This is a non-story chapter, and the only non-story chapter I will ever post. It contains three self-analysis posts I originally put on Spacebattles, but which I think Royal Road readers deserve easy access to. It is aimed specifically at authors, creative writing enthusiasts, and readers who like to know what goes on behind the scenes.
If you do not fall into the above three categories, I recommend that you simply skip this and move on to the next chapter. You will not have missed anything.
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Analysis Post #1 (On my use of irony in chapter 25, "The Gap")
From May 12, 2025:
Because I'm still a relatively new and inexperienced writer, I've been doing this thing where I use a chapter as a chance to practice/engage with a particular story element or technique. This isn't true for every chapter, but a large fraction. For "The Gap," it was irony (dramatic and situational), so I'd like to share a few thoughts about my use of it here.
First of all, the most obvious instance of dramatic irony: Meili would view John with no less respect if he brought Claire along, and in fact would view him more favorably if he did so. But John has no way to know this, especially without being told, so he can only assume that Meili's attitude would undergo a 180-degree flip upon hearing the number '2.1.' So he's correct and incorrect; this conflict with Claire could be avoided in its entirety, but the reader can't exactly blame him for the misunderstanding.
Because, like he texts to Claire: "You can't name a single thing that isn't [related to ability level]."
Misunderstandings are often overused, I find, especially in romance anime and Manga. They frequently come across as a cheap and easy way to generate interpersonal drama between the main characters. But I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with using a misunderstanding as a plot point or jumping pad for conflict -- after all, in real life, misunderstandings cause conflict all the time. We almost caused a nuclear war because of a country-scale misunderstanding.
The important thing, to me, is that the misunderstanding is believable. Best case, it might even feel like it's inevitable, given the personality traits of the characters and the worldbuilding of your story. What I dislike the most is when intelligent, well-reasoned characters with excellent communication fall into an artificial and forced misunderstanding for the purposes of plot progression.
My intention in this case, my hope, is that losing a friend due to a truly avoidable yet inevitable misunderstanding (given established character traits and setting) adds an extra dimension of depth to a tragic scene.
This chapter's situational irony is that Claire is essentially correct -- in fact, she has seen through Meili's scheming and manipulation more quickly and clearly than anybody else in the story -- but the knowledge doesn't benefit her, and her understanding of the situation is actually to her detriment. Throughout the story, I've made it a point to hammer in how much of a benefit knowledge of the future is for Meili, but I subverted the role of future knowledge in this chapter for Claire.
John has a fantastic impression of Meili, shaped by her treatment of him and her ability level. Claire's declaration that Meili's attitude is a trick or scheme to make him lower his guard only makes John view Claire as unreliable and paranoid, someone actively dragging him down. From John's perspective, it's like he has a lottery ticket worth 50 million dollars right in front of him, but his overthinking and low-status friend urges him not to take it for a far-fetched, unconvincing reason. (To run with the analogy, she's claiming that the lottery ticket will ruin his life because all his friends and family will start either getting jealous of him or seeing him as a purse instead of a human being.) And then, after an argument, the low-status friend suggests a course of action that will put the lottery ticket in jeopardy.
All of this makes Claire look inconvenient, more trouble than she's worth. If she gets another vision, this time with more convincing evidence of Meili's foul play, how likely is John to believe her? How likely is he to even give her the time of day?
If she never had the vision, she wouldn't have self-sabotaged, and she would still have a chance to be a grounding, moderating influence in his life. Does she still have the ability to play that role?
Another ironic thing I tried to do (maybe you would call it situational irony) is the callback to a relationship between Arlo and Meili. In chapter 8 of this story, "The Marriage," Meili's Lingard clan earrings are falsely taken by Wellston High as evidence of dating -- which was exasperating and embarrassing for her at the time. Now she can use that same falsehood for her own benefit, which I enjoyed that I was able to do.
(Of course, it might come to bite her from behind later on, but we're focusing on the current chapter.)
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Analysis Post #2 (On my use of extended metaphor in chapter 28, "The Convenient Version")
From August 26, 2025:
I've been very interested in extended metaphor recently, especially metaphor for reality in Fiction and Fantasy, and I think it shows pretty heavily in "The Convenient Version."
1. Abortion as a way to prevent interracial children in the American South (1900s)
This may be immediately obvious to some Americans, I think, but the events of this chapter are heavily influenced by novels like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, or real-life occurrences in the deep south of America. Women were not-too-uncommonly pressured or paid to abort by their families to prevent the shame of interracial offspring. I find it particularly fascinating that these families were making their daughters commit a pretty heavy sin in their own minds: these are deeply traditional and religious people, Christian, fundamentally against abortion. But once the prospect of having an interracial grandchild, niece, or nephew is on the table... Anyway, I conceptualize this as a sort of 'backward progressivism,' where tradition is broken for less than savory reasons.
I construct a metaphor for the same sort of concept in this chapter. I think Kyoko Albright is the very first instance in this story of a god-tier being treated disrespectfully by those 'below' them. And from a certain perspective you could conceptualize this as a good thing, even progressive. ("Do you want god-tiers to be able to get away with everything, immune to criticism from everyone else?"). The behavior of characters in this chapter (Kinsley's obviously insulting language, Javier and other researchers shown to say some pretty awful things) directly contradicts the hierarchy and this world's social system. I hope this gets the reader into the same territory of frustration or disdain that they might get reading a story about its real-life counterpart. I also think the violation of norms made this chapter a lot more striking -- compared to, say, only other god-tiers being able to comment negatively and the rest shutting themselves up and saying nothing.
To stretch the metaphor a bit further, both the fictional and real-life situations are revealing of their respective worlds' values. In UnOrdinary, god-tiers are valued for simply living their life and existing as the strongest, but in this fiction I've conceptualized that a large part of their 'societal worth' is tied up in their capacity to produce children, the policymakers and business leaders of the next generation. A god-tier who can't (or won't) do this will naturally open themselves up to being treated poorly. The real-life parallel to this is that, for essentially all of human history, a lot of a woman's (or a man's) value was linked to their ability to produce children, in some cases children of a particular race.
Importantly, it's not as if all this analysis is simply running through people's heads before they say or do anything in some kind of twisted social calculation. People's intuitions, being raised in whatever cultural contexts they're born in, allow them to assume a lot of behaviors without fully thinking through why exactly they're okay or not okay. This is naturally true for us real-life people and fictional people, both.
2. Conveniency and ingroup bias in the study of human biology
Scientific racism, racial anthropology, examinations of bone structures, facial structures, braincase size, comparison of certain kinds of people to apes, etc... I don't think I need to go into too much detail about the real-life side of things. In this chapter, I try to evoke the same concept (and the same inflamed or disdainful reaction from a reader).
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
"They call themselves scientists and doctors but choose to believe only what's convenient for them as high-tiers. I research Human Biology. I know more about this child - and every human - than everyone who came to convince me. And whatever the level, I think it's wrong to kill a human brain."
If, among the racialist researchers and human biologists of the 1800s, one were able to gain some kind of supernatural or superhuman insight into the biology of humans and overcome their in-group biases (like Kyoko can, with her passive), I imagine they would have a similar sentiment to the one expressed in this quote. Replace 'Aura Supremacy Theory' with other kinds of supremacy as needed, and the metaphor is essentially complete.
A benefit of making a metaphor for reality is that it allows a certain level of instantaneous familiarity with concepts that are difficult to communicate in detail (at least within the pacing and other confines of reasonable narrative storytelling). Another reason for their use, in my experience, is that even the most dystopian world should have some points of believability, some grounding in human nature and reality, or the reader will simply become incredulous and discard whatever stakes you're trying to build into the setting. I worry that UnOrdinary, with its (pretty outlandish) setting taken to a natural conclusion, runs a risk of losing the reader's 'buy-in' in this way. Metaphors for reality feel like a natural safeguard, which is why I used them heavily in this chapter and plan to use them again later in the future.
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Analysis Post #3 (On my use of implication in chapter 33, "The Son")
From January 19, 2026:
My main subject of interest today is explicit vs. implicit narration, or in other words, deciding what needs to be given explicitly to the reader vs. what can simply be implied.
To start (and maybe this doesn't even need to be said), this chapter ("The Son") covers a huge number of things in a comparatively small number of words. I think it does so pretty competently, in a way that doesn't feel too rushed or unclear, so I feel quite proud of it. Events spanning twelve years of time are extremely relevant, as well as the actions/perspectives of five different characters. This makes it the 'largest' (obviously not by word count) chapter that I've written so far.
To get this across, let's try a thought experiment. What would happen if I were to explicitly express every single important point that this chapter either glosses over quickly, implicitly covers, or flat-out skips?
We would have a chapter with scenes of the following:
Twelve years in the past, Jane is blackmailed into becoming a research subject. She hides this truth from William and John (or just William, since John is like three years old), fearing that they'll try to rescue her and get themselves killed. She says things to make them believe that she's leaving them out of disgust for weakness. ("Five would be enough. Even four."). This is the foundational incident that incites John's inferiority complex, insecurity, thirst for power, etc.
Two weeks before they make contact with Jane, John's ability is approaching 5.0. Seeing this, Meili begins to make preparations. In the canon unOrdinary comic, there's a singular scene where current-day Jane speaks, which is followed by this line from Jane's caretaker: "I didn't think you could still talk." Meili remembers this, which leads her to suspect that Jane's mental impairment is faked or at least exaggerated, but she needs a way to verify her suspicion. Additionally, Meili wants to give John maximum time with his mother, if it turns out Jane can communicate. The resulting best course of action is a strategy that, on the outside, looks like 'being really annoying for an extended period of time.'
A week before they make contact, John's ability reaches 5.0. Meili relays her plan to him. John begins training as much as he possibly can, but it's no longer for combat. He practices the combination of Invisibility and Silence, which will make basic recorders entirely unable to detect him. He also practices writing with aura, which is essentially just an extension of the precise control he's been getting better at for a long time. Meanwhile, Alicia practices seeing through the eyes of those with Aura Vision. It's actually a difficult, painful and unnatural-feeling process, because she isn't 'meant' to have the Aura Vision sense. But she doesn't tell anyone, not even Meili.
Before they make contact, there's also a scene that explores the actual mechanics of how Meili smuggles John into the facility. She carries him on her back while he's invisible and soundless, and when they get in front of Jane's room he gets off. They do this because the special, density-enforced door you need a key card to pass through has a mechanism that senses how many people enter it per card swipe. If John passes through after Meili, the door will detect two people going through with only one card swipe and cry foul. If she carries him, there's nothing anomalous; they're detected as a single person. This requires training on Meili's end, to walk and act naturally while carrying 170 pounds of invisible teenager on her back. There's also the digging they do to figure out that they can make it to the window in front of Jane's room without ever being captured by an Aura-recording device.
^this one isn't even implied, really, just cut out entirely.
Right as they make contact, for a period of three days, John struggles with the temptation to finally resolve everything and reconcile with his Mom. But by this point he's become thoughtful enough to understand that, from his mother's point of view, William is certainly the person Jane wants to know about, more than anyone else. After all, in her eyes, he's a person she barely knows, even if he's her son. He's not selfish enough to prioritize what he wants over his mother, who's already sacrificed so much for the family. This is an implication that I really, really like, although I'm unsure if it's all that easy to recognize. (Quote: "For the first three days, the amber-colored aura mostly wrote about William…" and there are only four days in total before they have to leave).
Through the first three days of contact, beyond giving Jane William's life updates ("the amber-colored aura mostly wrote about William"), other important things are said, but I can't really talk about that without giving next-chapter spoilers. I'm sure that, given Meili's character, it's not so hard to guess.
*And of course, all the scenes that are actually in this chapter are still needed. I need the Javier-Meili beginning segment to set the stage of tactics and what information the parties have. I need the second scene to portray that this is a complex undertaking, and also that John has developed as a person. I need the Jane pov sequence to introduce her character while also building narrative tension. And of course, the ending scene, which this whole chapter hinges on.
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Phew, right? It's a lot. Probably 10k+ words or so, if I were to actually execute the chapter with everything I've described above. And this would be double the length, but I don't think it would necessarily be any better a chapter than the one I produced. This is mostly thanks to the smart use of implications (or sometimes just cutting things out entirely, even if I think they might be nice to include).
So how do you determine if a story point can be reduced to an implication? I'm not an expert, and of course I don't really have formal training, but to me it depends on what purpose the chapter is trying to accomplish. For this chapter specifically, even if it failed at everything else, I wanted it to at the very least express the amazing, complex mixture of catharsis and sadness that comes with the kind of reunion John and his mom experience. (Noting that this reunion also serves as the single largest moment in John's twelve-chapter character arc, and you could also call it the apex of Meili's many-year plan). That was my thought as I wrote it. Its secondary purpose is to establish Jane as an interesting, admirable character in the story whom the reader will be happy to see play a further role.
To list a few of the interesting things about her, we have: faking mental impairment so as to become useless, hoping to be thrown away like garbage, while also coming from the insane background of a worldwide top clan, while also having married a cripple, while also being among the twenty highest-level people in the whole world…
Everything else in this chapter is tertiary or below. Meili's efforts (even though this is an SI fic), Alicia's role, the practical logistics of getting John inside, the (probably very funny) NxGen researcher's unaware POV… I tried to make these as trimmed-down and efficient as possible, which comes down to implication. And I'm not trying to say that I don't lose anything, by leaving these things shortened or missing. I am saying that I gain a more focused, emotionally compelling chapter by not straying too far away from what I think is most important.
*There's also a matter of writing style. If your story / personal style is one that gives lots of detail for everything that happens, and that's what the reader is expecting, then switching to implied stuff for a single chapter is probably no good.
To close this post off, I'll preemptively address a viewpoint that I think is pretty common. Some writers believe that this kind of self-analysis is just pointless rationalization, because (past a certain basic level of technique) good writing is ultimately about intuition and the author's creative feeling.
I think this is kind of true. There's a fine chance I could have arrived at this very same chapter without analyzing it through the lens of explicit vs. implication, by just feeling it out through trial and error. I've done this before, too. But I also think that, by using intuition AND thoughtful technique, you can write things you're proud of and think are great with more consistency – or at least spend less time stumbling in the darkness as you write, searching for intuition.
