Arc V: Gamers -- After Thoughts
Added 2025-08-05 16:00:11 +0000 UTCOnce again, we've reached the end of the arc. That means there will be no new chapters until October 14th for you and October 15th for Royal Road/Space Battles.
For those who want to save money and cancel, I'd recommend doing so now. I'd, of course, appreciate those who are willing to stay, but I prefer to be fair, upfront and honest about these things.
As usual, I'll provide a few posts for free members during the waiting period. Including the next arc teaser in September. I won't say much about the next arc now except that it is, officially, the longest arc in terms of written material. Arc VI: Trade has 11 chapter and 96k words. That makes it 6k longer than the previous record holder, Arc I: Academy.
Reflections on the Story
At this point, you are more than halfway to what I've written. Arcs 6 and 7 already complete and Arc 8 is nearly so. Generally speaking, the first three story arcs: Academy, Orasul Lunii, and Tartarus represent the beginning of the story. Migration, Gamers, and the story arcs that follow cover the middle. At this point, Sylvia really starts to show the sheer, unfair power the System has to offer.
I'm very glad to have so many readers here along with me. The discussion and the atmosphere, particularly in the most recent release has been incredible. Thank you.
Netherwitch Fanfiction
Recently, I had someone ask whether they're allowed to write a Netherwitch fanfic. I'll let them identify themselves if they so wish. As someone who learned by writing fanfiction, I want to be clear as crystal about my perspective:
I will never, under any circumstance, deny you the right to create divergences, alternative universes, or other forms of fanfiction for this story. This goes for fanfiction of my prior fanfiction as well.
My only requests are:
Don't plagiarize - That is to say, recognize the original author (me!) and avoid as much as possible copying and pasting my work into yours. If you find yourself copying passages, rewrite things into your own words. I'll give a special waiver or System Windows, as these are supposed to be... systematic.
No Continuations - At least for the short term, avoid trying to write the next arc of Netherwitch on your own. This request is purely to avoid clashes. If you want to write a very different next arc from my trajectory, that's okay!
Beyond this, do whatever you wish! Diverge, cross over, write not a continuation but a splinter that will take the world in a new direction. Throw in original characters, play with isekais, or even self inserts. Change the theme to romance, comedy, or grim dark as you wish. In short, go wild!Be respectful - Fanfiction is taking other peoples ideas and worlds and spinning them in new directions. Its not wrong to challenge my canon. Nor is it wrong to borrow ideas from other writers. I wrote Netherwitch to hoping to make people think. You don't have to agree with me. Indeed, there's probably subjects where you might think you know my personal perspective and where you're wrong. Because, sometimes I intentionally play devil's advocate against my own political beliefs.
Because, I believe doing so makes for better writing.
And one, final, happy thing. I hereby grant full permission to anyone writing Netherwitch fanfiction to open a patreon and collect money for their writing. Similar websites are also allowed.
What I don't grant, however, is permission to publish on sites like Amazon. Not because I'm adamantly opposed, but because I don't want the legal headaches that might follow. Just be clear its a fan fiction and I'm the original author.
Other than that, have fun!
Comments
No discord or anything at this time. I do have the patreon chat I opened. It's not great though.
Steve Barbour
2025-08-07 03:23:35 +0000 UTCI absolutely loved this story binge read the entire thing in two days flat. Now just gotta wait for October... (Despair) XD I'm so hungry for more, I might try my hand at writing something within the setting. No promises I'll get very far. Or that it'll see the light of day.. P.s. do you have a discord group or other community about this story?
Epsilon
2025-08-07 03:06:10 +0000 UTCLet your muse go wild. I'm glad to hear you have ideas. ... also, I didn't disallow smut. I just, uh, didn't endorse it. ... even if I might read it. BTW: I'm willing to share my trimmed spreadsheet with those interested. Actually, I should just make it available everyone as a major post. That'd be a fun thing to do during the down time. Though, I do need to scour it again for spoilers.
Steve Barbour
2025-08-05 18:17:46 +0000 UTCThat's for sure - writing is a lot of effort and way more difficult than what most readers think. A grand story like Netherwitch is also hard to write than one-shot or story with less than hundred pages or so. The amount of planning required is high unless you are some weirdo savant chaos lover like the guy who supposedly wrote thousands of pages with no planning, but I guess it fit in with the Loki theme. I won't plug it here, but if you are familiar you might know. Plus the quality, grammar and technicals of this story is much higher, and the output is understandably slower. I have no idea how people put out a big chapter a day even if full time. The editing and planning alone would certainly kill that pace unless you had an immense backlog, super talented, fast af and experienced. An idea on its own is almost nothing without the implementation. I would argue that good execution outweighs the importance of a good idea, although both is ideal. Also too much ambition and scope can easily kill a story for an inexperienced writer. Writing anything more than 20-25k words or so seems to be my limit, but I hope to break past that with structure, motivation and learning from my failures.
farichada
2025-08-05 18:10:12 +0000 UTCInteresting. I agree with you for the most part. Your offer regarding fanfiction is generous, and I hope it inspires further organic growth for your work. I have one or two ideas I might pursue. To keep things cleaner, the story would be set within the same setting but follow a different witch. Someone who was also previously a man, yet who walks nearly the opposite path of Eric/Sylvia. Some characters, especially early on, would be shared, but the divergence would become significant. It will start before and span far after the timeline of the main story. This character begins as a masculine, fitness focused, power-hungry, strong-willed, attractive, successful, chauvinistic, slick, dominant, confident, and highly individualistic person, yet also, at times, arrogant, naive, stubborn, prideful and tragically slow to adapt to their new reality as a female witch and the new mechanics of hell. Their refusal to accept their new role as a woman, at least, not until it's decades too late, sets them on a very different trajectory, the same initial one you alluded to in your text. The consequences are as initially grim as one might expect, but over time there will be a slow escape, and a far more gradual ascent. I do plan for there to be sexual content, unavoidable due to the events of the story, but it will not be the focus or described in detail. These events will catalyze their character development as the protagonist is forced to adjust to her new reality and role, albeit far too late. There will be small nuggets of opportunity and potential among the deep pool of humiliation, oppression, abuse, poverty, hopelessness, cruelty, and suffering. The eventual focus will be on her ascent. Themes of divergence, adaptation, the cruelty of immortality, martial arts, physical power, dream magic, transformation magic, heaven, and the Divine Will are likely to be central, though I’m still researching and refining these elements. I’ve already written several thousand words privately. While some high-level impacts from the main story will be felt, they will be indirect, and time will pass more quickly to emphasize the protagonist’s slow and difficult progress since unlike Eric/Sylvia they refused to leverage most of the advantages were given, but unlike them they will never fully surrender their core identity, but they will be forced to change and leverage it more they would have desired. There is some basis for dream and transformation magic from the core story, but outside of the arc with duvat dream drops and how Esmerelda was abused by dream magic and a few high level mentions of transformation magic with the biggest one being the Sylvia/Belkis appearance swap and the three faced witch; it is not been the focus or fully fleshed out, and I plan to be respectful to what exists, but will develop it further. The overall planned scope is also far smaller. I am not silly enough to match your ambition and grand plans with a fanfiction. It will also never devolve into smut or plagiarism.
farichada
2025-08-05 17:51:04 +0000 UTCI'll stick around at least for August. :thumbsup: By the way, there are some really simple tried-and-true setups to let your fanfiction writers actually earn what little money they can for the work they put into fanfictions of your stuff, without it becoming much of an issue for you to ever bother with. If you're interested (and honestly, as a writer you yourself know how much work writing a story is), then check out SelkieMyth's Discord server. He wrote *Beneath the Dragoneye Moons* and has a prolific authors' channel on his Discord. He also runs the Mango Media indie publishing house, and as such, has headache-free boiler-plate solutions for things exactly like this.
Eleeyah
2025-08-05 16:29:06 +0000 UTC
