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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 6/18: "BoM Poll: "Vengeance on an Ex-Friend"" [Closes 6/23]The Latest 6/19: Interactive: "Crushed by Another's Crush" 6/19: Public: "Crushed by Another's Crush"
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| As noted at the end of the treatment, "S01E23 "The Day of the Jackal, Part 1" " is adapted from a real-world episode, "Spider-Island, Part 1." One of the first things I did when I started outlining my "alternate series" was to delete the 5-episode "Spider Island" arc, which I found ridiculous and world-breaking. However, enough of that arc remained part of the Jackal's plan and motivation that when I came to outline the 3-episode story that would climax the first season, I decided to ransack the original for ideas and plot beats. The result is a storyline that retains the same shape and almost all the same action beats and plot evolutions of "Spider-Island, Part 1", but which means something quite different. It's a reminder that meaning in art and storytelling depends not only on intrinsic factors, but also on the context it appears in. |
| And as long as I am making multiple posts in one day: I have to send up a big THANK YOU in rocket-red letters to the anonymous benefactor who gifted me another year's worth of upgraded membership at WdC. That is a gift far beyond my desert, and I am immensely grateful for it. Whoever you are, you are a prince/princess/prinxex among readers! |
| Masktrix has posted the first chapter in the story I told you about yesterday, and I've posted a copy in the public Archive. Interactive: "Persecutions and Photographs" Public: "Persecutions and Photographs" Mastrix's comments: "A New Owner" |
| As I warned yesterday, today starts a run of silly Spider-Man stories that have nothing to do with BoM. "S01E22 "Let There Be Lightmaster"" would be a filler episode in an animated continuity, and it's a filler episode here. I'm not comfortable saying that—surely every episode should be special, especially the stand-alone stories that don't have an extended arc to help support them—but it's true. "Let There Be Lightmaster" references the "Sinister Six" plot arc, and it exists in part to keep that plot arc relevant as the season reaches its conclusion, but it mostly exists as padding to separate the last multi-part plot arc from the one that comes next.At least it's semi-original, being based on a comic book story and not an animated episode. Plot-wise, it somewhat tracks the comic that introduced the villain Lightmaster, so no prizes will be awarded for guessing the villain's real identity. It changes his motivations, though, to make them relevant to the animated continuity. As for Tarantula, he gets a very different treatment in this story than he does the first couple of times he shows up in the comic books. Like "S01E07 "House of Sand" " , it is intended to have a Batman: The Animated Series kind of a vibe. It's about a fallen hero who is damaged but redeemed, and is meant to be a more somber episode—something that probably doesn't come through in the outline itself. I'm not sure how well a candy-colored superhero show like Marvel's Spider-Man could capture the grayscaled tone of a BTAS episode, but this is a stab at it.There would be an image to go with it, but since yesterday WdC has decided I have a virus on my machine (though my scanners indicate I'm clean) and I can't even email images. I'll wait a day or two to see if the problem goes away (sometimes the WdC machinery gets gummed up) and try again. |
| So today brings the eleventh chapter in a ten-chapter commission. Interactive: "Maria's Crush" Public: "Maria's Crush" It was fun, even if I found that writing for Maria was a bit like digging clay out of the ground with my fingernails. Some characters write themselves; some respond well to be written; but for others you write and write and dig and dig, and when you're done you feel like you've written 10,000 words and have said 10 words worth of meaning. But people seemed to like it. My thanks to ThePrussian55, Chelsea Woodward, Easy, Wordsmitty, Centre, Achillesredux, and HayateZero for Gift Points and some very nice words. * * * Okay, now what? These last few branches have been commissions, and I'm all caught up with them. So now I'm off to work on a non-BoM project for a little while: my silly "Spider-Man" project: "Commissions and Projects" .I've been at work on it already for the past week or so, and I've got some new treatments that I will start publishing tomorrow. To see the project results thus far, check here: "Marvel Spider-Man: The Alternate Series" .I'll be posting one treatment a day, until I run out of completed treatments. I'll also be publishing short commentaries for each one, here on the blog. This project has been more successful as a learning exercise than anything else, and I might as well share some of the things I've learned. * * * But BoM readers won't be completely abandoned in the meantime. Tomorrow, Masktrix will start publishing a new 15-chapter storyline. And this one is pretty radical. For a start, it's a branch that I commissioned, which is a switch. It's an idea I've wanted to see done for a long time, but never bothered to work out myself. So I asked Mastrix to work on it for me. It takes off of these chapters, which are buried deep in an obscure corner of "The Book of Masks": "A Prank Present" ; "Of Pranks and Punks" ; "Punks and Persecutions" . Will has been working for Blackwell, but after his mentor gets eaten by a supernatural creature, Will searches the house and finds a peculiar book full of occult-themed stories. As he reads deeper into the book, he comes across an interactive story about a student at Westside High School who finds a grimoire that teaches how to make magical disguises. The story seems familiar, but Will can't quite put his finger on why this interactive story gives him such a strong sense of deja vu ...The idea (obviously, I hope) is to use these chapters as a way of telling BoM all over again but with a different protagonist. It would be the same universe, with the same characters, in the same setting, with the same rules. But it would be someone else, not Will Prescott, having the adventure. I wrote three chapters with three different protagonists but never developed any of them. So I've commissioned Mastrix to play with the idea. Tomorrow he will introduce a fourth character who finds the Libra, and launches it into a fifteen-chapter storyline. It's entirely his creation, by the way. Though I commissioned it, I only asked for two things: that it run for 15 chapters, and that Will Prescott at least put in an appearance. Otherwise, every creative choice has been Masktrix's. He's been showing me the chapters ahead of time (he's up to Chapter 10 as I post this), and I think it's really good. I think you guys will enjoy it too. EDIT: I will be publishing Masktrix's chapters in the Archives as well. The chapters leading up to where his storyline will appear begin with "The Path Through the Protective Maze" . |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "At Home as Maria Vasquez" Public: "At Home as Maria Vasquez" —was supposed to be the last in a ten-chapter commission. But after I wrote it, I decided I didn't want to leave it resting on those last two lines, so I wrote an eleventh chapter, which will appear tomorrow. Speaking of those last two lines, I sure hope they don't contradict anything that's been written elsewhere. I certainly didn't have them in mind when I plunged into this commission. In fact, they literally only occurred to me just before I wrote them. It seemed like they'd create a good kind of tension, for if and when I pick this branch up again. |
| Today starts a new commission, and you actually get two chapters: Interactive: "The Stage, Your World?" + "Masks and Rough Play" Public: "The Stage, Your World?" + "Masks and Rough Play" Well, one and half. The first is just an extension of the previous chapter, to set up more choices, and it's shorter than usual, so I'm putting it up today as an extra. Meanwhile, the second chapter advances the plot, but it doesn't count as part of the commission. The actual ten-chapter run will commence tomorrow. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "A Sunday Lunch with Scrambled Seating" Public: "A Sunday Lunch with Scrambled Seating" —is the last in the commission. I didn't actually take the subterranean plot as far as I intended, but between Cooper family shenanigans and setting up Jordan's life, there wasn't room for everything. Oh well. Tomorrow I start a new commission. Ten chapters, so it will run awhile. There's not much backstory to give. It will be a continuation of "The Leftovers" , which is a very early chapter. Will, working solo, has made a mask, and he has gone up to the school to find someone to test it out on. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "A Sunday Lunch with Scrambled Seating" Public: "A Sunday Lunch with Scrambled Seating" —is the last in the commission. I didn't actually take the subterranean plot as far as I intended, but between Cooper family shenanigans and setting up Jordan's life, there wasn't room for everything. Oh well. Tomorrow I start a new commission. Ten chapters, so it will run awhile. There's not much backstory to give. It will be a continuation of "The Leftovers" , which is a very early chapter. Will, working solo, has made a mask, and he has gone up to the school to find someone to test it out on. |
| Because of some continuity errors, Masktrix has asked me to revise one of his recent chapters and delete another. If you're following his new branch—and based on the views it's getting, you all are—the revised sequel to "Masks Need Moms" is now "Calling an Audible" . The first half is mostly the same, but the last third has gotten a serious plot revision. The sequel that was originally up has, consequently had to be deleted. Also, "Masks Need Moms" has had a fourth choice added to it. |
| Many years ago—never mind how many—when I was fourteen, I read a science-fiction story while killing time in the school library. I was a library aide that year, and I had lots of time to kill. Come to that, I read lots of science-fiction when I was fourteen. But this particular story was one of the few I read—not excepting those in the anthologies I owned—that stuck with me. It was short and punchy, for one thing, and written with a vivacity that put its one, very horrible idea across with great simplicity and clarity. There was a pencil illustration of graphic bluntness to go with it, and that too probably made it memorable. Also, the story spun its one, very horrible idea out of a common bit of futurism that shows up in many science-fiction stories and movies, so that every time I read a story or saw a movie that employed that bit of futurism, it reminded me of that short story and of its very horrible twist. But the name of the author, and the story? I had no notion or memory. That is, until a few days ago, when I downloaded and started to read a cheap Kindle book: 101 Science Fiction Short Stories. You can probably now guess where this is anecdote is going. Within the first three paragraphs of the twelfth story in the collection, I suspected what I had found. Halfway into it, I knew beyond a doubt. Confirmation at the end was anti-climax. "Road Stop," by David Mason, is a minor work by a minor author, but it is one of the best and most effortless blendings of idea and technique—a simple idea, vividly told—that I have read. I would give it a mild recommendation to general readers. To professionals or amateur writers with ambitions, though, I would commend it for study. And if I tell you that the story's necessary plot element concerns a self-driving car that comes out of the past and leaves the observing characters with a chill as it slides obliviously by, then you might understand why I was doubly struck by its reappearance in my reading. My experience with the story itself almost exactly recapitulates the experience of its characters. If you want to read the story itself, here it is in its original context: Worlds of If (January 1963) . No illustration here, sad to say. That was an addition made to the reprinted version I found in the school library. |
| Masktrix has told me I can close yesterday's poll. The winner by a whisker was "Slip into some school moms." He also tells me he got a one-chapter commission, but that was also to write something in the "school moms" choice. |
| A quick note on the chapters I'm publishing: Interactive: "Prepping for a College Caper" Public: "Prepping for a College Caper" This is part of a five-chapter commission, but there will probably be more than five chapters in this line. Neither yesterday's chapter nor today's count as part of the commission because they are taken with setting things up. The commission proper won't start until tomorrow. Meanwhile ... Mastrix wants to write a storyline in the "Baphomet" section of the interactive, and he wants to do something different over there. Today he posted a chapter that sets up some options: "Thinking Big" . But he is undecided what line to take.So I have posted a poll for him so you guys can make your own preferences known: [Poll completed and deleted.] Go vote there. In his forum post about the line, he says he is "not above bribery." What this means is that he is happy to accept commissions to write particular sequels to today's chapter. If you're interested in commissioning one of these sequels from him, contact him through WdC at masktrixie@Writing.Com. He has quoted to me a price of 20,000 WdC Gift Points per chapter commissioned. |
| It took longer than I expected, due to a couple of different kinds of teething trouble, as I explained earlier, but today's chapters— Interactive: "The Unhappy Warlock" Public: "The Unhappy Warlock" —conclude a five-chapter commission. It was pretty popular, and I would like to thank Achillesredux, Chelsea Woodard, Ero, and Easy for the Gift Points they sent me. The follow-up commission, which will start tomorrow, will back up only a few chapters from this conclusion, to "Hanging with Mrs. Cooper" , and will take a detour there. |
| And the post title isn't just a metaphor for what it's like to write this branch. About a week or two ago I started having trouble with a tooth -- off and on toothaches -- and the last two days it was really bad, and it's hard to write when your jaw is throbbing. I went to the dentist today, and he couldn't find anything wrong with the teeth in that area, but on looking over the rest of my mouth he decided I was grinding my teeth in my sleep and that was probably what was causing it. I'm getting a mouth guard. So that's another thing that's keeping the entries skipping like a rock across a pond. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "Sunday Fixings" Public: "Sunday Fixings" —is now up. And by "today's chapter" I mean, "the chapter that should have been up yesterday." But I'm making this thing up as I go along, and it's not so smooth. This is a short branch that is supposed to spend some time with Will in Kelly Cooper's skin and life. But there's not a lot for him to do inside her life, which makes it hard to make up a story for her. And on the other hand, what plot there is—him trying to figure out his relationship with Blackwell's, and Blackwell's relationship with Lucy Vredenburg, points toward evolutions that would probably force him out of the impersonation. So the kind of stuff that would pull the story forward would end this part prematurely; and the kind of thing that would keep this part going is hard to write because there's not much happening. It's straining my ingenuity, and I ran out of time the day before yesterday as I was trying to write. You should get a chapter tomorrow, though. I've got one written, at least. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "The Mother of My Enemy Is Me!" Public: "The Mother of My Enemy Is Me!" —is a revision of a previously published chapter. It deletes the last of the original chapter and substitutes new material. In making this revision, which expands the chapter in order to set up one of the commissions, I have had to delete the two chapters that originally followed it. One of those chapters will make a return in a highly modified form. I'm not sure about the other. If it does return, it will be a repost of the original chapter, not a revision. |
| Today's BoM chapter—"Of Curses and Even Worse Things" —may be new to readers of the non-interactive Archives, but it is a very old one. Tomorrow will bring another old chapter, and then on Friday there will be a revised version of yet another old chapter. Then, finally, some new stuff. In the meantime ... Yesterday I mentioned that after I finish some commissions I'm going to do something else for a little while. Here's more: I will be returning to a project I started a year ago, persevered in for some little while, then gave up in exhaustion: "Marvel Spider-Man: The Alternate Series" My bright idea: Take episodes of the recent DisneyXD animated series, mix them up in a new order, revise some of them, drop and replace others with new episodes, and create my own version of the series. This would eventually lead up to me writing my own version of the series's "Superior Spider-Man" storyline, which at that point had not aired in the US. I learned a few things from the exercise, the most important of which was that I absolutely suck at outlining. I'm not saying that the outlines themselves are bad. (Though possibly they are.) I mean that the process was ghastly. My brain works by improvising stories into being, and it seizes up like a bad engine when I try to construct the whole thing in advance in my head. I knew from previous experience that I didn't enjoy that kind of work, but the attempt to write three dozen outlines quickly ground me down to nothing. I wrote twenty-one treatments (and posted only nine of them) before giving up almost exactly a year ago. In March I resumed posting the treatments I had written, and I intended to continue writing, but after only one more treatment I gave up again. That left the thing four episodes short of filling up the first season. Exhaustion and frustration with the outlining process was one reason I stopped working on the project. Another was that the "Superior Spider-Man" episodes simply were not available to me. I don't have cable, so I relied on Amazon to supply the first 38 episodes, and for the last year that is all that has been available on Amazon. But in the middle of July Amazon finally brought out the rest of Season Two, including the "Superior Spider-Man" arc. I haven't bought it yet, and I still want to get this project done before I do, because I still want to write my own version of that arc, and then compare it to the official version. So that's my plan: Finish up the commissions, then bulldoze my way through some more alternate "Spider-Man" treatments. How far will I get? I don't know. That's the other big thing I learned from this project the last time I tackled it. Don't make grandiose plans. If this is the first you've heard of this project, here again is a link to it: "Marvel Spider-Man: The Alternate Series" . And here are some links to some of the more substantial blog entries where I talked about it:The idea occurs: "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Messing Up My Writing Plans ..." Progress report as I watch the first season of the show: "When Everyone Is Spider-Man ..." More reflections on the first season: "Spider-Man: Pros, Cons, and Amateurs" My ambition grows: "Decisions, Decisions" The plan is described: "Immediate Plans" How I go about writing a treatment: "Project Development" And after lots of initial optimism, I hit a wall: "I'm Not Dead Yet" |
| Today's chapters— Interactive: "The Curious Miss Cummings" Public: "The Curious Miss Cummings" —bring that particular branch to a conclusion, at least for now. There is a chance I'll continue it at some point, but it depends upon the person who commissioned it. (Or other people who want to make a point of commissioning a continuation.) Tomorrow brings a quasi-hiatus for WdC members, but new chapters for non-members. I have been commissioned to continue a very old branch, one that has not been fully published in the "The Book of Masks: Archives" edition of BoM. There are only two chapters I need to publish to bridge the gap, and I could publish them both right now, but I'd like to stretch out the schedule a little so that I can pad my backlog a little more. So tomorrow and Thursday will bring chapters for Archive readers, but nothing new for WdC members. To get oriented, go to "A Yumi Life" and read it and the fourteen chapters leading up to it.On Friday members and non-members alike will get the start of a new, 5-chapter commission that will launch with a new choice off that chapter. Well, sort of a new choice. In fact, I'm going to use that commission as an excuse to delete and write new versions of some old chapters that will expand what had been a two-chapter arc into a five-chapter arc. And that commission will then lead to a second, different 5-chapter commission that will continue it. Once that commission is finished, I will publish a 10-chapter commission in a different part of the interactive. After that we'll have to see, because I think I'm going to take a hiatus from BoM for a little while. I've been working non-stop at it for a couple of months now, both with new chapters of my own and with editorial help to other authors. I will definitely continue to provide the editorial help (if it's needed) but I've got a couple of suspended non-BoM projects that I want to pick up again. (BTW, I was reminded yesterday that the original chapter title had already been used. I think there are several chapter titles in BoM that have been used more than once, but because this one was pointed out to me, I edited it to change it.) |
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