High School Royale

Update: Full Transparency Post

Hey all.

So I finished taking the August SAT just this Saturday. This marks the end of the past nearly half year of non-stop test preparation for various exams.

From April-May, I was dealing with AP exams.

June, I was dealing with the HSK.

July, I was dealing with my AP Economics summer course and final.

July-August, I was dealing with SAT prep and AP Chemistry prep (side note, if you just took the august SAT, I wish you luck with your score!)

I'm fucking exhausted, BUT I still want more than anything to keep writing and to keep working on this project.

Now, I just want to be a bit transparent with you guys: the past few chapters—in my opinion—are shit. To be even more transparent, I never even had the time to proofread and edit them. This directly goes against what I wanted to accomplish with HS Royale, which is to proofread and significantly edit chapters to adjust them to an ideal level of quality that was never present with TCC (because as you guys know, I never proofread for TCC).

The past three chapters have all been completed in the span of just two days. Normally I would never try to finish a full chapter in just two days, and would just skip the upload for the week. However, I am also trying submit this story for the 2024 Wattys which required uploading for 8 out of the 10 weeks prior to submission, which is why I've been trying to pump out chapters at any condition.

So yeah. The past three chapters need a lot of work. They haven't been proofread, beta-read (one of my two beta-readers is my friend who has also just finished dealing with summer courses then the SAT), revised, or edited. For the next two weeks, I will concurrently be working on new chapters as well as going back and doing the full editing/revising process for chapters 16-18.

I will have a lot more time now. For the first time in nearly half a year, I have no huge exam I need to studying for. Yes, I am a senior now, which means college applications are taking up a lot of time now. However, with only 5 core classes I'm taking, my academic workload has never been lighter. I'm hoping this gives me the ample time to truly dive back into the writing rhythm.

Another factor that's been affecting work output is a very serious problem with terminal illness in my immediate family that I've been dealing with since junior year (fall 2023). I am not comfortable sharing details online but it has taken up a lot of my mental conscious.

I know I've been very inconsistent with HS Royale so far, far more so than I ever was for the year-and-a-half that I was publishing TCC. I've said sorry a lot, and am saying it again. At the end of the day school's top priority, and I could've never predicted how junior year would've gone down, but I feel that you guys deserve to know what's going on.

Really, a lot of this I've been wanting to say for a while now. I've been pretty silent about a lot of these issues because I never thought it'd really get to this point. HS Royale has never really been consistent at all. That may be why it's struggling to gain the same level of admiration and popularity that TCC has (with the biggest reason obviously given that this isn't based off an existing work). I don't mind, at the end of the day. I'm writing this for me as well.

So—like with my apologies—I this time thank you guys again for sticking me with me throughout it all. Unlike early TCC, I'm honestly ecstatic that HS Royale is actually seeing a ton of comment interaction! It took until the penultimate game, the Queen of Diamonds, for comments to start rolling in at a high volume. However, HS Royale has had an active comment section community from the get-go! I cannot express how excited that makes me. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people so invested that they're willing to comment. I love reading all of y'all's responses and replying.

Here's to, hopefully, an upload schedule that's finally consistent for the foreseeable future!
- R.J.