Posted September 12, 2024 by Beeanca Writing
Hello!
It's been a while, I know. I realize a lot of you may not follow me on Tumblr and might be wondering what's going on with Exiled from Court.
The bad news is that it's on hiatus until further notice, and I'm not sure if/when I'll come back to it. Much like many novice writers, I planned for a project too big in scope and realized I was floundering once we started getting into the nitty-gritty of the story. I was going through a very difficult time for the last 2 years, which really harmed my inspiration and desire to write.
I might come back to it once this current period of my life is over, though it'd likely be very different. First of all, it'd be a shorter story. I'd either get rid of some of the ROs, or find some way to better integrate them into the narrative (compare Harry, who you can have this huge, important backstory with vs Val, whom I love but is also just some guy, I guess?). It'd also probably be more focused on romance, since that's usually what interests me the most in IF anyway.
I also might scrap a lot of it and stick to the storylines that interest me the most—mainly the Harry stuff. A shorter game dealing with The Hedonist returning to Court and having to face Harry sounds really fun to write, and it'd be a lot less complex to plan. Also, Harry is definitely a more developed character than some of the other ROs. For example, I love Camila to death, but she doesn't have much significance in the story other than "The Hedonist's friend" and I was never able to find her some meaning.
I'd also make The Hedonist even more of a fixed character by getting rid of all personality stats and focusing solely on their actions instead of worrying about personality. The stats were all carried over from Choice of Games, and it's never been something I enjoy in their brand of IF. I was going to do this anyway when I first transferred the game to Twine, but stupidly asked Tumblr what they thought and, since most people preferred keeping the stats, I did that even though I didn't really want to.
As for the good news... I am working on a new IF! :) It'll be much shorter (about 6 chapters long) so it's actually feasible for me. Since it's still early stages, I'd rather not say too much, but here's the rundown:
Last but not least, I've also created a Neocities account where I post some of my non-IF writing and write about pop culture and music. Check it out if you'd like! I'm not super active in social media, but, aside from my Tumblr account, I'm also on Instagram and Bluesky (RIP Twitter on Brazil).
That's it for now. I realize this may be upsetting, but I hope you like my writing enough to stick around. Thank you for reading this looooong post, and have a good weekend. <3 :)