After making so many improvements to my novel recently I was impatient to read it in its newly perfected form. This led to a swift embarkation of try number 38 to get things right. I wanted this to be more pleasure than business, more reading and less editing.
But in the end there were still some edits that needed to be done. A few grammatical corrections, the expunging of an additional 'even,' and the switching of children to more appropriate mothers. I had created a cycle of beastkin children being born to beastkin mothers, but that cycle hadn't been fully observed, creating some cognitive dissonance. It's always best to complete your cycle, so I moved Chopper and Uriko (the half beast) over to be Nekone's kids.
I also fixed a plot hole where Sagiri was giving school lessons before she'd overcome her hikikomori status, so I replaced her with Nadeko who made chronological sense. Oops! What's important is by reading the book for the 38th time I found and fixed the issue, so all is forgiven.
As a result the 38th edition is better, cleaner, and easier to read than anything that came before. I encourage anyone who hasn't read it yet to give it a try now that I've put in so much editing effort:
When I reached the end of the book, I kept swiping right for the next page because I didn't want it to be over. Surely there was more of the tale to tell! If I had infinite wisdom and creativity, I'm sure there would be more to tell, but sadly I'm completely tapped out. I'd love to read more of this book, but I don't know how to write any more of it. The best opportunity for that would arise from me learning more about the 100 waifus by reaching the end of their source work stories, but that isn't up to me, it's up to the source work authors and English translators whether that ever occurs. For now the book really is as good as it can possibly get. The edits this time were few and far between, if I tried to edit the book again there wouldn't be any improvement at all. The bucket has struck the bottom of the well.
Even though this was my 38th readthrough, and even though I'd read it less than a month ago, it was still sexy. This is the sexiest book ever written, as well as the best book ever written. Of course Himeno, Urara, Illyasviel and the 'love singularity' starting with HaruHaru did a good job, but Cute, Mikan and Kobato contributed far beyond the amount of lewd words dedicated to them and were the true MVP's.
I especially enjoyed the scenes with Illyasviel, Asa/Yoru, Wendy, the new Nadeko segment and the new chapters 58 and 59 this time. Of course I enjoyed the entire book, but these sections put a smile on my face as I read, they really charmed me. I also liked when Cute complained about how irrational Earth had been and explained from her God's eye point of view what exactly they'd gotten wrong with a point by point dissection, it was quite the thorough harangue and from a different angle than most political arguments stem from, thus offering more original insights than you would expect.
The recent changes to my fictional character hall of fame fit in perfectly and feel like they were destined, that they'd always been there. It's scary, but I seriously can't sense any deterioration in the quality of characters from the first to the tenthborns. Sometimes I feel like the later waves are stronger. I now have no further complaints with the children's names -- like the book as a whole, I think the gallery has seen all the editing it needs.
I've devoted a lot of this year to this book and it's paid off. This was a delightful read. I'm sure I'll like it even more the 39th time, when I don't have to stop and edit anything.
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