On August 12 of this year, I uploaded the first chapter of A Saga of Jouko. Today, October 22, which also happens to be my 16th birthday, the final chapter has been published. Nothing else can be said about the story except: Consummatum est.

Now, I'll be taking you along on an extremely brief history of this fic.

Back in July (I believe sometime in late July), I had just gotten big into Girls und Panzer, somehow, and seeing Jouko knock out Anglerfish instantly made her my most favorite character despite little being known about her. After reading several GuP fanfics on Wattpad, I gradually grew tired of the usual "boys do Sensha-do" trope, cliche or whatever you wanna call it, and decided to make something different. No boys in Sensha-do, no romance, none of the usual stuff you'd see in 70% of GuP fanfics. There would still be OCs, but definitely not boys. Thus, A Saga of Jouko was born.

Initially, the story was super different, and by super different, I mean that it's smaller, I completely cut the battle of Ooarai vs. Continuation to allow Das Finale 4 to tell the story. On Wattpad, it ended with a final, tense duel between Jouko's Sturmi and Miho's Panzer IV at a special match held after the Winter Cup. I won't spoil too much.

After completing the Wattpad story, I tried some other ideas, including a Night of the Long Knives-style purge of Kuromorimine where Maho and Miho are arrested, and Maho is forced by Erika through Shiho to drop Miho by using misinformation relating to "sabotage". Another one was, get this, Tsar Nicholas II, of a different timeline where he is a FAR FAR better Tsar than in our timeline, reborn into the GuP universe and soon becoming the commander of Leopon Team. I had actually gotten four chapters out before I just unpublished it. Another story was a little "slice-of-life" story where the cast forms an orchestra. Ooarai was the violin section, St. Gloriana the violas, Pravda the cellos and double-basses, Kuromorimine the brass, a mix of Saunders and Continuation as the woodwinds, and last but not least Chihatan as the percussion. You can see why I did these placements. There was also a story based off of Yukiyukite Senshadou that followed a plotline similar to "Letters from Iwo Jima", but a lack of views meant I shelved it too, but even if I did I'd never finish it because of what I did next.

Migrating to out of curiosity, I decided to try out the website, and brought the fanfic here. I uploaded (I believe) six chapters before I saw just how much it was popping off. Within a month, it was well on the way to 1,000 views, almost there at 833. Unfortunately, the stats have broken and I am unable to see past the views for September. New reviews, favorites, and follows also didn't show up, meaning it wasn't just the views, but I didn't let that hinder me, and thus, I managed to finish the fanfic.

Plot-wise, I decided to diverge from the Wattpad version and make an even bigger story. I actually wrote a battle for Ooarai vs. Continuation where Continuation won. The reason for this was simply, Ooarai wins too much. I know, I'll probably get hate here, but in 90% of fanfics Ooarai wins the climactic final battle, so I wanted to change that stuff. I could've ended it with a Continuation victory, but I had other plotlines that convinced me otherwise. Thus, the Loser's Bracket was created, and the story continued.

Now, for religion, probably the biggest thing people are going to ask me about. Why did I make this fanfic go religious towards the very end? There's a simple reason for that:

I read books. Specifically, missionary books lying around in my school's library.

There are also the "Values" classes where my teacher, who is also a pastor, albeit of a Baptist church, for the school I go to is also a church and is Baptist, taught the class about the Bible, specifically "Crucifixion, Salvation, and the Glory of God." There were also devotionals held every morning for the monthly verse we had to memorize (well, verses, for August they made us memorize all of Psalms 139, on September, they made us memorize Colossians 3:1-17, and this month, October, we have to memorize Romans 8:1-17). Looking at one verse each day, once we had fully gone over the monthly verse, we switched to the Book of Matthew which I presume we'll study for the whole year.

So, after reading many missionary books, and after all were read normal theology books, I decided to try my hand in religion. I'll say it isn't perfect, but I tried my best.

As for the fanfic proper, I'll be honest and give it a 6, heck, maybe a 5/10, personally. There's many great moments, but there's just so much that needs to be improved, especially the plotline with Shiho, which REALLY needs expansion, a lot of it. It needs to be fleshed out more, not just "Oh, what's this? Nah, wait... maybe? Nah, okay, fine, I'll try... wow!" Reading TheShadowNerd's Wattpad take on bad GuP fanfics really influenced this opinion, and if you're wondering why the "POV" headings disappeared during the final battle, this is what TheShadowNerd said in that take:

"I would like to take this time to point out the incessant use of 'Your POV' or 'Maho's POV'. This is a horrible writing technique and completely breaks the flow of the story. Do not do this."

That means the "POV" headings will be phased out as I start revision.

If there are other complaints, feel free to shoot me a DM to my Discord: heyitsmjbw7048. The reason for this is because 's stats seem to have affected reviews, meaning that while there may be more, it just doesn't show more past the five reviews I currently have. So, if you wrote a review after the stats outage began and are wondering why it seems like I didn't notice, that's because I can't see the new reviews thanks to this outage. I hope fixes it soon, but until then, feel free to let me know your thoughts either in my Discord DMs or in the Girls und Panzer: der Fanfiction server, I'm pretty active there when I'm home.

Now, for future projects. Right now, I'm thinking of ideas of a fanfic based on Revolutionary Ireland. The school will not be based off of Shamrock School for Girls by the great CrabbyUnderaRock, but will be a completely original school. The only similarities will be the nation they are based off of, and the tanks they use. Otherwise, different school name, different OCs, different stuff. Basically, it is set in a world where the schools aren't schools, but nations entirely, and the Sensha-do commanders, or known headmistresses like Kuromorimine's Shiho, are their country leaders. Sensha-do matches are basically a way of having fun with each other, solving disputes, or other things. It retains its safe aspects. Ooarai exists under Anzu, so there's that too.

What will happen in this fanfic is basically, Irish elements in St. Gloriana are tired of them having lesser and lesser value as the days pass, being seen as nothing else but ordinary pawns in a much larger spectrum of St. Gloriana dominance. Soon, things get bad enough that it all takes a spark to light the powder keg, and send the Emerald Isle ablaze in revolution.

Well, that's all from me for now, I guess. I hoped you enjoyed A Saga of Jouko, despite its many flaws. I have some omakes I am currently making, so expect some to come out soon. Thanks for reading, all feedback is greatly appreciated!

Also, happy (very) belated birthday to Jouko, as well as advance birthdays to Miho and my other favorite character, Alice! (also happy birthday me, yippee)

Links and stuff:

Wattpad version of ASoJ: story/346910628-gup-a-saga-of-jouko
TheShadowNerd's critique of bad GuP fics: 911690949-bad-gup-fanfics-and-how-to-make-them-better
Girls und Panzer der Fanfiction server - /fVZwKsBT

Discord - heyitsmjbw7048