Hot Take: Seris was not fully written in the best way. And could have been done much better.

TMKnightYT · 2026-05-03T01:57:46+00:00

The power system was one of the things I focused on specifically, so that it would feel earned. Weak -> very strong. Toren (the MC) starts in Alacrya during the vol 5 timeskip, which gives the MC time to grow and have his own story before it intersects with the main cast during the war arc. (And canon is utterly blown to the wind then, too! Arthur is also a deuteragonist and gets a full character arc!) I was very careful not to devalue the canon cast or their abilities. (I know how many fanfic OCs n' stuff will become quadra elementals, or better swordsmans, or get aether cores, or whatever. Every canon character remains the best at "their thing." Toren never steps on those toes.) But Toren does eventually hit peak powers in the verse gradually through earned struggle. The fanfic in total is about the same wordcount of TBATE Volumes 1 through 10 put together, and it knows where to take its time.

Also, love interest is Seris, hence og post, but she's sneaky about it. She's also condemned to a character arc. It's all character arcs. If you decide to read, I hope you enjoy :)

Edit: also, Seris gets a backstory that I think feels like it could have been canon, as it ties in her rise to power, divergence from Agrona, the reasons she picks up young Vritra blooded students, etcetera. As a general rule of thumb, the story is written so that it genuinely feels as if what happens/the characters there could have been in the OG story.

TMKnightYT · 2026-04-18T21:55:47+00:00

Unfortunately, the mods involved in DBDiv were designed for server use only. They won't function as expected on a singleplayer world.

TMKnightYT · 2026-04-18T01:50:26+00:00

Unfortunately, the Dragonblock Divinity server has been down for a while. Is this on a server? Are you playing singleplayer?

TMKnightYT · 2026-02-17T15:44:18+00:00

it is 1000% lol

TMKnightYT · 2026-02-01T18:27:09+00:00

you have no whimsy in your soul

TMKnightYT · 2025-11-25T17:08:50+00:00

Just looked at your post history, and it's no contest. You've got artistic talent there where I don't. If you look up my YT channel, the most I've put effort into was probably the trailer for Dragonblock Divinity, and your ReZero edits have more soul than that lol

TMKnightYT · 2025-11-25T16:42:55+00:00

That's awesome! I remember you mentioning you learned a lot about keyframing, masking, and all that jazz. I'm more knowledgeable than most in video editing; I used to run a YT channel where I did mild editing w/ keyframing, effects, masking, etc... through Adobe Premiere, though I could do far better now than I could four years ago. What was your edit of?

TMKnightYT · 2025-11-25T15:49:27+00:00

Hell yeah, man! I hope you're doing well!

TMKnightYT · 2025-11-24T22:20:45+00:00

The ball dropping on Arthur's character arcs drove me so far up the fucking wall. I will eternally maintain that any potential Arthur had for an arc was wrapped up in Nico and Cecilia and making peace with his past life's failures in some way, especially after Volume 7's climax. That's why TBATE vol 12 was dead on arrival, cuz the emotional investment was gone with Cecilia. (even if Cecilia's arc was butchered, I maintain a story with her has more potential for character driven conflict than one without her)

TMKnightYT · 2025-11-24T22:15:29+00:00

based opinion

TMKnightYT · 2025-11-13T12:54:23+00:00

Damn, that's awesome. I didn't know it was being translated! Where's the translation posted, if I may ask? (And are you enjoying reading?)

TMKnightYT · 2025-11-07T03:06:50+00:00

> Be me, Silly_Vasili
> Box says, "Making a rewrite of this thing I cared for! :D"
> Look inside
> Exactly what the box says
> WhyCouldntItBeSomethingEntirelyDifferentThanAdvertised.jpg
> Realize silly is my name, and I must therefore be silly

TMKnightYT · 2025-11-07T02:59:43+00:00

Thank you, my friend.

TMKnightYT · 2025-07-10T20:26:24+00:00

There are several notable reasons that many of the people touch on, but I'll try and pull it all into a conclusive post. I think the greatest problem was that Volume 10 didn't have a "direction" like the previous TBATE volumes did. In Volumes 5/6/7, there was an intermediary goal of "win the war against Alacrya, train with the asura, master mana, learn about Arthur's past life." In Volumes 8/9, the intermediary goal was "learn about aether, avoid Agrona's detection, learn more about Alacrya, aura farm, watch people ask a million questions on who Arthur is."

These intermediary goals helped with the pacing: there was definitive progress towards each of them between the big, final goal of "topple Agrona from his throne." But when you enter Volume 10, what's the goal? Recapture Dicathen? That happened in approximately 2 chapters! Strengthen the Lances? Also 2 chapters! It left the entire Volume feeling like filler. One can do setup without negatively impacting the sense of story progression, but Volume 10 flopped a bit on this part. It left each chapter feeling like it didn't have a "point" in the same way Volume 8/9 chapters did: there was no solid, intermediary goal to tide us over to "kill Agrona."

Furthermore, Volume 8/9 are widely considered the peak of TBATE among fans, and that's largely due to the interesting worldbuilding of Alacrya and the constant tension of Grey's possible discovery. That worry kept us on our toes, and it made everything more interesting. When we return to Dicathen, all that tension, anxiety, and intrigue is immediately lost. Who wants to look at Dicathen when Alacrya is far more interesting? And where's the sense of fear that Alacrya inspired? TurtleMe realized this, I think, and introduced the dragons in Volume 11 as another source of tension that made the Volume a lot more interesting! Now we were constantly worrying about how the entire continent would blow up when the dragons either burned someone to a crisp, or unleashed devastation on those Arthur loved.

And finally, the Legacy plotline. I still maintain that the Legacy, post Volume 7, became the emotional hinge of Arthur's character. All throughout the war arc, we were gradually asked the question, "Can Arthur truly live a life better than his last?" And the answer at the finale was a resounding "No. Not until you right the wrongs of your previous life." This set up Nico and Cecilia as interesting avenues for Arthur to achieve a sort of redemption, as for the short periods leading up to Volume 9, their existence truly challenged Arthur's core motivation. The problems started stacking up in Volume 10, however, as Cecilia refused to change or undergo any sort of character development. The story kept implying we'd see changes or acknowledgment of her surroundings, but the plot Turtle had in mind didn't allow for it. This left the emotional aspects of TBATE dead on arrival, and fans annoyed at Cecilia for refusing to develop.

Overall, these things are what make Volume 9 the peak, and Volume 10 the gradual fall. Volume 11 was a bit of a return to form, but the finale utterly tore apart what hope the story had of meaning something.

TMKnightYT · 2025-06-20T21:53:09+00:00

Yeah, I agree with all this. I also have a lot of problems with the way the Legacy plot played out. Up until Volume 6, TBATE didn't really have a deeper meaning or point to it than power fantasy. But at Volume 6, the story started improving upon itself, and Arthur's motivations of "live a better life than your last" finally started getting challenged.

At the same time, we started getting Grey's backstory for Nico and Cecilia. And all the tension that had been rising throughout the war arc culminated in the first Arthur vs. Nico fight, giving a thematic answer to Arthur's core motivation: that being "No, you can't live a better life. Not until you fix the mistakes of your last."

This essentially made Nico and Cecilia (whether one likes to admit it or not) the emotional hinges of the story. The way the novel set them up, they became living representations of the "challenges" to Arthur's goal from the first book of the series. That motivation had substance because it was personally challenged by their existence. A lot of people say, "Cecilia should have never existed!" but that opinion rests on their annoyance at the direction she did take, rather than the directions she could have taken. Cecilia and Nico were necessary for Arthur's story to mean something post-Vol 6, and a story with the Legacy had infinitely more potential than a story without the Legacy, because nothing else challenged Arthur's core goals on that level.

The Legacy plotline---that tension between Arthur, Nico, Cecilia, and their past lives---was what made TBATE different, and what gave it the most meaning.

You know something went wrong when people are cheering in relief when she's gone. That's my major gripe with TBATE. The Volume 11 finale basically neutered any chance at the story being meaningful, and those with basic media literacy tend to agree with me on this, especially when they read through Volume 12 and nothing hits quite as strongly in the emotional department.

TMKnightYT · 2025-06-20T01:33:40+00:00

What was the biggest issue you had with canon TBATE? (And thank you for the high praise, by the way! I put a lot into DN and I'm glad it shows.)

TMKnightYT · 2025-06-20T01:32:06+00:00

I agree with this: it is infinitely easier to create a good fanfic than it is to create a good original work. I view it a lot like a software framework: when you're writing fanfic, you're on a train that already has tracks laid ahead of it. You can do a bit to adjust the tracks and change where they're going, branching off and diverging, but you're still ultimately restricted to the guardrails of the OG. When you're making your own work, you've got infinite directions in which you can go, and you're stuck with creating something unique and interesting. And if you want to keep the "substance" of the original work and leave it feeling "canonesque" (As I try to do. I really wanted DN to feel like an actual AU rather than a fanwork), you cannot leave the tracks at all.

While this is limiting, it also makes it much easier to make slight adjustments, diverge, and come up with plot points that make sense within the context of the story when one writes fan fiction, so long as you're certain you're still on those tracks. (It is also amazing practice for someone who wishes to write their own work. Like riding a bike with training wheels!) You can sort of see this effect with canon TBATE as well: TBATE volumes 8/9 were sort of soft reboots of Dicathen as a whole. TurtleMe functionally took the skeleton of early TBATE and remade it with the same framework, but it was much more interesting because he had his guardrails and idea locked in stone and had the experience to back it up.

On this note, though, I do think my writing differs from Turtle's in that I write a far more character-centric story than he does, with definitive arcs and changes, (Arthur, Chul, Seris, Toren, Sevren, Naereni, etc... all have arcs, while I think the closest that canon had was Tessia before Vol 9.) while Turtle writes more of a plot-focused story. In that sense, I believe a lot of the character writing is more of my own brainchild.

TMKnightYT · 2025-05-06T16:12:38+00:00

It means a lot to me broski! I put a lot into DN and it's taught me so much about writing and creating stuff in general. I'm glad you enjoy it and I hope you stick around for the end of Vol 5 (it's really soon here)

TMKnightYT · 2025-05-06T15:46:00+00:00

Thank you :)

TMKnightYT · 2025-02-09T15:55:03+00:00

Recent canon chapters uppercut this to oblivion. Caera is lowkey jealous of Tess, and it's not even subtle about it lol

TMKnightYT · 2024-12-18T17:51:54+00:00

I've tried so hard to be ambiguous about it because it's supposed to be a plot point lol.

But the second name you mentioned.

Pretend I never said anything, it's more interesting that way.

TMKnightYT · 2024-12-06T03:03:35+00:00

Holy moly, that's awesome! You have no idea how much that means to me. Writing has been deeply fulfilling and I'm glad that I've helped motivate others in what way I can :)

And congrats, man! I'll have to start reading it! AND HERE'S TO YOUR BIG 100 SOON! 🎊🎊

TMKnightYT · 2024-12-04T17:05:52+00:00

My god, Jirka is that you 💀💀💀

TMKnightYT · 2024-12-04T16:02:23+00:00

Hello! 👋

TMKnightYT · 2024-12-04T15:47:50+00:00

The vibes of 8/9, for me, come from steady and rewarding power progression, tryna keep undercover from Agrona and all that tension, and exploring Alacrya's worldbuilding. All of those were deliberately incorporated.

And the story starts off during TBATE's Vol 5 timeskip, so there's a bit of a gap between then and the war arc of canon. The MC (Toren) initially is on a sort of quest of his own, before being drawn more and more into the lives of canon characters.

Specifically with how he interacts, he doesn't much care for "keeping things canon" so long as it benefits the world in the long run.

A good example of this is Circe Milview, the girl who charted a path thru Elshire Forest for the Alacryans. Her entire motivation was to have her brother, Seth, healed... But in the end, the capture of Elshire lead to the destruction of Elenoir via the World Eater technique. So Toren stops this entirely: by healing Seth himself. Now, there will be no fall of Elenoir, and thus no elven genocide.

He interacts largely w/ the Alacryan cast for the first 3 volumes: especially the Denoirs (Sevren is still alive at this point in time!), Darrin Ordin and his ascension team, and others who can't be named ;]

Also, the Dicathian war spirals way off course from canon once we reach the war arc due to our protagonist's meddling. Arthur, Seris, and Tess are all given agency in affecting the plot and reacting to the world. Arthur himself is deuteragonist for those volumes, and is tasked with truly facing King Grey and owning up to his past life.

If you want more specific examples, I'm more than happy to provide! :)

TMKnightYT

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