So now that Ascension has been completed, I thought I'd take this opportunity to address a few things about the story, be warned there are some minor spoilers coming up, so I'd suggest reading the fic itself before this little segment.

The first and foremost thing is that Ascension had been written in it's entirety before I began posting, all in all writing it took me about six months, so if you're expecting me to just blitz out chapters every few days, sorry for disappointing you. In writing Ascension, I wanted to keep it as 'Canon' as possible, in so much that I elected to use as few original characters, Jaeger's and Kaiju as possible, obviously Wyrm Ravager and Ancile are my own creation's, largely because I didn't want to waste a potentially valuable asset by using one of the various machine's and monsters Godzilla has faced in the last sixty years. Hence some aspects are borrowed from various pieces of fiction, for example the battle in Manilla is briefly alluded to in the novelization of Pacific Rim, Shinomura is a Kaiju Godzilla faces in the Awakening Graphic Novel series, and finally Slattern's breath weapon was showcased in the Pacific Rim video game.

I also wanted to encompass as much of both franchises as I could, hence why we have characters like Ishiro Serizawa working alongside Daisuke Serizawa and Steve Martin. There's also at least one un-subtle reference or cameo to the Godzilla franchise in every chapter, some are glaringly obvious, some are a little hidden.

Obviously a few things are left up in the air with Ascension's ending, and that little section at the end of the epilogue is some serious sequel bait that I'm sure will keep you all guessing as to what could come next. Honestly while I do certainly have ideas as to where I'd go with a sequel, and what I'd like to do, I'm still on the fence about if I want to continue or not. Ascension was kind of a writing exercise for myself that grew into this novella that was originally never meant to be seen by anyone except a few close personal friends.

Now, to discuss some points in Ascension that people have mentioned; The version of Godzilla I used was meant to be an amalgamation of previous incarnations, without being tied down into a specific design, basically this Godzilla can be similar to whatever version you, the reader, likes best.

Cherno Alpha's fate was always sealed, honestly I only let Cherno survive the battle of Hong Kong, precisely so I could have it keep Scunner and Raiju away from Striker and Slattern. From day one the finale was going to be Godzilla vs Slattern, and in order to make the final battle as fair as possible, Slattern could not get caught in a nuclear blast like it does in the movie. Some of you may be wondering why Chuck Hansen gets to live, well that ties into the various ideas floating around for the potential sequel, basically I'm keeping my options open without committing to anything one way or the other.

To wrap this all up, Ascension has been an extremely fun for me to work on, and ultimately, while looking back I catch one or two mistakes, or find myself thinking "I should have done this" or "I could have added this instead" I'm still very proud of what I have. My only hope is that people have half as much fun reading it, as I did writing it.