So I put this off long enough. Guess I should do my afterword and final thoughts.
Starting with the fic itself. Originally Ages was just going to be "Nep a thousand years older having to adjust to a less advanced Gamindustri and talking about wacky adventures before the CPU Shift happens" as you all saw at the beginning.
Eventually the story itself became a subversion of the typical "Nep gets serious" fics that exist (even my own!) by taking Nep's new hardworking attitude to its logical conclusion. That is, even as happy-go-lucky as Nep is, eventually reality would wear her down as she got more serious. However, it couldn't just be because of life, there had to be more and why would she just run back to Hyper Dimension like that, leaving everyone behind? There had to be more of a reason than that, and that's why it became a subversion.
Let's talk about the three major events that happened in Ages between Nep crashing in Ultra (and the events that happened there) and her getting back.
The Alien Invasion, originally was going to have the CPUs trasverse the stars to go to the alien homeworld of the invaders and put a stop to everything. My beta reader pointed out "why would Neptune want to stay on Gamindustri then?", so I changed it to the invasion happening and Nep and the other CPUs had to repel them from Gamindustri. Somehow Nep got knocked down into Hades and that's where Pudding, Valvatorez (who never showed up), Artina and the rest of the Disgaea stuff comes from. It was a reference to the Nep manga where Neptune dies and ends up in Hell for being a bad girl.
The CPUs needing a giant robot to repel the alien armada came up due to a random question, I forget if it was me or my beta reader who asked it, but it was "how would they repel an alien fleet?"
I'll talk about Artina in a little bit.
As for the Mole People, I'll cover this a bit later as well, but the whole thing was because of a throw-away line that Neptune put out at the start of Re;birth 3 after she landed her big butt on Noire and sat on her.
The Dinosaur Cultists was actually a reference to Chrono Trigger with the Dino people who clashed with the early humans before Lavos crashed on the planet millions of years ago. Originally just a throw-away gag on my part, but as the story developed, I decided to use them as part of the reason things were really hard for Nep and the other Ultra CPUs.
Alright, so let's talk about the CPUs first.
Plutia, as you saw, had a lot of anger towards Neptune for what happened to her. Which, we can all agree that it was understandable. Yet, early in the story, she didn't act like that. Truth is, even if Plutia was furious with Neptune, she still loved Neptune. She wouldn't want Neptune to die or get seriously hurt, both of them suffered enough over the centuries, she didn't want Neptune to be gone, even if it would free her of her seal. Why did Plutia start carrying around a baseball bat? For the enemies her Voodoo magic wouldn't work on, obviously!
Peashy, after the alien invasion, did get a chip put into her brain for her HDD state so she was at least as smart as an average young adult instead of having the intelligence of a five year old all the time. It does carry over a little bit to her human form, but its effects are muted, because it would be too creepy for her to be too mature at five years old. What happened with Ouya and Stadia with them having to be sealed away really hurt her and made her want, with all her heart, to keep the rest of her family together. With Plutia trying to leave right away, Peashy wasn't thinking clearly and decided to fight against Plutia to stop her from leaving. Had Plutia taken some time to recover from what happened, as was revealed to be a mental attack that messed with the CPUs badly, Peashy wouldn't have stopped her. Well, sadly, with her trapped in human form, her ability to think clearly wasn't there and she just latched onto the emotions she felt after that.
And yes, Peashy still loved Plutia, she's Peashy's parent too after all. Peashy is probably the only one who doesn't blame Neptune for all the problems that Neptune caused over-all.
Noire's injuries were pretty gruesome and yes, she made a full recovery with the replacement body parts. The scars she has are very, very tiny and superficial, but Noire's a drama queen at times and likes to whine about it. Plus it didn't help that her replacement eye wasn't the right color at first and she really wasn't in a mood to talk to anyone. She did get better.
Blanc being chubby and having boobs... That wasn't something that came to me at first, but when it was time to introduce the Ultra Dimension CPUs, the idea came to me, especially with what had been revealed in the story so far. And yes, it's just "baby fat", that is, fat she put on from having babies.
Vert having short hair was inspired by a picture I saw of Ultra Vert with short, wavy hair and I was like "PERFECT!". Having her hair with some streaks of white in it due to stress making her hair permanently white in some spots was inspired from Super Neptunia RPG and Compa pulling a gray hair off of Neptune due to Neptune being stressed out from trying to fix her nation after what happened thanks to Filyn.
Mostly, I wanted something that could differentiate the Ultra CPUs from the Hyper CPUs.
Ouya and Stadia were, originally, supposed to be creepy children who weren't good people. Early in the story, Neptune said that they had rotten personalities in HDD. I also created them as I wanted some of Neptune's past to come back and bite her in the story. However, when it came time to introduce them, and yes, Ouya and Stadia were the first consoles that I thought of for them and I figure that they could work for being antagonists. But when it was time to introduce them, part of me had doubts. Even if they were lab grown to be perfect CPUs, there's no way that would be a guarantee that they would be compatible with the CPU Memories. That's how the idea of them being the child of a CPU came up. Thinking about it made it obvious the only choice would be Neptune as she's the only pure Goddess while the other CPUs are ascended humans.
But when it came time for them to make their reveal... I couldn't turn them into creepy children that would be a mix of those twins from "The Shining" and the Delightful Children from Down the Lane from "Codename: Kids Next Door". Turning them into sad and angry children who were desperate to die so they wouldn't have to fight anymore felt... More appropriate over-all for some reason.
I don't know why I did it. I don't like Original Characters in my stories too much. But I think the story was better because of it.
Speaking of desperate children...
I don't know why I had Kurome go from a psychopath to a sad and lonely girl who just wanted love and felt betrayed. However, I realize that it's probably because she and Neptune were basically foils to each other. How both ended up hurt and betrayed by the world and one went down a dark path and one didn't go down that path. In the end, I think it worked out. That and I saw a picture of Kurome on her knees, crying while Uzume hugged her and I realized that was perfect for Ages.
Which is why Kurome and Big Nep were so close to each other. I wanted Kurome's reveal of her being a sad child who just wants friends and love to be believable and not just something that came out of nowhere. Which was easy as Big Nep was with Kurome for a good chunk of Vii.
Kurome didn't think she had any good left in her when she met Neptune and the others, but Big Nep slowly brought out the little bit of good that remained in her.
And, hey, we got a sunflower field date out of it.
As for Delusional Orange, that was due to a video where Kurome was modded to be an evil version of Orange Heart, complete with Orange Heart's voice and had as much HP as the final secret boss of the game. I liked it so much that I HAD to use it for Ages, which is why the CPU Memory came up. And I bet you all thought I had forgotten about it before Kurome used it.
...And yes, Kurome did spy on Uzume and Orange Heart a lot, including when Uzume was bathing.
Okay, let's get to Artina now.
When I did a rough draft for what I was going to do with Artina, I was going to have her be a royal bitch, even worse than what you saw. In fact, I was going to wrap up the story a LOT earlier than I did, but a review by "DarkWitchFanBoy" asked about an Ultra Dimension Arc, but I was like "nah, not going to do it". However, I thought about it and realized that it would be a LOT more satisfying to end the story in the Ultra Dimension than in the Hyper Dimension.
Alright, can't put this off anymore... Let's talk about the Mole People in detail here.
Before I talk about specific stuff, the whole thing with the Mole People being originally aliens that cross-bred with the humans of the planet was me going "how can I tie this into the plot?" same with them being the ones who created the CPU Memories originally. Basically, they helped create the backstory of the world. So, for the hybrids, children born with Mole People ancestors, well... I typically don't want to get too political, and this was the closest I wanted to get. And don't tell me that you didn't see parallels with modern racial issues and the hybrids. And yes, it was intentional. Sorry if it came across as bad, annoying or cringy, but I thought to use it.
"You aren't guilty for what your ancestors did, you didn't do it, your ancestors did, it's not your fault for being born."
It also works for Ouya and Stadia as well, due to what they did while working for the Mole People.
Alright, let's get the big, dumb, pink mutated space alien elephant in the room out of the way finally.
The most controversial part of the whole thing. Why did Neptune and the others go back to the Mole People who raped them while they were brainwashed?
Frankly, I wasn't sure if I should do it. I was wavering for days before I made my choice. Yeah, I probably could have handled it better, done a better job and I know that a LOT of people were put off by that decision.
So why did they stay with those men? Well, as cliche as it seems, it was because they loved their children. They literally could not hate their children and, well, over the decades that became centuries, they did have time to talk with their "husbands" about everything that happened. It wasn't just a "oh, we did the dirty, thus it works out", that was just Neptune wanting to be a bit selfish and wanting to feel something, ANYTHING and Sobar happened to be there. She probably would have done that with Nepgear or Plutia at that moment if they had been there.
I could have done a better job, I apologize for not doing that.
Originally I WAS going to have an epilogue where Nepgear, now the CPU of Hyper Dimension Planeptune, goes to visit her sister a bit over a year later after Neptune had just had another child, only to be greeted by a lot of people she didn't recognize. When she was told by Neptune that those were her nieces and nephews, well...
Nepgear would have done the "shocked face" and went "AHH!" one last time to close the story out.
Buuuut, considering how... Controversial everything around the Mole People was, I decided against it.
Flonne totally would have been a minister for the weddings too. Just a FYI.
That's about it for Ages.
So what's my plans going forward?
Well, I'm going to take some time off to recharge my muse, she feels really burned out. After that, I plan on getting back to "Dance with the Devil". For those who read that one, yes, I'll get back to it soon. For those who haven't, it's a Ranma 1/2, High School DxD mega crossover. You might like it. I need to re-read some of it to get back in the right mood.
As for Neptunia... I think that I'm done. At least with long stories like this. I'll do some one-shots from time to time or even some naughty fics when I feel an urge. If you want to see some of my more naughty stuff, go to Ao3 and look up "R-18 Island" and "Defeated CPUs".
But, yeah, it's been a fun ride since I started writing Neptunia fics. I still love the series, I'm just... A little burned out on ideas right now. To think, it's only been over two years since I started my first real Nep fic "Shadows of the Heart". Feels like an eternity ago.
I'll close this out by saying I'm really thankful and humbled by all the reviews and love you guys have shown me.
Thank you all so much. Hope to see you in the future.