May 07, 2025
Author's Commentary #350:
Time to talk about Chapter 350: Artiljerija smidje.
Kaylee is back, and that means it's time for another crazy game, and it most certainly delivered. The game was amazing, with the obvious highlight being the 15th move. Jasmina needed to sac the queen in order to maintain her edge, but didn't see it, allowing Kaylee to get the win. Kaylee calculated this would be the case, which is why she did the little king shuffle at the start, an opening I hereby dub, the Artiljerija-Smidje gambit. It goes 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Ke7 3. Nc3 Ke6 4. d4 Ke7 5. dxe5 Ke8, and takes it's name from Jasmina's surname, Artiljerija, which is also the Bosnian word for "artillery", and smidje, the Dutch word for "blacksmith".
As for why this is, blame the Belgian folk song, 't Smidje, for not only inspiring this game, but also future events in the story regarding Kaylee. I will state that prior to discovering the song, I did already have a vision for what to do with Kaylee's character, with the song simply giving me the inspiration on how to better enhance said vision. Now onto the bios for the new characters.
シェイラ・ホジッチ (Šejla Hodžić) is how Šejla's name would be written in katakana.
Her birthday is March 8th, which is International Women's Day.
Her favorite piece is naturally the queen, given her personality.
Šejla was originally intended to be introduced back during Ichiko's show. I decided not to though, as I felt it would have altered the tone too much, or rather led to Šejla stealing the spotlight, which wasn't what I wanted at that particular moment. Šejla is going to be a prominent character, mainly due to her status as a Bosnian co-president. That being said, I'm not sure she'll necessarily be getting too much screentime in this arc.
アズラ・ヴァレシャノヴィッチ (Azra Varešanović) is how Azra's name would be spelled in katakana.
Her birthday is July 4th, which is Independence Day in the United States.
Her favorite piece is the rook, since she considers it the "big gun" of the chessboard.
Azra is Sejad's niece, and currently studying abroad in Texas. She loves ballistic weapons, especially artillery weapons.
ミルサダ・ナダレヴィッチ (Mirsada Nadarević) is how Mirsada's name would be spelled in katakana.
Her birthday is December 14th, which is the day the Dayton Agreement was signed, ending the Bosnian war.
Her favorite piece is the knight.
Mirsada is a Sunni Muslim girl originally hailing from Bosnia and Herzegovina's Srebrenica municipality, but now living in Neum and serving as DSPCM there. Like quite a few characters in the series, she ended up having her initial design replaced and passed on to another character. This was largely due to the fact that when I first designed the Bosnian women's team, Mirsada was the only character I didn't have a clear vision for at the time. The same was also true in regards to Mayane from the Brazilian team, who's original design ended up getting ported over to a character that has yet to appear in the story. As for Mirsada herself, like most characters introduced in this arc, I'm unsure if her backstory will be showcased in this arc, but it will definitely show up in the story at some point.
ペトロネラ・ルース (Petronella Roos) is how Petronella's name would be spelled in katakana.
Her birthday is February 15th. I chose this date at random, so there's no greater significance behind why this date is her birthday.
Her favorite piece is the pawn.
As for why she says "eberything" instead of "everything", it was actually due to me mistyping the word while writing the chapter, and being sleep deprived and frustrated at the time, decided to just keep the misspelling in, and make it Petronella's trait to misspeak certain words.
ヤネケ・オイ (Janneke Oey) is how Janneke's name would be spelled in katakana.
Her birthday is February 16th. I chose this date at random, so there's no greater significance behind why this date is her birthday.
Her favorite piece is the knight.
Janneke is actually related to a character from another team, who was designed long before her, but ironically will debut later in the story than her. As such, I'll refrain from going too in depth on Janneke until said character is properly revealed.
ドラホミーラ・プレシャティ (Drahomíra Plešatý) is how Drahomíra's name would be spelled in katakana. Her surname is both the Czech and Slovak word for "bald".
Her birthday is January 16th, which is name day for Drahomíra in Slovakia.
Her favorite piece is the queen, because it reminds her of Kaylee.
Drahomíra originally hails from Slovakia, but immigrated to Belgium, mainly due to Kaylee. True to her surname, she's bald. And naturally, cute as well.
이미래(李美華) (Rhie Mi-rae) is how Mi-rae's name would be written in Korean. イミレ（李美華）(Imire (Ri Mika)) is how her name would be written in Japanese.
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
Her birthday is March 5th. I chose this date at random, so there's no greater significance behind why this date is her birthday.
Her favorite piece is the queen.
Mi-rae was born in Korea, but immigrated to Belgium. She has a history with a member of the Korean women's team, but since said character has yet to appear in the story, I won't delve too deeply into it just yet.
And now, Belgium has beaten Bosnia and Herzegovina, creeping up the standings further. Believe it or not, many of the women's teams currently have a perfect score of 12 points, with only a handful of said teams having 6 perfect 4-0 victories. This will all become clearer when the standings are officially revealed in the story, but since that won't happen for a while, I thought I'd state the fact here.
As for other notable happenings and tidbits, Mimosa and Alice caught Iori's cold. This means team Japan will have another headache to deal with as team France will naturally file a complaint against them. The good news is that Iori's feeling better.
Finally, I've got a behind the scenes tidbit to discus. This chapter was uploaded on February 14th, Valentines Day. Chapter 346: Alien love, was originally intended to possibly serve as the chapter to release on the day, but story pacing said otherwise, thus I decided to have this chapter release on the day instead. The game featured in the chapter could count as a love letter though, since I really did enjoy writing it.
And now, just one game remains before the round officially ends, but before that, things will shift back to Okisato and co. The next chapter won't feature any games, but it will introduce more characters, some of which being characters that will have prominent roles in the story.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
