>>55270
Thanks for the kind words! I always try and make my tickling stories feel genuine to the characters and universes they take place in. In a way, I feel that it kinda disrespects the character if you just throw them into a fetish scenario without any work to get them there, so I focus on that on my stories.
Edelgard is super fucking complex as a person, so I knew that to make her justice I'd have to put in some elbow grease. I didn't want to just sexualize her cuz we wanna see her get tickled, she's a great character that can totally get there naturally. Giving Byleth an actual personality that not only would make sense for who she is but also would have chemistry with El was an interesting challenge as well. Making their romance feel natural and develop organically was one of my main priorities for this miniseries.
Overall, this project took me a lot of effort to get right, but I'm very happy with how it ended.
When I played through Crimson Flower, I instantly knew that I wanted to retell that last fight against Rhea and make it crazy as hell. Like something with that same level of ridiculous awesomeness as the boss battles in Final Fantasy 16 (really recommend the game if you haven't played it). And part 2 with all the Black Eagles characters bouncing off of each other was mad fun to write. The reason why Mercedes, Ingrid, Shamir and Lysithea are there is because I recruited them on my playthrough. So this story is as much a little tribute I wanted to give to the game and my playthrough after having such a fun time with it, as it's a fetish story.
Also yeah, ironic that the tickling part is where there's some criticism, hah. I do the all caps walls of laughter to try and drive the fact that the lee is losing their mind and it's super hard laughter that you're getting, but I can see how it can be distracting for some readers. I get where you're coming, and will keep it in mind for future works. I just find it funny, because I imagine most people skip all the worldbuilding and character work to go straight to the tickle scene. It's usually reflected in viewership statistics too on my past stories.
Still, I'm super fucking glad you enjoyed it!
One last thing, funny you mention me writing non tickle stuff. I actually do that and have been doing it for years under another name. This is kind of my alter ego to dabble in kinky fun and sharpen my writing skills while at it.