Halloween 2022 IF,  Interactive Fiction

Halloween I.F. – “Body of Work” – Wrap-up and Q&A

This year’s project was inspired by a Tumblr post that consisted of, in its entirety:

Okay ... nice dichotomy, IDIOT !! what lies  outside it???

I then looked back at Aveline’s project last year, That Which Lingers, and saw that my last comment on their Q&A was “University is a great place for a demon to get a start.” Somehow I shook these two ideas and came out of it like, hey, what if I made that a dark academia story with some extremely self-absorbed professors having academic rivalries and dangerous secrets! 

I hope you enjoyed this, whether you read it as it came out or read it later, whether your participated in suggestions or not! I had a lot of fun writing it, truly. (If you did enjoy it, now or later, and have some change lying around and feel like it, I have a ko-fi in the footer of this site! I’d also love it if you checked out more of my work!)

Anyway, the full story ended up being 61,263 words, and my PLANNING doc (in which I also included my daily outlines) ended up being 17500 words, so it was a wild month-and-a-bit for me. Can you imagine?? Frankly, I can’t, and I was there. If you want to read it all over again, you can find the whole thing linked off my Interactive Fiction page.

Thank you again for reading, thank you so much for participating

Now… ask me questions! You can ask me about the story, about the characters, about the writing process, about how something looked in my planning doc and how it changed to now, whatever! AMA! (And if you don’t have questions, feel free to share some part of it you enjoyed and I’m happy to talk about that part at random!)

7 Comments

  • AvelineReynard

    I ENJOYED THIS VERY VERY THOROUGHLY what a fantastic ending. What a bunch of fucked up lil guys you made! You are extremely powerful!

  • Noah

    I HAD A LOVELY TIME! Thank you for working so hard on this! My question to you is: was there anything in particular that we did not uncover/explore that you found especially interesting, but it just didn’t really align with where the story was going?

    • MeredithKatz

      Thank YOU! I’m so happy for all your suggestions and comments and I’m delighted you enjoyed it!

      There were a few things! Obviously you found out about Yujin’s ghost but we didn’t get into dealing with that particularly in here, so that was one thread that went unexplored. I had a little stuff going on with Octothorpe but that’d only have come out if you decided to go the Ethics Department route. You also didn’t talk to von Beekeper at all. Oh, and you could have found out way more Spiders family history if you’d gone to the jewelry store earlier when the hints were first dropped. Maybe I’ll do another story with them all sometime!

      Fun bonus, here’s an excerpt from Augustus’s initial bio in my notes doc:

      “Professor Augustus Pennywright, Doctor of Conjurations (specialty in Planar Research) is getting secret knowledge from his husband, a demon lord, to keep his research going and stay on track for tenure and also to try to uncover the nature of reality. Was part of a cult when he was younger; knows they found something, but has amnesia about what was uncovered. Contracted with a demon lord to help clear this block, fell in love, decided the contract and the ring seal to mark it meant they were married. He’s cheerful and affable and avuncular but also is way more passionate about the secrets underlying reality than about maintaining a healthy division between this reality and the next. Bad idea machine. “

    • MeredithKatz

      Oh one other thing is of course you could have found a way to get Pérez on board and then the last arc would be totally different since he’s a wards and protections specialist.

  • Seth

    THANK YOU THIS WAS WONDERFUL!!!

    I do want to know a bit more about Vii’s time in the great beyond and what he went through if you had any info on that you’re willing to share!

    Otherwise: were there any particular days where the comments just sent the plot WAY off from the direction you were expecting them to go that day?

    • MeredithKatz

      HONESTLY, I didn’t come up with much because I wanted it to be a bit… beyond comprehension. Honestly, everything around the Beast Beyond changed from my initial notes document where it was meant to possibly be a super weird love interest. Instead I made a love interest into it, if that makes sense. Sometimes you spontaneously add a third person into a photograph and all the stuff that’s sort of vague in your background info doc snaps into sharp relief about how it should be.

      The finale did for sure — I was fully expecting it to go full demon! Had a new lil imp design all made, but I like this way more. It’s so much mor on theme. Other than that, I had things like — I was going to enforce the schedule originally but then that seemed like it’d be less fun so I let it go off at a wild angle from there. All the breaking in, too, I hadn’t anticipated that, which was a great way to get information!

      (I also imagined a world where you all just called the husband every day.)

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