Fragments of Chaldea

Original Post Date: September 20th, 2017

I was waiting until Anishka’s promotion to upload this piece. Now that it’s live, it’s time to delve into another core concept for the Fragments Series.

Original Characters, or Original Creations depending, are a coin toss for many readers. Just like the real characters of a canon work, people can love or hate them depending on design. I am also aware the readers are mainly here because they want to see servants in a Slice of Life premise interacting with each other; This is obvious.

However, OCs are an important foundation block of this work, and I place them only as necessary.

Since the beginning, I’ve been painting the world I’ve created one brush stroke at a time. While some might like certain additions, others might find different ones appealing. Occasionally, these brush strokes are coupled with OC tints, or may be an OC tint entirely. This is necessary to help paint the staff’s point of view, since the series isn’t entirely about the servants: It’s called Fragments of Chaldea not Fragments of Servants. The world they all live in is painted accordingly to showcase a much larger picture when brought together, and the OCs are just another pillar of the community.

Remember the article about keys that unlock doors? Often enough, an interaction with an OC is the only plausible way to shed a different angle of light on a subject. In a Slice of Life, the entire system is roughly driven by individuals doing fairly mundane things one would expect from living an average (as can be for servants) life. To do it without any of the staff getting close to servants in such a confined environment would not only be unrealistic, but asinine. They’re there to help make the world feel alive and help ‘normalize’ Chaldea.

To do so, the OCs need to be designed correctly and efficiently. Overlapping among them is alright to an extent, but too many that feel the same would be just adding superfluous names and creating additional character bloat; There’s already over a hundred servants, so I’ll cut OC costs where I can. Which is why there’s a bunch of minor OCs that are just “usually there doing something mundane”, and then there’s the designed ones that fulfill their own purposes.

However, I’m careful in ensuring they’re roughly average with unique quirks that shine in given situations. They’re not going to hold their own in a fight against… well, anything really, but that was never the point of their design. I personally dislike reading about overpowered creations, especially when I’m writing a series that’s filled with canonically strong beings: Why do my OCs need to be super strong and are able to influence the canon lore conflict? 

They’re not masters and don’t need to, therefore they remain average. This is a Slice of Life, not the actual storyline. There’s a reason they don’t really appear save for a few mentions in the supplements; Because they’re part of the servants’ daily lives where they belong. They’re their to make different groups of servants feel welcome and alive again. It helps humanize them further to make the world more curious and vibrant.

Take Naomi, who wound up making Medea and Vlad feel a sense of home and companionship by accident. They, who have been nothing but treated with suspicion and judgement by many, found a small sanctuary next to a tailor who just wanted to knit in her free time. Suddenly they don’t look like the evil demons so many believed them to be: They’re reminded the servants are humans with emotions too.

Then we have Tyler for instance: The most laidback staff member in Chaldea. All he does is work genuinely hard at work while looking forward to free time to play games. He treats servants like potential buddies because he’s grown accustomed to all their presences, much like the rest of the staff. He’s someone many servants come to like or dislike because of his informal attitude and relaxed state of mind.

All fill certain niches and designs, and I only introduce one when something needs to be covered in the future. There’s only a handful unless you count the masters, so the bloat was avoided. By the extensive feedback and compliments I’ve received on each of the main ones, I’m also confident to say they’ve been implemented properly. They fill their niches and provide a sense of normalized anchors to specific activities that need to be fulfilled.

“So why can’t the masters fulfill these rolls,” you might ask. 

That’s the thing: They’re masters. They hold command seals and have to work with the servants to save humanity. There’s no reason a staff member needs to bond with a servant since they have no contractual obligation besides sharing the same roof. That makes the attachment that much more meaningful because it was done by choice rather than perceived necessity or proximity.

So what does the future hold in terms of OCs?

I can reassure you it will remain the same. I’ve got most of my niches covered, so the addition of any future OCs is a distant possibility; It will not be happening in Season 3. If they are introduced, they’ll likely be a minor one since I only have one more design niche for a major OC; Again, this is not coming anytime soon.

As for their own safety, I have nothing to say about that. I will simply remind all of you that the Slice of Life premise will always come first, so anything that happens in a supplement will not throw a hammer through that glass house.

Finally, the decision to make one of them a master. I knew this would probably be controversial, but thus far the feedback has been swinging far more positive than I initially thought. As stated before, everything is done with future intent, and by that I mean anywhere from next fragment to 30 or more entries down the line. Getting a new master was mentioned in Fragment 42, yet it took an entire supplement and 8 additional entries to finally occur (roughly 240,000 words).  It’s far too early to judge the new master’s role, but by her previous design you can make some estimates.

That being said, don’t expect even more future masters in droves or such. 

Strategic necessity and common knowledge aside, there doesn’t need to be that many masters, just like OCs. Each master, like an OC, needs a purpose and design only they can fulfill. Anishka has hers, and it will contrast with Gudao and Gabrielle’s as it’s revealed over time, just like theirs was. It all falls down to the same reply I keep having to give: Just be patient as things unfold. Rome wasn’t built in a day (unless you’re playing Civ).

Original Post Date: February 16th, 2017

I often mention “I’m building towards something”, but some don’t know what I mean by that since this is a collection of one shots. Allow me to explain my building blocks techniques.

Building blocks are necessary for every story, but even more so for a series of loosely connected one shots. Since every piece is new, but can build off concepts introduced in a previous one, the greater the number of pieces I have to use is directly proportional to my freedom of creation.

The collection has long since grown a path, though each one shot remains a rough standalone. Reading them all connected is significantly more rewarding than just reading your favorite servant’s by itself. The reason for this is the world building I’ve developed over the first few fragments. The collection has started relatively slowly because of it, but they were necessary to make the later ones plausible. Though some have begun picking up on my intricacies, it is always advisable to scan a new (or old) fragment for building blocks that might be used later.

Some just wind up as noodle incidents just to keep some guessing though, but the real ones can be rather easily identified.

The best way to view these building blocks is like keys to doors. As an example, in Fragment 1, I introduced Jeanne, Marie, the Salon, and several other servants. I also introduced the design concepts for the Furniture Department, Clothing Department, Quantum Pieces, and more. Finally, there’s the servant developments like Mozart working as the pianist in the Salon or Jeanne being a very capable singer. All of these can be seen as keys I can now use to open a new door in a following fragment.

As an example, let’s take the Kiritsugu Fragment that comes much later. The end goal was to reunite the Emiya family by introducing Illya and Kuro to Chaldea, but that was not possible to do earlier. Based on what appeared in the fragment, the following keys needed to be introduced (But are not limited to these).

• Irisviel
  
• Kiritsugu
  
• Irisviel / Kiritsugu
  
• Memorial Essence
  
• Shooting Range
  
• EMIYA
  

These keys can all be established during the fragment itself, and some are. However, shoe-horning pieces into one fragment to make it work is shoddy writing when done often. Placing them in previous fragments that complement their host while teasing something else coming up is significantly more powerful. As such, I’m constantly building keys in preparation for later fragments. It makes the door swing open much easier.

These doors themselves can be as simple as a Servant’s Personal Fragment, or more direct like a concept. One concept example is OC/Servant, and something like the requires much stronger build up. Introducing it flat out would lead to a lot of tomatoes considering what it is, but it was a key I was very interested in unlocking early for potential use later. Thanks to Naomi and Tyler’s efforts in previous Fragments, it had already been heavily established servants and employees can get along. It was simply a matter of using the correct combination to open the door at this point, with that number combo being Anton’s design (Engineer Division OC Key) and Frankenstein (Servant who wishes to be seen, and loved, as a person).

Just like the rest that came before it, establishing that meant a new key I can use to talk about others things for potential use. A main example is the employee who tries to hit on Mordred (encouraged by Anton succeeding) and fails epically. This acts as the initial fuse for Beowulf to start a food fight, sending the potential chaos into another direction to save the employee from a beating and show Dantes ‘fun mischief’.

Now, how can this work to help you predict a possible appearance/concept coming up? 

The trick is to view little snippets that appear within recent fragments that may be alluding to something more later on. The frequency of which they appear is also a solid indicator. Whether or not you’re right or wrong is anyone’s guess since I do throw curve balls. But as not to discourage you, let me give a solid example:

When Ozymandias was walking around Chaldea trying to break his new groove in, he ran into the Hassans with their newest member, Serenity. The next time she was seen was in the medical wing for an appointment, being careful not to touch anything while being fairly nervous. The last time you saw her was Christmas Day, when it was revealed she mostly stayed within her room because she was overly worried something might happen to a Chaldean resident if she wandered too often. The small, personal party the masters threw just for her was hardly compensation for all of the trouble she had.

Does that mean Serenity’s fragment, and possible solution, may be approaching? They keys are all there for the door, so in this case, the answer is yes. Serenity’s Fragment will be number 32. There’s your free teaser for what’s coming up as a reward for reading this writing insight!