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A hub for the "Book of Masks" universe. |
The Interactives "The Book of Masks" ![]() "The Wandering Stars" ![]() "Student Bodies" ![]() For non-WdC Members "The Book of Masks: Archives" ![]() "The Book of Masks (Abridged)" ![]() Community "BoM/TWS Message Forum" ![]() "BoM/TWS/SB Wiki" ![]() Current Polls None The Latest 7/1: Interactive: "Solving Other People's Problems" ![]() 7/1: Public: "Solving Other People's Problems" ![]() |
Today's chapter— Interactive: "Feminine Wiles and Feminine Denials" ![]() Public: "Feminine Wiles and Feminine Denials" ![]() —brings this commissioned branch to a temporary resting point. It's not quite a resting point, but the weirdness should be ramping up a little bit. It's going to have rest there for a couple of weeks as I take a break to publish some other things. I will be returning to this general area and cast of characters in a week or so with a different storyline for a different commission, but before that we're going to be hearing more from Jamie Rennerhoff as I pick back up with a sequel to "Do As I Do" ![]() Will, quite accidentally, has partnered with Jamie Rennerhoff, one of the hyenas who hangs out behind the school. Jamie is not nearly as bad as Will has imagined, but he has surprised Will with some of the things he likes to do with masks, such as getting Will to wear a copy of his (Jamie's) mother. He also has a thing for MILFs, and as this chapter opens, Jamie is repaying a major favor Will did for him by meeting Will at a motel. Jamie will be wearing the mask of one of his favorite MILFs, and has asked Will to wear a mask of himself (Jamie) ... * * * In the meantime I have some overdue thanks to give people, not just the guy who commissioned this branch (and paid for it early) but those who have been sending me gift points as it has run: Easy, DarkKing, and the-knight-croisant (whose GPs were actually for a different chapter, but technically arrived while this one was running.) |
... to update the current storyline after posting 5 "classic" chapters in the Archives. Right after I posted those, my ISP decided that actually I didn't need the internet for most of the day. That might have influenced my choice of chapter title to give today's entry ... Anyway, today's chapter is up: Interactive: "A Game You Can't Win" ![]() Public: "A Game You Can't Win" ![]() |
Today's chapter—"The World, Your Cafeteria" ![]() I chopped a huge number of chapters off that branch because they were out of continuity with the most recent developments in the interactive. In parallel branches the Durrases had moved to Westside, and the original branch didn't take account of the investigation that they would be sure to launch. And it would be very easy for Frank and Joe, with the latter's truth-telling technique, to track Will down. They would talk to Gordon (who is really Dane), who would send them to Dane (who is really Chelsea) who would send them to Chelsea (who is really Chen), who would send them to Will. It would only take them a few days to roll up Will's operation, ending the story. So these five chapters were designed to close off their investigatory path. Will has discovered the "golem" paste just in time, and I used these chapters to seal up some key people so that Joe's truth-technique, which doesn't work on golems, wouldn't lead them to Will. They can still interview Chelsea (as Dane) but that would only lead them back to the fake-Chelsea, who would be a dead end. They are now stymied, even if Will never realizes that they were a threat, so that this branch still retains possibilities. I had two other purposes in mind in writing the branch. The first was to set up possible schemes for Will to execute. The deleted chapters, I felt, had wandered around without direction. Today's chapter explicitly sets up some possible goals and therefore storylines. But it also sets up a continuation of the simple drug trade storyline, so that, with some editing, it might eventually be possible to return most of the deleted chapters to this continuity. The second purpose was to put Frank and Joe onto Will's radar as potential impersonations. That's always a fun possibility. * * * Tomorrow I return to the branch I was working in before, for a nine-chapter run. It got suspended here: Interactive: "Why You Should Never Dig Up Your Mistakes" ![]() Public: "Why You Should Never Dig Up Your Mistakes" ![]() Will has lost the grimoire, but he's made some new friends. But the current crisis is that he was caught on video helping Caleb dig up the class time capsule, and an anonymous person is taunting him about it. |
Yada yada yada, new chapter is up: "The Pleasant Phucker" ![]() In the last blog entry, I said I wouldn't be adding this run to the Archives, because it's mostly a housecleaning exercise, and I would have to add 40+ chapters in order to reach it. Aside from the labor of adding 40 chapters (which involves no heavy lifting but is pretty tedious), I preferred to save the storage space for new and upcoming chapters. But it turns out that I have a LOT more storage space in the Archives than I thought I had, and since the Chen branch is a pretty major one, I've decided to add it. I won't be posting it all at once, but at a rate of five chapters a day. This way, besides parceling out my efforts, I give Archive readers a daily 5-chapter chunk of possibly new material spaced out over the course of a week. Today's dose starts here: "Change for a Chen" ![]() The story so far? Will and Caleb have been messing around with the grimoire, and thanks to bad improvisation, they have trapped Will in Dane Matthias's body, Dane inside Gordon Black's body, and Gordon inside Will's body. (None of these disguises come with memories, by the way.) Will, as Dane, is now in serious trouble with the drug-dealing Gary Chen, who has been given permission to hurt Will to any degree short of outright killing him. But Caleb, in cracking the next spell in the book, seems to have found a solution: a dingus that can copy memories. With such a dingus, Will can move into another body (one with memories) and hide from Gary Chen. And where better to hide from Gary Chen than as Gary Chen himself? |
Today's chapter— Interactive: "Why You Should Never Dig Up Your Mistakes" ![]() Public: "Why You Should Never Dig Up Your Mistakes" ![]() —brings a temporary halt to this branch. It also brings a slight change in my publishing plans. So if you've commissioned a storyline from me, and I gave you a schedule in a recent email, well, consider this a public update. The chapters I've published so far have been intended to set up two separate commissions which happen to take place in the same general area. Both of them are pretty extensive, and I'm leery about publishing two long commissions, dealing with similar situations, back to back. I think people get a little wearied of it. So I'm going to be mixing things up. So now, having completed the set-up for the commissions, I will be haring off into quite a different patch of ground for ~5 chapters. After that, I will return to this branch with a 9-chapter sequel to today's chapter. That will take the first commission to the halfway point. After that I will take another break for a 5-7 chapter run in some other part of the interactive (exactly where, I've not decided yet) and then I will turn to the second commission. Only after I've published the second commission and also done an unrelated and distant run of chapters will I return to finish the first commission. This way, I hope, readers will get some variety instead of a block of ~40 chapters of two stories that are rather similar to each other. * * * Okay, so, where will tomorrow's brief storyline commence? It begins with "Too Many Dumbasses" ![]() Will's life is a mess. Thanks to a series of unfortunate improvisations, he is now impersonating Gary Chen, a drug-dealing lowlife at Westside High. Who else is an imposter? Well, Chelsea Cooper is now having to impersonate the drug-addled Dane Matthias; Dane is inhabiting Gordon Black's body; and Gordon is pretending to be Will. (None of these people know how the body-switch occurred, and none of them have the memories of the people they are impersonating.) Meanwhile, the real Gary Chen, who figured out what was going on, has blackmailed Will into putting him into the body of Chelsea Cooper. And, thanks to upheavals on the basketball squad, which have threatened to undermine Chelsea's social position, Will has had to swap his friend Caleb into Seth Javits's body (putting Javits into a memory-less copy of Caleb's body) so that the fake Chelsea can have the socially prominent Seth as a boyfriend. This summary doesn't even touch on the drug ring that Will has been forced to run, or on the other body swaps (Tanner Evans <-> Eastman's Chris Trantham; George Mendoza <-> football junior Kevin Hall; Joe Thomason <-> swimmer Andrea Varnsworth) that Will has had to make in order to ramp up his sales under pressure from Chen. In "Too Many Dumbasses" ![]() * * * What follows, starting tomorrow, is a revision of this entire branch. I warned a couple of weeks ago that, for continuity reasons, a huge chunk of this branch was going to have get moved to the NC-BoM interactive. After some reviewing and revision, I've determined that this chapter would be the best divergence point. (It's about fifteen chapters further in than the divergence point I'd originally settled on.) Sometime tonight all of the sequel chapters to "Too Many Dumbasses" ![]() ![]() NOTE: I'm afraid I won't be adding the coming 5-chapter run to the Archives. There are 40+ chapters I would have to add in first, and I'm not sure it's worth it for what is, basically, only a housekeeping exercise for the interactive. |
Today's chapter is now up, a little later than usual. But it is the holidays around here: Interactive: "Other People's Projects" ![]() Public: "Other People's Projects" ![]() Not a lot happens in this one, I admit. Will parts with the grimoire, and so it looks like his involvement with it is over. But not it's on the loose in side Westside, so I think you can guess what kind of story is likely to develop. Several stories in fact. This branch is a commission, and right after took this job on I was commissioned to write another storyline that would also be of this type, so when it comes, it will also be in the same general area. This chapter and the next few that follow are all intended to set up a common root out of which those branches will sprout. So it will be a few days before things really start rolling. In the meantime, Will's got his friends to keep him stirred up. |
Yesterday's chapter, "That Voodoo That You Do Too Well" ![]() So I went in both of them. That's why you're getting two chapters today: Interactive: "Coming Clean with Katy Conlee" ![]() ![]() Public: "Coming Clean with Katy Conlee" ![]() ![]() For now, these are the end of this line on this branch, which people seemed to like. (I got emails and some gift points from multiple readers.) And because you get two chapters today, I will be taking tomorrow off. Publishing will resume on Friday. I will be starting up another commission then. (Well, laying the groundwork for it.) It will be early in the story, a sequel to "Bids for Attention" ![]() Will has found a book of magic in a used book store. Freaked out by it, he has shown it to his dad, who has pronounced it a "trick book" with a spring mechanism that works a hidden compartment, and has asked Will to leave it with him. But Will still needs a contribution to his class time capsule, and has taken the book back and taken it to school. On the way inside, however, he has shown the book to some other people, who have shown an interest in buying it. Will now has to decide whether to sell the book, or to take it in to his teacher. |
The editing continues, and tonight wound up in a mess. If you've seen chapters appearing and disappearing, it's because I messed up. But by the time you read this post, it should have reverted to the way it was. With one very important edit to one chapter. I'm working in the branch where Will swaps places with Gary Chen. It's one of my favorites, but if I'm going to stick to my principles, I find that I am going to have to chop about two hundred chapters out of it. There's big continuity issues with it, as I worried there would be. One problem is with the mask-memory lore. This branch was written before it became canonical that people other than Will have a hard time getting the memories when a mind-band is glued into a mask. As I went through, I was able to fudge the issue at a couple of points with some light edits. But "Criss Cross Consequences" ![]() I suppose that a complete rewrite of the chapter, and revisions of subsequent chapters, could have handled it. But there was a much bigger problem. Frank and Joe. When I wrote this branch, I didn't worry or wonder what they were up. I was uneasily aware that they were loitering in the background, but powered through anyway. Eventually, though, when it came time to write "The Sophomore Candidates" ![]() As I was reading the "Gary Chen" branch, then, I was keeping track of dates in order to make sure that I kept consistent with "The Sophomore Candidates," and I discovered that I would actually have to move the Durrases' arrival up by a week, because Gordon's quitting the squad occurs a week earlier in the "Chen" chapters than in the "Sophomore" chapters. (That's a knock-on effect of Will fighting with the real Chen.) And that meant that the Durrases would be entering sooner rather than later, forcing a massive and unavoidable change in the story. Because that change was coming up fast anyway, I have decided that it will be better to break off the branch with "A Musician's Transposition" ![]() I have not lopped off the rest of the branch yet. It will be the work of several days moving chapters over the NC-BoM version. |
Today's chapter is posted: Interactive: "How to Scare a Girl for Fun and Profit" ![]() Public: "How to Scare a Girl for Fun and Profit" ![]() And the Archives now includes all the chapters that lead up to today's chapter, starting with "Tackling a Teacher" ![]() I said yesterday that today would start an eight-chapter run. I didn't like where the eighth chapter ended, so I wrote some more. It's up to 9 chapters now, and it will go to 10 and maybe to 11. |
Today brings the latest commission to an end, in two chapters: Interactive: "Return to Self" ![]() ![]() Public: "Return to Self" ![]() ![]() Well, one-and-a-half chapters. The first is the actual conclusion. The second is the denouement. I couldn't fit both into one chapter, so it's split. This was a challenging commission. It was inspired by a comment I had made about the YouTube crew getting ahold of the Libra and using romance and rom-com tropes to push people into becoming a couple. Originally the commissioner wanted it to be Will and Stephanie as the couple, then wrote back to offer some other alternatives. I did set up some of those alternatives at the start of the commission proper but decided to go with Kelsey Blankenship (one of the alternates) instead of Stephanie. It was tough, and I knew it would be, and I think I cautioned the commissioner that I might not even be able to set them up with the desired "couplehood" conclusion. Will and Kelsey are not a very compatible couple, not without some personal growth. (Will needs to mature and get some self-confidence; Kelsey needs to temper her sense of privilege.) Did I succeed? Shrug. That's not for me to judge. I will say that I surprised myself at being able to write something that resembled a romantic conclusion for them. That was after a weird twist in yesterday's chapter (whose title I have since changed), which I know threw the commissioner for a loop. Why'd I do it? "Intuition," I told him when he asked, and couldn't explain further without divulging spoilers. And it really was just intuition that led me to write it. I got to "No Strings" ![]() ![]() If you want a reason other than "intuition," then I think the answer has to be found in one of the "Storytelling Catechisms" that I have in my portfolio: "Three Ways to End a Story (Good and Bad)" ![]() If I had to justify what I wrote, I would say that Will has grown to acquire the maturity and self-confidence that he needs, and that by his example (sometimes his negative example of acting with Kelsey's own overweening self-assurance) he has also caused Kelsey to evolve. (And she has influenced his evolution as well.) At the very end, Will makes the kind of disastrous choice (sleeping with Patterson) that Kelsey would make, but now he has the wherewithal to try reversing it by running back to Kelsey. Her forgiveness of him is a kind of miracle, but it's one that reflects her own evolution away from selfish arrogance. And so the final disaster is what propels the final, happy ending. Now, I did not plan any of that out. As I say, it was intuition. But when I analyzed the intuition -- when I asked myself "Why does it feel right for Will to screw up at the end, only to have it turn out miraculously right?" -- the above is the answer I came back with. Maybe it works formally. (Maybe!) Does it work aesthetically? That's a different question, and again I can only shrug and observe that it's not for me to decide. But that's the longer answer I need to give to the commissioner, and it's one that I'll share with other readers because they might have had the same question. * * * What comes next? I need to get back to my Spider-Man project. But I do have an eight-chapter run that is finally (for once) not a commission. It picks up where I truncated an earlier branch as part of the recent pruning: "It Could Be Magic" ![]() The story so far? Will has been playing around with the "Libra", and has successfully made a mask of a P. E. coach. But he has lately been distracted by an unexpected romance with a basketball player, Katy Conlee. She and her friends are planning to prank another girl with some fake voodoo, which has led Will to think that maybe he should share his own book of magic with them. In the original branch, it led to Will showing the book to Stephanie Wyatt, and the story went in one direction. I didn't like that evolution. I think I like the new one better. |
Earlier today I lopped off a chunk of chapters in the branch that starts with "Tackling a Teacher" ![]() I never much liked those chapters. They felt like they wandered off, and I didn't much like the way things developed with Stephanie. It felt like a wrong turn. I got a little pushback in the comments to the last entry in this blog, so I went back and read forward a little more, and found the spot where I felt that the branch had first started to weaken. I rewrote that bit, and then found that after polishing another chapter there were half-a-dozen further chapters that with no changes to only minimal changes could be (IMO at least) salvaged. So the run of chapters that I just published -- "Picking a Brain the Old-Fashioned Way" ![]() ![]() Most of the changes reduce the amount of "magic" involved -- it was the pointless use of a mind-band on Yumi that I thought marked the first place where the branch weakened -- and I have set up different choices in some chapters. The main change comes at the end of "It Could Be Magic" ![]() So these six chapters now serve a different function. They are a transitional sequence where the focus changes from Will as he probes the early spells in the book, to Will as he begins to formulate motives and goals that don't have anything to do with the Libra but which might be served by it. The particular through-line that I've followed is one that aims Will pretty decisively at Katy. So, to me at least, it feels like it has more focus. (That being said, there are off-ramps in the middle of sequence that would make it a transitional phase that reorients Will toward Stephanie. Just in a different way.) |
Those of you who visit the forums have probably seen the thread about the seventh spell in the Libra (and the debates about what to even call the Libra), and might have detected in my own posts a prickly unhappiness with the state of canon in BoM. I do think that I (and everyone else -- thank you all!) have done a pretty good job of keeping this gigantic hulk reasonably consistent over the decade. But enough gunk has crept into it that I've finally decided to give it a bit of a scrub. This is not going to be a short job, and it's not going to be a very thorough job either. Shoring up BoM is going to be a bit like painting a suspension bridge. You start at one end and you keep going until you reach other end, by which point it's time to start over again. It's going to be done a little bit at a time. I've already made a start with some chapters, going through and fixing some of the lore (and polishing it up in places) and this will be a long, slow job -- maybe at the rate of four or five chapters a day -- whose results I hope will be largely invisible. The big changes will be in the branches that I saw off. Yes. I am going to get rid of some chapters and storylines. Some are ones that are too hopelessly out of step with the current lore to be salvaged, while others will be branches that I am just unhappy with and wish weren't there. Branches that trailed off into nothingness, or just didn't work out. Branches that embarrass me when I find them. I don't want to get rid of them completely, because I understand that some people might still enjoy them. So although they are disappearing from this, the "authentic" interactive, I am preserving them in a new interactive: "The Non-Canonical Book of Masks" ![]() For instance, if you go to "Braydon's Big Distraction" ![]() ![]() My plan is only to remove branches that I'm unhappy with. I do know that there are other authors who are unhappy with some of the stuff they've written, and they are free to move some of their chapters to NCBoM. (Or to ask me to move them.) I might also ask some of those authors for permission to move some of their branches, but if so it will be for lore/continuity reasons, not because of quality. Also, NCBoM will open and available for people to post chapters in. Just be aware that I won't be reading it, nor will I be publishing anything there -- unless I publish it in BoM and subsequently decide to move it. I hope this will be a reasonable compromise between preserving some possibly beloved warts, and cleaning the place up a bit. |
I haven't run a poll in a while, but rugal has one for you guys: [Poll completed and deleted.] It's part of his "Getting Izzy" branch. There's a mystery afoot, and it's up to you guys to decide if it gets tackled by Will as he's pretending to be Ophelia Wilmot or Mary Occam. |
Yeah, I missed yesterday, but it wasn't my fault. There was a 36-hour internet outage in my neighborhood. I'm back, for good I hope. Here's the chapter I would have posted yesterday: Interactive: "Homework for a Body Swap" ![]() Public: "Homework for a Body Swap" ![]() But I see that other authors kept you entertained in the meantime. |
Today's post completes the linking chapters I needed to write before reaching the commission proper. I haven't finished writing the commission, but I've written most of it and I've outlined the rest, so I'll start the story proper tomorrow. You can probably guess from today's chapter what kind of a story it's going to be. Interactive: "Cursed!" ![]() Public: "Cursed!" ![]() |
Today's posting looks like a two-fer, but it's actually a one-and-a-fifther. The day's chapter should have ended with a lot more than five choices, so I had to split the "pick a person" chapter into two chapters that would run along parallel tracks. I've only posted one of them, however -- the one I intend to follow. Interactive: "Theater of the Absurd" ![]() ![]() Public: "Theater of the Absurd" ![]() ![]() |
Today I start a new branch, which might go long or it might go short. It depends on how much writing I get done in the next few days. Interactive: "The Wrong Kind of Party Crasher" ![]() Public: "The Wrong Kind of Party Crasher" ![]() Background: After losing his magical grimoire in a scrum with some bullies, Will Prescott has mostly forgotten all about it and his life has been pretty normal. Normal, that is, until some cheerleaders—Eva Garner and her sister Jessica—start paying attention to him. As the chapter opens, he has been cornered by Eva and invited to go out to the Warehouse (an infamous party spot) with them. These chapters are related to a commission that I have accepted but not completed, and the branch will go long if I'm able to get it done in time to my satisfaction. I have had to write a couple of chapters to set up the commission's situation, though, and if I'm not able to get the commission done, you'll have to content yourselves (for now) with the linking chapters. |
After duplicating a title yesterday, I made sure to go in the opposite direction today: Interactive: "Invalid Chapter" ![]() Public: "Invalid Entry" ![]() And that finally brings this branch to a conclusion, where the commissioner wanted it to end. And next? Um ... There's another commission I'm supposed to be writing, and I have been working on it, but it's not nearly done yet. It's another case, though, where I have to write some connecting chapters before we get to the point where the commission itself can properly launch. Those connecting chapters are written, so I'll start posting those tomorrow, at least. |
So, I didn't mean to disappear for a few days, but I am back (knock wood), with the next-to-the-last chapter in this commissioned branch. Interactive: "Thimbleriggery" ![]() Public: "Thimbleriggery" ![]() Not that anything was wrong. It started with one day where I was too busy with other stuff to remember to post the chapter. Then that night I didn't sleep and was too useless to do anything the next day. And then I discovered that I just needed kind of a short break from even looking at BoM and WdC. I can't explain it, but sometimes it just happens. Anyway, one more chapter to post in the commission and then I'll ... be doing something. I don't know. This short vacation was started by a bout of insomnia, but I think my enthusiasm needs a more serious recharging. I'll have to just see what comes next. EDIT: Fixed "Public" link. |
Sometimes you have to get a project entirely out of your head before you're able to work on something else. I have a feeling it's going to turn out to be that way with the "Incredible Hulk" script. TBH, I'm having a hard time reading and polishing my BoM chapters— Oh, latest now up: "Memories From Another Me" ![]() ![]() —while I've got this script inside my brain. Never mind writing new BoM stuff. The script that I published as part of BoM was based on a watching of a single episode of the series. But I went back onto Daily Motion afterward and watched a bunch more, and found that my script was somewhat out of continuity with the rest of the series. I also found that both my version and the original episode didn't quite capture the nature of the relationship between Bruce Banner/Hulk and Rick Jones, at least as it is dramatized in the other episodes. So that left me dissatisfied with what I'd written. Then, too, I discovered that, far from being too short, my script was far too long. I did a partial transcription of an episode -- writing it out in the same format and degree of detail as I'd used in my script -- and found that it was working out to about 1 minute of screen time per page. [**] At 29 pages, my script was way too long for a 22-minute cartoon. So I spent yesterday and today revising the whole thing. I started by shortening dialogue and tightening conversations. Then I ruthlessly chucked out a couple of scenes and radically truncated others while adding some new ones. By the time I was finished, there was little left from Michael Reaves's original script save for the Puppet Master's ability to spy on and copy people on the streets. It might still be slightly too long, coming in at 22 1/4 pages instead the 22 even that it should be at. I've left the BoM version up, and posted the revised version as a standalone item in my Portfolio, for any that are curious: "Invalid Item" ![]() [**] The one-page-per-minute rule is a common one when judging movie scripts. Apparently TV scripts tend to run a little longer. There seems to be very little consensus on how long an animated-TV script should run. Many cartoon scripts are typically very detailed on shot breakdowns, which means they run closer to a rate of 2-pages-per-minute. But because I'm eschewing as much "shot" detail as possible, my script wound up running closer to the usual length. |