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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 4/25: Interactive: "The Emerging Backstory" 4/25: Public: "The Emerging Backstory"
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| You know what we haven't had in forever around here? A Plot Plinko Poll! If you don't remember what that is, that's where we get really interactive. We start at the beginning of "Book of Masks," and you guys vote on which path to take. We continue down the branches, plinking between chapter choices, until we arrive at an unwritten choice. And that's where I take over, continuing the story from there. We've done this before and it's been fun (at least for me). There will be two ways for you to vote. The first is in a poll that I will post, giving the chapter choices. The second will by awarding Gift Points (GPs) to your preferred choice. You can find a fuller description of the process in the poll here: [Poll completed and deleted] That poll, and all subsequent polls, will be open for 48 hours, then closed and a new poll posted. Today's poll, naturally, starts at the beginning of the story, and you've got five choices of path to take ... |
| Today brings the last chapter in my return engagement to BoM: Interactive: "Fun and Games" Public: "Fun and Games" It wasn't a huge story, but it's always fun writing for Chelsea. I also enjoyed getting some of Jessica Garner in there, even if she was a fake and probably ramped up to 110% by Chelsea. Tomorrow I shift over to a radically different branch with a storyline that takes off from "The World Smashers" . The story so far:The Personae, after slipping from Will's grasp, has wound up in the hands of some high school YouTubers, and Will has lately joined them in mischief. As the story opens, they are looking for a "research project" (aka, "an excuse to screw around with masks and disguises") and Will has pitched the idea of swapping people unawares and watching how the victims react. But who to switch? One choice has already been launched. Which of the other four will get started tomorrow? Tune in to find out. This is one that I started writing before I took that super-long sabbatical, and it's the first one I continued when I started getting back into BoM. It was originally going to be for a commission, but I don't remember the details of the commission or who asked for it, so I am presenting it as a freebie, just because I loved the idea that I was pitched. This is a longer one, and will run for 2 weeks. |
| I mentioned yesterday that I started writing again about six weeks ago. But I delayed making a formal return (at least in part) because I wanted to make my return kind of splashy with what I hoped would be popular content. And who's the most popular character in BoM? I think it has to be Chelsea Cooper. So my return storyline takes place in the same general branch where rugal was last writing: Chelsea got ahold of the grimoire after her boyfriend accidentally golemized himself, and she and Will have partnered with it to conduct experiments and mischief. Chelsea has been impersonating Gary Chen (!) while Will has been spying for Chelsea from under a mask of Yumi Saito. By the time of "Occupied Territories" Chelsea has won some important battles: she has forced Eva and Jessica Garner off the cheerleading squad and crippled a planned coup against her leadership. But she has also promised Will some extra masks, so that she and he will have the same number of potential impersonations, and Will is contemplating some possibilities. Today, he makes a choice in * Interactive: "Grabbing a Garner" * Public: "Grabbing a Garner" (NOTE: The public Archives now include the run "A Banquet of Babel" --> "Occupied Territories" , which lead up to today's chapter.)Note: I made some important changes in "Occupied Territories" and in the four-chapter run "Debts and Acquisitions" through "The Shopping Trip" , though they don't affect much outside of those chapters. TL;DR: In the original versions, Chelsea talked Will into giving her masks to enslave some of Chen's gangster bosses. I removed that, as nothing was done with that plot development, and it limited the amount of subsequent fun to be had. |
| So, it's been a couple of months since I've checked in here -- not even so much as a log-in. I suppose explanations are in order. First of all: No, nothing happened to me. No health issues, no life issues, no monsters crashing in through the front windows to send me screaming out the back door. Okay, from my point of view, there was kind of a monster ... Like a lot of things in life, creativity is cyclical. I think over the years I've done pretty well at providing daily content around here. Yes, I've taken some weeks off, usually with prior notice. That need for a break is one of the regular cycles. Comes about once a year or so. But there's also a longer, deeper, nastier cycle. A mega-crash. It doesn't happen all that often -- only once every couple of years -- but it has happened with me before. It's the kind of cycle where I don't just take a break from writing. It's the kind of cycle where I scrape off everything to do with creativity and invention and don't come back. Let me put it this way: If I was the kind of person who took, uh, "stimulants" and/or "depressants", this is the kind of crash that where I would crawl into a bottle or up inside a needle. That's how far away I need to get from the writing game. Fortunately, I never acquired a taste for those particular kinds of vices, so I find other ways of coping. I'll leave it to you to judge whether Civilization is a healthier habit than whiskey, and Minecraft a safer addiction than morphine. Suffice it to say that I am now a much better player of both those games. It also happens that this kind of mega-crash occurs without warning. It starts as nothing worse than severe procrastination, and in this case it was a couple weeks or before I even recognized what was going on, at which point (I have to confess) the crash had gotten so deep and so hard that I didn't even give enough of a shit to come back and post a short "Gone Fishing" notice. It was that bad. But about six weeks ago I started to come out of it, and started to get my feet under me again. I had to rebuild my confidence and stamina, practically from scratch, though, and instead of coming straight back here -- when I had no confidence that the return would even take -- I spent that time writing some storylines. Getting myself in shape. So, am I back now? I'm still shaky enough, and humble enough, that I can't promise there won't be any hiccups going forward. In the meantime, I have written enough content to fill about four weeks, and I'll start publishing it tomorrow. During that time I hope to finish rebuilding. I am most definitely back enough that if I feel the ground going out from beneath me again, I will say something. I know I have left some people in the lurch with this disappearance, and I am all about making amends and catching up. I have a giant backlog of emails I need to shovel out, and that may take some time. For now, I beg your patience. |
| So, it's the first of February, and I'm coming off my BoM writing sabbatical. I've also got a new branch to publish. Let's start with that. I wasn't sure what was going to be coming out today—I had been talking with Masktrix about giving him an exclusive publishing run—so I didn't post anything yesterday about what today would bring. Turns out, it brings "The Ally of My Ally" That is a sequel to "Friends and Anti-Friends" , and because that's part of a branch that wasn't in the Archives, readers of the Archives will find a bunch of new chapters have been posted, starting with "When Ambitions Collide" and running through "The Ally of My Ally" . The background to these chapters:Shortly after buying it, Will sold the grimoire to his friend Caleb, so he is surprised when he discovers that Chelsea Cooper, the head cheerleader, has somehow gotten ahold of the book. Will has started reinvestigating it, and has read it through up to the spell that empowers a kind of body-swap. Chelsea wants to use that spell for her own nefarious purposes, and Will has surrendered to the temptation to help her out. Without spoiling things too badly for reader of the Archives (who can get the details in today's published chapters), Will has taken over the identity of a junior girl as he searches for a possible girlfriend down in the junior class. But he feels sorry for the girl whose life he has borrowed, because she has major health issues. And as today's chapter opens, Will has found out that Chelsea has already begun using the masks to make replacements around the school ... This branch will run through February 9. * * * Meanwhile, how did last month go, with my "Superior Spider-Man" project? Well, I discovered that I really hate writing scripts. Okay, "hate" is too strong a word. Let's just say it was like banging my face into a wall. Scripts are insanely demanding in terms of storytelling. For that reason they are probably very good practice, but man are they hard. The audience—particularly for a kids' action cartoon—are not going to stick around for any frippery, so every single scene has to do some work and has to land with a serious impact, which means you can't be creative by improvising and hoping that something eventually turns up. (Which is my preferred method.) You have to know what each scene needs to do, and you can't waste your time getting it done. Also, it's hard to write action scenes. That really ought to be the province of the director or the storyboard artists (IMO), but at the very least I think a script should indicate some possible action. And you definitely have to provide dialogue, particularly if it is for a chatterbox like Peter Parker, so you need some action for the dialogue to bounce off of. The result was that I spent a whole lot of January staring at my computer screen. And there were many days where I couldn't bring myself to do anything more. I was unpleasantly paralyzed for many days on end. I did manage, ultimately, to force out two scripts, and I'm going to spend the first few days in February trying to force out a third, in addition to some q&d BoM writing. That will at least give me four scripts that I can show off, and they will round off a four-part storyline that is meant to open the thirteen-episode "Superior Spider-Man" arc that I still hope to get written. But I'll start today by publishing my transcript (with slight revision) of the climax of the IRL series: "S02E13 "Revenge of The Living Brain"" . The commentary on it is in another post down below.Now I've got to go catch up on some other BoM-related business that I've been ignoring. |
| "S02E13 "Revenge of The Living Brain"" is another close transcript of an IRL-episode, in this case "The Living Brain." The major changes: 1. In the IRL-episode, Anya Corazon changed into her Spider-Girl costume and entered the Raft along with Miles, where she handled all the fighting, making Miles redundant. In my continuity, Anya Corazon does not have spider powers, so I had to make some adjustments there. 2. I tweaked the end to amp up the fake-out. In the original, the new Spider-Man just swings away after destroying the Living Brain, and a little later there's a cut to him, perched alone, gloating maniacally about having pulled off the body heist. But I wanted to make the ending a little creepier. I also wanted to parody the kind of scene that usually climaxes these kinds of stories. In any other show or storyline, the good guy would fight off the bad, and afterward there would be a little bit of banter between the hero and his friends. For this one, I wanted to play it exactly in the typical manner before throwing the stinger/reveal in at the very end. |
| 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. |
| It's the last day of 2021—and good riddance to it, by the way—which brings the last chapter in the storyline I wrote to go with the Blind Polls. I hope people enjoyed it. I had fun writing it, but I don't deny it was sometimes a very hairy thing, trying to keep the plates spinning given some of the choices you guys were making. I think I want to continue it, but where and how? Pick it up where it left off? Or pick a choice not taken and write an alternate branch? Since I'm ambivalent, I'll let the readers vote, in another Plot Plinko Poll. First one here: [Poll completed and deleted.] The poll closes on Sunday at 12:00 PM EST. It will be a while before any such chapters appear, though. I've got a backlog of chapters scheduled through the middle of February (hurray!), and though I am going to keep publishing BoM stories, I'm going to take January off from writing BoM to work on something else. I've not quite decided what, yet. Anyway, I don't plan on going anywhere while I take that writing hiatus, and if this works out I'll be able to pick up things up again in February without missing a publication date. * * * Meantime, what can you look forward to, starting tomorrow? Something starting off here: "Gemini Falls" . Will and Sydney are creating their own "Brotherhood of Baphomet," and they have been converting the family of Alec "Brownie" Brown. In "Gemini Falls" they have just captured the last two members of the family.That branch was the subject of a poll, but before we can get to the choice you voted for (to recruit additional members by hijacking a second family) I need to get through the rest of the branch that has Will and Sydney inhabiting the roles of Micah and Riker Brown. That will take five chapters, and then we'll detour onto something else before returning to the Brown saga. |
| So I took Christmas Day off. Normally I would just leave that as a skipped day. But I decided to make up for it by giving you two chapters today: * Interactive: "Something Like Witchcraft" + "How to Replace an Absent Friend" * Public: "Something Like Witchcraft" + "How to Replace an Absent Friend" That way I will still be able to wind up this storyline on the last day of the year, and start a new one on January 1. Reminder that there's a Talkback thread for this one, in case you want to go on record as saying you would have voted for a different choice if you'd known what was going on in the chapter: "Blind Poll Talkback: "The Coward's Way Out"" |
| Here's from me, hoping you all are having a safe and happy holiday. I am going to be taking the day off from publishing to be with family, but I will be back tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing the rest of you around too! |
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