God damn it, I thought I was done with Chapter 30.

To those of you who don't know, I've rewritten this chapter of Guts and Glory 2 way more times than I care to admit. I have been stuck on the god damn fence and I thought when I published chapter 30 that would be the end of it and I'd just stick with whatever decision I made.

But it's causing problems now in later chapters. One, Jasmine's danger as a character is mitigated by what feels to me like some cheap deus ex machina bullshit. Kastor survives so I can introduce Overseer Rita, but then my original ideas with her as a character have mostly crumbled apart because I didn't like what I was writing and ended up redoing a whole bunch of it. Two, even in the version where Kastor survives, it's like, then what? I don't have any super interesting experiments for Vault 113. I had a few before before but realized it way too heavily contradicts my lore.

If I kill off Kastor, I can't use him again, the pack has to deal with the loss of their leader, and that creates its own drama. Is that necessarily a good thing? I'm not sure. A part of me wants Jasmine to be seen as a dangerous character, but another part of me is concerned that it'll not be appreciated by the readers.

I am strongly considering doing a rewrite of the chapter and retcon regarding Kastor's survival.

Again.

I swear this chapter has been an utter headache for me.  For reference, this is the chapter where Kastor survives. https://www.dropbox.com/s/wyqe8hidh67d63a/Chapter%2030.doc?dl=0

Here is the version where he doesn't, minus the fluff with Gwen, Juniper, and Conor to end the night. (If I change it, I'll add in that stuff back in.) https://www.dropbox.com/s/gewacr85zqe74a4/Chapter%2030%20-%20Alt%20version%20final.doc?dl=0 But which version feels better, ultimately?

I plan to go back and clean up the chapters a bit more if I am working on them, but which version of the story flows better? I keep bouncing back and forth on this and previously I consulted VIP Patrons only on Discord. To be fair they did vote predominantly for Kastor not to survive. However, that poll was done with the implication that the outcome would not be a hard vote but decided by weighted chance via a spinner tool online.

I think it would just be better if I did a straight up hard poll.

Decide Kastor's fate. Does his story end in the bowels of the obese vault woman? Or does his story continue, at least for a short while longer, as a captive in the bowels of the vault itself?