Blood & Chlorophyll Ch. 11 - Reflection

I was really excited to get a chance to show Katrina coming back home after the last few chapters. Chapter eight was their date, chapter nine was a flashback, and then chapter 10 was entirely focused on them being together. This is the first chance I've had to check in with Katrina again, and I think it was the perfect time to see just how much things have changed. Not only is she willingly reaching out to others, but she even starts cleaning her room!

It was refreshing to see just how much she's changed. I'm also glad I got to explain why she never bothered changing her lock screen photo, not that it's much of a surprise.

This chapter also gave me a chance to reveal a bit of world lore about undead races; they're frequently much less emotional. Obviously this isn't the case for Katrina, but I was excited to see her thought about her previous depressive states. Thankfully, the world of Becoming Monsters is extremely varied, and there are always exciting and troublesome exceptions to different aspects of the world.

We then switch back to Alicia, and I'll admit it was so fun to open her section with her buying a bed. It felt like a great way to transition out of the sappy, sapphic emotionality of the previous scene. Alicia has always been the more upbeat of the two anyways, and this feels like a great showcase of their differences; Kat is pensive and appreciative, while Alicia wants cuddles and kisses with her hot girlfriend.

She then gets in touch with Elias! This was an aspect of the story that, I'll admit, caught me a little off guard. I've been open about this previously, but I'm not working with an outline for Blood & Chlorophyll. This meant that, after I polled my lovely audience for character ideas, they got to be a part of the story. But what happens when I realize that I'm a really big fan of those characters? Well, they end up playing a bigger role than intended.

Initially, this book was supposed to mostly be a sappy romance with some dungeon nonsense on the side, but it's quickly turning into a story about the value of community and communal support. I'm really happy by this surprise, so hopefully you're all just as excited as I am for some more time with our Mermaid friend.

Also accidental is creating a cast that has wildly different Racial necessities. Alicia needs sunlight to regenerate, but sunlight also kills Katrina. Alicia needs to stay near her tree, but Elias needs water to survive. Clearly I just need to make a guild that consists entirely of strange races with potentially frustrating geographical and temporal challenges. There's probably a market for that, right?

Anyways, I had a blast writing Elias and Alicia talking to each other. The conversation felt easy, both for the characters and for me writing it, which is always a good sign of strong character chemistry. In particular, I'm excited to give our girls more friends, and I even found a way to give Elias a chance to contribute with the Key Dungeon! I think he'll be a great addition, and it lets me continue exploring ideas brought up in chapter seven. Mostly, I really enjoy exploring the lives of non-delvers, and seeing how they can still be interesting character even when they're not punching monsters to a pulp.

After a very cute, and somewhat lengthy, conversation, Katrina finally returns from her trip home. To me, this was the first chance to truly show them as a couple. They're not trying to recover from a heavy conversation, and while the Key Dungeon is still a threat, it's not an immediate threat.

I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent here, but I'm always really frustrated when a story ends with the main couple getting together. I've always felt that relationships are just as exciting to explore as the courtship leading up to them, but it always seems like writers never had an interest in showing them! Or, when they do, the relationship is constantly on the verge of exploding because of random drama. Why can't we have stories about two people that are happily dating, and there's no chance of them breaking up, but they're still relatable people trying to explore how best to treat each other?

That's a big reason why, in this cute lesbian romance book, they get together relatively early. Now we get to have cute scenes of Alicia showing Kat her room, and old pictures of herself. They get to go though Alicia's old clothes, and then we get to see our little Dryad get all flustered when Katrina takes her shirt off! I'm particularly proud of that moment, in all honesty.

I really hope you all are just as excited to see a cute couple figure things out, but we're also starting to cross an important threshold. The chapter ends with the doorbell ringing, which means it's time to start practicing for their Dungeon delving. Let's see if I can keep both sides of the story interesting!

Nyx <3