Status Update for my watchers

Update for the few of you who actively follow my fanfiction (though I think there aren't many, if any of you left after my hiatus). The next chapter is going to be LONG, and starting next week I'm going to be very busy for at least a month. So while I'm going to try and get it up before that, if I don't pull that off then it might be a while before it gets done. I mean, it'll still go up soon-ish, but we might be looking at a week or two before it's ready for a first submission, and considering its size I'll probably end up editing things that I missed during revision as time goes on

I'm pretty much setting the stage for the final phase of this arc. There's still a massive amount of stuff to work through, lots of battles, lots of them for side characters who might become important in later arcs (like, 80% chance, I'm known to change my mind) where I already have around 5 planned and will probably make more. Lots of major battles too, but we're approaching what is the equivalent of the Fake Karakura Town arc in the original Bleach.

Admittedly there are more parallels than I'd like in how this arc is set up to progress from here, even if most of the details are different. In the end it was basically unavoidable considering the plot, but I don't like straying so close to the original series because I feel like it cheapens my story and makes it seem like a redo of the original material, even if it's entirely unintentional. When i had this part of the arc planned out I don't think the Bleach anime was even at the FKT arc yet, maybe the manga was but I didn't start off with the manga so I actually didn't even have the FKT arc available to copy from, unfortunately this happens to me a lot where my own ideas end up reflecting what actually occurs in a series (example, I predicted about 70% of the stuff that happened in RWBY volume 3, 30% of it being stuff nobody could have ever seen coming). Great minds think alike I suppose

Once this arc finishes though I'll be starting work on arc 2, and I'm going to start cutting ties with the original series. By the end of that arc I hope to have broken away completely. This will be aided by the fact that the original series is drawing towards an end, which means I'll know the whole story and be able to make sure my own story doesn't go in that direction (not that it would anyway because I honestly think I could have executed this freaking blood war arc way better than it's being handled -_-)

 Arcs 3 and 4 I can say with confidence that by that point this AU will have completely separated from the canon of the series. As of right now, only 4 arcs are planned. But I've been working on arc 1 for something like... 4 years now? So who the hell knows what'll happen by the time I reach that bridge, I might be a published author by then and not have much of a desire to continue with this story, or I might have some crazy ideas for a 5th arc, time will tell.

But anyway, that's where things stand now, if there are any of you out there who actually end up reading this, you are now informed.