MARKED - Back home... and end of chapter!

[aldersprig]

MARKED - 2.15

The door Benoir opened led them into a long stone-paved hallway lined with arched wooden doors. Nilien recognized the carvings on the door frames; they were almost the same tree-patterns as on the door to her new room.

“This is my hall, I think. Thank you. And with no more trouble, too.” Nilien held out her hands for her books.

Benoir handed back the books. “Having come all this way, I feel as if I might as well get you the last few feet.” He gestured down the hallway. “Besides, I never make it down here.”

read on...

Comments

[kelkyag]

<pages back to 2.8>
Didn't Nilien leave her books back with Heline?
Also, I think "Nilien scooped Benoir up" in 2.8 should say Ember rather than Benoir.

Umm. Reading! Haven't had much to say -- this one hasn't really caught me so far, but it feels like it's still in the slow intro phase. (And the polls feel too much like a magician's choice to me to pull me in.)

[aldersprig]

Magician's choice?

She picked the books up at one point, on their way out of the bird-area.

Thanks for reading! Hope it catches you soon :-D

[inventrix]

Is that "the results are predetermined and will be the same regardless of the winning poll"? Because that's not true, so I'd be interested to know why it feels that way if that's what you meant.

*edit: oh wtf I'd fixed that one, what happened... *kicks site*

[kelkyag]

Ah, in 2.13, yes, I missed that. Thank you!

What inventrix said below. Chewing on explaining why.

[kelkyag]

Typos are sneaky little beasts.

<flails for words>

At some level, that was a "why haven't I been commenting" comment, as I know aldersprig can find proofreading comments without content comments frustrating. :)

The plot hasn't really started unfolding yet -- there's the poisoning attempt, and the unpleasant fellow students, and some Checkov's gun options, and what does being a rune mean anyway -- so my reaction is more about feel than about content, and goes in some conflicting directions.

- Choose-your-own-adventure books were a thing when I was a kid. (I date myself.) They were fun for a while, but they got old -- too many choices with nothing decide based on or whose outcomes didn't make sense, book-size limited necessity of branching and rejoining paths. So some of my reaction is just old irritation with the limitations of a similar-looking form.

- Nilien's familiar being a fox shapes the conversations she's having and the reactions of people around her, so it certainly has a color effect on the story. Does it have a plot effect on the story? If she'd had a bird familiar, she'd probably have had a roommate with a bird familiar (but possibly basically the same roommate), but she still would've visited the aviary, her familiar might still have had a stare-off with the crow, she would have gone to dinner at some point and met the wild rune hater. If the choice of rune color is anything but straight-up color, that hasn't been introduced yet -- the color changing flowers can be a plot artifact regardless.

The poisoning, and the school, and the gardens there being a big deal, and the rarity of wild runes, and people's attitudes toward wild runes are all out of scope of the polls, and to me so far feel like the bigger plot anchors.

That isn't to say the color and details of the story aren't important to how it reads -- the same basic story painted different ways can make fascinatingly different reading -- but there isn't going to be, say, a sharp left into space opera. Into murder-mystery, maybe. :)

- The readers voting choices for the main characters has the potential for jarring character inconsistency, if the authors don't smooth that over and/or manage the choice options to avoid it.

- In the end, there's one story. The readers can't go back to see what would've happened if they'd made a different choice. (Or can they? When this telling reaches its end, will you start up another incarnation?)

So, not "the results are the same" but more "at what scope are the choices meaningful to the story"? Nothing's wrong with color-level choices, I'm just not particularly intrigued by them.

[aldersprig]

you're not the only one that missed it!

[thnidu]

By the way, what does M. Sirin's "M" stand for?

[inventrix]

I have not quite decided yet. >.> It might not stand for anything anymore

[thnidu]

Mmmm. I was thinking of "Monsieur" or "Madame ou Monsieur". I often internally hear what I'm reading, esp. if it looks foreign or otherwise captures my attention, and so I sort of pausle (= pause and puzzle) over that... whatever-it-is.

[inventrix]

Aaahhh! That makes sense. The frequency of polls does mean a lot of them are minor. Do you think I should mark major fork points? I was thinking it was more fun if you don't always know. What do you think?

And that's one of the things, tbh; since it's not a whole CYOA, the results of the not-chosen options don't get explored (although that's a Patreon milestone!) and so it's not always obvious if the choice had significant effect. For example, if she'd turned back the way she came after she realized she was lost, things would have been VERY different.

[kelkyag]

I'm probably the wrong person to answer that question, as thus far my response to the polls has been <shrug>. From what I remember of various poll questions, none of them leapt out as necessarily re-shaping the big story, so much as reordering events or repainting details. But I don't know how much you've already built or planned, and how much is wide open and swinging wildly with the audience choices. (I could ask, but I'd be surprised if you opted to answer, or if the answers weren't weird meta-spoilers.)

I'm fine with reading a serial and commenting "Warg, cliffhanger" or "what on earth was she thinking?!?" from time to time. This one is neither top nor bottom of the list I'm currently following. I expect I'd enjoy the (imagined) behind-the-scenes design process of this project, putting together background and characters (or mixable character options) and fixed points and figuring out what the branches and potential endpoints might look like. But for me currently as a reader, the votes along the way don't add to the story. (I suppose they might if the readers were conferring to discuss what they thought might happen down various branches?) They might've when I was younger reader and had never written or staffed a larp. :)

[inventrix]

I chose it with that link in mind, actually! :3

[inventrix]

Hmm... Thanks for the feedback, though! I went back and reread your original explanation, too, which helps, because to use one of your examples, she wouldn't have visited the aviary at all if she hadn't gotten both gotten lost in the first place and continued onwards. She would've gotten Lorque's tour if she went straight back after getting her books, which would have been very different and given her different connections and knowledge to use for possible future plot conflicts. So I might not be making it clear enough that it's actually effecting events, OR it might just be because it's still, like you said, the slower intro part...

I need to think about it more, but I'm glad you brought it up.

[kelkyag]

Still chewing on this, apparently. The "(imagined) behind-the-scenes design process" is probably the most relevant bit for why my impression seems so skew from your process. For a project like this (for expansive values of "like"), I default fairly far over on the "mad planner" side. I've worked with (and for) people way over on the improvisational end of the scale; it was an educational -- and frustrating -- experience (which did shift my default a bit, and improve my reaction time a lot).

Your style I don't know, but my impression of aldersprig's is mostly improvisational, if perhaps not as much as [redacted]'s. So what I imagine planning-wise likely looks more like what I'd do than like what aldersprig would do, which combined with small multiple-choice polls feels narrow.

And now I'm even more curious about the behind-the-scenes process. :) Not answering questions about that is entirely reasonable! But I fail to resist asking. Might the aviary really never have come up at all? Did you know there was an aviary at all when you started, or even before she went through that door? Is there a school map? Much definition of the world outside the school(s)? A known cause of the poisoning ...?

[inventrix]

I can answer all of these!

-Yes, it's possible but unlikely to have never come up at all; its existence coming up but Nilien never going there, however, would have been very likely.
-Yes, I knew there was an aviary tower from the beginning, as well as the general layout of the school.
-I don't have a map, but I have a vague sense of a layout and a list of areas in my head.
-The current state of the setting is a rough "sketch" of the Empire and culture, with certain areas more filled-in with details than others as I go in and pick an area to work on. I do occasionally have to make things up "on the spot", so to speak, for Lyn, but usually I have answers to her setting questions already figured out.
-She was shot in the back of the neck with a poisoned dart, but nobody knows this in-universe but the assassin. I know why, too, but that's spoilers~

I'm going to reply in a second comment about the process! Actually no, I'm going to post on Patreon about the process, but I gotta finish the bonus ficlet first.

**edit: Also, the fact that she found the aviary is less significant than what she didn't find by not turning back. ;)