Hiya.

I figure even if I'm only posting updates once every 2 months now, it can't hurt to let you all know how progress is coming along so far for the October update.

Currently, I've got about 2.5k words written, which isn't as much as I'd like for the halfway point since my goal tends to be 8-10k words per update. I should still have plenty of time, however, so it should be fine. I did spend about a week doing nothing but filling in my outline for most of the different routes in more detail. I had a vague idea of where each of the paths and routes were headed before, but I wasn't really happy with the direction of some of them. I'm trying to make sure that every route feels like it has a purpose and is its own complete story. I don't want people to feel like they have to go through and read every route to understand anything that's going on, though I also want to make sure that each route has something in it that helps paint a fuller picture for those who do choose to read everything.

One benefit to having this outline filled in more is that I'm now able to speak more about the direction of the story. The accept path currently goes up to the end of Day 6 and has not yet reached the hard route split. The reject path, on the other hand, had its hard route split happen at the beginning of Day 6, though only Ted's and Daren's routes have been worked on so far. I'm continuing Daren's route on the reject path for this upcoming update, and if time allows, I'll try to get some progress on one of the other characters' routes as well.

As far as where the story is headed, my plan at the moment is for most routes to go up through Day 8. Some may end on Day 7 and some may end on Day 9, depending on how the different routes go. Right now, Day 6 has been sort of the calm before the storm.

In other news, I have been glad so far that I'm choosing to space out my updates to be once every two months. I would not have been able to make an update for this month even if I wanted to. My laptop was in the shop for several days because it turned out the battery was swelling up and had become a safety hazard. I've got my laptop back now, finally, but I'm still waiting on the replacement battery to be delivered. I'm able to use my laptop without a battery at the moment by leaving it plugged in, but I don't feel comfortable working on it at the moment because if we have a power surge or the cord gets pulled on, my laptop will instantly turn off. Luckily, it shouldn't be too many more days before the battery arrives and I can get back to work again.

As a last thing to end this devlog, have a height chart for all the characters in Fueled by Insanity. They are, from left to right, Benji, Jesse, Meimaru, Caijoru, Parker, Tracy, Daren, Caleb, Ted, Jeffrey, Sean, Marshall, and Blake. You may need to open the image in a new tab to zoom in. Since the image is so long, there's not really a good way to see all the characters at once. (It took me way too long to put this height chart together. Help.) (Also, Coza has fixed Blake's wrist so it no longer looks broken. Hurray!)

Meimaru and Blake have not yet made appearances in the visual novel yet, but have made appearances in the set of short stories I wrote a while back which you can find here.