Hello! Didn't expect an update for this one, right? Well, it isn't an update in the traditional sense, that's for sure. No, I'm here to tell you…

I'm rewriting this story from the ground up!

Chapter 1 of the new His Angel is up on my profile right now. Go check it out!

Okay, now that the easy part is out of the way, here's a life update on your resident Liar. (I promise it's honest.)

So, to start, when I originally began His Angel, I was 17 (or eighteen, honestly I forget) and in High School. I was just starting out as a writer, brimming with creativity, and I thought I was the hottest shit ever cus of how well-received the story was. Well, I started university in 2018 at 18 years old, then fast forward two or three years, and I'd grown immensely as an author. So immensely, in fact, that I was able to see…

His Angel sucked ass! It was horrible, from start to finish!

I tried to keep up with the story after that, but my motivation was completely shot. I couldn't even bring myself to reread the story to keep up with where the plot was at, much less write new plot. My main grievances with the story, aside from being horribly written from a technical standpoint, were thus:

1st: I made Issei too pathetic. Yes, I know, part of the draw was that he was a loser, but - and I say this with first hand experience - it's possible to be a loser without being totally pathetic. Even if the whole world treats you like a trash heap, you don't have to be a wimp about it. In my rewrite, I aim to fix this by giving him a higher baseline of confidence, but also anger and bitterness, making him still a loser but at least less of a whiny one. He's still miserable and self-deprecating and self-loathing, but he's not going to be a total drag at least. Honestly, I think giving him a touch more of those qualities is going to do a lot for his likability going forward.

2nd: Raynare was completely, totally, utterly out of character. God, dudes, even from the very first thought she had in the original, she was out of character. Raynare was depicted as cruel, spiteful, manipulative, and just straight up mean in the anime and LN - I mean hell, she murdered two people in two days and laughed her ass off about it. So, I made her a lot closer to her canon counterpart in the new one. I took the exact same character, and instead of changing her, I chose to expand on her. Here's some questions I want you to answer about Raynare, based solely on canon information. Ready? Okay: Was Raynare born on Earth, with Fallen parents, or was she a pure angel at one time? If she was, why did she fall? Why do the other fallen refer to her as "Raynare-sama/Lady Raynare?" (Implying a position of power over them.) Why was she such a cunt? Can't answer any of them, right? Well, I aim to answer them all and more. You can see hints of this in the first chapter of the rewrite. She's still going to end up as the Raynare you know and love from the original, we're just gonna take a less speedrunny route to get there. She's a deeply flawed and flat out evil character, so it's gonna take a bit of a slow burn from our loverboy to bring her over into the light. Spoiler: she's still gonna end up with silver wings, so strap in tight. Oh, also, she's only got two wings. Yeah, that was another fuck up. She'll end up with six, (3 pairs) don't worry.

3rd: Matsuda. Oh yeah, you guys knew this was coming. I fucked up with Matsuda on 3 counts; I made him too much of a bastard. I redeemed him too fast. And yes, the one you've all been waiting for…

He shouldn't have been with Rias.

Yeah, I know, I know. Now, for those of you who have called me an NTR writer or told me I made this story a "cuck story" (you know who you are) you're still wrong. By definition, it's not either of those things - but it is still written like ass. Canon Rias would never, not in a million YEARS date a shitbag like the original Matsuda, at least not for a good long while after he was redeemed. So yes, for insisting so hard on it in the original… I apologize. You get a deep bow and everything.

You hear that, fuckers? I'm sorry.

Alright, take a picture, that's the only apology you're getting out of me.

Now, the cold water: the themes of the story are still going to be forgiveness and redemption… we're just gonna go about it in a different way. What happens with Matsuda, including how big of a role he plays going forward, is still very up in the air. Make sure you leave some reviews or join my Discord server about it.

Actually, join my server anyway. It's a nice place, and you can directly influence my stories (of which there will soon be plenty more - reason coming soon) or just chat with me. If you were banned in the past (you probably deserved it) your ban has been revoked - yes, all of you - so play nice. The link will be at the end of this.

Okay, okay, back on track.

4th: Issei's parents. I don't like this subplot - never really did. Frankly, not too sure what I'm going to do instead of the hyperabusive over-religious parents. As someone who had hyper abusive parents in real life and was actively living (surviving) in that house while writing the original, this was sort of cathartic and sort of really hard to write, even back then. But now, I'm out of that house - writing the kind of abusive parents he had in the original would require me to go back to a really dark place in my mind, one that I've spent years distancing myself from, and frankly… I don't want to. Regardless of how good the resulting plot could or would be, I don't want to do it, so I'm not. Moving forward, Issei's parents will either be A: dead, B: canon parents but neglectful/uncaring (which would draw a parallel with Raynare wink wink, since heaven doesn't care about her either) or C: …some other third thing. Frankly, it's still up in the air. I surprised my server with this rewrite, so it's not like I've got a lot of ideas rolling around.

4b: Issei's other parents/Elsa. Look, man, I have no fucking CLUE what I was doing with this. I based her off Dr. Elsa Schnieder from the best Indiana Jones movie (fight me) and just ran with it. It was dumb. This will be cut entirely.

I think that was it? Frankly, there were several other problems, but I actually like a lot of what I did. Lisa Lisa / Mother Theresa (I swear to you, I hadn't even SEEN Jojo's Bizarre Adventure at that point, it WASN'T A JOJO REFERENCE) was really unique and cool (and will be kept, wink) and I haven't really seen anyone else do it in a plot. A new biblical God, I mean. Right? I mean, someone's probably done it since then, I guess. But I did it first! Ahem.

Freed being a main villain, too, I really liked. Rias' peerage in canon outscaled Freed right away, but Raynare and a very untrained, low level Issei? Especially Freed with Excalibur fragments? Yeah, no, that's a way harder matchup. Unsure on this going forward, but it'll likely be kept in a different way.

I also want to heavily expand on not just Raynare but all the Fallen. Dohnaseek, in particular, struck me as interesting. In the Dub, which I primarily subscribe to (it's hilarious, bite me you purists) he's very well-spoken and courteous, despite being very gruff, and his character intrigues me. He gives me the same sort of vibe as Dramaturgy from the Monogatari series (Or Akumamonogatari, my favorite work of mine, go read it now) which I seriously dig. So, he's definitely getting a touch up, along with Kalawarner and Mittelt. Mittelt is fucking hilarious when updated to current slang, right? I can absolutely see her scrolling Tiktok, like, way too much.

Okay, anyway, that just about covers it regarding the original vs the new His Angel for now. If I keep going for too long, I'll end up passing that story in word count, which would be just super awkward.

Now, I'm gonna talk about myself! Yay!

If you don't give a shit about me as a person or as an author, first of all, ouch. I give a shit about you!

Anyway, if you don't care, scroll way down - I'll have my Discord link at the bottom, or you can just tab away now. The rest of this is probably just gonna be me.

No, seriously, if you don't care about Belial the Liar's personal life, this is your last chance to tab out. (But I will be sad if you do.)

Okay, so, life update! I'm 24. I started college at 18. You may be wondering, 'does that mean you graduated?'

Fuck no! I've been in undergrad for six years! :))))

Yeah, back in 2020, I switched Majors out of Computer Science (hated it, was terrible at math) into International Journalism. From then on, I did pretty good! For my next two years, I was killing it! I even added a Minor to my degree - Japanese! I learned Japanese for two years under one of the best teachers I've ever had, and now it's a second language for me.

Unfortunately, that's where the good stuff ends. See, around spring '22, I started getting really, really tired. Now, I've had really bad insomnia and daytime sleepiness since I was a teenager - I wasn't really shocked. But it started getting BAD, man. To the point where the stimulant medicine I'd been on for years (severe ADHD) at that point started doing absolutely nothing. Assignments were flying by, deadlines were being ignored, it took everything I had just to keep myself alive. So, I started working with my doc to figure out what was going on.

We went through several incorrect diagnoses. Depression? Nope. I did have a pretty sweet psychotic episode on antidepressants, though. Anxiety? Not really. Multiple Sclerosis? Nope. Hell, at one point, we considered the possibility of a prion disease. I was tested this way and that - the exhaustion kept getting worse and my sleep at night kept disappearing. My brain had never worked less, brain fog and confusion and a total lack of creativity like you've never seen.

We didn't really know what to do.

Well, fast forward two more years and a lot of tests.

In March, 2024, I was officially diagnosed with Type 1 Narcolepsy.

Now, that may sound like horrible news. But, guys, as anyone with a chronic illness can attest, after a certain while you start to need a diagnosis. Even if it's something crippling and debilitating and completely incurable like Narcolepsy, you just want to know what the fuck is wrong with you. So, honestly, at that point? I rejoiced. I knew what was wrong!

Here's some info, for those of you who, like me, thought Narcolepsy was just "falling asleep randomly." Narcolepsy is actually an autoimmune disorder, in which the autoimmune system actively attacks the part of my brain that handles sleep. This causes my brain to be completely unable to regulate what you'd call the "sleep cycle" which every normal person has every time they sleep. In a normal person, it goes stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, Rapid-Eye-Movement (REM) sleep, stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, REM, so on and so forth until the person wakes up. Well, for a Narcoleptic, it goes: awake - REM - awake - REM - awake - REM and so on until the narcoleptic decides "fuck this" and gets out of bed. Heads up: Stage 3 sleep is the one you actually need, and we flat out don't get it.

So, yeah. That causes such lovely symptoms as
-Being completely unable to function as a human because you're utterly and wholly sleep deprived at all times, even while asleep

-Falling asleep randomly do to what we call "sleep attacks" or "excessive daytime sleepiness"

-Cataplexy; google it. It's bad, man. This is what you think of when you think of a narcoleptic person, the randomly falling over part. Truly debilitating.

-Nightmares, like, all the time. Sleep paralysis several times a month or week, which is just awful.

-Even more kooky shit, google it if you wanna.

But, yeah! So, as you can imagine, that made properly going through classes pretty fucking difficult. I've been failing and retaking a lot of classes, but I'm finally on track to graduate either this summer or this fall! Woot woot!

Okay, that brings us to the crux of the problem - me not writing. So, like you've probably guessed, Narcolepsy and ADHD both made it pretty ridiculously hard to do anything at all, and that includes writing even when I really wanted to. But, guess what - as of about three weeks ago, I'm being medicated for Narcolepsy! I'm on a very potent and complex medicine that allows me to enter Stage 3 sleep, so I'm slowly seeing symptom relief and FINALLY clearing out this years-long sleep debt. Side note, it tastes like shit and requires me to take the first dose at midnight, fall asleep, then wake up with an alarm at 4am, take the second dose, and go back to sleep. Really weird.

So, finally, I've gotten to the point where writing is coming easily to me again. It will likely never come as easily as it once did - I mean hell, forget the narcolepsy, I don't have nearly that kind of free time anymore. Plus, this medicine requires a very strict sleep schedule for me, so no staying up all night for updates anymore. Bummer, too, cus that's when my best writing happened.

But, it hasn't been all bad. Back in very early 2022 I got my first girlfriend - who turned out to be horribly abusive and then flat out cheated on me, which was an awesome first relationship. But then, I got an actually good girlfriend in September that year, who I've been with ever since! She keeps me together, bros. It's a good life. Love you, Michelle 3

I think, after a very long road, I'm finally in a spot where I can start putting my pieces back together again. I feel, for the first time in a very long time, good. I can think again. I can write again. I can take back control of my life.

Well, if you've read this far, kudos to you, dear fan. Just know, I love you guys more than anything - writing these stories for you as Belial the Liar has truly made a difference in my life, more than I can say. It's been a blast, and I don't plan on going anywhere any time soon. In fact, since you've read this far, let me let you in on a little teaser - I plan on remastering a couple other old stories, too. Wink.

Alright, that's it from me. If you've got any other questions, join my server! I love talking to you guys and hearing from everyone, and I would genuinely love to see a ton of you join! There are a lot of great people there, and we keep a very nice hut. We've even got a lot of high-profile writers! G1Splicer, MaousEmpire, Majik7, Curse of Whimsy, DanzyDanz, and probably a few more I'm forgetting because I'm tired.

Here's a link! Just copy this random string of numbers and letters:

eaMhy8j7vg

Then paste it into your discord search thingy, and you're good! I look forward to seeing you! I thrive off of feedback and story/plot ideas, so come chat me up. And, like I mentioned up there - if you've been banned at all, ever, for any reason, you are 99% probably unbanned. We only kept like 3 bans or so out of maybe 15 from all time, for people who really just earned the hell out of it by antagonizing others.

Also, when you join, you'll only see one or two channels - don't freak out! The moment you send your first message, one of our 7 or 8 moderators will upgrade you with a role and let you see the server proper. This is a measure we implemented early on in server history when our server kept getting slammed with bots.

Anyway, I've dragged on way too long at this point. I hope to see you, I hope you enjoy the new His Angel, and I hope you'll be seeing a lot more of me!

See you next mission!