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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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| * Interactive: "A Chill in the Air" * Public: "A Chill in the Air" That chapter brings this branch to a halt. There are actually two more chapters, but they go with each of the choices, and neither of them seemed very compelling when I reread them, so I'm not going to post either of them. Truth to tell—as I confess in "Commentary: "Betrayals, Backstabs, and Possible Boyfriends"" —I didn't find this branch very compelling as I reread it. I hope it amused readers more than it amused me, because that wouldn't be hard to do.Tomorrow I return to an area that hasn't been touched since ... Oh, gosh, around about the time that BoM started being posted? Okay, it got touched a few years ago, when I sent a bunch of chapters to the Non-Canonical BoM, but it's a place that hasn't been looked at since I introduced it at the very start of this whole thing. As "The Man in the Wheelchair" opens, Will has decided to get rid of the book, and decides to see if he can interest his next-door neighbor. And that is all that is going on—this is literally "Chapter Two" stuff.The chapter linked above is a new version of what was originally there, so even if you remember Andrew and his wheelchair, you should probably go read it. I'll pick things up from there tomorrow. |
| For the most part I've been keeping up with publishing schedules, but I've been completely ignoring everything else. Part of this is another BoM enthusiasm crash I've been trying to manage, and part of it is because of a recent fascination with other things. I tend to plunge down rabbit holes when I trip over an interesting one, and lately I've gotten fixated on box-office statistics. If you pay even a small amount of attention to the movies, you'll know that theatrical box office hasn't exactly recovered from the Recent Unpleasantness, and over the last few weeks I've gotten weirdly interested in quantifying the damage. This has involved pulling together box office data from over the last thirty years to examine trends and construct base lines. I've discovered all sorts of little tidbits along the way. For instance, did you know that: * Year in and year out, no matter how many movies are released, the top 200 movies always account for 98% to 99% of the box office. In 2019, for instance, the top 200 movies generated 97.9% of box office revenues, leaving the other 910 movies released that year to fight it out for the remaining 2.1%. And the top 100 movies regularly generate 90% of ticket sales. This means that approximately 85% of movies released in given year will perform "below average." * The major studios (and their art-house divisions) never release more than 15% of all movies in a given year, but routinely capture 80% (or more) of the box office. * In 1990, only 16% of the box office went to "franchise films" (sequels, remakes, reboots, "cinematic universes," etc.). By 2019, that percentage had risen to 61%. * Typically, a major studio will release 20 to 25 movies a year. Typically, half of its box office gross will come from just four of those movies. And typically its single best-performing movie will account for 20% of its box office. * Wanna play like you're a movie mogul? Shuffle a regulation deck and "buy" twenty cards (face down) from it for $100. Roll two die and add that amount to the $100 spend. Then, for each number card (2 through 10) in your twenty-card hand collect $3. For each jack in your hand collect $8; for each queen collect $10; for each king collect $15; for each ace collect $30. This, approximately, is the kind of gamble a studio chief faces each time he assembles a slate of movies. * The Recent Unpleasantness may have kicked the struts out from under the movie business, but those struts have been wobbly for some time. Sure, US-Canadian box office receipts rose 24% between 2002 and 2019, but ticket sales fell 22%, and the rate of movie-going (the number of times the average US-Canadian goes to the movies in a year) fell 31% during the same time frame. In fact, in 2019 the rate of movie-going (3.78 times a year) was lower than had ever been recorded. Put it this way: people probably went to the movies more often back when Germany had a Kaiser than they did the year that "Avengers: Endgame" came out. * As for how bad the damage has been to the domestic box office: We won't have official numbers until January 1, when the last of the holiday would-be-blockbusters have opened and the books on the year can be closed, but at the moment things are on track to a $7 billion box office. That would be down almost 40% from 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year), and if you factor in ticket-price inflation, it's closer to a 50% drop. Pretty scary, considering that theaters are supposed to be fully open and unrestricted. Not even during the Great Depression did movie theaters experience such a high-to-low contraction. Anyway, that's what I've been doing. I think I've gathered and saved up most of the data I've been seeking, so now I'm going to try catching up around here. |
| Today's chapters— * Interactive: "Class and Cluelessness" * Public: "Class and Cluelessness" —are part of a branch that was written for a commission. I composed it in a weird way. I started with the idea, then fed the buyer one chapter at a time, each time asking which choice to take at the end. It breaks off kind of abruptly here because the buyer decided he wanted to back up to an earlier chapter and take an alternate path. I'll be coming back to this area soon, continuing with that alternate path, but for now I'm going to break away and pick up another branch. Commentary thread on this branch is here: "Commentary: "A Dopey Trade"" Tomorrow, the story brings the Will-Chelsea partnership back with "Finding Mr. Right" . (That chapter will be new to those who don't follow the interactive.) Will sold the book to Caleb, who then lost it to Gordon and Chelsea. Gordon managed to golemize himself, and Chelsea has called Will in to help. The relationship has developed from there, with Will taking Yumi Saito's place in order to help Chelsea with her schemes; and because Chelsea and Yumi can't be seen talking to each other, they've decided to get Yumi (Will) a boyfriend. This is the fork where Chelsea starts impersonating Gary Chen, but tomorrow a different choice will be made. |
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