Hello, everyone. It's so strange to be saying this, but the last part of SAMATFOE is imminent, and we're getting closer and closer to the End. It's been a really fun five years. (Four to ya'll, but I've been working on this for longer than I've been talking about it publicly!) The cast of characters has expanded dramatically, I've gotten much better as a writer and artist, and I feel I've grown as a person too. I won't stop stalking the svtfoe tag or talking about svtfoe after this is done, don't worry, but I have a lot of non-svtfoe related plans in the future, so if you like Sílthéy and her weird siblings, don't stop following when SAMATFOE is over.
But as for the actual contents of s5, well, I've got lots of plans. We've got a dark magic plague that's an incredibly transparent metaphor for climate change. We've got Mina playing the oil barons and trying to stop everyone from saving the world for her own personal gain. We've got Glossaryck (capitalism). We've even got the answers to a lot of mysteries and character arcs. Like, so many character arcs. It has been incredibly difficult to stuff all these character arcs into this far-too-short piece of fanfiction. But I hope I did that adequately.
On a personal note, while hiring a beta/sensitivity reader for a piece as massive as SAMATFOE proved impossible for someone who does not own their own money, I have done a lot more research than I had at seventeen. I wanted the monsters to be more than just badly-done allegories for Native Americans – I wanted them to be people with their own culture, history, and ideas. People who are inspired by real-world Indigenous cultures, but, because they're literally nonhuman, are distinct from them. Whether or not they could count as Indigenous is discussed in-text, but I do not come to an actual conclusion because I want my readers to draw their own. It's not my place to say whether colonized space aliens could be Indigenous. And their connection to the land and to magic is drawn from their shared knowledge, not mysticism, and their culture is idealized because a caring godlike entity helped them to that, not because they're better than anyone. I hope to demonstrate that they are all people, first and foremost. Because we're going to be spending time in Septarsis! So much time! And Toffee has officially been promoted to main character status! It's Star and Marcie AND the Forces of Evil, babey!