The Book of Masks Homepage

May 7, 2025 at 10:46am
In response to "Photofinish"

I should clarify a bit on the "one more GP vote."

The way the math works in the GP voting, you can get some counter-intuitive results. For instance, one voter sent in some last-minute GPs to support "Great idea," but because he sent so few, it actually had the effect of decreasing lead that "Great idea" had. That's because "Great idea" had a strong Free Vote lead, and this lead was bolstered by the value accorded each Free Vote by the GPs voted for it. That small GP vote had the effect of knocking down the value of the Free Votes, which had the effect of diminishing the value of the lead that "Great idea" in the Free Vote, and this diminution was greater than the value of the GPs voted for it. Hence, dropping a small GP donation onto "Great idea" diminished rather than enhanced its overall lead.

There was something similar with the "one more vote" anomaly. I thought (at first) that adding one more GP to "Weird" would push it over the top because it was so close. In fact, adding one more GP would work because it would have knocked the value of "Great idea's" Free Vote below the 50% threshold. Moreover, to affect the value of the Free Vote, that one extra GP would have had to come from a new voter. If one of the other GP voters for "Weird" had voted one more GP vote, that wouldn't have affected the outcome significantly.

I know that this makes the GP vote sound weird, and it is. But (1) the weirdness is under the hood and invisible to the voters. The only thing they should be worried about is trying to support their favored choices. And (2) the only outcome that matters is the final outcome, not the changes that occur as votes come in. The weirdness that I note above is visible and makes a difference only if you watch the dynamic vote process unfold, and the actual process of percentages adjusting as votes are added is irrelevant to the final outcome. Had the votes been sent in a different chronological order, the observed weirdnesses might not have happened.

May 6, 2025 at 12:21pm
In response to "Photofinish"

Ok folks. you need to up your bidding.

Mar 13, 2025 at 8:22pm
In response to "Another Upset"

Understand. Would really like to see Blackwell torment/play with Will some more. Let me see if there's somewhere else it could happen or an option added.

Mar 13, 2025 at 5:57pm
In response to "Another Upset"

No, the quick ending stays. Every interactive needs an instant ending somewhere near the start, as a prank on the reader.

1 Like

Mar 13, 2025 at 3:54pm
In response to "Another Upset"

I would like to suggest that Slippery Sale Option Three be treated as a blank and get replaced with a new chapter that eventually finds Will being affected by the book. It was too early for a dead end in my opinion. Also it allows for anyone who is looking to start a new line early in the story.

And, no, it wasn't me this time that dropped the GPs.

Mar 11, 2025 at 12:54pm
In response to "Let's Have Some More Polls"

I keep forgetting to reply to the suggestion above.

I add new choices to old chapters on an ad hoc basis: usually when I am working in that branch, and I see a nearby chapter, or an earlier chapter, where I would have wanted more choices originally. I don't go looking for places to increase the number of choices.

But if someone knows of a chapter that could use more choices, and would like to see them added, just drop me a line.

Mar 9, 2025 at 9:55pm
In response to "Let's Have Some More Polls"

Wait! And in this poll I will be posting the entire chapter ... Doesn't everyone always go back and read the previous chapters to refresh their memories?

Question RE: "Invalid Item"

- What's your (Seuzz or anyone) opinion of adding more options to some chapters especially the very old ones that were limited before it was raised to five options? Not every chapter would work to get more, but there are some that another option may have been (still could be) possible.

I haven't gone to look for examples, but I may if I have some time.

Feb 12, 2025 at 3:43pm
In response to ""Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue!""

This is starting to feel like something to put in the forum. So: "Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Official Off-Topic Thread"

Nostrum

Feb 12, 2025 at 1:19pm
In response to ""Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue!""

From what I've heard from a CC at YouTube, not very good. It's basically forcing you to restart again, except you get a few advantages from your earlier progression. A change for the sake of it, not because it was necessary.

You tell me if that's the case, though. I recall "1MT'ing" with Civ1 on a SNES emulator during college almost through 4 AM, so I know the allure.

Feb 12, 2025 at 12:49pm
In response to ""Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue!""

I 1MT-ed yesterday for, like, 7 hours into the dead of night. I was so mad at myself.

In my defense, I was trying to get through the "Age of Antiquity" to the "Age of Exploration" because I wanted to see what this new "Age of" mechanic is like.

January 25, 2022 at 12:45pm

#1025365

The Rest of the Month

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.

January 21, 2022 at 12:01pm

#1025130

Rain Delay

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"

Spider-Man Commentary: The Master Planner

January 18, 2022 at 12:05pm

#1024977

Something Else

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.

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January 10, 2022 at 12:10pm

#1024455

Back to the Browns

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.

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January 8, 2022 at 11:56am

#1024362

RUFKM?!

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.

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January 8, 2022 at 11:17am

#1024354

"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.

January 6, 2022 at 12:13pm

#1024269

Close and Closer

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?"

January 5, 2022 at 12:05pm

#1024221

Poll Positions

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: [Deleted poll]

January 4, 2022 at 12:00pm

#1024151

Surprises

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.

January 2, 2022 at 12:09pm

#1024036

New Chapter, New Poll

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."