CabbagePreacher

Unfunny and dead meme aside, feedback (in the forms of comments) helps me a lot during the writing process. Unfortunately, I am not an oracle, and I cannot know what I succeeded in and failed in without the help of you, the reader. I'd highly appreciate it if I could take a little bit of your time and write some feedback about Total Nekonomic Collapse (or the John Brown Isekai in general) in the comments.

If you have liked the John Brown Isekai, then I'd like to kindly ask you to leave a good rating (and, if you're feeling especially generous, a review with constructive feedback). It might take only a few seconds to leave one, and it helps me out a lot.

Anyways, hope you've enjoyed Total Nekonomic Collapse so far, and I hope you'll continue enjoying the last chapter of it!

This is a beautiful country.

- Last words of John Brown (2^nd of December, 1859)

The Bloody Mayday of 2023 heralded game over for the political careers of many in the government. The economy had already grinded to a halt during the protests – the Japanese stock markets saw a bear economy like never before that affected even those who lacked sympathy for the catfolk. Businessmen were angry; Hell hath no fury like a businessman scorned. The ruling party, which had a long historical record of being the dominant party in the country, lost its dominance, with approval rates at an all-time low according to polls conducted after the incident.

Of course, for anyone with a heart bigger than that of a sardine, the police killing seven people also mattered as the violent suppression of one protest led to a dozen more protests that couldn’t realistically all be suppressed without calling the totally-not-an-army (the JSDF) to just shoot everyone protesting (which was seriously debated as a course of action for an entire week in the Cabinet before they realized that shooting more people was not going to help calm living people down).

Before they had a chance to properly resign from their position, the Governor of Tokyo was forced into permanently resign from living by a former S.U.C.K.E.R.S. member barging into the Governor’s mansion with a butter knife. The public’s collective anger was now focused on to the current government instead of the dead-as-the-Confederacy Governor.

After a week of futile deliberation and attempts to scavenge the situation, the Prime Minister and his cabinet collectively shrugged and then resigned. The National Diet convened to designate a new Prime Minister who might (presumably) do something for assuagement.

On March 19, 2023, after countless bouts of politicking finally leading to the appointment of a new Prime Minister who was a lot more cordial in regards to catfolk liberation, the Diet again convened to finally answer the demands of the protesters. The Nationality Law was amended to allow catfolk to be equal citizens of the country, which would also force ‘special educational facilities’ to be closed down and make the bells obsolete.

Legally, the catfolk were now equal to their human counterparts. This was far from the de facto situation; the fight wasn’t over. Many were now left unemployed and homeless when they were freed from their ‘owners’ and the ‘special education facilities’, millions had to be registered as citizens in a slow and painful process laden with needless bureaucracy and corruption, not to mention the fact that there was oft violent reaction by those who’d never accept ‘those damned beasts’ as their equals. Not to mention, those who had ran the special education facilities and those who had allowed this system of nekonomic exploitation to exist in the first place were still free despite their crimes. There were many that’d need to be brought to justice one way or another.

The above were fights that’d take a long time, generations would need to pass before some fights would conclude. Maybe some would never even end until the end of time. Perhaps they would.

What was important was to keep the powder dry, never surrender to apathy, and to never let go of the desire to make things better.

It had been a month since Brown and Miss Watanabe had gone missing. The Tamaside Patisserie had lost some of its population to catfolk emigrating to the city, many of them remained as the Tamaside community wasn’t honestly that bad that to live in. Other similar small independent communities had popped up in Japan as the newly freed catfolk took example from the Tamaside.

Maya and Misha had mostly spent their days idly as they had lost their motivation. The sisters were again spending an idle day in the former patisserie when they heard the door open.

“Maya, Misha! I’m home!” Standing at the door was a disheveled Brown, though he looked elated in a manner contrary to his disheveledness.

The sisters looked at Brown blankly, thinking for a second that he might be some illusion. They rushed to him in teary eyes when they realized he was, most likely, real.

“Gramps, where were you?! You weren’t taking some unannounced vacation, weren’tcha?” exclaimed Maya as she ran into old Brown’s embrace.

“…Good!” shouted Misha concisely as she did the same.

“No, if I was to take a vacation I’d do it in an announced manner, young lady.” replied Brown. “Let us sit down to talk, I hope you’ll find it in you to forgive me after hearing what I’ve gone through.”

Brown began relating what had happened since last month. During Mayday, Brown had continued to stay on the driveway even after the gunshots had rung. He had not fled or surrendered, only being arrested when the police fully surrounded him and beat him until he fell unconscious. Upon hearing Brown’s claim that he was American (and that he didn’t have his passport with him), the police had gotten in contact with the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo so that they could extradite him to avoid any incidents of the international kind.

Of course, for those in the US Embassy, someone claiming to be John Brown was only some amusing incident at first. It became less amusing when genetic testing revealed that this John Brown was the same person as the John Brown that was supposed to be (and was coincidentally) buried near Lake Placid, New York.

Someone being falsely declared dead and then coming back alive wasn’t impossible; someone coming back alive after moldering in the grave for 164 years was. With one alive and one dead, making two Browns in total, one of the Browns had been stuck in a state of legal limbo (and existential crisis).

The unusual case of Brown would have probably been never solved, if not for it gathering widespread attention in America, leading to the President personally interfering to save old Brown. He was legally resurrected (making this the first case of presidential necromancy in America, establishing precedent if any other historical figures got isekai’d) on April, making him the oldest American citizen at 223 years old (biologically he was only 60). It had admittedly taken him a bit too long for resurrection; as far as he knew it usually only took three days for resurrection, not an entire month.

Brown proudly held up his shiny new passport as he concluded his story. “Thusly, thanks our Heavenly Father above and the President below, I walk amongst ye once again!”

Maya had only one question left “What about Miss Watanabe? Is she…” He has avoided talking about her, something bad must have happened…

Maya and Misha felt tense. Brown paused, as if thinking hard on how to phrase what had happened to her in a palatable manner.

“Oh, Miss Watanabe? She’s… not fine.” Brown gulped “She has been most busy this month with preparing her students for some major exams.”

…

That was way too anticlimactic.

The Great Mayday of Maydays seemed to have awoken something that had been missing in the common people for a long time. Seeing a grassroots movement be successful emboldened and inspired other peoples to attempt the same. The New 20s were marked with global social change. Some were peaceful, some less so. Those events are a story for another time though, for this is a story about John Brown and the catgirls.

Two women of the catfolk were standing in front of one particularly old gravestone. One was reading aloud the inscription on the grave. “John Brown. Born May 9, 1800. Was executed at Charleston, Va. Dec 2, 1859. Geez, the old man’s a real boomer.”

The grave was enclosed in glass, it was a historical artifact after all. The best the two women could do was leave some flowers and burning incense in front of the grave. They got some weird looks from onlookers, for whom leaving burning incense in front of graves was unusual.

Another person who thought that leaving incense wasn’t usual was the one whom the inscription addressed: John Brown. He had been touring his former home (now the John Brown Farm State Historic Site) only to see his daughters burn some weird-smelling twigs in his sake. “Come on, young ladies. Let the old man rest.”

“He’s clearly restless considering he’s still marching on.” replied Maya, prompting boisterous laughter from Brown.

Yes, it was true that Brown was a restless man. He hadn’t stopped at Kansas, he hadn’t stopped in Virginia, nor had he stopped in Japan, for he was continuing his work in the United States. Brown had become a minor celebrity after returning to his home country; the autobiography he wrote had given him more than enough capital to travel around the country without needing to find work. He didn’t intend to cease working and preaching to make all men equal as the Lord intended.

As for Maya, she had finally learned how to read and write after a long and painful process. She intended to become an English teacher, following in the steps of Miss Watanabe. Misha had taken quite a liking to computers after having been introduced to one, she intended to be a computer engineer of some sort.

“Boomer… keeps, booming on.” muttered Misha. “Quite… erm, an incomprehensibility.”

Old John Brown spent a few minutes praying at the grave for the salvation of older John Brown, he wasn’t sure whether he was technically praying for another person or for himself at this point, and for the salvation of all the others (his sons Watson and Oliver Brown, along with ten raiders that had joined him in Harper’s Ferry) that were buried below these grounds. He also prayed for the modern martyrs of liberty, for the seven protestors that had died back in Japan and all the others that hadn’t been able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

With an “amen” Brown concluded prayer. While he had been praying, Maya had been preoccupied with something trivial.

“You know, I think they should expand the inscription on the gravestone.” said Maya. “It ends with you being executed, but you’re clearly alive. How about something like, ‘executed, but his soul is marching on’?”

Brown paused to think seriously on this clearly tongue-in-cheek suggestion. “I don’t think my soul marching on has anything to do with me being alive or not, young lady.”

“R-right…” muttered Maya. The old man takes this stuff too seriously.

The old man took a good look around his surroundings. He had been executed as a traitor, deemed fit to be hanged with rope made out of Southern cotton. His actions had been dealt with contemn. He had been branded as a radical by many for thinking of men as equal regardless of creed.

Today, he had many visitors here. His ideas weren’t so radical anymore, those who’d treat him with true contemn were a (really) loud minority.

It matters not if I’m dead, nor does it matter where my soul marches on, as long as we live and die to make men free.

CabbagePreacher

In this chapter of the John Brown Isekai:

(Original post by u/CabbagePreacher)

Hello, dear reader. With the end of 2022 comes the end of Total Nekonomic Collapse and this afterword; I hope 2023 will treat us more decently.

I didn't think we'd meet here again so soon, but as it turns out, one cannot simply choose to ignore writing more John Brown Isekai. I wrote the first draft in six days during a stint where I was free, admittedly a slower pace than the three day-schedule of the first volume. Again, like the first volume, Total Nekonomic Collapse came about from a sudden flash of inspiration that occured around a month ago. I thought that it'd be interesting to see old Brown in a new, modern environment.

I also wanted to have something to post as Nekopara fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (a popular fanfiction website) to see their reactions when they suddenly see old John Brown among their sultry catgirl-related stories (though, much to my surprise, somebody has combined 19th-century Russian literature and Nekopara, meaning that whatever I've written here has already been far surpassed in oddness).

I didn't want to write about another armed uprising, so I decided to write about resistance of the civil kind. It might not be as action-filled and "glorious" as reading about an armed uprising, but I think that this kind of thing is underrepresented in literature. Not everything has to end in explosions and gore, plus, I think it'd make sense for a man like Brown to adopt to the times and decide to go with such an approach if he thought it'd work out (nonviolent resistance hadn't worked out at all in the 19th-century US, hence his answer of violence to slavery). He wasn't some crazed madman looking to kill slavers for sport, quite contrarily I'd argue that his willingness to kill those who contemn freedom came from Brown valuing human life above all else. I'm happy to have presented a portrait of Brown that is quite different to what you might commonly see.

As for what comes next, I hope to be here with the full-novel length John Brown Isekai (the first volume of it being titled "Fall of the Slave Harem") by the time you see me next. My real life has been unexpectedly busy, hence the lack of more John Brown Isekai. I plan on beginning releasing Fall of the Slave Harem in about 6 months or so, please excuse my tardiness in doing so. I don't make anything close to a living by writing (without my three Patrons I'd be making literally nothing); I only have what little free-time I get to work on writing. I hope that you understand my situation and I ask for your patience. I'm quite happy that people have still been following my work during periods of not releasing anything.

Other than Fall of the Slave Harem, I might make smaller projects like these if I have the time. I've grown quite fond of the novelette format over my time writing the John Brown Isekai. I have quite a few projects in mind that are currently too undeveloped to be worthy of talking about in the afterword.

Thus concludes Total Nekonomic Collapse. A big thank you to all of my Patrons: Valen Bell, Oren, OnlyFeatures and Eddy, for their help. Their contributions have been a great help in making more John Brown Isekai possible. Thank you to crowooze for the illustrations in the fifth chapter. And, thank you, the reader, for reading my work. Have a nice year, and I hope to see you again.