With Owen's route done, it's time for me to write another reflection. Owen's route was something I didn't expect would turn out so well, but after seeing the route finish its Act 1, I can say with certainty that it exceeded my expectations. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't thinking it was going to be bad, I just thought that it wasn't going to be as good as Kamil's Act 1, which might sound ironic for those who vastly prefer Owen's route to Kamil's. Kamil's Act 1 is a big hitter in terms of story, so I was worried how Owen's Act 1 would compare being developed right after his. But now his Act 1 is finished, and I think now would be a good time to see what went right. Suffice to say, I didn't have anything to worry about.

WARNING: COMPLETE SPOILERS FOR ACT 1 OF OWEN'S ROUTE.

Compared to the two routes that were being worked on before, this one didn't change much during development. Owen was always a shy, socially awkward, chubby orca who had issues with his parents and maintaining his emotions. And that's not surprising at all. The initial idea of By Your Hands was a VN that focused a lot on deeply flawed characters who couldn't quite fit in with society. Brendan's and Kamil's issues are things that are heavily looked down upon in society, and while it looks like they are able to fit in with everyone else easily, a closer look reveals that they aren't satisfied with their lives. Meanwhile, Vlad goes against society and chooses a lifestyle that intentionally offends the average person. Connor… I can't exactly reveal how he fits into this description without getting into spoilers, but needless to say that he has his own issues that will be revealed in due time. Owen's the only main character who is apathetic about how he fits into society, and yet his character best showcases the type of story I wanted with By Your Hands. Without him, the VN would be missing a part of its soul. He is an essential part of the game.

The development cycle for Owen's route was… something, I can tell you that much. A lot happened during the days I was working on his route. Like, whatever amount of stuff you think happened to me during that period of time, the actual amount was a lot bigger. I've lost a few friends, I've gained a few new ones, I saw people I cared about suffer, and I saw my country go in a direction I'd never thought it would go five years ago. It wasn't all bad, but I would be lying if I said that there weren't moments where I was hurting. I definitely changed as a person, in terms of my personality and way of looking at the world. The biggest thing about me that has changed is that I no longer want to make stories with the intention of saying something to the audience. Rather, I just want to make stories that connects with both me and the audience I'm engaging with. Part of me wishes I could return to the person I was at the start of development. I don't even know if people like the person I've become, but I know I can only move forward, and move forward I shall. That said, working on Owen's route and By Your Hands was a sort of stabilizer. It helped remind me what my life's passion was, and what I enjoyed doing the most. Making visual novels. With hot guys kissing each other in it.

There aren't any words to express how much I love Nemo's writing skills, and I think Owen's route doubled my love towards his writing skills. For Owen's route, I gave Nemo more freedom on what to write for his route, and man did he blow my expectations out of the water. If you take away all the character arcs in the VN, Owen would be my favorite character. I just find that his personality and chemistry are the most enjoyable to read about out of the entire cast. This doesn't mean that he's my favorite character out of the entire cast, but I like his interactions with Rex the most. I'm the most convinced that these two are romantically attracted to each over Rex with any other love interest in the game. Unlike Kamil, who had a considerable amount of detractors, Owen's more generally liked amongst my audience, with the worst usually being people being neutral on him. He is overall a likable character, and frankly relatable for most people, and the flaws we see of him so far are easier to sympathize with. It's no wonder why he's so popular with fans and I'm pretty satisfied with the fan reaction to him.

The side characters weren't as popular as the ones in Kamil's route. I expected people to like Gavin more but he's gotten a lukewarm reception so far. I've gotten some comments that he teases Owen and the protagonist too much, which might explain the reception he's gotten thus far, other than the fact that he doesn't have much screen time yet. I based Gavin on a goat character from GAB Shiba, you should know which character I'm talking about if you've read that comic, as well as my sister's ex, who left a large impression on me. Hopefully he'll become more of a notable character in later Acts, but we'll see. Charlie didn't get a lot of screentime, so there wasn't a lot of feedback to his character, but I did see some people complain about his characterization. He will get more screentime in later Acts, so we'll just have to see if people's opinions improve by then. Olivia got more positive feedback, with people saying she's a cool older sister to Owen. Surprisingly, Owen's dad, Oswald, got a lot of adoration (and thirst) from people. I guess people felt both sorry and horny for him despite him not having a sprite initially (although he does one have one now). Owen's Mom on the other hand… got recieved about as well as you'd expect.

I've been seeing some confusion from some of the survey responses I've gotten, so I want to clear the air. Yes, Owen is autistic. It was always the intention from the planning stages of the game for him to be on the spectrum, as it was a fundamental part of his character, as autism is for real life people with the disability. As someone who grew up autistic and struggled because of it, I wanted to tell a story that dealt specifically with the ugliness associated with being on the spectrum, as I felt a great desire to see that sort of story be expressed through a visual medium. I would go more in-depth into my struggles, but I think it's better if I let you figure things out on your own based on what I've said and BYH's content. Anyways, when I got Nemo to write for me on this project, I knew that this was the perfect opportunity, considering I wasn't confident about my writing skills at the time to write such a personal story. So far, he has done a phenomenal job. This is just the beginning, I hope to do this story justice.

I think my main concern for the game right now is how long it will take for it to get done. The pace the game is getting updates is okay, but it's going to take years for this game to get finished at this rate. And that's not the worst thing in the world, I knew that the game would be very large and would take a long time to work on. But I do wish that I could speed up development even just a little bit. I do have a few ideas on how to do that, but we'll just have to wait and see. During some parts of development of this route, I had moments where I wanted to work on other projects and I tried to sideline development for a bit. I did create another VN, Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons, but seeing Nemo write Owen's Day 6 gave me a lot of motivation to work on the game again and implement some things I've meaning to put into the game for a while. Hopefully, you guys are patient enough to see through the completion of this game.

All in all, working on Owen's route has been a nice way to pick myself and continue working on the rest of the game. Vlad's route is probably going to be more involved than even Kamil's route and Connor's route is definitely going to be worth the wait, so the extra energy will be needed. It's going to be a good one. This reflection is a little bit shorter than the last reflection because I had less to say. That's okay though, not everything I write has to be thousands of words long. I realized that I've been behaving in my own self-interest for far too long without understanding the feelings of others. After everything that has happened, I've decided that I don't want to hurt anyone close to me anymore. To those who don't want to associate with me because of my actions, I just have one thing to say to you: "I'm sorry". I've become a changed man, and now I'm open to whatever the future holds. I hope you guys enjoy Vlad's route as it updates. I'm really looking forward to seeing people read his story.

That's all I have to say. Thanks for reading and have a good day!