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Poll - The Future Direction of the Novel
🕑 Added 2022-08-13 14:40:38 +0000 UTCSo the difference in between what I expected for the latest arc and what you readers expected has been weighing on me. The Royal Road ratings dropping to seem to imply that's not just anxiety talking. And I went well what did you expect? A dramatic fall from grace for Londyn as she slips ever deeper into authoritarianism that ends up with her removed from office and also disgraces the entire League, casting all the heroes adrift as they question everything they stood for? Forcing Bob to confront the consequences of his actions, the loss of his friend, and to really question who he wants to be and what impact he wants to have on the world? Bob scrambling to prevent the League's resources and technology from falling into the wrong hands as the greedy and powerful seek to claim it? Sending Bob on a quest to try and repair what is broken with an ironic twist of him having to save the heroes and rebuild the league, forcing him to ultimately confront his dislike of the heroes once and for all? Or alternatively, to build some new systems, maybe based around Nemesis, the AVS, and the remnants of the ILS for a more decentralized and less strictly heroic but more practical approach?
And then I thought...
Wait, that does sound pretty cool actually. Cool enough that I figured it's worth putting the possibility out there.
So yea, full disclosure I'm not killing Londyn here either way as that's entirely too tragic an end for her but I could be convinced to remove her from office with a dramatic fall, with serious consequences for herself and the League as a whole. Maybe even the whole thing coming apart.
There's a problem though. Several in fact.
1. It requires rewriting most of the latest arc. Pretty much everything after chapter 125 would need to change. The arc itself would need to expand in length for Londyn's fall and the impact on the heroes to be fully developed. I'd be going back to the drawing board on everything except the start of the arc, so the rewrite would not be quick.
2. It requires an entirely new, unplanned arc immediately after where Bob, the heroes, and the world need to wrestle with the fallout from Londyn and the ILS's fall. As there are exactly 0 plans for this arc, it may also result in delays as there are no backlogs or what not.
3. It dramatically changes the starting situation for Volume 4 and the planned arcs for certain characters. Which therefore disrupts most of my current plans for volume 4. Pretty much every arc would need to be replanned to fit into the new scenario, might need to even drop arcs or add new ones. Even the ending of the series as a whole would need at least a look at to make sure it will still fit. And every individual character, the major ones at least, would need to be examined to determine how they would develop in these situations and what I would ultimately want to do with them. And I would want at least a vague idea of how Volume 4 would develop before I would start the rewriting to ensure things come together in the end.
All in all, I'd have to scrap/rewrite everything that comes after this arc, including a week of side stories and about half of the first Volume 4 arc which I have already written. For example, got a mini-Academy arc out already on the patreon that doesn't exactly make sense if there's no Academy by the time it's supposed to happen. And if the world's on fire at the time. So I'd need to go back to the drawing board to figure out how everything would work in this case and how the story would develop going forward under the new assumption and which of the Volume 4 arcs still work in that case. And I am still taking this week off, giving my work forecast for this coming week these kind of efforts will not be possible or wise to try and squeeze out. So all this work wouldn't even start until next week.
What I'm trying to say is...if we did this posting would stop / reduce in speed until I am satisfied I have everything replanned out and have rebuilt a decent backlog. Probably meaning a two week freeze in posting at the minimum. After all, if I'm going to go through the effort of dramatically rewriting it, I'm going to abandon speed and give it as long as it needs.
So I'd like to get your thoughts.
Do you prefer for me to continue onward as I have been, current plans in place for the next Volume? To take only the one week off and then resume our normal pace until the series is done (likely 2 months-ish going by the length of the other volumes?)
Or do you wish me to stop and salvage this arc, going as far as to changes plans for the entire rest of the series? However long that happens to take?
Or maybe you want your cake and to eat it, you want me to finish the series now as is and then consider a rewrite/alternate version later on?
The choice is...well ultimately still mine but I like to see numbers so maybe you might influence me?
I'll count patreon votes as 10 each, to reflect your financial contributions and the fact that the rewrite would involve deleting chapters you've already read.
Comments
The Architect
Imo, the current direction is great. As much as we love the chaos, the proposed direction for a rewrite sounds even less fun than the current one.
