LAST EDITED ON Jul-02-14 AT 03:50 AM (EDT)
 
>Note to self: read a story until I reach the first date stamp. Stop
>reading, go find an index, search through the stories until I find the
>immediately preceeding date stamp. Determine where in the overall plot
>the 1st story falls. Resume reading the first story.

Well, look, not only is this not as hard as you're dramatically portraying it here (the first date stamp in most of these pieces, including Storytime, is the first thing apart from the opening titles), the What's New item explicitly spells out where it fits! I'm not seeing how "readers, keep your bearings" is such a tyrannically unreasonable expectation on my part.

>Jeez, you're touchy tonight.

A bit, I suppose, sorry. Low morale generally, frustrated specifically, and the "well, excuse me, I wasn't expecting homework" attitude wasn't helpful either.

(Also, and this is not specifically directed at you, Jeanne, but this is where the discussion seems to have got to generally: When did we arrive at the place where a particular installment suddenly had to be Necessary? That's what most of the objections I'm seeing tonight appear to amount to: "It just didn't seem to be necessary." Are we seriously judging pieces now by whether you had to read them in order to advance to the next loading screen or something? If so, uh, dang. That's not gonna work out.)

>My point was that publishing that story
>out of order, instead of publishing in sequential order as is usual,
>led to unease in at least one reader because it didn't follow on from
>the last story published.

Well, fine (hard to avoid under the circumstances, without scrapping the thing entirely, and not doing that was the point of the exercise), but what was the thing about "couldn't you have put it in another story"? Of course I couldn't have put it in another story, they're all happening at some other time. I'm genuinely confused as to what you're driving at there, because the only way I can parse the question makes no sense.

I mean, I suppose could go back and assemble the extended Blu-Ray edition of Goodbye & Hello that has Storytime and Fire Hazards reintegrated into the narrative. Then I'd probably get other people going, "This one is soooo long. Why didn't you pull some of those scenes out into side stories? That scene where they're looking at pictures could have been its own thing, for example." :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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