Jun 25, 2025
Author's Commentary #481:
Time to talk about Chapter 481: Crazy, crazy Tankman.
This chapter is special in that it's been planned for a while and actually was written way back in February. To give some context, for a monthly writing challenge, I decided to write a spin-off of the series centering on the Costa Rican men's team known as The Skeleton Hiker's Journal. Content-wise, I cover all the core things in it in this chapter, with the notable difference being that this chapter is in third person while the original story, which was only a single chapter, was told in first person from Štefan's perspective. Now let's do the bios for everyone.
シュテファン・ピカンテ (Štefan Picante) is how Stefan's name would be spelled in katakana.
His birthday is June 10th, which he shares with Costa Rican grandmaster, González Acosta, Bernal.
His favorite piece is the pawn.
Štefan is actually half-Czechoslovakian on his mother's side. The reason for that lies in the fact that at the time I created his character, the Slovakian folk song, Štefan, was stuck in my head.
フレッド・デュラス (Fred Duras) is how Fred's name would be spelled in katakana.
His birthday is October 30th, which he shares with Czech chess master, Oldřich Duras.
His favorite piece is the pawn.
And obvious reference to the Důras Gambit, said gambit is also sometimes known as the Fred Defense, hence his name being Fred Duras. As you can imagine, that's his most played opening as Black.
マニー・マンドン (Mannie Mandón) is how Mannie's name would be spelled in katakana.
His birthday is June 21st, which he shares with controversial Costa Rican-American grandmaster, Alejandro Ramírez.
His favorite piece is the king.
Mannie's the bossy boss, which is fitting since his name literally means "bossy". I originally had plans to have him be the original from which Manny Pewler was cloned from, but I'm unsure if I'll stick with that.
ハレア・エスケレート (Jalea Esqueleto) is how Jalea's name would be spelled in katakana.
His birthday is July 12th, which is Eat Your Jell-O Day.
His favorite piece is the knight.
The inspiration behind Jalea is actually kind of intriguing. Back in the day, there was this old Scooby-Doo web game known as the Mayan Mahem. In Chapter 4 of it, there's a skeleton in one of the areas, who you can click on to lose hp, with Shaggy referring to him as "disgusting dead guy". That's stuck with me for all these years, and served as the inspiration for Jalea. Though the disgusting dead guy in Mayan Mayhem didn't have a parasitic jelly living in him and reanimating his corpse.
ルディ・ジョーカー (Ludi Joker) is how Ludi's name would be spelled in katakana.
His birthday is December 22nd, which was the day FatTv's Joker Kitchen-Crazy Hamburger was uploaded.
His favorite piece is the king.
Ludi is obviously based off of Bosnian Youtuber, Ommcoo, aka the Crazy hamburger guy. He's also one of the few characters that isn't canonically speaking Japanese, mostly speaking Bosnian and English. As for the Golf, it's a reference to the Volkswagen Golf, a car that's popular in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
And with that, we're almost out of Pre 6B. And yes, I'm officially calling this mini-arc Pre 6B, not Pre-6B. I don't want to have to go through all my commentaries again and reedit them. Anyway, next up is a micro lore chapter, then a Kisha chapter, before finally the long-awaited Okisato backstory chapter which will be VERY important for things going forward in the series.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
