I mean, this chapter was good, but the pacing feels off. It feels like I’m watching a movie and the theater keeps pressing pause every 5 minutes or if the studio released it in 24 five minute segments you had to watch separately. The story is great and I love the development of their characters and relationship, but that doesn’t really hit home with the pacing feeling this off. I feel like if at least chapter 19 and this one were released as one chapter (why even make 19.5), it would have been fine. The short chapters are fine for the shorter stories (just killing goblins with the gang and hanging out at the bar), but is murder when a nice longer plot like this comes along.
@Metalweeb Except it is though. When the person you are trying to save says “Don’t save me; save yourselves. I can buy you guys time”, but YOU specifically want to save them, YOU ARE being selfish. Not to mention that death inherently impacts everyone around the person; the person themselves just dies which may hurt for a minute (depending) but then its over. What lingers is the feeling of wanting to continue to talk and hang out with that person. By definition wanting to save a close or loved one is selfish (at the very least in cases where they express they don’t want to be saved). There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, but is a correct observation. Wanting to spend more time with someone is a selfish reason for wanting to save them(and a reasonable one); even just not wanting people to die is a selfish reason. You aren’t going to take it upon yourself to take care of that person for the rest of your life. I’m trying to think of an easy way to explain this, but the matter of fact is that SHE doesn’t want him to die. He himself is fine with dying if he can save everyone else and even if he’s not she can’t read minds and would have no way of knowing that. Most mainstream heroes actually have pretty selfish reasons for saving people. Maybe its because they lost their loved ones and don’t want anyone else to feel that way, or maybe they think they have to to atone, or maybe it just makes them feel better because their own planet blew up. And as food for thought, economics as a field of study is entirely based off of the assumption that everyone acts in self-interest (not necessarily selfish, but still following their own desires and wants; people don’t exactly save someone because they don’t want to). I would say, don’t get mad all authors for making a fair observation and assertion.