Weekly Progress Update [21/AUG]

Hi everyone, hope your week has gone well!!

I've been working on the final scenes for CH9 and I'm more than confident I'll be able to send it off for beta-reading some time the coming week ✨

The initial estimate of 60k for this chapter has been cut down to ~45k (which I'm literally 2k away from reaching) as I realized, while editing in between, that the middle part ended up being too bloated with plot points and choices that should be spread out more during future court sessions instead of dumping them on the Crown all at once. 

It wouldn't really make sense narratively speaking for the Crown to have to make so many governing decisions all at once when they only have, like, 20% of their court present--besides which, it was killing the pacing too lol. So the Crown will still be making a couple of major decisions, both plot and relationship related, but the rest of the political issues I have planned will be introduced gradually as the story goes along and the Crown gains more experience as a ruler!

Also, the (hidden) reputation choices the Crown has made so far between the factions of nobility and the public will also start coming into play. Some of you might find a locked third choice during this chapter that you won't be able to choose, until your Crown gains sufficient points with that specific faction!

I'm going to leave it to my betas to tell me whether the point thresholds are too harsh or not haha.

Here's a preview of what you can expect from the Crown's first court meeting:

Turns out being the Crown isn't as cut-and-dry as it seems.

On the LI front, I've had a lot of fun with R's and A's scenes during the court meeting. The content for the LI has been split up into duos somewhat for this chapter; X/D at the start, A/R in the middle, and for X/D romancers they will get an additional scene at the very end of the chapter. 

I can't give away too much, but the balance of LI content will regain itself in CH10, which will have more A/R content, as X/D will be less present during that chapter. Hence why I gave them an additional romance scene at the end! 

That's it for this week, thank you all so much for the patience and support, as always.

Until next week 💖