In Between: CH11 X Route Progress

I don't know what's come over me the past few days but my writing pace has been absolutely crazy since I posted that progress update on Sunday haha. I've written between 1.5k-2k words every day since then and am already up to 10.195 words!! 

I'm really excited about it so I wanted to share. I suspect all this writing energy is because I've got a break from uni for the first time in forever lol.

All of my progress these past few days has only been for X's route, though, which it appears will have the most variants in its opening scene, just because it features the Imperial Court.

I have to account for 1. who the Minister of Law is (with 3 possibilities), 2. whether Lady Naza has been appointed as Minister of Defense or not and 3. whether an alliance has been made with the royal historians or not 😵

The route especially diverges based on whether Minister Besna still heads the Law Office or whether you managed to dismiss her:



If Minister Besna is still part of your Crown's court, there are other ways to mitigate her influence (Lady Naza/the royal historians, with Lady Naza getting an added relationship choice during that scene; if you have neither of these you're kinda screwed), and it leads to a looooot of variation. Whereas if you managed to boot Besna out back in CH9... as you can see, the route is MUCH simpler LOL.

And yes, as you can probably tell from the "h" at the end of the passage names, this only accounts for X's high romance route 😭 

I don't think their low romance route will be majorly different wrt the Imperial Court, but I will have to rewrite a lot of paragraphs to account for the fact that a Crown who's on the low romance path at the end of CH10 (spoilers) doesn't suspect X is behind the attack...

I'll be glad once I finally have this scene behind me, because it is logistically the most nightmarish to deal with atm. All the other LIs' opening scenes, while they'll be equal in length, will also be much simpler and straightforward in comparison... a little mercy for me, as a treat 🥲 

I will have to repeat this process later when the Crown gets another (regular) court meeting in the main plot, so I guess it's good I have my variables already sorted out. I'm just going to have to write like a madwoman to get through these scenes and actually get to the JUICY parts (X's romance scene!!!! wait for me!!!!!!!!!)

Hope your week has started out well 💖 Pray this writing pace keeps up for me so I can post the chapter in early June!!