Grasping at Shadows [5/5] (Suikoden II, Jowy and the Highlanders)

[puella_nerdii]

Seven months, 38.5k words, 88 pages, three garbled save files, two lost notebooks, one additional playthrough, way too many weeks of writer’s block, hours of whining, and a ton of attempts to make sense of the weirder parts of SII’s script later, I stick a fork in this fic, for it is done at lastAnd you know what, I don’t say this kind of thing a

Comments

[lindenleaves]

Hooray! I worried maybe you'd given up on this

[puella_nerdii]

It was rough going for a while (see: losing the notebook that I'd written the first half of this chapter in, and then dealing with a corrupted save file), but I'm glad I pulled through in the end. Thanks so much for sticking with this.

And I'm glad the beginning and end parallels worked for you! (I'd originally planned to end this with the Beast Rune saying o hai thar to Jowy, but I honestly like it better this way.)

I very much liked your characterization of Sasarai in this in general, and it's a great idea to pick through his involvement in the assassination plot.
Thank you! :D Man, I loved writing Sasarai in this -- I think he stole the chapter for me, in some ways. He's such a dick, especially when he's maintaining the ^____^ face the entire time.

I hadn't considered the idea that he might worry Riou wouldn't take things as far as they needed to go, though I still think he could have tried explaining some of those concerns to Riou before, you know, trying to kill him and Nanami.Oh, he totally should've. But Jowy, I think, is