Now I had originally planned to post the next chapter of Slime and Devil on New Years to kick off the consistent upload schedule once more. I had been struggling to make chapter one of this fic for well over a month, with rewrite after rewrite of the same chapter going into it. After I had made a chapter I was satisfied with, I announced the upload date and began to work on the next chapter. Although I made decent progress with Chapter two, my motivation once more collapsed as it had for the many rewrites of chapter one.

My motivation with this fic is done, dead, gone. Although there are situations in which I could “fix” the fic to restore motivation, those would require a retconning of AT LEAST one whole volume, something I’m not willing to do without restarting the whole fic, which itself is not something I’m willing to do right now. Sunken cost fallacy, I know.

I have other projects I wish to do, projects with far better planning and foresight. I have been working closely with my biggest editor to make a new Tanya/Tensura fic based on a different concept than Slime and Devil. Unlike Slime and Devil, which had its entire planned plot changed like three times, this new fic has a storyboard plan from the beginning to the end (well, almost to the end. We’re not quite that far yet, but we are approaching it. But everything is pre-planned ahead of time, unlike Slime and Devil which was basically running on chapter-to-chapter improv until the most recent volume).

It was this sloppy writing style that led to the major issues I have with the fic and many others. And it is these problems that I have strove to solve with my main two fics going forward: A Young Woman’s Extermination Chronicles and the currently unnamed Tanya/Slime fic. So I come to you with two options for Slime and Devil. I have tried my hardest to push myself and to create an ending that I am fully satisfied with, but I could not push myself to slog this series through the final arcs of Tensura in the state that it’s in.

So your options are as follows: I can leave this fic on hiatus indefinitely, putting it officially on the backburner as I can once more let my focus drift towards the fics with more promise to me (Slime/Tanya fic and Extermination Chronicles), perhaps allowing for some of the older fics (Tuefelsreich, Death and Thunder, Mage x Family, etc) to see the light of day again.

Or, alternatively, I can give this fic a quick and maybe somewhat unsatisfying ending. This ending probably wouldn’t be a happy one for Tanya and Tempest, but would be a sort of foreshadowing for the other Slime/Tanya fic I have planned. It wouldn’t be the best ending, but at least it would be an ending.

If you want this series to have a full legitimate ending, pick the first option in the poll I’m linking with this post, just know it could be months or even well over a year until you see the start of that ending. Alternatively, if you want an ending now, you can pick the second option, though again that might actually take a bit (as I said, motivation is dead).

For the poll, visit this link:

https://strawpoll.com/NMnQ5ApLDn6

If you’re on FFN or a website that doesn’t allow links, it is posted in the announcements channel of the Discord which can be entered with the code: xcCvpSxmA7