The problem with ditching your RO for someone else is the risk of missing out on romance content (and approval gains) with that RO, which is why I usually avoid such ditchings like the plague… but I’m willing to make an exception for this game, just to see how it turns out.
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Are you actually me? 
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It’s the mid-autumn update!
This semester has been positively dreadful in terms of me being able to steal time from professoring to write. I’m teaching three overfull writing-intensive classes, on a new committee, and have been tapped to create a new required class for humanities majors, which is fun, but takes a lot of work. I also got a grant to do some scholarly research on Renaissance poetry, which I have to do before the end of this coming summer. It’s a lot!
Spring will be, alas, much the same in terms of workload. It’s just the luck of the draw, classes-wise.
However, I’m writing every chance I get. I’m plugging away at the Vyv path through Chapter Seven (aka, chapter 7d, as it’s now called) and it’s coming along really well. I’ve just written a section about attending a fancy poetry reading with Vyv, and I think the Vyv fans among you will enjoy it.
The hardest part is snapping back and forth between academic and writing modes–it takes a while to adjust.
So I’m treasuring my rare writing days. I have one coming up on Wednesday, and I hope to get a few vignettes written and done. Then, when I hit Winter Break I’ll have a precious month to write more swiftly.
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Hi gang!! I kinda wanna write a fansong for this series :3 any ideas?
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I don’t have any, but I’d love to see what you come up with!
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Yay! I was genuinely surprised by how much my main mc and Vyv just vibed in the first game and how Vyv brings out my mc’s wild side. Particularly liked the nude posing mc can do for Vyv in the first game.
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I don’t know what genres you work in, but a miniature adaptation of the opera Aunt Matilda invites the MC to would be fun. Or if that’s not your style, maybe a drinking song for the Noble Gases?
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One of the things I love about the first game is just how absurd the opera is. It alternates between every possible scenario every time the MC pays attention to it.
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Thank you all for the wonderful ideas <3 I shall see where inspo takes me
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Quick update.
Last week of classes: that means final papers will be coming in, and after that, a month and a half to write-sprint until late January.
You’ll see the word count soar starting at the end of next week; at the very least, I want to finish the ch. 7 Vyv path; if I exceed my expectations, I’ll get into at least the code-outline of Fitzie’s ch.7 path.
The Vyv chapter isn’t hard to write, but what is hard is writing in tiny installments; starting at the end of next week I should have a decent amount of hours all together in a row and gain some serious momentum.
Chapter Eight will NOT take me as long as chapter seven, mostly because it’s not five chapters in disguise as one, but just a single chapter to wrap up the plot threads and provide some thrilling moments to end the game. Not going to be short–but it won’t be Chapter Seven levels of absurdity. I hope.
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@Gower I see this announcement in every forum so I copy it and tag you.
Dashingdon announcement:
Just giving you a heads’ up that the server that supports Dashingdon will be shut down by the end of January.
“I am no longer able to maintain the dashingdon.com system and server. It is terribly outdated and there are creeping security concerns. So, unfortunately, I will be shutting down the service at the end of this month. The URL will be redirected to cogdemos.ink and all users and games will be permanently deleted (mostly to prevent any user/pass/email leaks)”
You’ll want to migrate any and all demos for your WiP to the new hosting service. https://cogdemos.ink/. The support thread for cogdemos.ink is here and it’s run by a user named EvilChani.
Please spread the word, if ya can!
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@Gower Maybe it’s sily question, I know Marmaduke still struggle with university and Vyn still struggle with getting Law degree and they are same age with Jolly good so,it make me wonder that Does jolly good get degree from university?
I believe haven’t defined how the main character’s schooling ended–it might have been be receiving a degree, of course, but it might have been for other reasons, which I’m going to let the player define.
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I think my mc was an extremely gifted but also extremely difficult student, as such he may not have finished a degree per se and is content being idle rich for the moment. I do love how my mc is knowledgeable enough to put one of Vyv’s professors in their place and the complex math scene that Fitzie finds sexy.
If I had to guess my mc might have been expelled as a freshman for something like impersonating upperclassmen and taking their tests for them, not for the money (although my mc wouldn’t have turned that down either) but for the challenge. Aka being a paid test taker, which is very naughty in academia.
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I may be mistaken and confusing Bertie Wooster with Sir Humphrey Appleby, but I have it in my head that he was an excellent student at Eton & Oxford who won awards for things like scripture knowledge. I think there’s a bit where he’s asked to judge a competition of schoolgirls and when introduced they emphasize his academic achievements.
I have always thought it’s a funny commentary on education that a dipshit like Bertie would, in addition to the correct pedigree, also be a considered something of an intellectual, at least on paper. Plus, you know, grade inflation for the rich and connected has always been a problem.
Whether Bertie was an excellent student at Eton and Oxford, I have some doubts. He certainly was among those present. And he did indeed win a Scripture Knowledge prize as a youth, a fact that he never misses an opportunity to note. And he certainly does have a knack for recalling little bits and shreds of literature and inserting them in places. I suppose he deserves a lot of credit for that, at any rate.
Then again, perhaps he graduated top of his class. Though I suppose we would need to know more about his class to be able to judge what sort of achievement that is.
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Given that this entry is set at the rural manor of an eccentric earl, will there be a Gally Threepwood/Uncle Fred sort of character who either works for or against the main character depending on their goals?
Or does the main character themself play that role?
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That sort of character will make himself known more fully in Game 3, whenever that shows up, I assume when we are all old and gray.
The primary antagonist of Tea and Scones is the impossible push-pull between the desire to keep things running along relatively smoothly at the ancestral manor to please your family and thus ensure your future as the sort of person who can pay their bills and afford nice things, preferably both; your clubmate’s/love interests’/servants’ various needs to pry into things that probably shouldn’t be pried into (including you); your sponsor’s outrageous demands; and your character’s own sense of personal growth (or not).
So a trifle more abstract than a Gally or an Uncle Fred, I fear.
I suppose this gives me the opportunity for a brief update. I waxed on at length on my ko-fi, so I will sum up here. I am knee-deep in Vyv’s chapter, and having a good time writing it. That’s good, because it’s super long so far.
There’s a lot to do in Vyv’s chapter, and there’s a lot of reactivity–stuff involving Trina, Figs, Mopsie, and a certain other character from Tally Ho whose appearance may shock you with delight. Here’s what takes a long time to write a chapter that is essentially one big party scene: a) lots of activities; b) a feeling of time passing, so the different activities shift and change over time; c) you may or may not have a particular ally with you; d) Vyv might be your love interest or just a boon companion; e) honoring your past choices by creating a bunch of stuff that only exists if you did A, B, and also C in previous chapters, and f) the transition and the tight link between the fun part of the chapter and the uncanny part and the mad chase scene. The fact that there is a distinct branch at the end depending on whether you are the one being madly chased, or if you are madly chasing, also obviously seriously ups the word count.
As always, I hope you will indulge the stupid-big nature of the time involved and the words. I have to give this time to breathe, and it will all be worth it when it arrives.
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Setting a high bar for Havie, eh? 
I was re-reading Cakes and Ale recently and it reminded of how much fun I’ve had with these books over the years. They’re some of my favorite games, period, and I can’t wait to sink into Tea and Scones
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