Gally
Got the whole word talking King Kiba
Omake rewards, tell me if I've missed anything.
Right now this story is sitting at about 500 words, so if you add enough to it I could give you a reward. Alternatively, I know you said something about making a companion piece for a Hero!Mordred - if you post that, and the 2 omakes reach 1000 words combined, I can count them as one for the purposes of a reward.
Excalibur, Sun-Mother, Fire of All Creation. Artura held the fury of the sun itself in her fingers, its light and warmth hers to bestow. Caledfwlch, its shadow, found its home in:
[] Darkness
[] Cold
"I will be the fire that drives away the darkness. I will remember what we have lost. I will stand for the old ways and fight for the new ones. I will endure. I will endure. I will endure." Thus was spoken the words, an oath to an order which had survived the death of worlds, from the lips of:
[] Conner Cirencester
[] Roxanne White
vs.
[] Forgotten Friends – And when your hour of need is upon you, they will come, they will come, they will come.
While I really love this omake, I've made a decision that works under 1000 words long won't be getting rewards. Nothing against you personally NPC, I've told the same thing to Krain. At some point I have to decide on a cutoff length for reward-worthiness, and 1000 seemed like a nice round number.
Right now this story is sitting at about 500 words, so if you add enough to it I could give you a reward. Alternatively, I know you said something about making a companion piece for a Hero!Mordred - if you post that, and the 2 omakes reach 1000 words combined, I can count them as one for the purposes of a reward.
Excalibur, Sun-Mother, Fire of All Creation. Artura held the fury of the sun itself in her fingers, its light and warmth hers to bestow. Caledfwlch, its shadow, found its home in:
[] Darkness
[] Cold
I gave you a reward for "Light from Embers" which was >1000 words. But this omake + that one totals up to more than 2000. Even still I want to make sure I'm being fair here, so I'll do this: You can choose between your previous omake reward and a pair of new ones. Does this sound relatively fair?
"I will be the fire that drives away the darkness. I will remember what we have lost. I will stand for the old ways and fight for the new ones. I will endure. I will endure. I will endure." Thus was spoken the words, an oath to an order which had survived the death of worlds, from the lips of:
[] Conner Cirencester
[] Roxanne White
vs.
[] Forgotten Friends – And when your hour of need is upon you, they will come, they will come, they will come.
This is fair. But I feel like I've also given the same kind of romantic attention to Gemma, in the long run. Annabelle was clearly interested in Mordred, but Gemma had the scene at the party where she was clearly flirting with him. And right after the date with Annabelle, Gemma revealed her plans to run away, and while that didn't turn out very well, it was at least as overtly romantic as the soccer game. I've tried to balance the options at hand rather than push one side or the other, but I guess I can see how it could come off as favoritism.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
Is this some kind of trait you can take several levels of? Because I think it's already on our Character Sheet.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Results do matter, though? Because of how things have repeatedly turned out, to me it feels like you've only set Gemma up as the foil--as the thing that only serves to move the action along until there's progress on the main relationship. There's no getting away from the soulbond as written and we just saw it take over the relationship and help contribute to everything spiraling into a mess even when this was supposed to be Gemma-time.
KnightDisciple
Brotherhood. Unity. Peace.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
Hm. So, if I keep my previous reward, does it get "boosted"?
I didn't check too closely, are both of my omakes over 2000 words?
Argle. This feels like a tough choice. I like the implications of this new choice, but I like the one from my old reward, too.
I should warn you, I don't know how quick it will be but I've probably got one or more omakes beyond these 2 in me for this idea/concept.
It's the previous reward for my previous omake that I wrote.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
Yes, and you've taken it already. Or so I believe since it's on the sheet. So when Gally said you can choose between an old one and a couple of new ones, I wondered how it would work.
- Location
- USA
I think the biggest problem is Gemma got some nice fluff early on, but since then it's only been like watching a train wreck in slow motion. A lot of that's our fault in that regard, since we we'd been kinda just doing enough to put off the inevitable explosion (which -- for better or worse -- we finally set off). We also only really pursued her as Morgan, whereas we got closer to Annabelle as both Morgan and Mordred.
I'd say if Gally should be accused of "favoring" one over the other it would be that he's dangled more optional plot threads for Annabelle in front of us than with Gemma. We just happened to have chosen to pursue them over the ones for Gemma. A lot of the "pushing" Gally has done is the result of our own actions in my opinion.
RogueDruid
"You are in my way, And simply unecessary"
- Location
- Salt lake city
While part of me wants to choose ice, as a counter point to his act of burming down the farms on his mothers orders, I have to go with the darkness. After all, we lead the forces of evil. Darkness just seems like the better thematic choice.
[X]Darkness
- Location
- St. Petersburg
It was impossible to approach Gemma - well, any of them - as Mordred, though? Outside of a safety provided by dreams.
I see at least a few people mentioning that we may be at fault for the situation escalating as it did, and that we might have needed to come out sooner, but I don't understand how it would even work? Remember how our first meeting with Annabelle went? We have only established some measure of rapport during the third dream, and that's because she couldn't do anything to us during the first two.
We couldn't have come to know them personally without attending the school and getting involved in their personal lives under the spell, but we also couldn't back down from it easily once we did. We are possibly having an easier time now, with Annabelle wanting to help and Gavin sitting on the fence.
I am looking over our decisions and don't know how much we could have done differently (other than distancing ourselves), and if it would help instead of harm our cause.
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Basically we escalated too fast. On the third date we ran away from home with them.
Too soon.
- Location
- USA
I honestly think it might have been better to keep the charade up longer so Gemma could be more stable when it all came out. Would have still been bad, but we kinda let it come out at the worst possible moment (not that we probably would have let it out at a much better one, but we technically could have)
There's also the fact that that our interactions with Gemma are steeped really heavily with Gala, whereas we're doing a significantly better job of separating Annabelle from Artura. We kinda haven't put the effort into separating Gemma from Gala that we did in separating Annabelle from Artura. The Gemma/Gala quandary is something we haven't really addressed. In part this is probably Mordred himself causing problems for us since he was clearly the closest to Gala, and she's probably the last thing he would want to let go of from the past. In contrast to this is Mordred struggling with, but accepting comparatively easily the difference between Annabelle and Artura. While he could easily be the poster child of "Mommy Issues" that ultimately has led him to not wanting Artura to still be around even though he's so connected to her.
The other knights have this problem too, but our connection as Mordred to their past selves is nowhere near the same league as with Gala and Artura.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
What effort was there that we didn't spend? What time have we been able to have to have those kind of detailed interactions that weren't derailed by the metaplot?
[X] Reason with Piper, Talk to Gavin
Gally
Got the whole word talking King Kiba
This is definitely fair. I sort of have an explanation, but I'll also cop to the fact that DPoC isn't perfect, and I'm still learning as I go. I appreciate y'all voicing your opinions of the quest, whether good or bad, because it helps me identify what I need to do going forward. So I realize that this explanation probably won't fully satisfy you, or others who share your opinion. I wish I could balance all this stuff, and hopefully I'll be able to someday.
So honestly you guys were kinda fucked with Gemma since the start.
I think it's fair to say that one of the central themes of DPoC is preconceptions, and how they shape your view of a person. Mordred has struggled to shed his preconceptions of all the Breakfast Club, but especially Gemma/Annabelle. Part of his journey is figuring out that he doesn't know them as well as he thought he did, and through that, learning that he might not have known his mother and her Knights as well as he thought he did. Mordred tends to see the world from a very Mordred-centric view, and while sometimes that can be a boon, often it ends up skewing his interpretation of others.
Gemma is a prime example of this. From the very beginning, Mordred saw her as an extension of Gala, sort of a way to work through his lingering issues with the girl he knew from Camelot. All his interactions with Gemma were colored by his experiences with Gala, and the preconceptions he brought from them. But Gemma exists beyond her interactions with Mordred/Morgan - she was dealing with her own shit the entire time. Mordred's inability to look past his own problems and see that was the crux of the final confrontation in the club. Gemma breaks down, and Mordred is caught off guard because it's a move he'd never expect from Gala.
Mordred's not the only one who is hung up on preconceptions though. I'm sure you can draw a dozen just from Breakfast Club interactions, but the one I want to highlight is the first dream with Annabelle and the conversation the Breakfast Club had in the car about Mordred. All they know of our protagonist is that he was an ally who turned on them, gathered up all their greatest enemies, and did his damnedest to murder them all. When Mordred appeared in the cave, that is what they were thinking. When Mordred ran from them, we know it's because he was confused and reeling from his circumstances, but the Breakfast Club just slotted that into "he's out there scheming, just like he was before the Fall. Any day now he'll come back and do his damnedest to murder us."
Taken in that light, the Morgan=Mordred reveal was never going to go any way but poorly. It would only serve to reinforce the notion that Mordred isn't to be trusted and is actively deceiving them. That's not the whole story, and Mordred's going to do his best to explain that in the next update, but that's how the Breakfast Club is going to see it - because their interactions with Mordred are colored by their own hazy memories of Camelot. Any goodwill you built up as Morgan would be inevitably tainted by the reveal of your deception.
How does this tie into the Gemma/Annabelle relationship issues? Well, Annabelle was always going to be a very important character, because she is the crux of not only Mordred's issues, but really the rest of the Breakfast Club's. The "soulbond" (and I use that word more hesitantly now, because I didn't intend for it to carry connotations - maybe "mindlink" would be better) wasn't in my plans initially, it was actually an omake reward that I realized helped solve a fundamental problem y'all were facing. It gave Mordred a foothold in the Breakfast Club via Annabelle, and a way to leverage some of the goodwill he got as Morgan, by giving Annabelle the chance to see that maybe Morgan isn't entirely a facade (She chooses to call you Morgan, in the most recent update).
Hearing y'all's complaints, I think I failed to properly balance Gemma out against that HUGE relationship/plot point. I'm in a case brief state of mind, so let's hit the bullet points
- Part of it was because I knew the relationship was doomed - Gemma was always the most unstable of the Knights, and she would never have reacted well to the deception. Her breakdown actually got worse and worse as you connected with her.
- Part of it was me trying to fit too much into one update. I should have given y'all more alone time with Gemma on your adventure, before I brought the rest of the Breakfast Club in on the action.
- Part of it was Annabelle being a far more active/domineering personality, and Gemma resenting her for it. Gemma primarily reacts to your relationship with Annabelle because Gemma primarily reacts to Annabelle. It's a huge part of her character and her breakdown/
I didn't explain myself very well - KD's initial omake was less than 1000 words, so it shouldn't have gotten a reward, but I must have overlooked that at the time. I didn't want to just snub his second omake though, so I tried to compromise and give him a choice between keeping his old reward and choosing a new one.
But, thinking about it, if you choose your old one again you can get a level up on it, I don't mind doing that.
No problem, looking forward to them.
- Location
- USA
Which metaplot. There are several things that can fit that description.
As for effort on making distinctions, I admittedly am going off how I recall things playing out, rather than specific votes on our part. I do recall us voting for more options that had us interact with Annabelle in situations that were significantly divergent from how Artura was than ones to show Gemma being divergent from Gala (although we tend to fine out the divergence after the fact in both cases). The only time I distinctly recall us voting to interact with Gemma specifically where we found a significant divergence was music club where she was actually musically inclined -- although it wasn't as divergent as it could have been since we have issues with Gala showing us up in life.
On a somewhat tangentially related note, I've always seen this as a quest where us players are roughly guiding Mordred, rather than us being Mordred. While we have significant control over him, he is a character in his own right and we don't control every detail about him.
Gally
Got the whole word talking King Kiba
I try to take inspiration from player attitudes and apply them Mordred. Gemma's actually a good example of this.
When she first appeared to talk to Mordred on the corner, there were a lot of "best girl" reactions. A lot of them were jokes but you guys definitely liked Gemma from the onset, and I think that had something to do with how Gemma clearly fit the nice girl/childhood friend archetype rather than anything Gemma had done specifically (she had had very little screentime at this point). So I thought, "what if Mordred is sort of projecting onto Gemma like the readers are, but instead of projecting various anime tropes about the childhood friend archetype, he's projecting his various feelings/issues with his childhood friend?"
And then that spiraled waaaaaaaaaaaaaay the fuck out of control and kind of became the central theme in the series.
Whoops.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
For the first, I know you're trying your best, but admitting that feels a bit... Obviously there are philosophical differences and of course players don't have to succeed at everything (lord knows we've failed at more than enough) but do you think that you might have been prejudiced against anything we could have tried to have that relationship not-doomed? Or from another perspective, I don't think it's particularly great (leaving aside the nebulous concept of 'fairness') to have nothing we did or could have ever done succeeded.
For the second, I directly griped about that before, so yeah 100% agreed. =/ As noted, it might not have been entirely your intention, but we got what felt like a couple updates of Gemma kicking things out of stasis and then whoops Annabelle steals the show yet again. And the viewers are baited into fixing it/focusing on her as always.
Any of the ongoing 'active threats'. There was basically never downtime to DO anything.
And again, without trying to re-fight old wars, there was a vocal element of the playerbase who actively resisted trying to vote on Gemma interactions because they were convinced she would keep showing up and we'd get to do stuff (re: club votes/free time interactions) and boy we know what actually ended up happening.
I kind of been wondering what Hero Mordred would have been like. Would he have been the same up to his decision to rebel or stay, or would he have been way different?
- Location
- St. Petersburg
This is spot on. Both the differences in treatment of Annabelle and Gemma were caused by Mordred's connection to their Knights counterparts. How do you even begin addressing that, though?
I mean, it got addressed now by necessity, since Gemma has all but said it's been killing her, and not figuratively. But without that, and with what we experienced in the Dreamland, I don't know how one can even start to untangle that knot.
We have decided to run away, drop all magical business as she wanted - at least for a while, - and attempt to sort that out... and then that decision was taken off our hands.
*Faux edit as I read Gally's post above.*
I am interested. I had no idea how to approach the situation, and if we would gain anything by postponing it, so I am the least mad at how it turned out. Just relieved that this business is mostly behind us now.
It got pretty bad after the Movie. Gemma was freaking out after her death and the fight with Annabelle, and Mordred was freaking out because of Gemma's/Gala's death (our decision to check on her the day we caught her running away was heavily influenced by her murder) and whatever it was that he had with Annabelle/her ex-boyfriends.
Which... I kinda have to - grudgingly - commend you on, the situation got pretty tense even when the danger was gone. That was some A++ drama, would watch on TV.
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- Location
- USA
Huh. I was kinda expecting that, but I didn't want to put words in your mouth (or whatever the internet equivalent is). It's something that's nice, although it usually first comes up (or rather the thread first notices) in a bad situation where the character is influenced in a non optimal way. Still well played, things spiraling our of control like that is usually a good sign.
So I guess this makes our Gemma/Gala problems our fault, as well as our comparative lack of Annabelle/Artura ones also our fault. And the total lack of caring how closely the others in the Breakfast Club parallel the original Knights our fault too.
Fun.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
She had done a pretty big thing, actually. She gave us the benefit of the doubt when very few of them (if any) were willing to, and the first sort-of-normal interaction when she gave us the money. By that act alone, she sowed doubt whether the Knights are our enemies, and then cemented it by saying that she doesn't want to fight and is tired of it.
Contrast that to Annabelle's first reaction. If that were our first experience with them, things might've gone very differently.
Her introductory scene reads more powerful than any of the subsequent ones for the Knights. I wasn't kidding when I said she may have been responsible for setting us on our path, and trying to see the people behind the Knights. About the first thing I thought after that encounter was:
Which made it extremely ironic when Mordred utterly failed to extend that courtesy to her.
That was a pretty big deal for me, and a large part of the character's appeal. I still hope we'll be able to mend bridges with her eventually, since it would be pretty strange to make peace with the rest of them, but not the person that nudged us in that direction.
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- Location
- USA
Looking back on that, her first interaction with us is kinda undercut by how Mordred projects Gala onto her.
She gave us the benefit of the doubt because of course that's what Gala would do. She didn't want to fight us because Gala didn't want to fight us. It doesn't help that Mordred does his best to see the similarities and ignore the differences for her.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
Is it?
Our interactions with her were always colored by Gala's shadow, but until a certain point what Morgan notices are the differences. Things that make her unlike Gala.
It was during the movie when the differences eroded, possibly because her death caused some heavy associations - and Mordred was bringing back his memories and experience of fighting the Knights at the time.
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- Location
- USA
You kinda just proved what I was saying, or at least what I was trying to say. Most of our interactions with her have had us projecting how we believed Gala would be, and being surprised when the mold didn't fit. Although good point that the projecting of Gala onto Gemma only got so extreme during the movie. I hadn't noticed that. Most of what was before the movie was us just using our bias for someone we never met, whereas during and after it we seem to be only looking at the Gala parts.
I think killing Gemma really messed Mordred up.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
...I'm out.
Im sorry but no. Go on with whatever you want to do with this quest. More power to you for it even! But I am OUT.
Im sorry but no. Go on with whatever you want to do with this quest. More power to you for it even! But I am OUT.