The Wildfire Tour: Live From Seoul and Phoenix Odyssey 13.41
Hello, Firebirds! I can’t tell you how excited I am for today’s drop, because it’s been a full year in the making!
Today’s chapter, Heart and Seoul, marks chapter #408 in the complete Phoenix Saga, once you factor in the net gains and losses of chapters from the Reignited project through Books I and II. This may be a milestone that only interests me, but the canon Ranma ½ manga ended at chapter #407. This means that the silly little fanfiction I started publishing on a lark two and a half years ago now, by chapter count if not any other metric, contains more Ranma content than Ranma’s creator herself produced.
It seemed the perfect time to celebrate by dropping the curtain on a surprise I’ve been cooking up for you for the last year and a half. Call it my way of saying thank you for sticking with me this long and allowing me to tell you this incredible story over the last two and a half years.Â
If you think about a lot of the famous tours of popular artists - Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour being a great recent example - when the tour run is nearing its end, there’s usually a recording of one of the shows made available on DVD or a streaming platform. It’s presented as a way to invite people who couldn’t make it to the show to still experience it, and to preserve the show for posterity so people can relive it again anytime the mood strikes.Â
Back when Book X was in the outlining stage, I hatched an audacious plan to do the same, within the confines of the written medium that the Phoenix Saga occupies. The development began in earnest during the run of Book XI, and many of the scenes in Books XI, XII and XIII have been influenced by it.
Simultaneously with this chapter release, I am also releasing an entire new book in one day that I have been writing in secret, in parallel with both Book XIII and Reignited. The Wildfire Tour: Live from Seoul is your personal backstage pass to the complete performance you see the team setting up for in Heart and Seoul - the Dapper Dragons’ second performance in Seoul, South Korea on the night of Monday, December 21, 1992.Â
Over the course of eighteen chapters and right around 80,000 words, you will see every note, every dance move, and every special effect in the two-and-a-half hour concert. You’ll see nineteen original songs - seventeen you know, and two that are exclusive to this special book. There are no gaps, no time skips, and no pauses. You’ll see Ranko’s whole team working and communicating together backstage. Every costume change and every special effect is captured and explained. Every scene on the video screen behind the band is narrated. If I’ve done my job right, you’ll feel like you’ve got your very own front-row seat to the show.
If you’re not a big fan of Ranko’s performance scenes - I know there’s some folks out there who aren’t - don’t fret. There is not a single word of content in Wildfire that is pivotal to the rest of the plot of Phoenix Odyssey. This isn’t the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where if you don’t consume every piece of content, you won’t understand the goings-on in the parts of it that you want to watch. Think of Wildfire as an optional DLC mission in your favorite video game, or a deleted scene on a DVD; it’s there if you want the extra content, and you aren’t penalized if you don’t.Â
As I said, Wildfire has been a work in progress for the better part of a year. It is easily the most technically challenging writing I’ve ever done. Every detail needed to be vetted for historical accuracy, from the model number of Shinji’s bass guitar to the luminosity of the spotlights. It was also necessary to make sure what the stagehands are doing was even possible with 1992 technology, that the terminology was all correct, and that everyone was following correct procedures for safety and effectiveness on a production of this magnitude. Additionally, since the Wildfire Tour is essentially the same show repeated in multiple cities, every song you’ve seen performed on the tour in Phoenix Odyssey so far had to be checked to ensure that everything from the choreography to the stuff on the video screen was internally consistent with what you’ve seen before, and any deviations were suitably explained. I could not have had a prayer to successfully complete this project without the aid of my friend and beta reader Celhestial. Her extensive wealth of show production experience has been absolutely invaluable as this work has come together. She has my eternal gratitude. Credit also goes to @alesshi for the amazing cover art, and for not spoiling it for months while I wrote! <3
This work has also had a lot to do with why my writing speed has slowed so dramatically of late. Maintaining multiple works became so taxing that I had to eventually pause Reignited so I could focus on Wildfire and the ongoing Book XIII. As the point in the timeline of Book XIII where Wildfire needed to release drew closer and I found myself behind schedule on Wildfire, I had to slow the releases for Book XIII down in order to give myself time to catch up. Being completely honest, I severely underestimated how difficult this project was going to be, and it has overwhelmed me beyond words for the better part of the last six months. I apologize. It has undeniably dragged the conclusion of Odyssey to a crawl, and it’s been driving me crazy that I couldn’t even tell you all why.
The good news is, it’s done now! You can all enjoy it, and I - hopefully freed from some of the writers’ block and health issues that slowed this project down, and without my focus being split in so many directions at once - should be able to ramp up my speed considerably through the final eight chapters of Book XIII and the epic conclusion of Phoenix Odyssey. Once that’s done, I intend to devote my full focus to Reigniting books III and IV, while outlining the fourth and final series in the greater Phoenix Saga. That series’ title and plot summary will be announced in the authors’ notes for the last chapter of Book XIII.Â
So, yeah! Surprise! I hope you enjoy The Wildfire Tour: Live From Seoul as much as I have enjoyed conceiving and planning it these last twelve months - if not more so!Â
Oh. And one more thing… While I’m no Ranko Tendo, and I don’t have my own band of Dapper Dragons to play their instruments behind me, I’ve occasionally been known to hop on my Discord server, the Storytellers’ Speakeasy, and sing a few of Ranko’s songs a cappella on a livestream. Tonight at 9:00 PM Eastern time, I plan to do a livestream in which I will sing all nineteen songs of the Wildfire Tour, in order - including exclusive tracks Tick and Bad Idea. I’ve been fighting with some mild tonsillitis the last few days, so I may have to take it slow, but that’s the plan, anyway. I hope to see you there!
Read Chapter 13.41: Heart and Seoul
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Read The Wildfire Tour: Live From Seoul
Archive of Our Own
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Royal Road
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WebNovel
