Hi @Lucy_Henley ! Welcome on board! I'm delighted you are enjoying the story. If you feel inclined to write "a ridiculously long paragraph" about the characters, please do! I really enjoy seeing what my readers are thinking. But silently lurking and short comments are fine too. Totally up to you.
I’m on my phone right now, so I’ll do the long paragraph when I’m back on my computer!
I don’t play with aliens much in my game. I feel like I should! Obviously I wouldn’t steal your lore or anything, but it’d be fun to include some aliens in one of my stories somewhere.
@Lucy_Henley I really love the aliens. Gameplay-wise they're pretty simple, unlike vampires or spellcasters, but they're so adorable. Those huge eyes just melt my heart. So I like playing with them even just for the cuteness factor. And the fact that they are under-developed in the game actually leaves lots of room for your own lore and storytelling ideas. So I actually like that.
Detective Brad, not yet emotionally marred by detective work. XD I love the description of the cops. OOH so if it's a temp rent place I wonder what the woman was doing there? And if she was temp renting it I was wonder if it was for some nefarious purpose...The scene of Swan staring at Reuben is just...so creepy in a plain way. Like 'nothing behind the eyes businessman' face. Typical landlords, someone being housed for free is somehow worse than being stolen from. XC I didn't actually think of that somehow, that that site could easily be used by people to lure vampires for hunters. I am worried about Tre now ;-; As for the question I'm really bad at spotting things so I'm not sure ;-;
I'm sorry for always seizing on such small details but I feel like maybe you put them in for people like me, so:
I was already laughing when Mori was in the same hawkeye expression/same pose for 2 frames
and then the next frame
and then the next...
anyway it was very very funny
as was the line "I see him when we're both in the hall."
Oops! Maybe I didn't make this clear enough. The mystery girl was not temp-renting the house. She was the squatter. Sorry about any confusion there. That was unintentional.
But, you're totally right. An unoccupied house, or a temporary rental place, would make a great place for vampire hunters to lure in vampires.
Lol. Yeah, Detective Swan is very new in his position and hasn't yet become all jaded and cynical about it like Reuben. He also is probably overly concerned with not upsetting all the wealthy people in his precinct. Your response to him staring at Reuben made me laugh. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think you might be right.
Tre has been missing for three days now. It's definitely time to start worrying.
Seeing more of Reuben's grumpy face is always funny, but here there is a lot of info too... So the mystery girl was a squatter in a short-term rented house, and Tre is still missing and Reuben's colleagues are seriously looking for him now...
Lots of very funny expressions too in this chapter.
Also, the mystery girl is becoming more and more mysterious chapter after chapter, argh!
I see you also opened a contest at the end of the chapter. Sadly I don't have the time to reopen all the chapters and look for her in every picture, but I can try to make a guess anyway... I would go for 12 appearances (I'm pretty sure in some chapters she was in more than one picture...).
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
For a random guess, you did really good! If we only count the number of scenes she's in, 12 is exactly right. So I think you have a very good memory. I'm impressed. The number of individual screenshots is higher, though, since she appears in multiple shots within some of those scenes.
Reuben's grumpy face often makes me laugh. Especially at times when I have a pretty grumpy face myself.
Tre is still missing, and Tristan went to the police for help. At Reuben's precinct station. Maybe Reuben should have shown a little more compassion the other night when Tristan was looking for Tre...
Oh well. Surely that won't cause any problems for him down the line. It'll probably be fine.
These are the days when I miss the infamous "walls of text" the most, argh! Anyway, it looks like we are back to the "vampire mafia hideout", and another suspiciously pale woman is presented. She seems to be related to an important politician as well, uhm... That building is a mess anyway, with fancy official rooms, back corridors full of high-tech security stuff, and random pool rooms (?)
As for the mystery girl count instead, I think that even if I decided to re-read everything and count the appearances I would have missed at least a couple of them XD
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
Happy to see the intriguing characters and beautiful interiors, and surely will go back to look at this chapter later when we are farther in the story
With comics this is often my favorite kind of chapter... I have little idea as to the plot, but it's pretty to look at, there's enough going on that the characters are interesting, and it's always fun to go back again later.
About the mystery lady, i try to search her at background everytime, but I admit, the air shot .. no, I did now ever saw her in that
I kind of found the kind cop lady more annoying than the "bad cop" lady with only one face the kind lady is .. too kind.. but still keeps staring at door when he walked away.. eww..
Where are you Tre????!!!!
And mystery penthouse still keeps it's mystery, not even trying to guess , haha
ps.
My love, my love, my fearless love, I will not say goodbye..
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
The mystery lady can be very hard to spot sometimes!
Reuben shares your feelings about Detective Shelton, especially since she is interrogating him. But she is investigating every lead to try and find Tre. He has already been missing for three days.
I was very busy the day I responded to your comment. So here's a little more now that I have some time.
That penthouse is pretty crazy!
The owner has some tight security behind the scenes. She has both a stronghold (vault), and an escape route (helicopter). So, is she paranoid, or does she have real enemies?
It's actually one of my favorite builds in this story. Part of it is copied and modified from the Alto Apartments lot in Uptown. I copied each room from the apartment lot and reassembled them on the penthouse lot so I could add to the design. The original apartment rooms make up about one quarter of the final penthouse building, and the rest I added. I did mess around with the original decor a little too.
I love secret passageways that lead to some weird surprises, so I couldn't resist that sprite pond down in the vault. I've often done stuff like that in builds meant for vampires because I figure the vampires who can't go out in daylight probably want a place where they can feel like they are outside in the sunshine without being in danger. In a different save-game story, I built a whole vampire spa around the idea of making the indoor space feel like outdoor space, so the vampires that go there can enjoy a "beach-like" setting without burning up.
So my ultra-wealthy vampire in this story also gets an indoor pond. There's even a "sun" in that blue sky. Maybe I should get some shots of her chilling on a lounge chair down there.
I also modified the website to make the bloopers and extras page easier to find. It's now in a drop down menu under the "Behind the Scenes" tab as well having a more obvious link on the behind the scenes page, instead of a single tiny link buried at the bottom of a massive wall of text.
The Characters page has been updated with all the named (and a few unnamed) characters as chapters have been posted. If who's who is starting to get confusing, it's a handy reference. I promise, no spoilers if you have read up through the latest chapter.
In personal news, this time of year is extremely stressful and busy for me because of how my real life job works. And I also have quite a bit of work to do on a lot of the upcoming chapters. I work on my story in a very non-linear, chaotic, jumping around, and creating multiple drafts manner, so it's essential that I stay way ahead of what is being posted. Unfortunately, several chapters coming up soon are in various states of diva-esque non-readiness no matter how I try to coax them out of the dressing room.
I have two more chapters fully ready, which I will be posting next week and the week after (chapters 26 and 27, a two-part scene), but then, after that, I'm going to take a break from posting for a few months.
I'm actually a bit disoriented by the first part, college seems so different from what I'm used to! But I'm also happy I never had do any teaching in an organic chemistry lab (even more so on Monday morning)! Also, kids, the lab coats!
Anyway, it's always nice to follow Annie, in particular when she's in her element like today. She seemed to have passed by quite a lot of people also. Mystery girl is quite clearly okay even after that fall, but the *honest merchant* didn't seem to be having a good time instead...
Too bad Reuben isn't talking to her either, but I'm not sure that asking Ion to "keep an eye on him" could be a solution. "Maybe Reuben will be more willing to talk to Ion than he is to talk with me" sounds like a recipe for disaster XD
And underfoot remains the most adorable dog around!
As for the hiatus instead, instinctively I would want to protest because I don't want to wait at all to see the following, but rationally I fully get it. Modifying chapters takes time, and this doesn't conciliate easily with tough periods at work. So don't worry, take your time!
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
The college lab and classroom designs, and what Annie does as a grad student, were based on my own college experience. But it definitely is one of those things that's different in different countries. Do grad students in your universities teach the lower level lab classes? They do here. That also involves having office hours a couple times a week for students who need help. So that's what she's doing. The cafeteria is also a big part of college life where I'm from. Annie lives off of campus though, so she doesn't always eat there.
Interestingly, in my college chemistry lab classes, we weren't required to wear lab coats for most of the things we did. We just had to wear safety glasses and long sleeves, etc. Though maybe these students should be wearing extra protection. I actually did consider putting Annie's students all in lab coats for that shot, but that made the picture boring. I wanted to show some distinct personalities, so I went with normal clothes. I did make all of them wear safety glasses, though it's hard to see in the picture.
*grin* You noticed "honest merchant" guy having a very bad day in the background in that one shot. I'm impressed! He's hard to spot there.
Ion keeping an eye on Reuben? What could possibly go wrong with that? Surely Reuben will appreciate his roommate looking out for him. 😜
Underfoot sure does steal the show, every scene she's in. Very adorable little doggie.
Thanks for the understanding words of encouragement! A lot of these chapters really take a long time to put together. Some more than others, of course, but definitely many weeks for most of them. So, posting at a rate of one per week, I knew I'd have to take occasional breaks to stay ahead. And then, also, I ended up not liking how I was doing Season Two, and completely ripped it apart and redid it. Which has caused me a lot of chapter reorganizing and rewriting (and new screenshots needed, which is what takes most of the time). I originally was hoping to be able to post all of Season One before taking a hiatus, but I ended up changing stuff at the end of this season to work better with the next season, so things in the last several chapters of this season are a mess right now.
Two more chapters will be coming before the hiatus, though. And I think you all have been waiting for these ones for quite awhile now, so hopefully you'll enjoy them...
In here instead they are paranoid about lab coats, but only with the undergrad students. I agree that's mostly a way to avoid getting spots or holes on the real clothes more than a real protection for the nastiest stuff. I have to admit that nowadays I wear mine only when there are students around, with the kind of stuff we are doing it's not really needed and we want to "show some distinct personality" too XD
Luckily we don't have to do much teaching either, it's something we can choose to do because we get paid extra money for it but it's not a requirement for graduating. And we're also lucky in the sense that usually only have to cover a few hours in the students labs, and we usually are involved only with courses we know the best (for example, I would never be called to teach organic chemistry XD). Also all the office hours work differently, and almost only professors are involved. Oh, and our university is not contained within a campus and we don't have common buildings like a cafeteria, so also the general atmosphere is quite different.
I know it's silly, but whenever I see a story set in a north America-like setting I immediately think it looks a lot like movies, our universities definitively seem much more boring in comparison.
Back on the story making part instead, I completely see how doing major changes to Season 2 is likely to require also adjustments to the chapters preceding it. I'm the first to always be tempted to return back and modify the chapters I posted already in the past, so I definitively see why having a consistent section of the story written in advance can be very useful sometimes.
I will focus on waiting for the next two chapters then!
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
I actually can't remember, at this point, whether teaching labs was required for graduate students or just an optional way to pay for schooling. It's been too long since I was a student. But I do remember that all the geology grad students were doing it. I can't remember anyone who wasn't. So we might have had a certain number of hours teaching required. I taught mostly entry level geology labs for non-geology students (general science requirement), and was the "school liaison" who set up educational geology programs for public grade schools, high schools, and adult visitors.
Dorm life and campus life were definitely a part of my college experience though. I met my best lifelong friend because we lived in the same dorm. And later, my husband, I also met living on campus.
Funny that you should mention the "looking like a movie" thing. I grew up in Alaska, which is technically part of the USA, but the main part of the US is so different from Alaska that when I was a kid most Hollywood movies seemed very foreign and alien to me, since none of them depicted anything like the world I was living in. Even if some movie was supposed be be set in Alaska, it was usually filmed somewhere else and still looked unfamiliar to me. And until almost adulthood, I never saw a real city. Cities in movies didn't seem real to me for the longest time.
Am I being dumb or was the woman Annie tripped with actually the one from that house from the last chapter? I don't think anyone could get Reuben to open up Annie, it isn't you : P I feel like Ion wouldn't see Geekcon as a cheap mockery of Ion's life. We all know Ion would be like a kid in a sweet shop XD I relate to Ion way too much it's unreal XD Paladin asserting dominance on the dog in that one shot oh my gosh XD
Unfortunately I am not in a great thinking place RN and so not sure how to interpret chapter 24 but I love your pics as always < 3
The woman Annie tripped over is the "mysterious stranger" who has been lurking around taking pictures of Ion. I'm not sure if by "house from the last chapter" you mean Chapter 24 (the silent chapter at the fancy penthouse in Uptown), or Chapter 23 (the house in Newcrest that got "robbed" that Reuben went to). But if you mean the latter (the house from Chapter 23) then yes. That's her. No one else in this story wears a hat like that. 😜
I agree, it's not Annie. It's Reuben. He's just very unwilling to talk right now.
I suspect Ion would love Geekcon. So much human culture there to learn about. "Kid in a sweet shop" is probably about right.
Paladin and Underfoot are very entertaining. I think Underfoot's bark took Paladin rather by surprise here.
Chapter 24 is not really meant to be understood right now. It's more about the background details, the setting, and the side characters than anything that's "happening" in the foreground at this point. Just a lazy rainy afternoon at home, in a giant glass penthouse inhabited by vampires in Uptown. Nothing important. Just enjoying the pictures is totally fine.
Hi hi! New reader here, and I'm actually so sad that I already caught up and have to wait for future updates now... when I got to your most recent post and realized there wasn't a "next chapter" button, I was like NOOOO!!!
It's incredibly evident how much love and care you have put into crafting this story, from the compositions of screenshots, the pacing, the FORESHADOWING... *chef's kiss*. All your characters feel so fleshed out and vibrant -- everyone has their own eccentricities and flaws that play off of each other so naturally. I'm particularly partial to Tristan, because I am also a queer introverted chef who has trouble making friends (though I would kill to be as muscular as he is )
I won't comment too much on the story, because there's a lot to process, but I'm really excited to see where all your subplots and hints are leading! Amazing work!
@DeidreMahariel Hi! Welcome the Seventeen & Maldusk (chaos) universe! I'm always happy to hear from another reader.
Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging comments. It definitely takes a lot of time and effort to produce this story, and I care a lot about growing characters that all feel different from each other, alive, and complex. Foreshadowing is important to me as well, and I really like stories with lots of intertwining subplots. So it's nice to hear that what I am cooking up is working for you.
I have a lot of empathy and fondness for Tristan. He's an interesting character, and he's dealing with a lot right now. I'm glad you like him so much.
There will be two more chapters coming, this weekend and next weekend, before I take the break I mentioned in my post a few days ago. The break is mainly because I desperately need to work ahead for a bit. The posts are catching up to me! But hopefully I can get enough done to resume posting in a few months. I promise, I'll be working on it.
I love getting comments from readers, but I know there is a lot going on in this story and it can be hard to think of what to say sometimes. That's totally fine. You are welcome to comment or not as you like at any time. I really appreciate you letting me know that you are enjoying it though. Gives me a boost to keep going.
LOL; I love the poses at classroom, that must of been one really boring class
She did it on purpose, didn't she? so Annie will fall, thats how legs look alike there, even in main pic.. Annie should check does she have all her stuff.. not saying mystery lady is a thief, but ... that, both falling and keeping Annies focus on apologising... good opportunity.
Hilarious that all are eating popcorn
oh, that brown haired dude is in trouble there again?
Princess Underfoot!!! oh yes!!! I call her Princess for now, she is more like queen, tho
Ion looking after Reuben? finding out why slamming doors? Why I feel it will cause even more slamming
And last, best part
'YOU ROCK, PRINCESS U!!!!!
You showed him!!!
PS.
My love, my love, my fearless love, I will not say goodbye..
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
Comments
I don’t play with aliens much in my game. I feel like I should! Obviously I wouldn’t steal your lore or anything, but it’d be fun to include some aliens in one of my stories somewhere.
and then the next frame
and then the next...
anyway it was very very funny
as was the line "I see him when we're both in the hall."
@SnowBnuuy
Oops!
But, you're totally right. An unoccupied house, or a temporary rental place, would make a great place for vampire hunters to lure in vampires.
Lol. Yeah, Detective Swan is very new in his position and hasn't yet become all jaded and cynical about it like Reuben. He also is probably overly concerned with not upsetting all the wealthy people in his precinct. Your response to him staring at Reuben made me laugh. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think you might be right.
Tre has been missing for three days now. It's definitely time to start worrying.
@mightysprite
Mostly, I just didn't feel like making more poses, to be honest. But it is funny.
Lots of very funny expressions too in this chapter.
Also, the mystery girl is becoming more and more mysterious chapter after chapter, argh!
I see you also opened a contest at the end of the chapter. Sadly I don't have the time to reopen all the chapters and look for her in every picture, but I can try to make a guess anyway... I would go for 12 appearances (I'm pretty sure in some chapters she was in more than one picture...).
For a random guess, you did really good!
Reuben's grumpy face often makes me laugh. Especially at times when I have a pretty grumpy face myself.
Tre is still missing, and Tristan went to the police for help. At Reuben's precinct station. Maybe Reuben should have shown a little more compassion the other night when Tristan was looking for Tre...
Oh well. Surely that won't cause any problems for him down the line. It'll probably be fine.
This one is another silent chapter. What happens in Uptown...
Main page link
Chapter index link
Business and politics.
As for the mystery girl count instead, I think that even if I decided to re-read everything and count the appearances I would have missed at least a couple of them XD
With comics this is often my favorite kind of chapter... I have little idea as to the plot, but it's pretty to look at, there's enough going on that the characters are interesting, and it's always fun to go back again later.
I kind of found the kind cop lady more annoying than the "bad cop" lady with only one face
Where are you Tre????!!!!
And mystery penthouse still keeps it's mystery, not even trying to guess , haha
ps.
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
@mightysprite
Glad you enjoyed the pictures. With the silent chapters it's more about setting things up for the future than it is about the plot right now.
@Ellupelluellu
The mystery lady can be very hard to spot sometimes!
Reuben shares your feelings about Detective Shelton, especially since she is interrogating him. But she is investigating every lead to try and find Tre. He has already been missing for three days.
@HermioneSims
I was very busy the day I responded to your comment. So here's a little more now that I have some time.
That penthouse is pretty crazy!
The owner has some tight security behind the scenes. She has both a stronghold (vault), and an escape route (helicopter). So, is she paranoid, or does she have real enemies?
It's actually one of my favorite builds in this story. Part of it is copied and modified from the Alto Apartments lot in Uptown. I copied each room from the apartment lot and reassembled them on the penthouse lot so I could add to the design. The original apartment rooms make up about one quarter of the final penthouse building, and the rest I added. I did mess around with the original decor a little too.
I love secret passageways that lead to some weird surprises, so I couldn't resist that sprite pond down in the vault. I've often done stuff like that in builds meant for vampires because I figure the vampires who can't go out in daylight probably want a place where they can feel like they are outside in the sunshine without being in danger. In a different save-game story, I built a whole vampire spa around the idea of making the indoor space feel like outdoor space, so the vampires that go there can enjoy a "beach-like" setting without burning up.
So my ultra-wealthy vampire in this story also gets an indoor pond.
Annie doesn't know about Tre being missing yet, so she has other things on her mind.
Main page link
Chapter index link
Annie runs into people.
The Characters page has been updated with all the named (and a few unnamed) characters as chapters have been posted. If who's who is starting to get confusing, it's a handy reference. I promise, no spoilers if you have read up through the latest chapter.
In personal news, this time of year is extremely stressful and busy for me because of how my real life job works. And I also have quite a bit of work to do on a lot of the upcoming chapters. I work on my story in a very non-linear, chaotic, jumping around, and creating multiple drafts manner, so it's essential that I stay way ahead of what is being posted. Unfortunately, several chapters coming up soon are in various states of diva-esque non-readiness no matter how I try to coax them out of the dressing room.
I have two more chapters fully ready, which I will be posting next week and the week after (chapters 26 and 27, a two-part scene), but then, after that, I'm going to take a break from posting for a few months.
Anyway, it's always nice to follow Annie, in particular when she's in her element like today. She seemed to have passed by quite a lot of people also. Mystery girl is quite clearly okay even after that fall, but the *honest merchant* didn't seem to be having a good time instead...
Too bad Reuben isn't talking to her either, but I'm not sure that asking Ion to "keep an eye on him" could be a solution. "Maybe Reuben will be more willing to talk to Ion than he is to talk with me" sounds like a recipe for disaster XD
And underfoot remains the most adorable dog around!
As for the hiatus instead, instinctively I would want to protest because I don't want to wait at all to see the following, but rationally I fully get it. Modifying chapters takes time, and this doesn't conciliate easily with tough periods at work. So don't worry, take your time!
The college lab and classroom designs, and what Annie does as a grad student, were based on my own college experience. But it definitely is one of those things that's different in different countries. Do grad students in your universities teach the lower level lab classes? They do here. That also involves having office hours a couple times a week for students who need help. So that's what she's doing. The cafeteria is also a big part of college life where I'm from. Annie lives off of campus though, so she doesn't always eat there.
Interestingly, in my college chemistry lab classes, we weren't required to wear lab coats for most of the things we did. We just had to wear safety glasses and long sleeves, etc. Though maybe these students should be wearing extra protection.
*grin* You noticed "honest merchant" guy having a very bad day in the background in that one shot. I'm impressed! He's hard to spot there.
Ion keeping an eye on Reuben? What could possibly go wrong with that? Surely Reuben will appreciate his roommate looking out for him. 😜
Underfoot sure does steal the show, every scene she's in. Very adorable little doggie.
Thanks for the understanding words of encouragement! A lot of these chapters really take a long time to put together. Some more than others, of course, but definitely many weeks for most of them. So, posting at a rate of one per week, I knew I'd have to take occasional breaks to stay ahead. And then, also, I ended up not liking how I was doing Season Two, and completely ripped it apart and redid it. Which has caused me a lot of chapter reorganizing and rewriting (and new screenshots needed, which is what takes most of the time). I originally was hoping to be able to post all of Season One before taking a hiatus, but I ended up changing stuff at the end of this season to work better with the next season, so things in the last several chapters of this season are a mess right now.
Two more chapters will be coming before the hiatus, though. And I think you all have been waiting for these ones for quite awhile now, so hopefully you'll enjoy them...
Luckily we don't have to do much teaching either, it's something we can choose to do because we get paid extra money for it but it's not a requirement for graduating. And we're also lucky in the sense that usually only have to cover a few hours in the students labs, and we usually are involved only with courses we know the best (for example, I would never be called to teach organic chemistry XD). Also all the office hours work differently, and almost only professors are involved. Oh, and our university is not contained within a campus and we don't have common buildings like a cafeteria, so also the general atmosphere is quite different.
I know it's silly, but whenever I see a story set in a north America-like setting I immediately think it looks a lot like movies, our universities definitively seem much more boring in comparison.
Back on the story making part instead, I completely see how doing major changes to Season 2 is likely to require also adjustments to the chapters preceding it. I'm the first to always be tempted to return back and modify the chapters I posted already in the past, so I definitively see why having a consistent section of the story written in advance can be very useful sometimes.
I will focus on waiting for the next two chapters then!
I actually can't remember, at this point, whether teaching labs was required for graduate students or just an optional way to pay for schooling. It's been too long since I was a student. But I do remember that all the geology grad students were doing it. I can't remember anyone who wasn't. So we might have had a certain number of hours teaching required. I taught mostly entry level geology labs for non-geology students (general science requirement), and was the "school liaison" who set up educational geology programs for public grade schools, high schools, and adult visitors.
Dorm life and campus life were definitely a part of my college experience though. I met my best lifelong friend because we lived in the same dorm. And later, my husband, I also met living on campus.
Funny that you should mention the "looking like a movie" thing. I grew up in Alaska, which is technically part of the USA, but the main part of the US is so different from Alaska that when I was a kid most Hollywood movies seemed very foreign and alien to me, since none of them depicted anything like the world I was living in. Even if some movie was supposed be be set in Alaska, it was usually filmed somewhere else and still looked unfamiliar to me. And until almost adulthood, I never saw a real city. Cities in movies didn't seem real to me for the longest time.
Unfortunately I am not in a great thinking place RN and so not sure how to interpret chapter 24 but I love your pics as always < 3
The woman Annie tripped over is the "mysterious stranger" who has been lurking around taking pictures of Ion. I'm not sure if by "house from the last chapter" you mean Chapter 24 (the silent chapter at the fancy penthouse in Uptown), or Chapter 23 (the house in Newcrest that got "robbed" that Reuben went to). But if you mean the latter (the house from Chapter 23) then yes. That's her. No one else in this story wears a hat like that. 😜
I agree, it's not Annie. It's Reuben. He's just very unwilling to talk right now.
I suspect Ion would love Geekcon. So much human culture there to learn about. "Kid in a sweet shop" is probably about right.
Paladin and Underfoot are very entertaining. I think Underfoot's bark took Paladin rather by surprise here.
Chapter 24 is not really meant to be understood right now. It's more about the background details, the setting, and the side characters than anything that's "happening" in the foreground at this point. Just a lazy rainy afternoon at home, in a giant glass penthouse inhabited by vampires in Uptown. Nothing important.
I won't comment too much on the story, because there's a lot to process, but I'm really excited to see where all your subplots and hints are leading! Amazing work!
Forum Thread - Blog Chapter Selection
Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging comments. It definitely takes a lot of time and effort to produce this story, and I care a lot about growing characters that all feel different from each other, alive, and complex. Foreshadowing is important to me as well, and I really like stories with lots of intertwining subplots. So it's nice to hear that what I am cooking up is working for you.
I have a lot of empathy and fondness for Tristan. He's an interesting character, and he's dealing with a lot right now. I'm glad you like him so much.
There will be two more chapters coming, this weekend and next weekend, before I take the break I mentioned in my post a few days ago. The break is mainly because I desperately need to work ahead for a bit. The posts are catching up to me! But hopefully I can get enough done to resume posting in a few months. I promise, I'll be working on it.
I love getting comments from readers, but I know there is a lot going on in this story and it can be hard to think of what to say sometimes. That's totally fine. You are welcome to comment or not as you like at any time. I really appreciate you letting me know that you are enjoying it though. Gives me a boost to keep going.
She did it on purpose, didn't she? so Annie will fall, thats how legs look alike there, even in main pic.. Annie should check does she have all her stuff.. not saying mystery lady is a thief, but ... that, both falling and keeping Annies focus on apologising... good opportunity.
Hilarious that all are eating popcorn
oh, that brown haired dude is in trouble there again?
Princess Underfoot!!! oh yes!!! I call her Princess for now, she is more like queen, tho
Ion looking after Reuben? finding out why slamming doors? Why I feel it will cause even more slamming
And last, best part
'YOU ROCK, PRINCESS U!!!!!
You showed him!!!
PS.
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..