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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 7/1: Interactive: "Solving Other People's Problems" 7/1: Public: "Solving Other People's Problems"
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| I haven't managed to write any more Spider-Man scripts, not after the first, because I bumped my head on some continuity issues and have been nursing the bruise since. Instead, I've decided to devote March to writing short stories, with the aim of writing one a day. Most of these are written for contests here at WdC. I know people come here for "Book of Masks" stuff, but once a week I'm going to trouble you anyway with links to the stuff I've been writing on the side. I mean, it's up to you whether to click on the links or not! The first batch of seven actually come from late February, as I was warming up. Most of them are in the "weird" genre, meaning grotesque fantasy, and all of them are written tongue-in-cheek in the manner of old pulps from the 30s and 40s—or from the 70s at the latest. At least one of them—you'll have to find it yourselves—might amuse the BoM readership as having a similar story motif.
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| With— Interactive: "A Dane Disguise" Public: "A Dane Disguise" —I've finished off another commission, one that I've been returning to off and on over the past few weeks. Starting tomorrow I will publish the last chapters in the first-and-last commission that I had on my plate: the first I accepted, and the last I will finish. It picks up with "A Trap of One's Own Making" . Will's life is going to shit on account of some weird crap with the girls at school. A bunch of them have been coming on to him, then denying it. Now, people are accusing Will of inventing fake girlfriends, and of sending fake DMs and texts to himself in order to back up those lies. Our hero is angry and bewildered.Last we saw he set a trap for his persecutors by arranging for all the girls that have been flirting with him (including a cheerleader, Maria Vasquez) to meet up at a coffee shop. He has just arrived to confront them, but none of them seem to have any clue as to what he wanted to see them for ... This will be a ten-chapter run. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "The Cherry, Hung with Snow" Public: "The Cherry, Hung with Snow" —rounds off a palate cleanser that was also a commission. Now it's time to jump back to the previous commission and finish it off. In "Joint Ventures" , Will traded the grimoire to Spencer Osbourne for a couple of doobies. At the end of the chapter he had a chance to talk to Spencer about the book, but he turned Spencer down. That led to two short branches. In "Some Ginger and Mary Jane" Will's friends and acquaintances started acting strangely, and in "Portable Bodies" Will found himself body-swapped with a cheerleader.In tomorrow's chapter, though, we'll find out what happens if he decides to meet with Spencer, to talk about that book he traded away ... * Separately, Tal gave me a book-cover-style image for "Student Bodies" , so that it matches the style of Book of Masks and The Wandering Stars. It's up now! |
| I am away from my regular computer today, and forgot to bring a copy of today's chapter with me, so there will be no chapter published by me today. Sorry. EDIT: Meantime, let me try to catch up with some thanks to the various people who have sent me WdC Gift Points. I really do appreciate it! AchillesRedux DarkKing Easy Ein forthefunofit Tal That One Guy the-knight-croisant ThePrussian55 Theresa Daoang [a.k.a., Freakyduchess] |
| Interactive: "Gallons of Gossip" Public: "Gallons of Gossip" Those chapters suspend one commission. Now comes another commission that doubles as a short (4-chapter) palate-cleanser. Like the last palate-cleanser, it involves Sydney McGlynn, and her and Will's plan to create a "Brotherhood of Baphomet" out of magical clones. In "Demons by Night, Demons by Daylight" they have taken over the identities of Kelsey Blankenship (that's Sydney) and Amanda Ferguson (Will), but Will hasn't forgotten that he was being bullied from a couple of different directions before he made the switch, and he's thinking about now doing something about it .. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "Invalid Chapter" Public: "Coach Class" —rounds off a palate-cleanser/commission. Tomorrow—internet access permitting—I return to a commission I suspended work on earlier. In "Joint Ventures" Will sold his mystery book to Spencer Osbourne in return for two joints, one of which he contributed to his class's time capsule project. In "Stoned-Cold Stupids" that plan backfires after he changes his mind and lifts the joint from his teacher's desk and replaces it with a different contribution. The result is that he gets detention and gets grounded.The story went in one direction after that—one that climaxed in "Room Services" with Will bagging up a bunch of weed for Kim Walsh. But tomorrow we'll start exploring a different path things could have taken. |
| My internet was out this morning [Sunday]. Given the weather it is possible that I will be off and on the internet over the next couple of days. EDIT: Today's chapters are up early, on account of I'm not sure if I'll be able to stay online today. Interactive: "Invalid Chapter" Public: "She Who Runs the Show" There are also some new chapters for the Archive readers: "New Boss, Same as the Old Boss" --> "Senior Secrets" The last of these also will pop up for Interactive readers as a new chapter. It's actually a replacement chapter for one of two chapters that I moved to the NC-BoM and deleted from BoM. It's not much of a replacement -- a little revision here and there. The main changes are at the very end, to set up a wider array of choices. Depending on whether I can get online, I might post some short sequels to further set up choices. |
| Besides today's BoM chapter— Interactive: "Avalanche Girl" Public: "Avalanche Girl" —I've got a bonus for anyone who has been casting a curious eye at my Spider-Man project: "S02E12 "The Master Planner"" To briefly backstory the project: DisneyXD produced (and still produces???) an animated Spider-Man show, called (with a dull lack of wit) Marvel's Spider-Man. Thirty-odd episodes into it, they began an adaption of the comic books' Superior Spider-Man storyline, the one where Dr. Octopus body-swapped with Spider-Man. I heard about this before it started airing, I it gave me the notion of writing my own adaptation of that storyline, to see what I could learn by comparing my efforts with those of the pros. The adaptation has long-since aired, but I haven't watched it yet. My ambitions had gotten very big in the meantime—I wound up reimagining the series almost from the ground up—and I exhausted myself a couple of times while trying to fulfill them. The results (thus far) of that reimagination are in my portfolio here: "Marvel Spider-Man: The Alternate Series" After finishing off the last batch of BoM commissions, I decided to return to this fanfic to do some more work on it. I had already written everything up to the point where the Superior Spider-Man launches, and was just waiting for a break in BoM to throw myself into outlining and writing the 13-episode arc itself. Well, since returning to the project I've got that arc outlined, at least in enough detail that I can start outlining and writing the scripts. And yesterday, after two days of work, I wrote a first draft of the first script in the arc: "A Day in the Life," I'm calling it. But that's not the bonus I'm publishing today. "A Day in the Life" is Episode 14 in my version of Spider-Man's Season Two, and I suspended the publication of my own treatments with Episode 11. I don't want to publish Episode 14 until I've got some additional scripts written. But to mark the occasion, I am publishing Episode 12. Episode 13 (also already written) will follow in a week or two. Then, at after I've got a number of new scripts in the backlog and I'm comfortable that I won't have to make extensive revisions to them, I plan to start publishing the actual Superior Spider-Man arc. The new entry comes with two important caveats. The first is that it is almost entirely unoriginal, being a very close transcription of the IRL-series episode "Brain Drain" by Jacob Semahn. The second is that it is written in the form of a script. I hope the script format isn't too troublesome to readers. I tried to upload a Word document in script format, but the WdC machines wouldn't preserve the format, so I had to improvise. In writing this script, I have done my best to minimize action description and camera work, which is the most tedious part of a script, and the part that the writer should concern himself with the least. The idea is to get across the story: Who does what and why do they do it? Actual choreography is for the director to handle. To get up to speed on what is going on, it is best to start with "S02E02 "Between an Ock and a Hard Place"" and read forward, though the story has roots extending all the way back to the very start of the series. But Episode 12 is the first where the Superior Spider-Man first heaves into view, as Doctor Octopus makes reveals himself and makes his first overt move against Spider-Man. |
| Interactive: "Getting to Know All About Me" Public: "Getting to Know All About Me" The chapters above conclude a commission. Now comes a palate cleanser. (Except this one is also a commission.) Will has partnered with the ravishing Sydney McGlynn to study the grimoire and magic in general. She wants to use it to create a bunch of magical clones that will form a "Brotherhood of Baphomet" that she and Will can control. They've talked through it far enough to decide they want their "brotherhood" to be a coven of covens (three covens of three girls each) and that the school sports teams are where they will look for "recruits." But which teams? In "Three by Three" they are weighing the possibilities ... |
| I accepted six commissions late last year, ranging from three chapters to twenty-five. I have been working pretty hard on them, not only to keep up with my one-a-day publishing schedule, but to get ahead and build up a backlog. Well, yesterday I finished writing them. Though I still have to publish them all, I have completed the commissions, and have a backlog of thirty-two chapters. So that's enough to fill up the rest of February and early March with new BoM content for you guys. I'm going to take a break from writing BoM for a little while—two to three weeks, at least—and write some other stuff while the backlog empties out. I'll say something when I'm ready to return to writing BoM material. * * * In the meantime, I'm flattered and abashed to share the news that "Book of Masks" has been nominated for WdC's Quill Awards, in the category of "Best Campfire, In & Out, or Interactive": "Invalid Item" . Given the kind of thing "Book of Masks" is, it is more than the usual rote expression when I say, "It is an honor just to be nominated," and I thank whoever made the nomination."Book of Masks" has been nominated for Quills in years past—though it's been a number of years since the last time that happened—but it has never won. Which is okay. I'm astonished to see it even nominated, and that is quite enough. |
| You might have noticed a common theme in the commissions I've been fulfilling, and it might have been frustrating you. (I've not forgotten what genre "The Book of Masks" is in, and therefore what its readers come to it for. Honest.) By a quirk, most of the story plots have surrounded Will with surreptitious substitutions while leaving him not only untouched but unaware. Today's chapter— Interactive: "Public Parts and Private Parties" Public: "Public Parts and Private Parties" —marks an end to most (but not all) of this pussyfooting, and the commissions from here on will start moving out of their establishing situations and into the real crises. Tomorrow's chapter, which will continue a commission I was working on earlier, begins with just such a crisis. It is a sequel to "Drama in the Drama Department" , which ended with Will and Leah Simmons going into the school theater and each getting knocked out. What were they doing there? Will was still trying to track down that grimoire that he sold off, and the last he heard it had wound up as a prop in the drama department. What was Leah doing there with him? Well, she and Will have been spending a lot of time together.They may be about to get a lot closer to each other than either could have conceived. |
| Originally, today's chapter— Interactive: "Another Story From Cindy" Public: "Another Story From Cindy" —was going to be a break-off point. It's the end of the set up for a commission, and the commission itself was going to start in Chapter 11. But in writing ahead, I've lapped myself, and am almost finished writing the commission. So I'm going to continue publishing this branch all the way through. There will be another 7 or 8 chapters to come, starting tomorrow. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "A Trap of One's Own Making" Public: "A Trap of One's Own Making" —is Chapter 15 in a 25-chapter commission. I didn't want to impose a 25-chapter run on readers (or upon myself, for that matter) which is what led me to split it up and deal it out between 5- to 8-chapter runs from other storylines. There are ten more chapters to come in this branch, but we've got some other business to do first. Tomorrow starts another commission. Like a lot of recent work, it is a sequel to "The Hot Potato" , but it has a different thrust and development, so I'm using it as one of the palate-cleansers between the other commissions.Will has taken that strange book to school, with an eye toward offloading it into the class time capsule. But other possibilities are beginning to occur to him—or, at least, other people are suggesting their own ideas for what he could do with the book. |
| I had a 24-hour stomach bug yesterday. That's how come you didn't get a chapter. Right, yes, it's not like it takes a lot of work to publish a chapter. But I felt like crap in the morning, when I usually publish, and just decided to skip a day. Besides, I wasn't doing any writing, so I decided to make a complete holiday of it. But we're back on track now. Today's chapter— Interactive: "A Meeting of Minds" Public: "A Meeting of Minds" —ends things on a cliffhanger. I'd say that I definitely want to come back to this one, but I usually feel that way about most of the branches that I suspend work on. One of the reasons I did a delete-and-replace here was because I saw an opportunity to attach some more recent inventions from the interactive to early chapters that have lain dusty and ignored. That is something that I will be keeping an eye out for as I continue to mow through the early chapters of BoM—a chance to link up early lore to more recent invention. As for what's coming tomorrow: I'm swinging back around to the first of the three commissions that I've been working on, with a sequel to "Feminine Wiles and Feminine Denials" . Will has lost track of the grimoire—last seen vanishing into the school's drama department—but he's made up for it (maybe) by becoming acquainted with a number of girls who seem to be interested in him: Elle Moore, Laura MacGregor, and Leah Simmons. Alas, there is more drama than one would like even in a drama department, for both Elle and Laura are now denying that they've been hanging out with Will nearly as much as he says they've been hanging out with him ... |
| From a commission— Interactive: "Room Services" Public: "Room Services" —to another palate-cleanser. As I've said, I've been going through old chapters to clean up the continuity, and where I have deleted chapters or branches (because of continuity issues, or because I plain don't like them), I have been trying to write short replacement branches, so that the clean-up is not merely subtractive. That's why for "palate-cleansers" you've gotten short runs starting with "An Army of One" and "Picking a Brain the Old-Fashioned Way" .Tomorrow's 5-chapter run is similar, harking back to a branch that was first written many years ago. It begins as a sequel to today's extra Archives chapter, "The Buzzin' Cousin" Will and Caleb have been making masks, and have succeeded in copying Eva Garner and Jeremy Richards into a pair of them. (They also have a copy of Lisa Yarborough's mind laying around, but they are loathe to do anything with it.) They have also just finished making a golem. But they need money to continue, so at Caleb's suggestion they have shown the masks and book to Caleb's college-age cousin, Dylan. Dylan likes the stuff, and wants to buy the golem and some masks from Will and Caleb ... Much of the first two of the coming chapters may feel familiar, as they reuse and repurpose material from chapters I deleted, before it twists off into a new direction. |
| Here's something extra for readers of the Archives: "Dirty Omens" , the first of three maybe-new-to-them chapters. Background: Will and Caleb have been playing around with the Libra, and after making a copy of Jeremy Richards they have scored a copy of Eva Garner. What kind of fun can they have with a mask of her? I'm adding these chapters to the Archive because when I finish publishing the current run of chapters I will be switching to a run of chapters in this other area. So I need to add some chapters to the Archive in order to connect chapters that are already there with chapters that will be coming. |
| There seems to be some confusion still about the revisions I'm making to Book of Masks—the whys and the hows—and also about what exactly the "The Non-Canonical Book of Masks" [NC-BoM] is supposed to be. This is surely my own fault. So, let me try explaining it again. When I started writing Book of Masks all those years ago, there was very little lore. I knew the structure of the book, and the contents of the first seven spells. But I had no theory of magic. I had no setting (except the name of the town and the schools and the bookstore), and I only knew the names and stereotypes of half a dozen characters. And though I tried to keep various branches in continuity with each other, each branch tended to develop on its own. Eventually I began constructing notes for myself. Character sketches, class schedules, a worked-out magical theory, even a map of the city. The lore developed. Some early ideas were dropped and some later ones expanded. But as things developed, two large fractures opened up in the continuity. The first fracture opened after I started keeping outlines of each branch, detailing when events happened, so that I could keep track of the same events across different branches. Storylines written after I started making outlines are kept in a close continuity. Storylines written before that are probably all kinds of screwy in terms of when things happen. The second fracture separated an important change in mask lore. In early chapters it was assumed that anyone who put on a mask would get the memories instantly. Later, I adopted a suggestion that only Will should be able to get instant memories, and that other people would get them very slowly. This marks a huge difference between the kinds of plots that developed before the change, and the kind of plots that developed after. One consequence is that I never return to branches written on the early side of either of these divides. I like having strong continuities, and I don't want to write sequel chapters that align with early chapters but contradict developed lore, or sequel chapters that contradict early chapters because they align with later lore. This means there are a lot of storylines that I don't really have a chance to return to. So I am going back through the interactive and trying to close up those gaps. Where I can heal the contradictions by rewriting chapters, then that is what I am doing. But where a chapter revision will not work because the contradictions run so deep, I am copying the original chapters to the NC-BoM and deleting them from BoM. That way the original chapters are not lost, but the contradictions disappear from the revised version. And, I confess, I am also getting rid of some branches that I just don't like anymore. So I am only excising two kinds of branches: Those that contain technical "errors" (errors, that is, from the standpoint of latter-day lore) and those that I just don't like. This is NOT an attempt to establish a "canonical" storyline. It is only meant to segregate chapters that, for technical reasons or reasons of personal taste, are now problematic. Also: I am, to the best of my abilities, only doing this for branches that I have written. I am NOT checking/reviewing or removing chapters written by other authors, even if they contain contradictions. [**] This may change in the future, when I get into branches that contain lots of sub-branches by other authors. But those decisions and negotiations will be made when I get to them. So, if you think you've got a pretty good handle on how the lore currently works, please do continue to add to BoM, and if you're not sure about something, email me to ask. What I'm doing is localized and very specific housecleaning, not changing the rules. Also, if you want to add chapters to NC-BoM, please do so. It is not intended to be a special, read-only archive. [**] Okay, yes, with one exception. I cut out the "vore" branch. That one was REALLY out of place, and it is ancient. |
| The brief branch that concludes today with— Interactive: "The Cheerleader Proxy" Public: "The Cheerleader Proxy" —was a palate cleanser. Now it's on to the third commission I've been working on over the last few weeks. Like the other two, it's a sequel to "The Hot Potato" , in which Will has taken the grimoire to school, intending to dump it into the class time capsule. But instead of selling it to Jack Li (as he did in the other two commissions), "A Clash of Values" has Will stumbling onto three guys who have a better idea for what he should put into the time capsule ... |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "Drama in the Drama Department" Public: "Drama in the Drama Department" —ends on a familiar sort of cliffhanger, and it ends what is technically only the set up for a new commission. But I'm going to break away here for awhile and return later to wrap up the commission itself. In the meantime, here's another palate cleanser! It starts with "Joey and You and You" . Will has been experimenting with the grimoire, but he has been looking for help. He found it (to start with) with Jenny Ashton, who then introduced Will to a home-schooled friend of hers named Joey Tartaglione. (Joey, despite her name, is a girl.) Jenny got freaked out by the book and quit even before she learned the basics of what you could do with it, but Joey is fascinated by it ... and she might equally be fascinated by Will. At any rate, after making a mask of him, she has put it on. So that when Will went over to her house, it was his twin who answered the knock ...* * * Meanwhile, I've decided to get back into updating my writing blog over on Tumblr . I fell out of the habit of updating over there, and even out of the habit of doing the stuff that I used to post about. You won't find me talking about Book of Masks over there, except in a veiled way, but you will be able to gauge how active I've been at writing BoM stuff, and what I'm reading and watching. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "Of Experiments and Test Subjects" Public: "Of Experiments and Test Subjects" —concludes a short, 5-chapter run. Yeah, there wasn't a lot there (though I hope what was there was fun), but it was always intended as a palate-cleanser. That's because the three commissions I am currently working on all have very similar storylines, employ an overlapping cast of characters, and all take place in the same general area of the interactive (the chapters following "The Hot Potato" ). Given these similarities, I think it would be a little confusing if I jumped from one commission straight into another, so my plan is to publish these little palate-cleansers in between the commissions. These won't run more than five chapters at a time, though I hope they'll be entertaining as they extend some other storylines a little further.So tomorrow it will be back into "Hot Potato" territory and some characters who were lately familiar, but with an alternate take. "Other People's Projects" opens with Will selling the grimoire to Jack Li, and it ends with Will's father asking him to try getting it back. But Will's going to make a different choice tomorrow, leading to different complications ... |
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