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Tuesday, June 11, 2024

'In Another World With 100 Waifus' read and edited for the 43rd time:

The endless edits continued to the very last paragraph of the book.  I rewrote the ending to be a little less abrupt:

  "Our last daughters are wed. I have nothing left to worry about in life!" I shouted gleefully the moment Cute and I left the Shrine together, where both of us had participated in rather major roles to make it all official.  The five newlyweds had already escaped to their honeymoon suites situated near the top of our Burj Khalifa mansion, leaving us peons to clean up the party grounds behind them.  I hugged Cute-sama as hard as I could, all the relief in my body pouring out into my embrace of hers. The mandatory marriage law had done its job. Without actually killing anyone, it had spurred everyone to decisive action, and let them start down a path they'd never regret taking.

  "I raised them well." Cute bragged.

  "You're the best!" I agreed.

  "And so are you." Cute gently replied.

Before then, I added seven more words of praise to Mylene in Chapter 43, 'her courage and prowess on the battlefield,' and deleted endless unnecessary 'justs', 'evens' and commas.  I also fixed multiple typos and grammatical errors.  To top it off I rephrased tons of poorly phrased sentences into more legible and pleasant prose.  This is probably the biggest change from the previous edition, lines that used to trip up the reader and make them think, 'wait, what does this mean?' can now all be read at full speed without interruption.  I also added Kant to the scene with Levy and moved Tolstoy over to Chapter 59 where he fit in better.

It did get a little easier to edit after I reached Chapter 38, but every chapter still required a lot of work.  This was the most intense overhaul in a while.  It became a much bigger chore than I had intended.  Chapter 56 especially, reading the endless list of names, was draining.  But it's a necessary resource that holds up the rest of the book, so all I could do was bull through.

Generally when I finish editing '100 Waifus' I can tell people about all the exciting improvements, but when I edit this much it's impossible to describe.  All you can do is re-read the book and see.  Near the end I was editing the edits I'd just made the day before.  I wanted everything to be perfect so that at least on my 44th read I could relax and enjoy, so I scrutinized everything with a microscope.

For instance, thanks to that '100 Waifus' music playlist I'd made, I noticed that there ought to have been 1,099 partygoers for the family photo, not the 1,098 the book said.  The book had neglected that Christopher himself would be in the photo while the music playlist had not made the same oversight, so I corrected the number to 1,099.  If not for all that work on the music playlist I never would have noticed.

But that's how carefully I sifted through the text.  I even noticed when there was a space between a franchise title and its ':' after it and deleted the space.

After editing everything this carefully I'm confident the work is finished, confident enough to pay up for a new paperback version, which this time will represent the crowning glory of my life.  What could possibly go wrong?  Overall the book is 125 words longer than before, which is impressive considering how many 'justs' bit the dust.  Not that it helps, there's still 605 'justs' in the book and 592 'evens', far and away the most common words in the book.  But just imagine how awful it was before now.

Anyone who is curious to see the radically overhauled 44th edition can start reading now.  Those 125 extra words are all worthwhile, and hit a lot harder in context.

https://diamed-the-road-less-traveled.blogspot.com/2019/02/in-another-world-with-100-waifus-part-1.html

https://diamed-the-road-less-traveled.blogspot.com/2019/02/in-another-world-with-100-waifus-part-2.html

https://diamed-the-road-less-traveled.blogspot.com/2019/02/in-another-world-with-100-waifus-part-3.html

https://diamed-the-road-less-traveled.blogspot.com/2019/03/in-another-world-with-100-waifus-part-4.html

https://diamed-the-road-less-traveled.blogspot.com/2019/05/in-another-world-with-100-waifus-part-7.html

'100 Waifus' is basically composed of three things, you could see them as three cords braided together that support each other from the beginning of the structure to the end -- name galleries, sex/romance, and philosophy.  Last edition perfected the name galleries, I had no complaints reading through them this time.  The philosophy has been solid for a long time now, though I did improve upon it a bit this time as well.  But the most fun portions are the sex and romance (which are inseparable by the way, don't let anyone tell you otherwise), which also happen to be the most improved this time around.  I love every time a waifu compares her life in Eden to her life in her origin and how much better things are with Christopher.  That happens a lot, but it isn't repetitive, because all their origins are so different.  It makes for a splendid moment with each and every one of them.

Xanth is actually similar, composed of puns, sex/romance, and adventure.  The adventure aspect, where the heroes use their courage, ingenuity and magic talents to overcome monsters and dungeons and powerful malicious entities, I replaced with long lists of names.  Ah, names.  How sweet they sound.  One name, two names, three names. . . .Let me count the names.  Okay so maybe Piers Anthony has the advantage on this front.  But the puns I replaced with philosophy, and I'm damn sure I have the advantage there.  In '100 Waifus' and Xanth the sex/romance is always the best part.  Maybe I learned that from him.

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