Two things I wanted to talk about today!

1) I have a big IRL announcement! I'm going by a new name! From now on, please refer to me as Sage! It's probably going to take me a while to align all the various aspects of my life to the new moniker, and I'm nowhere near prepared to start pursuing a legal name change, but I'll likely be moving in that direction in the future!

2) Based on reader feedback, I'm having second thoughts about some of my dialogue choices in this chapter. For clarity, it's not my intention for Lanyon to pin all the blame on Jekyll or to see himself as the victim. He sees himself as a callous playboy taking out his issues on others who finally got a taste of his own medicine.

But I'm concerned my intention isn't coming through as intended, at least not for all readers. Over a year ago, I saw several posts saying things like: "Jekyll is a terrible person. He's selfish, he's self-centered, he's the real villain of the story. When will he be held accountable?" I try not to let individual reader reactions impact the story, but in this case, I may have overreacted and put too much emphasis on Jekyll's failings in his relationship with Lanyon. It doesn't help that I very much share his profound fear of honest communication--and of stating your wants outright--so it's tough for me to have an objective view on this particular issue.

We're nearing Act 3 of this story, so things are supposed to get really really tough for Jekyll. That aspect is intentional, and hopefully when viewed through the lens of the entire story, rather than a slow drip of week-by-week updates, this will all tonally balance out! But I'm someone who can start to feel anxious or exhausted when it feels like every single character is constantly blaming the main character for everything (I often felt this on The Magnus Archives), and that's not where I want to go tonally with this story. What do you think? Do you think it's worth it to soften some of the language here, or do you think the story works as-is?