ShoH Update (October #4) (Patreon)

 Hi everyone, updating the alpha link today!

I’m making lots of headway on Chapter 2 (Riel’s route) and will likely finish it within a few weeks and move on to Chapter 3, saving Chase’s route to finish on the side. I’ve found it’s more productive if I just power through and lay down the bare bones of the story instead of trying to fill out the massive, sprawling beast I create with each chapter (my fault): it’s a lesson I learned with Chapter 1 and Trouble and Tallys’ route, which is why it took me nearly a year to finish that chapter alone. So to prevent that from happening again, I’m going to just power my way through and lay down the structure and drafts for each chapter as I can!

This update provides about 8,000 (or more: I’ve lost count) words of content in Riel’s route, including confronting Ebert again, some flirt opportunities with Blade, Trouble, or Riel, and getting ready for the minister’s gala. (The results of that "what insult to call Ebert" poll were tied, so I wound up using "meat man" because I think it's funny lol.) I also fixed a lot of what I was unhappy with (in terms of transitions and pacing) with the previous prose so it makes more sense what’s going on and who knows what, etc. I feel good about moving forward from here!

(Also, if you have any outfit requests you’d like to make for the gala, feel free to comment below! If I feel they’re appealing enough to a broad audience rather than hyper-specific, I’ll include them! Patreon perks, yeah!)

I had a weird week this week where I think I pushed myself way too hard: I wrote probably 100,000 words in six days total, just between this, the Patreon short story, and work for my day jobs. I was getting on average about 3-4 hours of sleep, culminating in going to bed at 4:30 AM after working on ShoH, waking up at 7:30 AM for an all-day orientation for law school, rushing home after 12 hours through an hour of traffic to host a Halloween party that ran until 3 AM, and then just… being paralyzed by exhaustion the next day, lol. I think I slept 13 hours off and on and I’m still tired… so I learned my lesson and I won’t be doing that again!

(If anyone is curious, I dressed up as Arthur from the kid’s show Arthur, because there was this whole thing where I claimed I was on the show as a little kid and absolutely no one believed me, so I had to try to find a clip of that one specific moment when I didn’t know the episode or even really the year it took place, and it took like 4 years to find it, but then I did and it was such sweet triumph…) 

I also went to a Haunted House, and it made me realize something I’d left out in this ask: an RO who goads the haunted house scarers into going after their SO for entertainment! (Which would be Chase, as I think we all know.)  This happened to me, so.... 

Also, a lot of things happened this week in terms of my personal/professional life (all good and very exciting), but I’m waiting for official permission to share them here first. (!) I’m also still hard at work on this secret contest that I’ll be hosting on Patreon, which I’ll be announcing on November 19th, so please keep an eye out for all that!

And—I read my first COG game for the first time in a long time and I loved it! It’s called The Fog Knows Your Name and it captures everything I love about horror, small towns, and coming-of-age stories: if you like IT, Life is Strange, Stranger Things, or Oxenfree, you should check it out!

Speaking of, would you guys like to see a list of CSGs that I recommend based on tastes and interests based other video games (/movies and books)? If you’d be interested, leave a comment below!

And Happy Halloween! Did anyone dress up or do anything spooky? I’m looking forward to playing Vampyr (maybe) and Luigi’s Mansion 2 to celebrate! 👻🎃