So we come here. To these thoughts. And honestly, I don't have that many thoughts on this story. It is what it is.

Different from what it was originally. As stated, this was more of a Soletus getting over his current state and is still him moving forward but slightly different. It was just the act of getting him out to do something when he finally stopped thinking about his failure and started looking at what is in front of him. Basically not a complicated story. Something simple to occupy my mind during this pandemic.

However, I may have just shot myself in the foot with this story as well given the neth thing. Oh well. I figured I was. Just sharing what's in my brain instead of letting it churn and crying out to be released.

I really enjoyed writing it. Seriously this was so fun to write. I wouldn't be saying it if I didn't change Arlwin.

Arlwin as a male didn't stand out to me. Soletus didn't learn or get anything from him. And I had this idea that they would each other. They interacted with each other a few times. However, writing Arlwin based on the character he was in Risen, I didn't like the way Soletus interacted with him in the first draft of this story.

In fact, originally Soletus's mouth got him in trouble with Princess Silva. In order to save Soletus from the ire of the princess, Prince Arlwin made him become his shield and help him gain needed social standing and not make an enemy out of a noble. Soletus didn't like being dragged around, or being questioned, and neither did he tell Arlwin what had happened to him because he basically felt as if he was being singled out for fun. It made the gazebo conversation impossible to have because Soletus, even when pressured wouldn't begin to talk to Arlwin.

And then I questioned what was the point of Arlwin other than introducing him? Soletus didn't gain anything from knowing him. If they were to meet each other in a future story, there wouldn't be much of a mutual respect there as I intended. Not to mention, future Arwlin wouldn't ask and trust Soletus to do a very important favor in the future.

So I changed Arlwin's personality a little matching Theris's personality a little. Making that curiosity of his less antagonistic. Things were working out better, and in the middle of it, a stupid thought from the depth of my mind made its way to the forefront. What if, Arlwin was female.

Now this thought, is an old thought. I thought of it years ago. Let it go because it was a dumb idea. It wasn't such a dumb idea anymore given how many male characters I have. I thought it would be fun and breathe new life to the story I was writing. And with the change, I switched her to being neth. This also forces me to re-write Risen because future male Arlwin was married with twins. I was going to have to re-write it anyway.

Arlwin as a female, is just ten times better than male Arlwin in my opinion. She takes care of female x that I had a hard time creating. That character, that one female that Soletus would associate himself with. The one friend I imagined him with that would survive distance and time. That no matter where he was in life, Arlwin would appear, and they would just start right where they stopped.

So why couldn't I do this with a male character? Aside from too many, turning him into a female got my mind working a lot more. I was kind of stuck with Arlwin. I didn't have a good story for what he was doing currently in the army. He was just at a garrison outside Summerset. The reason why he was at a conference that he had no intention on going. He just wanted to see his mother. Nothing special about it. The change made me think more in depth. Sometime changing a character is the change in perspective you need.

So, what about after this. I'm going to take a longer break than I have planned. And drop one more story that I've planned. Let me explain.

I don't want to do a lot of web fiction writing right now. The sooner I can get done with this, the better. I need some time to edit the previous stories and edit them to be better than what they are. And I can't keep up with a schedule whilst doing that because editing makes me tired. It's one thing going through a grammar checker the way I have. It's another thing to use the text-to-speech. It's making my brain tired. I need to do this for multiple stories. There is no way I can post weekly.

Then there is the question of what to do with the cleaned versions. The truth is, part of me doesn't know.

I can tell you that I find Wordpress 's new editor very frustrating to deal with for anything long form. The amount of re-formatting I now have to do now is stupid. I really wanted to turn my focus on Wordpress, but I don't even like it hardly anymore. Then I should focus on RoyalRoad. However, RoyalRoad isn't great for my writing.

The Monk and the Princess has done poorly on RR. And the next story isn't going to be any better. It focuses on Kiao again. So with that thinking, I don't think with edits and re--uploading, they would perform better.

And by re-uploading, they will be separate entries. They will still be the same stories, just worded better. They will be organized differently:

Hy'Ruh-Ha will be stand-alone. Wolf, Mask, and Unmasked will be in an unnamed collection. The only difference is that Mask and Unmasked will become a single story with a part one and two. Edict will be Edict and Changes will be the same. Changes will be the collection of The monk and the Princess and the new story, The Sun and Stars.

What I really want to do is post the revised versions on Smashwords as a free download or whatever they have. On RoyalRoad and Wordpress will basically be samples. It would save me a lot of hassle basically. It will get me away from web-fiction.

It feels like I've done what I set out to do. I did a web fiction project and I want to really move on now. But I don't want to move away from The Brotherhood Archive. I just want a better way to show off my fiction.

So I don't know what the future holds. I will have dates for the Sun and Stars eventually. But for now. Thank you all who read this story and everything despite my being linguistically disabled.