nia

MAY 2026

Happy end of May! I can’t believe spring is nearly over 🫨 Time flies when you’re making an IF. I’d love to release Chapter 2 this summer. Truly, it’s all I want in life right now 😭 The good news is that summer tends to be a little quieter at work, which means I can sometimes get away with writing when no one’s looking 👀

Speaking of writing, I’ve been doing a lot of it lately!

Let me tell you about it!

HIGHS: I really started digging into the Lodge route this month, which has been a blast! It’s actually kind of funny how different the Cold Zone and Lodge routes feel. When I was writing the CZ route, everything felt slower, more contained, and more introspective. Which, I suppose, is the whole point. You’re literally isolated with nothing but your thoughts lol

The Lodge route is much livelier. No one’s miserable yet, everyone has an actual bed to sleep in, and there are more people around to stir the pot. Though honestly, a lot of that might come down to introducing Misty and Marcel. They’re fun! The first five ROs you meet all exist somewhere in the same general plane of reserved and/or shy, with Kailee as the main exception. Then you add these two little firecrackers, and suddenly it’s a whole new ball game.

I love how the group dynamics change depending on who’s around. It gives you a chance to see different sides of the ROs, and it makes me really excited for future chapters when everyone is present and accounted for.

LOWS: Adding to the group is fun, for sure, but...THERE ARE SO MANY BRANCHES HOLY SHIT! Lol I'm not kidding! In the Lodge route, there are four main branches, and within three of those, there are nine variations. On top of that, there are also smaller scenario-specific details that only apply in certain situations, and all of those need to be accounted for too.

I keep trying to think of ways to stop it from exploding into all these wild variations, but cutting too much would also dull the story. You wouldn’t get to experience those shifting group dynamics, and that’s kind of the fun of this chapter. It’s definitely a lot to handle, but honestly? It might just be this chapter because of the whole advantage situation. We’ll see if it gets this chaotic again with what I have planned in the future. (It probably will! I don’t think I’ll be able to resist 😭)

Something else I’ve been struggling with this month is MC personality. I don’t want to overwhelm people with a million choices every time there’s a personality bump. But I also don’t want to force myself to come up with options for every single stat if they don’t naturally fit the context of the scene.

Sometimes choices give multiple bumps across multiple stats. Sometimes they only bump one. But I do worry that I’m leaning on certain stats too often and neglecting others. I dunno--I imagine most of you would prefer more variety in the choice sets, so it’s definitely something I’m thinking about as I keep writing.

And that's about it for this month. It was pretty productive, and I'm hoping June will be even more so. Until next time lovelies!

BYYYYYYEEEEE~

Current Word Count: 190K (approx. +66K words for ch.2)

Wait! Before you leave, I have a question!

-the sky the sand the hotel lobby-

youre stuck to me like some gum on my shoessss