Oct 13, 2024
Author's Commentary #224:
Time to talk about Chapter 224: Armageddon and dirty flagging.
This marks the start of Side Story 4, and will be focusing on Sandy Shores, the American SPCM that was secretly a Desperado. I actually had this Side Story in the works for a while and was even planning on posting it before Season 6, but decided to focus on Season 6 first.
As for the chapter, I was originally going to start the arc with Sandy just being in prison, but felt I needed to better set the stage as to what the WWCF holding facility is like. While prisoners are forbidden from playing any that aren't fellow inmates, with the exception of playing anonymously on the prison account, they are required to play a match once a day. Even Michiko is no exception to this rule, and is forced to move the pieces via her thoughts.
As for the theme of the match, some might have noticed I've started a spin-off novel called The tales of Caïssa and Assïac. In it, I give my take on the mythos behind how some chess rules and practices came to be. All the chapters in that novel will find their way to this one, eventually, but I felt that some might just want to read the mythos on its own, which is why it's in it's own separate novel.
In this chapter, Armageddon and flagging, the term used to describe when someone runs out of time, are the big themes. My take on the mythos is that Caïssa and her younger twin sister, Assïac, the goddess of spoilers, got into a great fight and began fighting each other in a series of chess battles. However, all the matches ended in draws, and at the end of her rope, Assïac implemented Armageddon, where Black would get draw odds. Caïssa retaliated by giving White more time and abolishing time increments. And as for the match, Caïssa won by flagging Assïac.
In this game, Ginji decides to be an asshole and deliberately make blunders when Sandy is low on time. The crazy thing though is that even after he blundered his queen, his position was still 100% winning for him. The good news though is that Ginji won't be the main focus of this Side Story, so he won't have a large presence in the upcoming chapters.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
