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 |  A hub for the "Book of Masks" universe. |
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The Interactives "The Book of Masks"  : A high school student discovers a grimoire that can make magical disguises."The Wandering Stars" : Sequel to "The Book of Masks.""Student Bodies" : A high school student is turned into a blue goo that can possess people.For non-WdC Members "The Book of Masks: Archives" : Dodges the "Servers Busy" barrier!"The Book of Masks (Abridged)" : Introductory storylines for new readers.Community "BoM/TWS Message Forum" : Community for readers of the interactives."BoM/TWS/SB Wiki" : Notes and documentation for authors. Spoilers!Current Polls None The Latest 4/15: Interactive: "Sunday at the Park with Teresa" 4/15: Public: "Sunday at the Park with Teresa"
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| Today's chapters— * Interactive: "A Date With Himself" * Public: "A Date With Himself" —round off my latest branch. Tomorrow I start on a branch that will take up the rest of January. It's a branch that hasn't appeared in the Archives yet, so today also brings a bunch of new-to-the-Archives chapters starting here: "Your Friend, Who Is More Responsible Than You" . Background: Will has been exploring the magic by himself, and has victimized his best friend, Caleb, by stealing money from him. This is the area in which Will meets Sydney McGlynn, but in this branch he narrowly misses making her acquaintance, and continues his experiments solo. For those who know the story through the interactive, it previously ended with Will discovering the means to do a full identity swap by making lackeys. Tomorrow I will continue the story from where I last left it. |
| Stuff was happening yesterday around the time I usually post a chapter, and by the time I was done with it the day was pretty far gone, so I just skipped the day. Yesterday's chapter is now today's chapter: * Interactive: "Personalities on Parade" * Public: "Personalities on Parade" |
| Today ends the, mm, controversial series of chapters I've been publishing. It also ends a sequence of storylines that I wrote last month in response to various polls. On to something else! Tomorrow brings a sequel to "The Inside, Looking Out" . Will has made a mask, and inside he has made a new face -- literally the face of someone who doesn't exist, combining his own features and those of his cousin Umeko. He went shopping under this new face, and accidentally got himself some new friends. (Well, some of them are new. Some, like Cassie Harper, are people he was already acquainted with.) The question he now faces is, does he keep this new and popular identity in circulation? Or does he get rid of it as being a lot of trouble? (Among the troubles that come with it: his new friends are under the impression that the new guy is gay.) This sequence will run for six chapters. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "Party Surprises" * Public: "Party Surprises" —is the last in the short branch I wrote in answer to last month's Plot Plinko Poll. As I warned, it's mostly transitional, designed to clarify the group dynamics and set up some possible relationships. I'm trying to publish all the polled items before publishing my freewriting—no reason to make you guys wait on what you asked for—so tomorrow I'll pick up where I left off last time: "Boys Will Be Boys" . You voted to have our anti-heroes, Will and Sydney, infiltrate and replace another family, so that's what will come next. |
| Really? That's the place you guys want the storyline to diverge? After "How to Replace an Absent Friend" , by taking the "Keep Chelsea all to yourself" choice? Well, okay. But that's the only chapter where I didn't have an alternative development in mind. When I wrote that chapter I was desperate to come up with a choice to end it with, and settled on "To text Keith or not to text Keith; that is the question" because I had some vague idea that Keith being a witness to such a meeting might be important later. It didn't become important as I improvised forward, so you're asking me to diverge at a place where ... Well, where my first assumption is that the exact same thing will happen regardless of Will's differing choice. Well, maybe I can come up with something. But (LOL) this is literally the hardest possible place you could have voted to make a divergence! * * * Meanwhile, and topically related, I've taken the last few days off from the "Spider-Man" project. I got the first act of Episode 2 written, and got halfway through the second act, and then I decided the act break wasn't dramatic enough. After one day of noodling around with it, I decided to put it aside and return to it later. That's my project for today, and we'll see how it goes. The situation here (how to end an act) recalls that of writing BoM chapters -- striving to end a chapter on the kind of cliffhanger that impels the reader/viewer to find out what happens next. Relatedly, there's a "commentary" post below on the last "Spider-Man" item that I published. While rereading things and getting back up to speed, I realized I hadn't provided a commentary for it. |
| "S02E12 "The Master Planner"" is an almost-exact transcript of the IRL-episode "Brain Drain" from Marvel's Spider-Man on DisneyXD. The only changes come with some technical terms, some adjustments to the way Peter reacts to The Living Brain (which in the IRL-series wasn't introduced until this episode), and a dialogue-tweak here and there. So why is this one a script and not a treatment, like the previous entries in this project? Well, first, because all the entries from this point on will be scripts. I started this project because I wanted to do my own adaptation of the "Superior Spider-Man" arc, to see how it might compare with the IRL adaptation, and the closest comparison (short of recording and animating it myself, which is impossible) would come by writing a script. Previously I wrote treatments because I only needed to record the changes to the animated continuity that I wanted and needed to set up my own adaptation. But why transcribe a script, in this case, that is so close to the original? That was so that I could get an idea of how many pages a script for an animated show should be. I know that the usual rule of thumb is "one page equals one minute of screen time," but I've also read that the rule of thumb is different in animation—and I've read inconsistent things about what that rule of thumb is. So I figured I should make a close transcript of a couple of IRL-episodes, to give myself a rule of thumb to follow. |
| The last poll was very close, but the vote again was to continue down the path already written. So here's the next poll: [Poll completed and deleted.] Meanwhile, as promised, a new storyline starts today: * Interactive: "Does Anybody Mind?" * Public: "Does Anybody Mind?" |
| Today ends a short run of Will-and-Sydney chapters— * Interactive: "Boys Will Be Boys" * Public: "Boys Will Be Boys" —and tomorrow starts another short run, the chapters you guys collectively commissioned from me in the last Plot Plinko Poll. Background: Will has used the book he bought to make a mask, but he's still uncertain enough about it all that he's gone looking for partners, and has found them at school: Kim Walsh, Josie Holden, Mike Hollister, and Philip Fairfax. They have set up a kind of headquarters in the basement of the nearby elementary school and have been working quickly through the first few spells. They have just prepared two complete masks—masks that copy memories as well as bodies—and the time has come to test them out. This is a run of chapters that was written by rugal, so I'm uploading them for the first time to the Archives, and they start here: "The Westside Book Club" . Those who remember the arc will notice that the last chapter in the run has had its ending changed. There were too many complications (real and potential) in the original, so I simplified it. (The original version of the chapter is in the Non-Canonical BoM: "Getting Familiar with the Unfamiliar" .) It was still a tough thing to write, and there's only five chapters to come. I basically limited myself to clearing up confusions and mysteries, slowing down the action so it could breathe a little, and preparing some inter-personal conflict. It's all rather transition-type stuff, I'm afraid.Meanwhile, the current poll still has 24 hours to run: "Invalid Item" |
| Well, that was interesting. In the poll just concluded, "Diverge here" was so dominant that last night I went ahead and prepped the follow-up poll, asking which of the alternate divergences to take. But when I woke up this morning, "Look for Rachel" had surged into the lead. So here's the next poll: [Poll completed and deleted]. "Something Like Witchcraft" ends with Gordon Black catching Will at the start of school and demanding he come talk to Chelsea, but the story continues with Will ignoring Gordon and walking off to class. You can vote to continue down that path, or to diverge by sending Will to see what Chelsea wants.* * * Meanwhile, I've been at work on my "Superior Spider-Man" fanfiction project. If you don't know what that is, it's this: "Marvel Spider-Man: The Alternate Series" . TL;DR: I am writing my own adaptation of the comics' "Superior Spider-Man" arc, and imagining it in place of the adaptation that the DisneyXD Marvel's Spider-Man produced. And I am writing it without having first seen how the IRL series handled it, so that I can compare my own work to those of the professionals. I spent the first two days of January reacquainting myself with the long-dormant project, and with re-engaging with it, and then yesterday I started hammering out an outline for the first episode of the planned 13-episode arc. Then, while looking the folders for some more notes, I found that I had already written the script for that first episode, and had completely forgotten about it. Also, I liked the script a lot better than the outline I had just completed. I'm not sure how I feel about that. My plan had been to outline the 13-episode arc, and then to write detailed treatments (like those I've been posting) before writing the scripts. But I think now I'm going to skip that middle step, and go straight from the arc outline to the scripts. For one thing, I have learned that I hate writing treatments; and for a second, I think that the treatments I've been writing are probably a lot more complicated than can be squeezed into a half-hour script. (Certainly the forgotten script I'd written was less complicated than the treatment I was starting to prepare.) I think, then, that I'm simply going to prep each script with a detailed idea for the story—Who wants what? What's stopping them? And what happens if they don't get it?—and write the script from there. And yes, the project is going to be scripts from this point on rather than expository treatments. |
| The new storyline continues in today's chapter— * Interactive: "Brothers in Mischief" * Public: "Brothers in Mischief" —and the polling continues with [Poll completed and deleted], which will run for two days. The poll asks you to pick between two choices: to continue down the path already written, or make a divergence here. If the latter choice wins, then it will be followed by another poll asking which of the three possible divergences should be taken. I'm doing it this way so that a possible preference for a divergence doesn't get split three ways, allowing a minority opinion for continuing to sneak in a win. So, ignore the fact that the Gift Point votes are accessible through the "Look for Chelsea" choice. You wouldn't be voting for "Look for Chelsea" but merely for making a divergence at the end of "Hustled and Bustled." |
| New year, new branch, and for the protagonists of "The Book of Masks" (as ever), new faces and lives ... As I mentioned yesterday, the year starts off with a return to a Will-and-Sydney storyline, at home with the family of Alec Brown. Today's chapter— * Interactive: "Bare Moments Between Masks" * Public: "Bare Moments Between Masks" —picks things up where "Gemini Falls" left off. It's the start of a five-chapter run that takes Will and his girlfriend through a brief impersonation as they finish replacing the members of the Brown family and sets up a new project for them. So, look for color, mostly, rather than action.As for my plans for the month: I'm going back to work on my much-delayed "Superior Spider-Man" adaptation. I mean, it's just gotten embarrassing how stillborn that thing is, now that I've got my "reimagining" of the series up to date. I don't know what I'll be publishing related to it, though, because I don't know how much I'll get written during the month, or what form the writing will take. Also, it turns out that I'm bumping up against my WdC limit in terms of individual items I can have in my portfolio. So, I'll just have to see what happens next. |
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