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"Secrets of a Secret Admirer"  brings to an end this short little five chapter branch. One that took much longer than I intended because at one point I was close to done with "Dates That Go and Come", forgot to save a draft and lost the whole thing which basically killed my drive for a solid week because I really did not want to have to rewrite nearly an entire chapter again.

This was another commission with one really simple request: Will shows the book to Dorothy and we see how that naturally progresses. Thankfully there was a set up for Will to give the book to Dorothy right there. I don't think I'm spoiling anything (unless you lack the most basic ability to infer things somehow) by saying that "Gail", of course, is Dorothy. But why go through the charade and hide behind masks for a character who otherwise seems pretty straightforward about what she wants?

Well there's a couple other branches where she's up front about her interest in Will by him basically forcing the issue: he shows her the book in one and in another danced with her at the Warehouse and then blew her off. But for me Dorothy is a girl who's both confident and shy. She's promiscuous but would like a steady boyfriend if she finds the right one and deep down her reputation does bother her to a degree. She doesn't think she should be ashamed of being how she is or liking what she likes and tries hard to always project an air of easygoing confidence.

But she can certainly get upset and hurt and so feels to an extent that her reputation is something of a detriment. Which might be why she likes Will. She does find him cute but more than that she likely finds him kind of innocently naive and so feels like he might not judge her the same way others would (and maybe that he's enough of a dork that he wouldn't shoot her down anyway). But she's also a bit nervous about testing that theory, however having the book fall into her hands gives her a way around that as Gail, Will's secret admirer and the girl who could be anyone he dreams of. She can get with him, maybe be more sexual and hide her identity easy as pie until she's ready to come clean.

I always like to get into a character's head if I'm going to be using them and Dorothy's one of the ones who I feel I know the most. She's not a strong personality like Alex Day, someone who seems to completely take over any chapter she appears in, but when I start writing her I don't have to think much about. Maybe it's because she's one of the ones who's easiest to understand for me that she's one of the characters I'm most fond of. But I do have trouble coming up with storylines for her because there's always a "And then what?" factor. She hooks up with Will... and then what? She's gotten what she's wanted, Will's gotten what he's wanted, there's not really much else to do but sexy time shenanigans.

I will say that I was a little stuck in where to leave this off because I had two possible jumping off points: Dorothy tells Will everything or Dorothy tells Will a truncated version with some key facts and people omitted. It was a sort of coin flip choice for me so I asked for a bit of advice in the form of "which do you prefer" and was told the latter. Since that's what I'd also been leaning towards that sealed it for me as the right way to go. Hopefully it leaves things in a potentially interesting place for both Will and Dorothy. One where either choice can lead them to what they want but in two very different ways.

As for why Dorothy chose the name Gail, well what's the full name of probably the most famous Dorothy in fiction? Dorothy probably had a similar thought.