Fragment 114 Insight

Slowly but surely the fic advances a bit further. Mostly slowly.

D’Eon was a bit of a curveball in terms of how I got to focus the fragment. I really wanted to capitalize on their spying attribute to offer a showcase of all the sights they’d gotten to witness. I hope after reading it it’s safe to assume very little happened in Chaldea without them finding out about it.

In regards to their gender, I realize it was likely a prominent topic for some who may be disappointed how rather casually I handled it. Obviously I didn’t choose the gender depiction in any disparaging way but rather the idea D’Eon chose how to be addressed for ease of conversation. But they still don’t mind if others choose to see them in the other way unless it’s used in a demeaning form. If in the future there’s a time their gender is swapped, I’ll switch the pronouns accordingly to display that.

That aside, on completion of the first draft took a long time. I could definitely feel the rust writing this, but it was also partly because I was second guessing whether I blended D’Eons character depictions well with his presented scenes. Part of me felt like this was a sort of voyeur situation and little was being done in favor of the focus servant in question. At worst, I pondered if this was feeling more like a large shard collection and not truly a look into the current normal life of D’Eon. Another conflict of interest between wanting to showcase a character while simultaneously advancing several of the dozens of subplots. Making this living world only gets rougher with time and character bloat.

Which brings up another topic of curiosity: The amendment to a firm rule Sita broke previously. As stated in some Q&A and a topic post to the main website, the rule has been adjusted in favor of allowing non-gacha servants with significant character development to enter the fic. This was mostly due to certain rewarding characters being locked out, but I’m not sure many were expecting the necessary servant to be Archimedes. Surprise or not, he’s a rather helpful pivot into what I need developed by a certain time frame. As slow as the fic is going, it’s still on schedule.

That said, I tweaked a bit of the ‘to be summoned’ lineup because of the long delays between fragments. It meant Voyager was allowed to enter far sooner than any probably anticipated, but some familiar faces are still promised to arrive soon. This fragment introduced a bunch, but next fragment will also see a few more. The character bloat grows, but it’s my hope everything written thus far provides a solid framework for what previously featured servants are probably doing while another focuses on their days.

But every now and then, we have to focus on someone else to build up a foundation for what’s to come.

Teaser: His cousin always joked he never knew what to call his luck. Terrible was a start. Maybe not as terrible as he’d always claimed, but no matter what he did, he was always dragged into something else. But what could he say? Even if someone far more capable should’ve been chosen to be the fourth, he’d put forth his double best despite what little he felt he offered.