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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 5/3: Interactive: "Tongues of Fire" 5/3: Public: "Tongues of Fire"
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| Today's entry, I'll admit, is a quick-and-dirty rewrite of "Replacements Three" but with a new victim. I was pressed for time. But I also must admit to liking the parallel-but-different resemblances between closely related chapters. This is a commission, and it actually wasn't supposed to take place in this part of the interactive. The idea I was pitched was supposed to go in a very different part of the interactive. But it would have taken many chapters to write my way to the commission's starting point. Two days ago, as I was turning my attention to the commission, I saw a way of getting to the same story (well ... almost the same story) in a shorter and more direct way by putting in here, right next to where we last were: "The Tomboy" (public) + "The Tomboy" (interactive). So there's not a lot of background to give to set up what's going on. Instead of picking Andrea Varnsworth as an identity, as he did in the last storyline, in this one Will picks—Well, you should just click on through. |
| A commentary track on today's entry. Two weeks ago, in "Improvising in a Complicated World" , I wrote:Today—Tuesday afternoon, as I compose this—I am supposed to start writing the storyline that you guys voted for over the weekend, one involving Will, the YouTube crew, and Andrea Varnsworth. I spent some time thinking about it yesterday, and I got an idea I liked. Something in line with what you'd expect from the anticipated storyline, but with a bit of a twist. It got me excited. But when I started gaming out some of the more distant consequences—not outlining, just playing "what if ... and then what if ... and then what if"—I remembered two other certain characters who are in play. And those two characters wouldn't exactly derail what I had planned, but they would complicate it. Put it this way: Given characters A and B, then X is bound to happen. It is inevitable, and it will happen almost immediately. And X would badly interfere with Z, the plan I have for Will. It would probably forestall it entirely, and even if it didn't forestall it, any story that juggles X and Z would be ungainly. A challenge to handle, at least. So this is where I am as I slump thoughtfully over my laptop: What the hell am I going to do about X, when it is Z and its complications that I'm so interested in? I can now say that characters A and B are Andrea/Will and Chelsea/Josiah; that Z was Will's plan to sleep with himself in a way that he could get caught and thereby become notorious (in a good way) with Andrea's friends; and that X was Josiah wanting to get together with Will to rekindle the spark between Andrea and Chelsea. I wasn't uninterested in the latter, but I was more interested in the former. I was also more interested in setting up a conflict between Andrea/Will and Charles—he's not going to play Will's game—and all of that would have been a momentum-killing interference if I'd tried juggling it alongside Josiah. So, yes, today's chapter is meant to derail Josiah's plans and set up a branch that would concentrate on Will's plans. But the alternative, where Will goes off to meet Josiah, is still available, and the proper course of action there is for Josiah's plans to derail Will's interest in promoting himself with Andrea's group. * Meanwhile, there are some interesting comments in the post below, regarding Andrea as a POV character, the merits of Will's plan, and whether the interactions between them work. I'd be interested in seeing these opinions expanded in light of today's chapter, particularly Charles's appearance at the end of it. For the record, that chapter was composed before I saw the comments, and it was in no way influenced by them. I can't say that I intended for readers to react as (at least two) readers reacted. I didn't intend for Will's plan to be a bad plan, and I certainly didn't consciously try to portray it as ill-conceived. But I did intend for it to fail, and for it to fail by leaving Charles baffled and even a little angry with Andrea. (Well, this much I intended: rugal felt that Will's plan was motivated by "a bit of a complex over the fact that the 'new and improved Will' isn't even a blip on the radar of people like Andrea and her friends." That much I intended absolutely; it was the motive for him to make that play.) So I intended Will's plan to go wrong. Did my imagination therefore prepare for that failure by supplying a chapter sequence that was unhappy and "inorganic," all the better to show that the plan was a misreading of Andrea's social group? I don't know. I can only say the reaction actually kind of pleased me. Whether it made for a satisfying read, of course, is another question. But I don't think it explains why the chapters were so hard to write. * Finally, I used variations on some ideas proposed in this week's QotW. Today's chapter doesn't set any of those up as choices, but it does set up the chance that those choices will become available later. |
| Tomorrow will bring this branch to a suspension point; I'll have some commentary on it here on the blog. For now I'll remark that these chapters have been surprisingly hard to write. I don't know why. I know the characters, and I knew the direction I wanted to send things. But there were lots of little places where I just got hung up, where I just didn't want to write my way thru. The place where Will, as Andrea, goes in to the school for the first time, for instance. I came right up to it and my imagination said "Nope," and shut down for a couple of days. I think it was because I needed something to happen there, but there was nothing to happen. A lot of BoM is devoted to portraying "what it is like" to be someone while being someone else, so there's a need to dwell in moments of real life. But if there's nothing happening in that real life, if there is no goal to draw the characters along, then there's nothing to draw the imagination along either. On Friday I'm going to start publishing a commission, one I need to start working on today. I hope I can get it to a stopping point before the end of the month, when I'm scheduled to go off of BoM for sixty-two days. |
| Hrm. It turns out that WdC Books have a file size limit as well as a chapter limit. I found that out this morning while trying to add the new BoM chapter to the public edition, which is why that chapter appears in a different (and earlier) volume than its predecessors. It also suggests that those other volumes are going to hit their size limit a lot sooner than I was counting on. I've also topped out at the 10 book limit. So, I'm going to have to delete some book items in order to make room for more BoM volumes for the public copies. I can lose the two old blogs easily enough—they will probably disappear later today or tomorrow—and I've got a short story collection that garners fewer views than the stand-alone stories they collect, so it can easily go as well. (Hell, do short stories get any views around here?) I might also delete "School for Demons," or convert it into another format. So I'm not really pressed for room. I just have to do some reorganizing. EDIT: Okay, I think I've got the reorganization one. There's now a "Vol. 4" of BoM in the public pages, and it contains today's chapter, "A Call Across the Dimensions" ; I've deleted the earlier copy that I placed in Vol. 2. I hope i've got all the links correctly updated.EDIT x2: And wow, I must not have got any sleep last night, since I earlier had this entry's title spoonerized as "WdC Limits Hit." |
| Yesterday I said there was a 70% chance I'd have a chapter for you that would put a semicolon on the branch. Well, I do have a chapter for you—"A Call Across the Dimensions" (public) + "A Call Across the Dimensions" (interactive)—and I came close to leaving it there with "Continue" as a semicolon, but decided to push on. Tomorrow will bring a chapter ending with that semicolon, and then it's off to another section of the story, to "The Popular" , where Will has been offered the chance to impersonate Andrea Varnsworth as part of a sociological experimenting in turning an unpopular guy—himself—popular. |
| So the current storyline—currently updated to "A Girl Who's Unsure of Herself" (public) + "A Girl Who's Unsure of Herself" (interactive) is going longer than I had intended. Well, they always do. But in this case I had intended to rush through the Sydney-Kelsey swap and wrap up with a little occult business. One chapter could do it, I told myself. Then I wrote that chapter—"A Girlfriend Becomes a Best Friend" —and it spun out on me.Partly that's because these swaps always take more words than I think they will, and in this case I was having too much fun squeezing a little more juice out of Kelsey. But mostly it's because I surprised myself. I didn't expect it to be such an existential crisis for both Will and Sydney when another Sydney popped into existence. And yet as soon as they had that mask balanced over Kelsey I realized it was going to be a very hard thing for both of them, and for the pedisequos, to deal with. It could have gone much longer than it actually did, and maybe it should have. But there will be other branches in which to explore what happens when Sydney meets Sydney. I cut it as short as I could after introducing the problem, and used the remainder of the chapter to deal with the faux-amnesia that everyone but Will gets when first donning a mask. And I surprised myself again at the end of the chapter with Sydney's suggestion that she isn't cut out for impersonations. I do like surprises like that, but we're not going to take that route tomorrow. I'm writing one chapter at a time now, so I can only say with 70% certainty that tomorrow's chapter (to be written today) will put a semicolon on this branch. I might have been able to write two chapters yesterday instead of one, but I had a mild 24-hour stomach bug, and it was all I could do to get one chapter done. |
| The choice "Kelsey Blankenship" was far enough ahead last night that I gambled on starting to write that chapter, so I've got that chapter ready to go this morning: "A Girlfriend Becomes a Best Friend" (public) + "A Girlfriend Becomes a Best Friend" (interactive). But the vote was much closer than the Free Poll would have indicated. Kelsey romped in that poll, but she didn't get a lot of GP love; on the other hand, Deanna did, and she was almost able to close the gap at the very end. Each vote in the free poll was worth 725 pts, and the final tally was: Kelsey: 10,900 Deanna: 9850 Erik: 3900 Ricky: 2900 I've got at least one more chapter in this branch to compose before I'm ready to move on. |
| I think WdC must have tweaked their software recently, because now chapters do not generate tip forms unless they are of a certain character length. At least, that's my guess. In earlier polls, tip forms generated, but the tip forms today didn't generate on the chapters I posted, and I had to go back in and insert some placeholder text. My apologies for not catching the missing tip forms earlier. I was in a hurry this morning, and only checked to see that the chapter choices had been posted. I just assumed the tip forms had generated too. Anyway, you can now vote through the tip forms. Here's some quick links directly to those chapters: [Polls completed and deleted.] |
| So here's the poll for today: [Poll completed and deleted]. You can vote in it, and you can also vote with GPs using the tip forms at the bottoms of the character choices at the bottom of today's chapter: "When Troubles Pile In" Tomorrow's posting may be a little late going up, depending on how close the vote is. |
| Today brings the next-to-the-last chapter I've got written in the current storyline: "Girls with Plans" (public) + "Girls with Plans" (interactive). But there's one more chapter after tomorrow's that I want to write and publish before turning to the next storyline. There's material that I want to get down in pixels, but there's plot shenanigans that need writing alongside it. But tomorrow's chapter will end in a four-way choice, and which shenanigans get written depends on which choice it's going to be. I could just pick one of them, but actually I'm indifferent between them, in the sense, that they are all equally appealing. So I'd rather let you guys be the tie-breakers. Which means that I'm going to publish a poll tomorrow. That's the head's up I'm giving you. |
I've had a hard time writing recently. I would put a lot of it down to hangover from some intense writing bouts outside my comfort zone recently. In February I wrote a novel outside my usual universes and mythos, and in May I tried writing a bunch of 1000-word short stories. This was exhausting. But I've also had a hard time buckling down to write BoM stuff. Like, this is June 13, and I've only written eleven BoM chapters this month. Usually I'd be ten or fifteen chapters ahead. We're cruising toward a serious hiatus in the months of July and August, when I intend to go off BoM again. I think yesterday I found one of my problems. Well, two of them, but I'm not going to talk about the Minecraft addiction, as it's too obvious to have anything to say about it. The main problem is that I've stopped using a timer. I think I've talked about this trick before. I stumbled on it a few years ago. What I do is I sit down with an open document and start a timer. Forty-five minutes. As soon as it starts ticking, I start writing. I also give myself a quota: 600 words. The goal is to have 600 words written when the 45 minutes are up. There are two ways of missing the goal. The first is by writing fewer than 600 words in the allotted time. But I don't beat myself up if I fail that. However many words I've written in that time, I'm okay with it. I've put in my 45 minutes of chair time and can end the session with a clear conscience. The second way is to hit the 600 word mark before the 45 minutes are up. Actually, this is a "miss" only in the way that it's a miss when you overshoot the target, but in this case overshooting is good. I keep an eye on my word counts, and if I hit 600 words before my chair time is up, then I have permission to knock off before the timer runs down. So, really, there's two goals: 600 words, or 45 minutes. I'm guaranteed to hit one of them, which means I'm guaranteed to have done the work that I've set myself. And that's a pretty good feeling. What makes it an even better feeling? I consistently overshoot my word counts, because I have timed myself and can easily hit 800 words in 45 minutes, and sometimes I can even hit 1000 or even 1100 in that time when I'm rocking. So, I rarely stop writing before the 45 minutes are up. That gives me the pleasure of hitting one goal—45 minutes—and beating the other—600 words—so that I get a real ego boost along with my production. Writing can be an awful process, and anything that gives you a rewarding feeling at the end of it is something to be clutched at. I invented this trick a long time ago (and as I say I think I've talked about it before), and I was thrilled to discover that Anthony Trollope used a very similar system. That's another ego boost, discovering that you're as smart as one of the smartest and most successful of nineteenth century novelists. But somehow I got out of this habit after I wrote that novel in February. Burnout, as I say. I was productive during March at writing BoM, but I lapsed again in April, and the method wasn't conducive to writing 1000-word short stories, as those came much more slowly, and I tried to get each done in one sitting. (Very hard exhausting, that.) So I got out of the habit when I went back to writing BoM at the start of June, and so found it hard to concentrate. (Also, I had that Minecraft window open, but you don't need to be told that that was a problem.) Yesterday, though, I turned on the timer ... and two hours later (and two separate 45-minute sessions) later, I had two new BoM chapters. Easy peasy. Now I just have to screw myself up to open that timer again. (And close Minecraft.) |
| I used the phrase "Writing into the Dark" in yesterday's post. That was a kind of pun. It referred to "writing into" a dark kind of story, but also to improvisation as a writing technique. (To improvise a story without knowing where it's going or what it's going to be when it gets there is sometimes called "writing into the dark.") And that's how I write. Details accumulate and suggest other details; characters do things, which suggest what kind of characters they are, which suggests other things that they'll do; complications breed solutions which breed new complications. I called improvisation a technique just now. It is that, but for writers who improvise it is more of a helpless reflex. The kind of writer who improvises doesn't write into the dark because he finds that it works. He writes into the dark because he finds it impossible to write in any other way. This kin of writer has a hell of a time outlining, for to outline a story is to conceive it practically in a full state, and for improvisers this is much too big of an exercise of imagination, like creating a full world in one blow. (Even God took six days to finish up Creation.) For an improviser, creation comes by improvising clumps, then joining them together into bigger clumps, and joining those clumps into still bigger clumps ... The danger, of course, is that at the end you'll just have a clump and not a story. This makes interactives a terrific form for improvisers to work in, and especially to practice in. The difference between a story and clump is that a story has a shape, and it definitely has a climax and an end. But interactives don't typically have endings, only stopping points, and they can twist around without ever going anyplace in particular. Interactives are made for noodling around in, and improvisers are noodlers. BoM is no exception. It's a place I like to noodle in. BoM is an exception in one way, though, and that's its attention to continuity. The details of Will's family and friendships and school don't vary from chapter to chapter or branch to branch, and if something happens in one branch (like the university hosting a Mozart piano concerto on Wednesday, October 1, then it's going to happen (whether mentioned or not) unless Will does something that, directly or indirectly, prevents it from going off. I like that kind of continuity for its own sake, but it's another way of giving an improviser (like me) a handle for invention. Improvisation yields richer and easier results when there's details at hand to work with—clumps already scattered over the workbench—and a world where the details invented for one branch are available in another is one that is very rich indeed. There have been many times when I've consulted my chart of "things that are happening in the world right now" and found something that I can use to advance the action I'm working on, or which suggests a really great twist or terrific new detail. But sometimes continuity gets in the way. And not just when some pre-existing event has to be gotten around. Today—Tuesday afternoon, as I compose this—I am supposed to start writing the storyline that you guys voted for over the weekend, one involving Will, the YouTube crew, and Andrea Varnsworth. I spent some time thinking about it yesterday, and I got an idea I liked. Something in line with what you'd expect from the anticipated storyline, but with a bit of a twist. It got me excited. But when I started gaming out some of the more distant consequences—not outlining, just playing "what if ... and then what if ... and then what if"—I remembered two other certain characters who are in play. And those two characters wouldn't exactly derail what I had planned, but they would complicate it. Put it this way: Given characters A and B, then X is bound to happen. It is inevitable, and it will happen almost immediately. And X would badly interfere with Z, the plan I have for Will. It would probably forestall it entirely, and even if it didn't forestall it, any story that juggles X and Z would be ungainly. A challenge to handle, at least. So this is where I am as I slump thoughtfully over my laptop: What the hell am I going to do about X, when it is Z and its complications that I'm so interested in? |
| I don't often say much about writing process around here. And I say still less about some of the choices that I make while I'm still in the process of writing them out. There's a couple of reasons for this. One is that it risks spoilers to talk about what I'm writing, and why it's turning out the way it is. Another is that, typically, I'm writing chapters in a different area from the one I'm publishing in, so you won't even know what I'm talking about. But at the moment my publishing and writing schedules have briefly intersected. (I just typed up the next-to-last chapter that I intend to write in this sequence before breaking off to write something involving Will, the YouTube crew, and Andrea Varnsworth.) Also, I've been getting some comments via email that suggest it's worth saying something about why the storylines with Sydney have and will evolve as they have. * So, when I invented Sydney, I wanted two things: a surprising kind of a girlfriend for Will, and a surprising kind of partner for him. I think that's what we've got in her. Will could be more successful with girls than he imagines himself, but even Sydney would ordinarily be out of his league. And not only is Sydney as a type (shapely, popular, cheerleader sort) unusual for her interest in magic, but she's got dark ambitions probably beyond even what Aubrey Blackwell is capable of. (That's not to say she's the Wicked Witch of the West in disguise. It's just that no step she takes looks like it's going to be the last one for her.) The fun up to now (AFAIC) has been in inventing and justifying this character, and the long line of chapters that took her and Will deeper into the Libra climaxed in the moment when they decided that they were going to replace a bunch of people with duplicates and use them to make kind of cult—a Brotherhood of Baphomet. But I have felt very shy about writing past that point. Or, at least, shy about writing past the point where they make their first replacement. Because I have no freaking idea what a Brotherhood of Baphomet is and how it works. * Now, I've been here before. A long time ago— A very ... very ... long time ago, now that I look at the publication history. —I got Will in trouble by throwing a couple of teenage cops at him. Their names were Frank and Joe Durras, and I only wrote two chapters with them, and I only wrote those chapters because I was tickled by the idea of Will getting into a magical scrum with the Hardy Boys. But then I got emails asking "Who are these guys?" and "When are we going to see them again?" and I had to say "I don't know." I didn't have a backstory for them—I didn't even know if they were human, or magical, or what—when I tossed them into the story, and I didn't want to write any more for them until I had them figured out. So I left them far behind and far away to do some other stuff while I thought about it. (At the time, it felt like a year or two passed before I picked them up again; a more alert reader than me informed me that actually is more like only a couple of weeks.) When I came back I still had only a few ideas, which I used to get them onto a few more pages. But bit by bit, more ideas accumulated; I met some more people who belonged to their Order; I learned more about them by bouncing them off these other members of the Order, and by listening those other members; and gradually a fully worked out mythos for the Stellae Errantes emerged. That whole process took at least a year of writing. * I tell you all that because I'm more or less in the same position—the same starting position—now with Sydney and the Brotherhood. So what I'm saying is that writing about her and Will and this Brotherhood is going to be a very slow and tentative process, with lots of starting and stopping lots of hopping around as I figure stuff out and find places that are conducive to figuring it out. Anything that shows up in the next week is going to be far from the final and complete word on what this thing is and how it works; and as I want to fold revelations into each evolution of the hijinks, that means that the hijinks here are unlikely to quickly develop. I can say one thing about the Brotherhood, though you shouldn't take it as a spoiler for anything coming up. Actual Brotherhoods are a thing connected to Fane. That's not something I have lately invented; alert and unusually retentive readers may remember Baphomet being mentioned in relation to Fane during one of the Fane-centric storylines. When I decided that Sydney's father would be into the occult, I decided that he would be a Fane employee, and Baphomet seemed like a good and surprising choice—something much more sinister and plainly occult; something more like something out of Dennis Wheatley—than what we usually see when we see Fane. But it's going to be a very long time, in terms of weeks and chapters, before anything like that becomes relevant to a BoM storyline. |
| Wow! Yesterday's poll got pretty heated. There was a real battle in the Free Poll for second place, but if that's all you were watching you didn't see a tenth of it. I had bunches of GPs flooding in, in small gifts and in giant ones, voting for everyone. I had people emailing to ask if they could change their votes. And I had several people vocally pining for unity behind a single anti-Andrea vote: "Anyone but Andrea! I like her but we've seen her before!" Well, before we get to the winner, I'll direct your attention to today's BoM chapters: "Bondage Girl" [public] + "Bondage Girl" [interactive], where you'll see that one of the non-Andrea choices in the poll is the actual choice for the current storyline. That's not in reaction to the emails, by the way; I was actually commissioned to write something for Amanda by the same reader who commissioned the "Student Body" chapters. So, by sheerest coincidence, you were going to get something with Amanda anyway.There was also enough of those "Please write about someone new" that I'm making it the topic of this week's (revived) QotW in the forum. But enough throat-clearing. Who won the poll? Andrea was the winner in the Free Poll, with a clear lead from the very start, though the others exchanged rankings several times throughout the day. Final Free Vote tally: Andrea 14, Jelena 6, Amanda 5, Catherine 5. As I said, there were quite a lot of GPs voted, ranging from several 500 GP votes for Andrea to a 20K vote for Catherine, with lots of others in between. In the GP vote, the final tally was: Catherine 20000, Jelena 14100, Andrea 4500, Amanda 500. The final vote is a sum of two figures: the GPs voted for each candidate and the Free Votes for them, with the Free Votes given a value of one-half the average GP vote. In this event, each Free Vote was worth 2443.75 GPs. So here are final standings: Andrea: 39712 Catherine: 32218 Jelena: 28762 Amanda: 12718 My thanks to everyone for playing! |
| Today finally brings the final poll in the second sequence: "Invalid Item" . Will has a choice of four popular girls he can impersonate: Catherine Muskov, Andrea Varnsworth, Jelena Petrovic, and Amanda Ferguson. You can vote in the Free Poll, and you can also vote with GPs. (Links to the chapters for GP votes are in the Free Poll.) Meanwhile, it's back to Book of Masks with "Even a Football Player Has Weak Spots" [public] + "Even a Football Player Has Weak Spots" [interactive]. Will and Sydney are planning to replace some of their classmates with duplicates who will then form a cult under their control. Will wants a dividend: at least some of the duplicates should be people who can get back at the people who are now persecuting him. He's decide that Blake O'Brien, a football player with a ferocious crush on Sydney should be the first victim. But that doesn't mean that Blake himself has to be replaced ... |
| I forgot to say anything in the most recent poll about voting GPs; worse, rugal reminds me that you can't vote them to me with the tip form because he wrote the relevant chapters and the GPs would go to him. So, as I describe in the updated poll, if you want to vote GPs in "Invalid Item" , vote them through the tip form at the bottom of "Newbie Orientation" . But be sure to tell me, in the message field, which choice you are voting them for. |
| So, in yesterday's entry I didn't post a direct link to Friday's poll. I didn't think I needed to. I didn't have anything to say about it that wasn't said in the poll itself; and the ToC at the top of this page links to the most recent BoM-related items anyway. For instance, if you look at it now you'll see under "Current Polls" today's date (6/8) and a link to the current poll; you'll also see under "The Latest" the date and a link to the latest chapter in "Student Bodies." But participation was down in Friday's vote, which I put down to a lack of enthusiasm. But I also got inquiries asking which choice won on Thursday—a question that could have been answered just by looking at Friday's poll. So ... I guess at least some people didn't know where to find the poll, because they didn't know that the ToC had a link to it? I'll try to do better about including a link to the current poll by posting it; but I'll also remind readers that the most recent poll and the most recent chapter can be found through the ToC above. (I'm usually pretty good about keeping it current.) Anyway, those who found the poll yesterday voted to continue "Feminine Charm", so that's the topic of today's poll: "Invalid Item" Today also brings the last of the commissioned chapters for "Student Bodies": "Acquisitions Complete" . I was tasked with getting David to take over the Westside cheerleader squad. He was successful; I hope I was entertaining.Tomorrow it's back to BoM, to take up the storyline you voted for at the start of the month: "The End of One Road" Will and Sydney are forming their Brotherhood of Baphomet, and they want to get back at some of Will's persecutors indirectly. |
| Today in "Student Bodies": Yeah, I couldn't resist adding a recent character to the SB continuity, but it nails down that SB and BoM are very different continuities. There's no magic in SB--the stuff is all faux-science. But I tried to work up an equivalent to her backstory in BoM. |
| I've got a pretty good idea of where the voting is going go, which is why I'm using today's poll to telescope forward a little: [Poll completed and deleted]. But I'm including all the choices possible along the way, because they might go someplace interesting. * If Will just goes home instead of returning to the studio, he won't unmask the conspiracy, and the strange turns in his life will continue—though maybe Seth (to his surprise) will become a friendly and supportive presence. * If he runs away from the magic, then he will have unmasked the conspiracy and will know what is going on. What will the other guys do to him? Will he tell anyone what's going on? Or will he accept their help without partaking and participating? I mention these possibilities not to lobby for them, but to give an idea of where they might lead, since readers already know where the third choice (join the conspiracy) leads. |
| It was a close vote between the two choices in yesterday's poll, with "When a Body Meets a Body" edging out in the Free Poll, but a GP vote tipped it to "A Consultation with an Expert." That sets up a three-way vote in today's poll—[Poll completed and deleted]—where Will has a choice of two girls to try taking on a date, or going off with Cindy Vredenburg to make a video for some guys' YouTube channel. If you follow that last link, you'll see it will lead to a chance of him finding out that there's disguises and impersonations at work behind the scenes. |
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