What were you trying to say playing around with different class structures like that?

So to be perfectly honest, that plot almost came around by mistake in a way.

I definitely wanted some element of, you know, the lower class versus the upper class.

But I remember when I got it back from my beta readers, a lot of them pointed out the themes of like class struggle and, you know, poor versus rich in much more of a way than I had intended it to be.

So then in future drafts, I lean into it more.

And I really want to just highlight sort of the different worlds that people can live in.

You know, like someone who has, you know, millions and millions of dollars is obviously living in a very different world than someone who's struggling to make ends meet, even though they might pass each other on the street from time to time.

How do you approach world building? Like, did you have the world fully formed once you kind of realized it was going to be sort of Italian Renaissance period? Or did it evolve with that, like beyond that into different noble houses that you weren't expecting or different cities or, you know, aspects of the landscape or what have you?