By Your Hands wasn't made to prevent burnout with BB. Ironically, it actually made the workload bigger because I was working on both at the same time during October and November xp. That said, I do think working on BYH was good for me mentally and creatively. I'll consider what you say in either case.
I probably should have expected Brendan to be more popular but I knew all of him so I couldn't see only the small snippet you see in the first build. It will be interesting to see how people react to information revealed about his character in future builds.
And I'm glad you liked Ben's route! We're definitely going to have fun writing his route.