Seersucker
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Schedule Shift Tues, Thurs, Sat
🕑 Added 2025-04-01 13:00:15 +0000 UTCHey everybody, so this will be the last of the daily updates, and from here on I'll be transitioning to Tues, Thurs, Sat update schedule. I'm hoping to do some revisions based on some of the comments I've gotten on the story so far now that I'm slowing things down, but the major beats will all remain the same.
This is probably my most controversial story so far in a lot of ways. I always like to take big swings with each story and this one seems to be getting the biggest reaction, and probably the most feedback I've ever gotten this early on, both positive and negative. I don't take it personally, we all have different tastes and I get it if the central premise of the story is a turn off, not everything is for everyone.
This story is based largely on how I would feel in Michael's situation. I've always thought of reincarnation stories as a bit of a horror story for a parent. As one myself, I would be devastated to learn that the person my wife and I brought into this world was just some guy from another dimension. If I did that to someone else I would feel horrible no matter how many layers of deniability I gave myself. I'm naturally inclined to guilt though, and so is Michael.
If you want characters that feel less guilt or act a bit more rationally about things I'd recommend my previous stories "Downtown Druid" and "Deadman" which have much more pragmatic protagonists. Part of why I chose to write Penitent was because I wanted to write someone very different from Donovan and Dantes, though with a few throughlines that all my characters wind up having.
I have 5 books planned for Penitent with a definitive ending in mind at that point. I hope you all stick around for it and enjoy the ride. I've got some pretty fun twists and turns planned throughout.
Since you're all Patreon readers, I'd appreciate it if you could take the time to write a review on RR since you all have a better idea of the shape of the story than anyone else and honestly this story already has the most .5 star ratings of any I've ever written possibly combined, so I wouldn't mind averaging that out a bit.
Thank you for reading!
-Seer
EDIT: It's been pointed out that I should've made it more clear that this was going to become a thrice weekly story. If you feel you've been bamboozled, shoot me a message here on Patreon and we'll sort it out.
Comments
Sunto
I completely agree and can empathise with your opinion on how parents would react to their child being taken from them. I think it’s a really interesting idea that I haven’t seen done before, which is why I’ve gotten so invested in this story. That being said, I do think that the general publics reaction stance towards them is unjustified. Given that this phenomenon has apparently been happening for a long time, as far as we know, the government would clearly know that the reincarnated aren’t deliberately choosing to kill the child. So it doesn’t make sense to me (excluding deliberate misinformation from the government) that people despise them so much. I mean to try and compare it to our own world, I guess you could argue it’s like unintentionally killing a child whilst driving? But more aptly, it’s like if you took someone from an uncontacted tribe who’s never even heard of cars before, put them in a coma, then woke them up 5 seconds before the car crashed into a child, behind the drivers seat. Then blaming them for not knowing they should swerve out of the way. I really enjoy your writing, and I’m happy to suspend disbelief, I’m just saying it feels illogical (for now barring future plot developments). But even if the stance was that reincarnators are inherently evil for this unintended outcome, it’s still doesn’t really make sense what the Stent government is doing. If you know that the takers are naturally more gifted, and visually indistinguishable, why would you deliberately persecute and enslave them for years only to let them go (I definitely think there’s going to be a plot twist)? I imagine most people would, rightly in my view, feel their treatment was unjust. It would be far safer to just kill them as children, rather than training up a bunch of super powered soldiers that will hate you. I suppose I’m just saying I’m looking forward to how this is all covered going forward, because I’m loving the book so far.
Dominick Zimmerman
Don't refund you definitely mentioned that you would end up moving to a less intensive release schedule at some point in the past👌.
