You look like you want to read the [Author's Notes]

So. Aside from really, really old stuff on Everything^2, this is literally the first piece of fiction I've ever posted online. Hell, this is the first time I've felt comfortable enough to do so without being afraid of feedback -- constructive, or otherwise. And I have to warn you, it's probably going to be edited and rewritten a lot over time. I'm trying really hard to get over my perfectionist tendencies, the ones that have stopped me from ever finishing anything over the course of a multi-decade life, but I still have a really strong tendency to want to revise stuff that I think I can improve.

I want to balance a somewhat plausible plotline, and reasonably believable and unbiased characters, with the opposite side: obvious wish fulfillment and fantasies. You know: "erotica" versus "porn". This means that, obviously, some plot elements, choices, et cetera, are going to be *coughcough* "problematic", because GONADS. I mean, let's face it, that's why most people are here.

But at the same time, I want to develop my ability to write decent plots and characterization, without devolving into walls of exposition, or going the other way and providing way too little context to set scenes. And I want to provide alternative options to "durr make girls do sex" when possible -- not that there's anything wrong with that, and I guarantee there'll be plenty of that too.

I would really like this to eventually be as egalitarian as possible, in that I'd like for the main character to be male or female, straight or gay or bi, cis or trans. But I know that if I try anything other than my own perspective -- straight cis male -- I'm going to get it wrong. I might be able to believably pull off "bi cis female", but that's only because I could consult my wife if necessary. So maybe one day I'll ask for help in filling out those other paths, but for right now I'd better stick to the perspective I know.

It probably goes without saying, but just in case, I want to make it crystal clear that certain elements of this story are either (a) for plot/character purposes only, (b) squarely in the fantasy realm, or (c) both. Readers should not infer that anything in the story means that I have any desire whatsoever to experience them personally, in reality, any more than a person with **** fantasies wants to ****/be ****, or a person playing FPSes wants to mercilessly slaughter dozens of people.

Questions Asked About CHYOA, By Me

Is there any way to test chapters out by manually setting variables to desired values? I haven’t found a way yet, and it makes debugging conditional statements really hard.

Is there any way to edit pages on an iPad without the interface sucking? It’s almost impossible to pull up the bar that lets me set heading styles, billeted lists, etc.

What language is the CHYOA backend written in? I have a lot of experience in Ruby and would love to lend a hand...

Occasionally Asked Questions

(not "Frequently Asked Questions", as they've only been asked once or twice to my knowledge)

• Why are you going so slow? I'm falling asleep waiting for the action! -- Part of the reason I'm doing this is that I'm trying to slow my brain down and really stop to think about settings, characterization, et cetera. I can't count the number of times my impatience when reading a novel meant I suddenly stopped myself and realized I literally couldn't remember the last dozen pages because I had skimmed over them, and I tend to do the same when writing stuff. This results in things going more slowly, and more realistically (at least, as realistic as you can get for a character with a magic mind-altering armband). Still, in order to satisfy those just looking to get into action fast (not to mention my own occasional frustration), I've started the "manipulative sociopath" branch which jumps into things must faster.
• Why are you going so fast? Your chapters are too small, and that means I end up with a dozen "new chapter" notifications when you've only written a small amount of content. -- I'm sorry, that's the programmer in me, breaking things up into tiny, self-contained bits. I want to identify areas that might serve as good jumping-off spots for branches, so I end up thinking in terms of lots of smaller chapters instead of a few larger ones. I understand that this can be annoying, though, so I'm going to try to set more updates to "edit silently" in the hopes that they don't bug people.
• Why am I seeing branches marked "[Female]" for example when I chose "[Male]" in the beginning? -- You're playing in normal mode, and not Game Mode. (Either that or you found a bug, which is definitely a possibility.) A lot of stories out there have you choose at the very beginning, and then split off into separate branches. My story relies heavily on condition variables to decide which paths are open in each area (at least, it will -- it doesn't quite so much in the beginning), and male/female is one of those. I did it this way because frankly there would be a lot of repeated content otherwise. If you're in story mode, I'm going to try and annotate some choices to give you an idea of what the context is for cases like that, but honestly you're free to just explore however the hell you want.
• What's with your nickname/handle? -- "Slime Q. Slimedog" is the name Manjula orders Apu to change his name to, after she learns that he cheated on her with the Slushee Girl. The name made me laugh, so I figured what the hell, it's a good pseudonym. I do not, in fact, think of myself as a slimedog.

Fun (?) Facts

• This story started as a prompt for a modded version of AI Dungeon 2, and contains a few seeds of stories that it generated! It’s probably about 90 percent new material, though. For one thing, you generally want to keep the details you provide to AID2 to a minimum, as it will invariably get them confused. This means the vast (vast) majority of the exposition, details, etc. here were written after the fact. I still use AID2 as a sort of “AI Assistant” for coming up with good ways to continue plot lines. Usually it generates incoherent messes, but every now and then it comes up with a really interesting twist that I never would’ve considered!
• I am such a goddamned nerd that I am actually graphing my story using GraphViz/Dot in order to be able to parse the many, many choices I have planned. CHYOA's story map is nice, but limited in its usefulness when it comes to tracking variables/conditions. What I really wish I had available is basically the equivalent of a code coverage map, except for storylines, so I can make sure I'm not creating a branch that's logically impossible to follow in Game Mode!