Weekly Update - 24 June, 2024

Hey everyone!

It's been... a strange week. About halfway through it, I decided that what I had planned to be the "common plot" between all of the routes—PC and co. getting involved in the Trojan War and the events of the Iliad—really just... wasn't working. For several reasons, though the biggest two were pretty stark:

a: It wasn't serving any other part of the plot, so all of the other characters' emotional beats were totally separate from it, which didn't seem like a good idea.

b: It's just a little too big to fit comfortably in as the short-but-solid 'spine' Blood of the Living really needs.

There was also, of course, a lingering question about whether I could do justice to such a beloved and much-studied story. Maybe, in long form, from a different angle, I might be able to (though that feels dubious), but I don't think that any version where this many other gods get involved was going to end up looking or feeling like the Iliad at all, and frankly, that's a bad thing in this case.

So now there's a different plot there, one that's a little sketchy right now but should fill out more as I go. More to the point, it better ties into the last game, the characters themselves, and is on something closer to the right 'scale.' While gods are involved in the Iliad, it is primarily a human conflict, and human limitations play a big role in shaping the narrative. The new plot is something a little more 'godly.'

And of course... it's really only meant to play a secondary role anyway. The primary role this time belongs to the individual plots attached to each RO, and to the PC's family-related subplot, whatever they choose to do with it. I'm hoping BotL will overall be much improved for this change, even if I had a pretty big existential crisis in the middle of trying to figure out the logistics of the change.

I... also may need to change the title, but we'll see how that goes. There were always sort of two reasons BotL was going to be called that, and the more literal one (all the living people spilling blood in the war), is now not at all a main event in the plot.

Anyway, that was sort of the main feature of progress this week, but I've also outlined at least the first few scenes of Chapter One, so I plan to spend most of this week just actually getting words down on the screen, then the last day editing so those of you who get the BIP will have a functional one this month! I'm not sure how it's going to go, after all this time, but I'll give it my best shot and see what we end up with.

In the meantime, I hope you all have a great week.