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Art-wise, it remains to be seen. I'm not working on much art at the moment but I'm sure my hand will start hating me again at some point. 😌 I'm looking forward to finding ways to mitigate the workload though (it's one reason that Wil's base shares certain traits like the shoulder width no matter which one you use. It will allow me to use that to my advantage to avoid re-draws when possible). Which sounds weird but it's more like...I'm looking forward to the challenge and figuring out what that balance looks like. I kind of view all my projects as a bit of a petri dish where I can experiment and learn. And this is one example of figuring out how to use things like CG composition to my advantage. It seems like it'll be an interesting learning experience.

The gap between episodes will be where I'm working on art so we'll see how that turns out.

Writing the gender-variable character is not that much extra work honestly. Definitely manageable.

- The pronouns are just variables, so there's no extra work needed when referring to Wil as any particular pronoun. I just put something like [they] and the correct one will get substituted in as needed. Since early chapters, I've not needed to add additional verb conjugations or descriptive noun (at least not so far) variables. Most of those were created fairly early in the process and once the foundation was there, I really haven't needed to add on. Every so often a new one crops up and I have to go into the lists and add more options but it's pretty uncommon at this point. But all the pronoun stuff just looks like this in the script. It's not additional work to do this:

(it was additional work to set this up, of course. But I used an existing tool and it's essentially all done now)

- There will probably be some extra testing needed to make sure there aren't any stray, unbracketed they/thems around though, but you have to test anyway so I'm not sure much 'extra' it really is. I think testers found a few before I released chapter 1 as well.  And Wil gets referred to in third person much more when it's early on and they're being introduced to everyone. Later, there are chapters where it doesn't happen at all, so this is less of a concern.

- In terms of other writing and variations...I just don't feel that - apart from a few allusions to anatomy - there's much difference in how I write Wil. Personalities, of course, aren't gender-specific. So how Wil responds to things doesn't change or anything.

Most of the extra 'work' is in planning and thinking about how to phrase certain things. There are times I'm writing and realise that I could have a variation in the text, and I have to pause to think about whether it's warranted or not. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. It's very case-by-case. 

But honestly this kind of thing is pretty uncommon and it's hard to quantify because I have to stop and think about things all the time. I'm writing alien LIs. There are anatomy questions that I need to answer for myself. That's 'extra work' compared to writing human LIs in Gilded Shadows. LoL Having to plan around character specifications is a normal part of writing anyway whether it's a gender variable MC or alien 🍆.

Even when I do require variations for Wil, it's often just a single sentence or a few words. I'm not having to re-write entire paragraphs.

I mean, setting up variations or variables and conditional statements is "more work" but it's very negligible at this point.

Is this code:

more work than:

Technically, yes? But also...we're talking like 45 seconds more work. So...🤷

The main difference between writing a gender-variable MC vs a gender-locked MC (so far and to me) is that I have to think about and question a lot of things that are normally more automatic when writing, say, Morgan in Gilded Shadows.

In GS, when writing the love scenes (which aren't explicit anyway), I didn't really have to worry about what I was implying about what part was getting inserted where and by whom.

In WSC, the love scenes are still not explicit. But I do have to think more about what might be implied by what I'm writing. Even if they aren't graphic, you can still draw conclusions about what the text is implying is happening. So I have to pause and consider that more carefully.

I guess in some ways more thinking is more work. But on the other hand, that doesn't always translate to more words or variations or coding or anything like that; sometimes it just means writing with more awareness. And, again, it's hard to quantify because MC's gender is not the only thing that requires some extra thinking - or even extra variations.

Anyway, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. 🤣🤣 One day I will figure out how to respond without 1000 words of text.