Now that the first arc of 私は、キラ / I, Kira has been completed, I'd like to take this opportunity to do a quick Q&A to answer some of your questions. First off, here's one that I originally mentioned I'd answer way back in chapter 19:

I am surprised that you did not understand my previous comment. But I have one problem. How can Kira claim he is an "atheist" after he saw shinigami? Aren't shinigami gods of death? And isn't atheism the lack of belief in a god/gods? Please correct or explain logic. - Alexis Vance

Chris believes that the Shinigami aren't literally gods, but some other kind of entity, one that can be scientifically explained given enough information. Whether or not he is correct is for the reader to decide.

Do you actually know Japanese or did you use Google Translate? (Just asking, no offense or weaboo implications) - Alexis Vance

I know only a small handful of words in Japanese, so I had to use translate for those parts. The same applies for Rugo's German, the UNSC meeting in chapter 5, etc etc.

So why dose your chracter yell a lot on your story_ and how dose no one best him...

why dose no one hear your chracter screaming? Like walls can only do so much. - epic and evil man

I already answered this in his PM to me but I'll answer it here too. Most of Chris' "screaming" is internal monologue, the rest is when the house or surrounding area is empty. Well, at least that's all that Chris thinks. There's actually one other reason why his yelling hasn't caused problems when he's at home, but I can't reveal that yet.

The final question I've gotten is, how did this whole project start? Well, it ain't a quick story so buckle in, kids.

You see, I have this friend named Hugh, and every now and then we hang out and do stuff, although these days it's just D&D with us and the rest of the boys. Anyway, back in mid- or late-2015 I was hanging out at his place and he recommended this manga series to me, Death Note, and when I showed interest in the topic he said I could borrow his copy of the series to read through it, so I did. And oh boy was I in for a ride.

I remember getting used to the "backwards" style of manga-reading almost immediately, and as for Death Note itself, I was hooked on from day one. I still clearly remember the raw fear and anxiety when Misa was captured, the sense of betrayal when Light gave up his DN and memories, and the joy and relief when the two of them got it all back. I also remember, when L died I was quite confident that it couldn't be that easy, that he wasn't really dead, that this was all a trick, and it wasn't until deep into the Near/Mello arc that I managed to un-convince myself of that. So, by late December I was nearly done, and after seeing everything building up to the final showdown, I decided to wait until my birthday to read the ending, so that Light's final victory could be the cherry on top of a great day after all the presents and cake and stuff.

And that's why, on the night of my fifteenth birthday, I cried myself to sleep.

Oh, it also didn't help that I thought that random girl at the very end of the manga was Misa. Seriously, why was she even added? I mean, if you're going to do that, at least make the girl look different. Half my panic attack was for nothing.

So, you can probably guess how I got into Fanfiction from there. It started out as simply reading scenarios in which the series had a positive ending, but I quickly found myself entrenched into this little community that I previously didn't even know existed. At the same time, I was beginning to collect together my thoughts on what I would do if I had a Death Note. Who I would use it on, what I'd do differently, all those things were on my mind a lot, and it quickly became more than just that, a real story began to form in my mind.

So, for help I asked MizuLawliet, now known as MaybeLawliet, for advice. Her Fanfic Into the World of Murder and Apples, which at the time was still being produced on a regular basis, was what really inspired me and convinced me that I too could write something big like that. It was in early-to-mid February that we began discussing my ideas, and she helped me a lot to refine them into something more original and unique. She hasn't been active on this website at all for a long time now, whatever she's doing I hope she's happy now.

So, on October 9, 2016, I was finally ready, and 私は、キラ / I, Kira made its debut. A few elements of the writing process have changed since then, for example up until chapter 30 I tried to make the in-world time roughly match the real-world time, but things have had the same overarching plan for nearly three years now.

And that brings me up to one final point I should discuss. This first arc has just been wrapped up after three years of development, and depending on how you count them there are going to be either three or four main arcs in the completed story. In other words, at the current rate things are going, SpaceX is going to put a man on Mars before I put the epilogue on this website.

There are two ways I can get around this problem. The first is to produce content at a much faster rate, like what I was doing in late 2016 and 2017. This is, unfortunately, impractical due to university and my other projects. The only way this could happen is if I had someone else helping me to share the workload of writing, which doesn't seem to be an option for the foreseeable future. The more realistic solution is for me to start cutting some corners. I won't remove entire arcs or entire chunks of the story, but I may shorten the non-absolutely-essential parts.

So, I was originally planning for this little Q&A thing to go on for this full chapter, but since we're far below the word count quota I guess I'll, umm… I dunno. I guess that's it for now. The next chapter is already in production, so don't worry about it taking months and months, although it's quite a challenging one I will admit.

Finally, in case anyone was wondering, yes I have heard of the plan to storm Area 51 this September, and while most of the people who signed up seem to have given up on the idea, there are still going to be a ton of people showing up so the operation could still easily be a success. I encourage anyone capable of doing so to be there to help out the stormers. Just try not to get hurt, and if you're seriously going to go you should bring lots of water. This is the desert, after all. And you'll need some kind of offroad vehicle too in order to get there.

That's all I have to say for now. 'Till next time!