%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  A hub for the "Book of Masks" universe. |
|
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 6/26: Interactive: "A Rescue and Retreat" 6/26: Public: "A Rescue and Retreat"
|
| 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! |
| In the forum I've put up a Talkback thread related to the current storyline: "Blind Poll Talkback: "The Coward's Way Out"" Feel free to comment on anything related to it, but I posted it because I'm particularly curious about voting regrets. This is the story I wrote using the blind, context-free choices I gave you in a series of polls. I'm curious to know how many people would have voted differently at the end of each chapter, had they known what the story was and how it was developing. Oh, and today's chapters: * Interactive: "Hustled and Bustled" * Public: "Hustled and Bustled" |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "The Coward's Way Out" * Public: "The Coward's Way Out" —starts a new storyline. This is also the branch that you guys helped co-write with the Blind Polls a week or so back. It was sometimes a challenge to keep things going and to keep them developing. I hope the results are entertaining. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "In Which Chivalry Gets Its Nose Punched" * Public: "In Which Chivalry Gets Its Nose Punched" —rounds off the current branch with the standard arc-ender. The plan is for Masktrix to pick things up at some point. Tomorrow I start publishing a branch in a section that hasn't been visited in a long time: "A Cry for Help" . The story thus far:Will Prescott picked up a book of magic in town, but freaked out when it demanded some of his blood. So he sold it to his best friend, Caleb Johansson. Caleb seems to have been experimenting with it, but Will doesn't want to know about it. So it's a shock when he (Will) gets summoned up to Westside late one Friday night by the school's head cheerleader, Chelsea Cooper. She babbles about some stuff that Will doesn't understand, and tells Will that her boyfriend has somehow hurt himself. Will is further mystified to see that Chelsea has somehow acquired possession of that book he sold to Caleb. This storyline will carry us along to the end of the year. |
| So I just closed the last polls. Here's a word about the results. In the Plot Plinko poll "Leave Caleb in the dark" was the runaway winner. So much so that yesterday I did some preliminary thinking about where to take the story. And after thinking about it ... Well, with rugal's permission I'm going to rewrite "Getting Familiar with the Unfamiliar" to give it a different climax and a different choice, and one consequence is that Caleb is going to disappear from the scene, rendering this last poll moot. But, in a sense, my revision will still respect the vote. That vote was to ignore Caleb's presence, and removing him from the scene is another way of ignoring him, and leaving the focus on Will and the original quartet.Nor will the revision materially change the story. I just want to simplify the ending in order to focus on a different and more manageable crisis. And I've already made some nearly invisible changes to earlier chapters in the branch, changing the timeline without altering the fundamental plot. Meanwhile, the "Next Story Choice" poll ended with a victory for "Convert another family," but the vote was closer than it appeared, with a big batch of GPs for "Convert people at Fort Suffolk" taking that choice to within a whisker of an upset. I thank everyone for their participation in both polls, the results of which (knock wood) will appear early next year. For now, I've started publishing another Will-and-Sydney-and-Baphomet love story, starting here: * Interactive: "Freshman Frolics" * Public: "Freshman Frolics" That branch was not written in conjunction with Masktrix, but it was written with him in mind, after he queried whether I had plans for that area. I said I did, and after a short exchange of emails I saw that my plans could set up ideas that he was playing around with. I'm sure I won't be alone in hoping that he'll follow up what I wrote with another one of his smashing storylines. |
| Everything reaches a climax almost at once. Monday brought the last of the Blind Polls. Yesterday brought the last of the Plinko Polls. Today brings the end of the commission I've been publishing. Tomorrow I start publishing a new branch. It's a return to the story of Sydney and Will and their "Brotherhood of Baphomet, but it's nothing to do with the still-running Next Story Choice poll. This one branches off of "Breaking Bodies" . Will and Sydney have hijacked the identities of two Westside teachers, Hannah Cho and Michael Hagerman, with the aim of spreading their Brotherhood into some of the lower grades. Last time, they started with the junior class. This time they will start in a different class. Which one? Tune in tomorrow to find out.And speaking of the Next Story Choice poll, and storylines about Will and Sydney: I forgot to mention that I'm accepting GPs as votes in the Next Story Choice poll as well as in the still-running Plot Plinko poll. Some readers already took it upon themselves to send me GPs, and to keep the voting fair I want everyone to know that that is a voting option. Remember, if you vote GPs for a losing choice, you will get your GPs back and maybe collect a dividend. if you vote GPs for a winning choice, you forfeit your GPs but will have helped put your choice over the top. The polls (which don't close until Thursday at noon) are here: [Polls completed and deleted.] |
| At every turn and twist of the Plinko Poll, you guys have voted to continue down a path that rugal has already written. Sometimes it's been by the thinnest of majorities, but that's the way you've voted. Well, you take it any further. "Getting Familiar with the Unfamiliar" (which won in a landslide after a surge of overnight voting) hasn't got any sequels, and that means that today you get to vote for which unwritten path to carve out after it. Like I warned at the start, I do not guarantee that I'll write a branch based on the results, but I will give it some hard thought and effort.As for the Blind Polls, there too you guys have managed to vote consistently for paths that led away from climaxes and turning points. Yesterday, though, it finally ended. It wasn't quite my design or intention to decisively wind things up. But Will's room to evade or maneuver finally narrowed to nothingness, and every choice in yesterday's poll was going to twist things into a new configuration. The only question was going to be: What configuration? To my immense surprise, it turned out to be the configuration that follows from the choice "Confide in Carson." So that's the end of the Blind Polls. But today still brings a second poll. I want to continue the branch that was suspended with "Gemini Falls" , and though I have ideas for all the possible ways to continue it, I'm not wedded to any of them, so I thought I'd let you guys choose. The background: Will and Sydney, working to create "Brotherhood of Baphomet" set about converting the family of Alec "Brownie" Brown, one of the wrestlers at school, and had just succeeded. But that only gave them six members. Where are they going to find the other four?I'm going to leave both polls up and open for 48 hours. They will close at noon EST on Thursday, December 16. [Polls completed and deleted.] |
| The vote in yesterday's Plot Plinko poll was very close, but "Leave it as is for now"—a vote to continue down an already-written path—kept a small but steady lead throughout the day, and won in the end. The Blind Poll result was much more decisive, with "Eat with Rachel" dominating from the start. Today's polls: [Polls completed and deleted] |
| Yesterday brought two clear winners, despite some efforts to change things with GPs: "Seal the mask" in Plot Plinko, and "Talk to Rachel" in the Blind Poll. In the latter, you managed to steer your way past that climactic turning point that I warned you about. You also keep voting for choices that have already been written. So you get two new polls again today: [Polls completed and deleted.] |
| Yesterday's "Plot Plinko" poll spent most of the day in a dead-on tie between "Will volunteers" and "Straws are drawn to pick", with "Fairfax gets volunteered" trailing far behind. But some GPs broke the tie, delivering victory to "Will volunteers." There were some GPs sent for the "Straws are drawn pick," but they came through the Anonymous system, so I am unable to return that person the GPs they sent, or the dividend they would have collected. Meanwhile, "Tell Caleb he's being weird" surprised me with a win. The other choice, "Make the call to your dad," would have brought things to a climactic turning point, but now the story gets to continue. There are four choices in today's "Blind Poll." One of them, I'll tell you, will bring things to a head. The others will string the plot out further. [Polls completed and deleted.] |
| "The Westside Book Club" was the landslide winner in yesterday's Plinko poll, and for most of the day "Text Keith" had a commanding lead in the Blind poll. Then, with forty-five minutes to go, "Keep Chelsea all to yourself" roared ahead into a tie. Which was bad news as far as I was concerned, because I got up extra early today to write a "Text Keith" sequel so I could have a Blind Poll ready today. If I had to throw it out ... But an extra vote came in at the last minute, and "Text Keith" eked out a win. I'm curious to see what today's Blind Poll results will be. The choices are weirdly specific. [Polls completed and deleted.] |
| Yesterday's Plinko vote wasn't as close as it looked. "Show Josie, etc." picked up the most free votes anyway, but a bunch of Gift Points got dumped on it also, so it was the winner going away when everything got tabulated. Meanwhile, I wasn't surprised that "Try for cred-- tell Gordon to get bent" won in the Blind poll. It sounds like the choice that would lead to the most interesting results. But will it? I guess we'll find out. We'll also see what you make of the choices in today's Blind poll. Don't forget that there's also a forum associated with the interactive, where if you want to speculate aloud about where the "Blind" story takes place, you can. Here's today's polls: [Polls completed and deleted.] |
| The results in yesterday's polls were a lot more lopsided than the day before, with two very clear winners: "Show the book to someone else" in the Plinko Poll, and "Look for Rachel" in the Blind Poll. The last one surprised me, but I guess people are wondering "Rachel who?" and "What has she got to do with the story?" So I guess we'll all of us (including me) going to find out! Anyway, today's polls: [Polls completed and deleted] |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
