Chapter 45: Author’s Note: Fall Of Battlefield Restart

I guess now would be a good time to open up about something that defined my hobby as a writer.

There used to be a novel called 'Battlefield Restart' that had just starting posting 6-7 years ago.

It was EXTREMELY early on in my writing hobby.

For those who don't know: This was the first work I did that got any sort of clout at the time of writing.

Originally, it started off as just a gag where I randomly switched up the standard 'Hero Gets Summoned To Fight'… back when subverting that part was still a recent trend. Not much to think of.

At the time of writing, 'RoyalRoad.com' was just getting off its feet as a Webnovel writing platform.

This was after seeing the success of translating the work called 'The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor', in which the website was named off (since the virtual game in that novel was called 'Royal Road' too).

You could say the standard was lower back then.

My priorities as a Webnovel writer was also pretty much whack because of certain IRL circumstances.

Maybe it wasn't a Webnovel that had reached the peak compared to others, but the success of getting 'Battlefield Restart' into the Weekly Top 10 Ranking was something that deeply impacted me.

Comments and reviews had flooded at the time.

Not all being positive opinions in nature...

This was probably the most natural thing to happen after basing your main inspiration as 'Mushoku Tensei'… without really knowing what made that novel so great to begin with. All of it was useless.

I did indeed create a flawed character on a redemption arc, but lacked understanding of what I was working towards or my own disposition as a writer. It didn't even occur to me that they existed.

Someone with dyslexia like me wouldn't have ever picked up writing as his hobby without another.

And that person was definitely my older sister.

She was someone I idolised, but also someone I'd overly relied on without ever growing into myself.

Becoming a parasite that gnawed at her heart…

My own self-insert was similar to the me of the time. A guy who was ignorant of social cues.

I'd even made a joke of it in that story, saying that the main character, 'Simon Rainglow', was fearful.

Because of his circumstances depicted in 'My Life' (which was a more dramatised version of events in my past), I turned the main character's main flaw as being too paranoid towards others.

The first step to making a good novel was made.

I showed both the strengths and flaws of having such a mindset. How life would treat such a 'child'.

However, I hadn't understood how to continue.

The reason for that being more than a writing block. It was actually funny what broke the story.

Since the main character was my self-insert going through a redemption arc, I also needed to understand what would be needed to make my character 'grow'. What did he need to develop?

The answer eluded me…

It was a bad choice to mix the words 'self-insert' and 'redemption' when the author himself wasn't able to change. I as a person was an inflexible moron that couldn't distinguish fiction from reality.

Since I never thought my own covert paranoia towards people was bad, I couldn't 'redeem' it.

Which was the first step to ruining a good novel.

The main character progressed from a child to a ten year old in a blink of an eye, but didn't change.

Still set in his way without so much as looking back. An immature person as well as a writer.

I had really soft and thin skin back then…

So easily would I break under the pressure of one person's opinion and changing the story to suit it.

My goal being more to get some sort of recognition and acknowledgment I felt I'd never got IRL.

Being a slave to my average amount of readers.

But that wasn't what truly 'broke' the story.

After my family forced me to socialise in another country without the option of coming back, I truly felt what it was like to be trapped in a 'foreign world'. All while being unable to meet my family.

The only thing I could do was listen over the phone.

It was around the time I was reposting my story and continuing it past chapter 41 (where I'd left it off).

The scene where most reviews would say peaked.

Saying things like: "You really need to read 40 chapters before you can make an opinion on it."

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Which I didn't know was praise or not.

It was the scene where I chalked up the nonsense in an earlier event as a result of brainwashing.

And that he finally met the antagonist at that moment. The one who held malice towards him.

There was only one simple problem: And that was that her motivation had no bearing on his growth.

Whether he defeated her or not, it was just him defeating a villain that just randomly popped up.

Even if he did win, what would happen from there?

It felt like I was building a bridge, but was extending it towards an abyss. There was nothing.

Moreover, my writing style was more: 'Make your character feel at ease, then dump things on him'.

The entire story was basically him getting cozy before the plot would hit him over the head.

Which actually worked better than you'd think.

Since the story was written in first person, the lack of world building just gave more emphasis on the protagonist. I'd even purposefully refused to name drop the MC's first life name to keep that focus.

But all good things had to end.

The trauma I was experiencing in real time in that other country made my chapters turn from a real story… to pseudo-philosophy. Twisting the plot and narrative without any rhyme or reason as to why.

The result was as you'd expect.

A good story completely flopped…

I myself, with my bad memory, had forgotten what Battlefield Restart was all about in the first place.

But that didn't stop me from fantasising anew.

In that place that might as well be considered another world for me, I planned a new story.

One built to combat my own nihilism that was slowly entrenching itself into my mind with time.

It was a Webnovel that used Text Emojis and whatever else I could pragmatically to tell a story.

I considered it a sequel to Battlefield Restart of sorts, which in itself was arrogance on my part.

A sequel to a story that hadn't been finished…

You guys could probably tell how well that went.

The story didn't fit the time and place. People didn't like META commentary without substance.

It ruined the immersion of a reader.

It's not like I was writing Omniscient Reader Viewpoint. My story became a line of blogs.

Not one bit of a meaty story in any of them…

Just echoes of how good the study could've been.

A long synopsis that didn't have any flare. Just a line of chapters filled with only empty promises.

To think, I was planning to write a trilogy where the second sequel of my Battlefield Restart series would fuse the earlier instalments as one. Would have been nice if I had the time to write that much.

Or the non-dyslexic brain that could handle writing three stories at once without constantly forgetting.

This was what eventually made me come to write 'I Was A Landlord In An Otome Game', my last work of fiction. One that I'm hoping would one day exceed 1000 chapters and house all my ideas.

I'm not looking for any real recognition anymore.

Maybe a reader or two who would make things less boring, but the lack of them would stop me writing.

I'd just continue posting like it was my nature…

Maybe taking a day off to research some stuff before posting, but there'd be nothing but that.

My life wouldn't change anyway…

As you probably already guessed, the reason I'm bringing this up is because the spirit of 'Battlefield Restart' still lives within my last work. The same main character from that is the 'drunkard' in this.

A pretty big leap…

I'm hoping that the themes I'm trying to focus on can get through in the next two chapters, so I'm going to take a but longer to really tweak them to my heart's content. That would be my motivation.

Thank you for reading until this point. I'm thankful for anyone who'd took the time to read this note.

Feel free to ask anything in the comment section.

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