Have to admit, I've never heard of
Rome AARisen until today. I had to look it up. (Did you know someone created a Wiki and a TV Tropes page for it? That AAR was HUGE!) It must have taken a herculean amount of strength and determination to keep that thread going for
five years. Kudos to the writer, wherever they are. There's no way I could even think about trying to pull off something like that.
After Everything took 11 months to write, but the actual
AAR thread was only active for 8 weeks. I launched
Faith in Chaos with only the first two chapters finished so that I could adapt and tweak the story based on reader reactions. I'm planning for this story to end before the year is over. (July in the best case scenario, October in the worst)
Poor Kaia. Her belief system was just warped enough by Manaaki and his Church that no one could have convinced her that the "shadow state" she theorized about was Manaaki's Church. She wouldn't have been able to put two and two together until it was well past too late. From a writing standpoint, I included Kaia's shadow-state ramblings as a "big red warning flag" to anyone reading for the first time. It was supposed to be a hint towards future plot developments. There are a few "red warning flags" in the early chapters of
Faith in Chaos as well, but they're nowhere near as obvious. At least I think they're not obvious. I'm only an amateur writer pulling a 10-year-old story out of my memory, after all.
As for renaming these tales, I don't think I can do that. I've never personally considered either of these stories to be "After Action Reports" and I can't bring myself to label them as such.
P.S. I give kudos to anyone who reads
After Everything in one sitting because I can't do it myself. I get hyperfocused on the little details, stress over spelling and grammar mistakes, and I always like to read it out loud using the voices I picked out for the characters years ago.