BoM/TWS Message Forum

Alright, to answer the main question, I believe the branch I wound up wandering down first was the one where Trixie and her friends help get Will out for a bit after his grounding.

Now for some thoughts. Initially I had a rather good impression of the Bavarian Forest group but a lot of these chapters reversed that for me. They come off, to me at least, as a little self-absorbed, overly blase and almost way too filled with drama or potential drama. Like there's a real tension between the guys and the girls because the guys seem to think the girls are bitchy or users. But then the guys themselves come off as if they're trying a little too hard to be too cool for school (except Lorenzo who just seems naturally arrogant) and nearly all of them, guys and girls alike, come off as if they're lightly fucking with Will for amusement. They seem like a siren for Will, singing an enchanted song to lure him in only to see him pulled down into an abyss.

Of them, Dean seems the overall nicest of them if a bit moody. Lacie seems possibly the nice as well except that I'm getting the impression that she has wild mood swings and Will would be playing with fire if he got involved with her. Her coldly revoking the coupons because Will didn't hang out with her doesn't speak well of her, like if they were together she would expect to be the center of Will's attention at all times and things would bad for him if she wasn't.

It seems like the set ups where Will ends up largely with people outside of that group end up going the best for him; in fact, it seems like Will gets jerked around a lot in a lot of these set ups. The ones involving Carson and James come off as them (and Keith of all characters) being unreasonably mean and treating Will like they think he's a moron. Not to say I think they're bad or that they can't go in interesting directions (and it was nice seeing a new wrinkle in James' pining for Jenny that doesn't make him come off as such a simp). I assume the intent is to give the reader a similar sense of frustration—both with other people and the situations—that Will himself is feeling. At least as a reader I know I kept feeling bad for him when it seemed like he would connect with a girl, for instance, only to have her casually reveal that she's totally into someone else (but on the flipside, he got lucky with Dorothy).

Of all the possible branches (ignoring the ones that I wrote), I think the ones that grabbed me the most in terms of what I'd want to see followed up are the ones with Amy, Emily and the Meet Cuties one. Emily and Amy both seem like fun characters and I could see Amy especially causing a lot of shenanigans with the book; having a character show interest in Caleb is a nice twist too. The The Meet Cuties one seems like it could go in a few interesting directions depending on what Will does (I would assume the two non-Kim girls are new; there's a lot of new characters in this general area I noticed). The Mackenzie one might be interesting because I get the impression that her getting involved with the book could go horribly awry.

I think a lot of the other branches it's either a little too early to say or they tread some ground that's already been trodden before. But overall it's certainly not boring.