. The entire underground fighting arena thing not only is a cliche supported by about two thirds of the source material, but really served as a useful way of quickly establishing how powerful Akira, Angel (both with and without tattoos), Cologne and the Quartet were. This gave us a short hand for the rest of the fic, especially if you consider the fight in Russia to also be part of this (which I do) which also established Lotus Infinite and Rip Van Winkle. We pretty much showed that the stakes (and the power level) have gone up several steps in the intervening seven years. I really like Akira's combat style, especially. It was the first time I rally got to show off what a "water aspect" martial artist fights like.
Blade: Rip Van Winkle's big return was also fun. She was always one of my favourite of the Millennium villains, and while her role in Hybrid Theory is ultimately as a minor nemesis, it's a very cool minor nemesis (one of, uh, several such). Developing her personality a bit past the time skip was fun, and I liked that we still got in a bit of the "Holy crap, that poor Nazi vampire" feeling the Hellsing manga had even without Gratuitous Alucard GunRape.
Epsilon: The bit where she pulls out the machine gun is still my favorite bit. Especially the heroes going "oh shit" a few moments later.
Blade: In fact, there were a lot of neat little badass moments in this chapter - pretty much everyone gets a chance to shine, from Cologne's awesome iron-cloth-stained-with-blood trick to VesVes turning an actual Swedish cultural artifact into a weapon of mass destruction. And, of course, there's Lotus Infinite. Speaking of ol' Lotus, there was yet another Aberrant reference in this chapter as we have Akira mention the "hypercombustion engine", something we all wish was around in the real 2008.
Epsilon: Even Zoicite gets to come across as effective and urbane here. Though also suitably creepy. It's actually kind of sad that he and Kyosuke are basically our only gay males in the fanfic, and both are villains of their storyarcs. Carries some unfortunate implications (especially considering our apparent lesbian fetishism and overwhelmingly female main cast) but we didn't mean it that way, honest!
Blade: Hey, we did go nearly half the fanfic before a lesbian showed up. Just... a lot of them showed up after that. Speaking of lesbians, back to Lotus! At least this once we can take credit for planning - Aaron had planned out the Lotus Infinite plot as far back as the beginning of Book II.
Epsilon: Yup. Though we sort of tried to hide that this chapter, by making it unclear whether Bison was inhabiting Ukyou's body in his earlier appearance or not. Also, I wanted to make it unclear in this chapter whether Nabiki was out to kill Ukyou. We don't get her actual motives confirmed until later.
Blade: Pretty much a "hiding in plain sight" gambit that let us put off the question of who Bison's body really was until a bit later. On that note, in an odd way, I think Ukyou vanishing from the plot for nearly two chapters and remaining off-stage as a main character until chapter 24 (arguably, until chapter 26) really helped her character. Her constant self-loathing and doom and gloom had alienated a lot of readers, but by giving her some distance, and letting people like Akira, Nabiki, Ranma, Angel, Link and Bison play up how important she was and how heroic she was, we made her return a Big Deal that made her a far more effective heroine going forward than she had been in awhile.
Epsilon: Which pretty much brings us to the end of the main plot this time. This chapter was a deliberate attempt to keep things short and focused, a trend we hoped to keep through Book III. It actually almost worked, for about two chapters. The rest of the chapter was largely just some cameo stuff, though the Nabiki scene is more important than it first appears. It also contains the first hints of Link's growing paranoia and disconnect from things around her, in the way she uses her dopplegangers.
Blade: I'd been thinking about those for quite awhile, and virtually every scene they appear reveals bits and pieces of Link's fractured psyche and self-image in ways that were quite fun to play around with. As a final note, we got a surprising number of people who asked who the "Master Oro" Angel referred to was. He is, in fact, a character from Street Fighter III, and is also who she was referring to in chapter 21 when she gave the line about the guy who lived in a cave and "smelled like piss". Basically, he's a 100-year old man with terrifying jaundice who ties one arm behind his back so he doesn't just kill everybody, is likely stronger than anyone else in the series, and whose desires that Chris satisfied somehow to get him to train Angel were undoubtedly terrifying indeed.
Epsilon: Finally, two shout outs are in order for this chapter. First, to Really Bad Fanfiction, who let us know about the outstanding bit of Mexican slang "taka taka" that Angel uses; and to Elin, the World's Best Prereader, who factchecked our descriptions of Sweden this chapter (and is why we set a goodly chunk of said chapter there, other than Scandinavia actually being a quite appropriate place for one of Tethys' subordinates to set up shop). And that's it for this time! Next, the very last chapter that could even generously be described as "short".
Blade: We actually never intended to write any sidestories, since Hybrid Theory was more than long enough on its own. And each time we did write one, we assumed it was the last (as can be seen in our author's notes). Funny how that worked out.
Epsilon: I find it amazing that, in order to give us a break from releasing writing so we could finish our writing, we... did more writing.
Blade: Well, that's what we get for blowing off our original April Fool's project. In celebration of Chapter 21 (and to get some much-needed breathing room), we'd originally planned to do a Hybrid Theory card game, with rules inspired somewhat by Magic, DBZCCG, and Ani-Mayhem (yes, they are not anything alike). However, we ran into a slight problem there when - for some unfathomable reason - Aaron's employers took exception to him drawing the illustrations at work.
Epsilon: Yeah, that put the kibosh on that idea. So we had to scramble to come up with another April Fool's project. After some late night brainstorming and too little sleep it hit us: a sidestory utterly unconnected to the main story. A pure comedy adventure set in Hybrid Theory's grimdark universe. We chose characters, bashed together a plot, crammed as many jokes as we could into the space provided and... well, I think we ended up with the funniest thing ever produced in relation to Hybrid Theory.
Blade: The cast almost suggested itself. Pantyhose Tarou was conspicuous by his absence in the main plot (at least for those who knew our previous works), and Sakura and Ryu from Street Fighter were leftovers from the just-scrapped subplot that was to have seen her get together with Ranma. Figuring out who was going to tie all of them together proved a little more difficult, and involved us tossing ideas back and forth using characters we had no intention of using in Hybrid Theory proper. I was pushing for a Darkstalkers character to remedy its anemic HT presence, but sadly, DS lost out again as soon as we scanned the King of Fighters FAQ and realised how completely insane Athena Asamiya's backstory was.
Epsilon: Seriously. Go reread the fic and her introduction and the backstory she gives. That is, in fact, exactly her backstory. No polish. No exaggeration. Nothing added or removed. We just decided that Sei and Chou never met her in Hybrid Theory (probably killed or something) and that therefore she was operating in a holding pattern for years waiting for her grand destiny of... being a idol singer. For crying out loud, she is a magical reincarnated Greek Goddess with kung fu and psychic powers, and what is her importance to the plot of King of Fighters? ZILCH.
Blade: That's what makes her so awesome! And readers tended to agree. The first sidestory was easily the most popular of the three, judging from reader reaction and a remarkable continuing enthusiasm for the characters that surpassed any of our expectations.
Epsilon: A lot of that likely had to do with, basically, the fact that I wasn't lying earlier. We had a lot of fun with this chapter and it is genuinely funny. I personally ended up getting strange looks from my coworkers when I read through Athena's introduction scene again and got to the part where Athena found out Tarou's real name (from his birth certificate... with her psychic powers!) and basically fell off my chair laughing. It's not considered good form to laugh at your own jokes, but I couldn't help it. I think it also helped that we had just read Nextwave and thus were in that kind of superscillious over-the-top action violence humour.
Blade: So yeah, in a sense, despite it being tossed off in literally a couple of days as a last-ditch resort, this was probably the most successful of the three sidestories. Funny how that worked out. Credit where credit is due: the aliases "Invincible Knife Princess" and "Killfuck Soulshitter", used by Sakura and Tarou respectively, as drawn from the collective zeitgeist of the RPG.net forums.
Epsilon: One of the many good parts of this fanfic. It helped that it gave us an excuse to make fun of Ryu, which we love to do.
Blade: Not to mention making fun of ourselves by making Tarou into an enormous asshole with an entirely undeserved idea of his own awesomeness, in stark contrast to the Cool Loner Sarcastic Badass we'd always characterised him as. The great thing is, the manga supports both of those just fine.
Epsilon: And in case anybody is wondering, Sakura is probably my favorite Street Fighter character. The idea of making her into some pathetic twenty-year old still clinging to her schoolgirl glory days was a bit of a hoot. And this was before it became canon in Street Fighter IV!
Blade: Nothing like being ahead of the curve. But enough of clinging to our glory days. The second sidestory came about because of a confluence of screwups on our part. First off, we badly needed breathing room to get ahead in the main chapters again, fair enough. But more seriously, this was about when we realised we'd really screwed the pooch on the Washuu/Yosho/Akane/Rei plotline, that none of them had appeared nearly as much as they should have thus far in Book III, and that this was particularly a problem with Washuu, who was about to show up as the mastermind behind Sailor Moon's god-powers and pwn Chris for free, despite basically doing nothing since her admittedly impressive shrugging off of Gyro in chapter 23.
Epsilon: Plus Chris was obsessed with Heavy Metal Papillon.
Blade: Oh yeah, that. The "anime version" of HMP, complete with ridiculous pink scythe, sprang full-formed into my head one day and I became rather obsessed with finding a venue to show her off. That also touches on something that influences both the second and third sidestories - our wanting to play up Galaxia (and to a lesser degree the Animamates) as the stupendously awesome (in both senses of the word) foe we had found her to be when watching Sailor Stars.
Epsilon: If there were ever a sequel to Hybrid Theory (just send cheques payable to C&A Productions) it would totally focus on Galaxia and Z. Galaxia because she is awesome, and Z because the original Tenchi series dropped the ball so heavily we could make him awesome.
Blade: In addition to giving Washuu her badly needed facetime, the second sidestory delved heavily into the Rei/Angel relationship, a rich mine of character interaction that we'd been forced to largely skip during chapter 21 and then inexcusably didn't find a reason to really bring up later. You're probably all sick of us bitching about how we screwed poor Rei, but this really was the biggest misstep for her, as it would have given her a compelling reason to be doing things in Book III that would have influenced the plot, and it would have made Angel's story even more compelling.
Epsilon: We suck. Though to be fair to poor Rei, the scene where everyone was ragging on her about her 'look' was easily the high point of this sidestory. In case you missed it, there was a bit of subtle jabbing at ourselves and our writing tendencies in that scene.
Blade: Hell, all three sidestories are really rife with references both obvious and subtle making fun of ourselves and Hybrid Theory itself. It was very cathartic, and was a good part of the reason why we enjoyed writing... uh, 2/3 of them. But more on the third later.
Epsilon: One thing I enjoyed about this chapter was a chance to write Yosho. He didn't really get any facetime at all in Hybrid Theory, and I loved rectifying that in this story. The scene where he tries to bambozzle Papillon was very fun to write and quite amusing.
Blade: Washuu was fun to write, too. Really, all the Tenchi characters we included were. You'd almost think we didn't hate the series.
Epsilon: Yeah, its amazing how much bad writing can ruin good characters.
Blade: As a final bit of foreshadowing, we went to some trouble to build up Angel's absolute sense of location, which would (in the next released chapter or two) prove crucial to her defeating Ranma. So clever! Except if we were really that clever, we would have had more in the fic itself. And people complained about her beating Ranma anyway. Whoops.
Epsilon: We also laid on the irony a little thick in the last few scenes. Still, overall the second sidestory was well-received enough and fun enough to write to be considered a success.
Blade: This sidestory was also written very hastily, though not quite as much as the two-day turnaround time of the first one. It didn't show too badly in the editing, other than in the scene where the villains first attack, where we completely lost track of whose perspective it was. On a vaguely related note, I was actually really fond of how we characterised the Animamates as having an "it's a job" attitude towards planetary genocide. It worked really well and we enjoyed writing it quite a bit. The fact that both Iron Mouse and Papillon are hilariously inept in different ways and view each other with complete contempt made it even more fun.
Epsilon: Which was probably the key to both the first sidestories. They were a break from the relentless grimness of the main story, full of comedy and banter and new characters and were just plain fun to write. Then... then came the third sidestory.
Blade: Okay, okay. So, after two easy light and fluffy sidestories, we felt we were on a roll and another one would easily save us a month. And pride goeth before a fall, and all that. It turned out it took nearly two months for us even to get started on it as we struggled to conceptualise how to best use the characters involved, and even though we banged it out in about a week and a half, this was easily harder (and longer) than the other two put together.
Epsilon: The decision that made it hardest was the decision to go with a dramatic storyline, one that tied intimately back into the existing plotline in a number of ways. We really should have gone with our original plan to have the story revolve around Ranma, Akane, Minako, Tarou, Sakura, Athena and Herb versus Zoalord Rienzi and his sexy laser breast zoanoid bimbo squad.
Blade: Or maybe we shouldn't have. Honestly, the third sidestory isn't bad. In places, it's great. The main problem with it is that it is massively compressed and somewhat uneven in tone (which is, in fact, very much an understatement).
Epsilon: In fact, it can be seen as a sort of Hybrid Theory in microcosm, with bits of hilarity right next to bits of grueling despair, hyperkinetic action and drama and parts of just plain wtf-inducing surrealism.
Blade: Which just goes to show making Hybrid Theory 1/100 its length wouldn't have been a good idea, since it was a bit... jarring in places. But not nearly as much as it should have been, which is I guess some testament to us. Or maybe just to how fricking awesome Touga and Kairos are, since they provided the lion's share of the humour.
Epsilon: We liked using Kairos almost too much. We also had a good chance to use Seiya, Z, Ayeka and several other characters that we really liked. Seiya's personality as presented in the Sailor Moon Stars anime was enthralling and a lot of 'his' personality went into what would become Ranma's grown up personality for book III. Z, like we said, was so underdeveloped that we got a chance to really make him interesting to us and Blade really liked Ayeka.
Blade: Much as the second sidestory fleshed out Angel's time at Washuu/Yosho/Rei's place, we'd originally intended this sidestory to flesh out Akira's relationship with Tethys. That didn't end up happening due to massive time constraints, which is unfortunate.
Epsilon: It did end up fleshing out a bit of Akira's history, however, especially the kind of person she was without Ukyou. It was easy to read the fanfic and get the impression that Akira was some sort of superwoman, inhumanly dedicated to Ukyou. This chapter was as much an exploration of Akira's weaknesses as it was her strengths. Plus it allowed me to get perhaps the single greatest Akira moment I have ever written. I refer, of course, to her insistence that once you blow somebody's head off, you have won the fight.
Blade: More references and cameos in this story (and in the last, actually, so might as well add them too). The reporter Iron Mouse bonks over the head and steals the clothes of is Nana Asahina, who in the original Sailor Moon was the host for awesome youma kunoichi Oniwa Bandana. Heavy Metal Papillon talks about a race of giant sentient trees with green-skinned servitors - a reference to Sailor Moon R villains Ail and Ann. In this sidestory, we have something even more lowbrow - the name of the planet, Demood, is "doomed" backwards (oddly enough, it wasn't). And the "Samoflange" is from Thundercats, probably most famously in a profanity-laden outtake from same. Kairos does a "shadow game" riff straight from the hilarious "Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series" fandub series. And, of course, there was the ship "Hiryuu", and its captain "Shoten". Ha.
Epsilon: There's probably dozens of such references I'm forgetting as well. Frankly, shout outs and cameos was just fun to do. For example, the character of Sailor Sabre was based off Saber from Fate/Stay Night and her partner was partially based on Rider from the same series. Also, the first name of captain Shoten was stolen from Haruhi Suzumiya.
Blade: Oddly enough, not the last time that series would be referenced despite the fact we hate it. But not until chapter 28. Moving on to a caveat emptor that was probably inevitable given the rush in which we did this, our description of how Galaxia sent a message to the Juraians contradicts Washuu (who said she never communicated) in Chapter 21. Maybe they didn't tell her. Or maybe the message was just Iron Mouse "bedaah"ing them.
Epsilon: We also used this chapter as a way to rail against the Tenchi series in general, and the execrable OAV3 specifically. Z's rant against the supposedly benevolent gods of the Tenchi verse was pretty much entirely author on board.
Blade: If maybe not entirely as much as "Ryoko the Beautiful Nice Ubermensch Gives That Hateful Goddamn Mary Sue Ass-Pirate Noike What's Coming To Her". But that aside... there really is some neat stuff in this chapter. I love how seeing a new planet and how different it is from Earth (and how vast the universe is) instantly brightens Akira's dour mood; it's an extremely good character moment.
Epsilon: Really, my main problem with this chapter is the chase scene. To put it bluntly, I didn't like it. I'd just watched Advent Children (about fifty times) and really wanted to do an over-the-top chase scene like the one in that movie, except with spaceships and magical girls! It probably went on too long, was too hard to follow and above all was boring. Other than that, there was a lot of this that I liked. It got bad fan reaction, but that was mainly from Tenchi fans.
Blade: Yes, apparently Misaki as the Counterreactor is near and dear to Tenchi fans' hearts. I have no idea why, but far be it for me to criticise anyone else's irrational attachments to segments of fandom. Still, ultimately, despite its rather glaring faults, I think the chapter-sized sidestory by and large succeeds at what it was intended to do - provide a neat foreshadowing to Akira's pivotal role near the end of the series, and to a lesser extent, tie the happenings in the entire universe together (by revealing how phages are made with Paradox, revealing that by extension so are all other Sailor Moon villains, by extension all leading back to Galaxia and Chaos).
Epsilon: What's really annoying about the fan reaction is that the story we told is not even incompatible with the original plot of Tenchi. Heck, Tenchi OAV 3 has one of the most blatant Third Circle and Paradox moments in the entirety of all our source material. We just said that the Counterreactor was Paradox and that Tenchi "event" at the end of OAV 3 was Third Circle and bam, it works perfectly. Still, not bitter... not bitter...
Blade: And that's that. As far as quick breaks from the story so we could catch up on our writing goes... uh... well, two out of three ain't bad. I think the neatest thing about the sidestories was that they let us explore different parts of the vast and intricate Hybrid Theory universe that weren't covered in the main story; not just in terms of characters and locations, but also conceptually and tonally. They, more than anything else we did except chapter 21, really got across how vast the whole thing was.
Epsilon: But ultimately it was all a diversion from the story itself. The story had to go on. Just like it will in our next Technique. Eh! Eh! See what I did there? Clever!