# Pastebin 88bmJPQz 11:18 AM <~barredowl> think we should start up now with this? 11:18 AM Sure 11:18 AM sorry I'm a slow reader, go ahead and start 11:18 AM <~barredowl> okay. 11:19 AM "Mr. Wilson, we accidentally made friends with a mob boss." love this bit at the end :p 11:19 AM <~barredowl> i'm not exactly familiar with black as night, but i thought this was a pretty cute format. 11:19 AM <~barredowl> it was pretty short but in a way i liked. 11:19 AM <~barredowl> nothing big really. 11:19 AM Exactly, Moned. Perfect sentence for ending this. 11:19 AM My first impressions when I read this was that I love it. Like it is very wholesome, especially when compared to the previous parts 11:19 AM <~barredowl> i guess in this kind of thing i'll act as an outsider perspective 11:20 AM Plus, yeah, pretty efficient. It works well, it's a good WWS format. 11:20 AM <~barredowl> and i liked this on its own 11:20 AM This goes really hard into emotions, with the evocation of a long-lost dog returning to its owner. It hits me in the same place that those kinds of videos on Twitter do, and it also has the writing ability to back it up. I really, really enjoyed this a lot more than the other ones. The main problem that I felt was present in the series -- the constraints present in only using GoI formats -- is gone from this tale, and 11:20 AM there is just some really great structure overall in how the questions are answered and how the events are relayed. 11:20 AM <~barredowl> not sure how it works in terms of fitting into the larger series. 11:20 AM <~barredowl> red3: totally agreed 11:20 AM I feel the anomaly isnt that exciting as a whole, but the story makes up for it 11:21 AM DrMoned: I disagree there with the anomaly wasn't as exciting 11:21 AM I don't know if it fits completely into the series as a whole, but I perfectly see that as a next step in Mr. Night's plans and I assume that in these series, we see at each article a step in its plans who is reached. 11:22 AM Yeah I'm not familiar with the series either 11:22 AM Like, I feel this plays well with what we know of Night, the boogeyman of the Chicago Spirit 11:22 AM This does fall into the usual traps of the series, with it still feeling like the character is being introduced even though we're almost done with the series, but the writing here still works very well. 11:22 AM as a stand alone I like the article, the format works well 11:22 AM <~barredowl> what are the usual traps? 11:22 AM BlueJones ah, but that is once again describing the story, rather than the characteristics of an anomaly 11:22 AM <~barredowl> i want to know so i can get a handle on this kind of stuff. 11:22 AM And I need to go at dinner, I will be back shortly! 11:23 AM Aight 11:23 AM <~barredowl> biya 11:23 AM <~barredowl> okay 11:23 AM <~barredowl> let me think about what i want to bring up here 11:23 AM The biggest problem I have with this series is it feels like nothing happens. Mr. Night is introduced and reintroduced and reintroduced over and over without any main plotline or progression. He wants to start the Chicago Spectre, but he's made no effort to do so besides talking to one GoI this entire series. The rest just feels like filler. 11:24 AM <~barredowl> i quite liked the individual adoption notices in the middle about why people didn't like having ol' shade as a pet 11:24 AM <~barredowl> they were pretty sad. 11:24 AM <~barredowl> a little 11:24 AM DrMoned: Hmmm, granted that it does feel like that but. again, this plays in line with Night being the silent and professional gangster they were 11:24 AM I guess I really liked it because I know nothing about the series. On it's own, it's wholesome and funny, and sad at the right parts 11:24 AM red3 like a music track having a build up over and over without the drop :P 11:25 AM DrMoned: Less like a build-up and more like the first motif repeated over and over and over again. It's interesting for a bit, but seriously... It has to develop further than this. 11:25 AM <~barredowl> i quite liked the stinger at the end. it was fun. 11:26 AM i agree with barredowl 11:26 AM red3 I have missed most of the rest, alike to diana and barred. Due to mealtimes 11:26 AM Talking about that, I gotta go eat. Sorry ppl 11:26 AM DrMoned: Only the weak consume food. 11:27 AM Yeah I missed the rest of the series 11:27 AM <~barredowl> anything else we want to discuss about this? any particular things you want to bring up which might be interesting? 11:27 AM I've actually got to go right now, I've got to eat lunch 11:27 AM But my only real big problem with this is with the adoption notices. I felt like the second-to-last one should've been swapped with the last one, since I figured out the main mystery (Why does this dog act the way it does and who does it miss?) right on that line. Swapping those two could've created a much smoother transition into the next section. 11:28 AM <~barredowl> i'd tend to agree with that. 11:28 AM Oh yeah, that would leave a nice taste for the read 11:28 AM reader* 11:28 AM <~barredowl> i didn't really look at the notices as a build up, tbh, but that might just be a fault with how i read things. 11:29 AM I still love the reactions the keepers have with shock and night being reunited 11:29 AM <~barredowl> yeah, but other than that, i really don't have anything to add. 11:30 AM Overall, this article oozes with excellent craftsmanship, like a table where all the pieces are just so well put together. There are very obvious sections for the introduction, the inciting questions, the build-up, the payoff, and the cliffhanger that reading each one just felt right. It felt like I was achieving small milestones as I moved through the piece, rather than just grinding my patience against another 11:30 AM sentence and another sentence and another sentence as I tried to get through the peice. 11:30 AM *piece 11:31 AM <~barredowl> yeah. 11:32 AM My final thoughts: It was incredibly wholesome, as expected of WWS. It also had a tiny bit of a mystery to an outsider doing a read into WWS drafts 11:33 AM <~barredowl> yeah. apologies i can't really pull this conversation forward, i'm just... not at all familiar with this canon and i'm still trying to find my own footing. 11:33 AM barredowl: that's okay. Its actually useful to have an outside point of view I think 11:34 AM <~barredowl> okay, i think that's mostly it. anybody have anything to say before we wrap things up for this talk 11:34 AM <~barredowl> ? 11:34 AM Like I think the more I think about this, I think each piece is meant to be read more of a seperate thing on their hubs 11:34 AM format wise I mean 11:34 AM <~barredowl> i suppose 11:35 AM Nope. This is definitely my favorite of the series so far. I still do think that this takes qntm's rule in the worst way possible, since the pieces rarely overlap and feel just like random stabs in the story rather than a single line. 11:36 AM Cause what I notice is that red is seeing this after reading the whole series so far, where as barred and the others have completely different reactions to this