Also I never had a child in the game so playing as same wouldn’t be for me🥺… please write the vampire book
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Ohh Sam as a protag, interesting
I’m more interested in Bait as a game but this is intriguing too!
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Elena, just as Aletheia says: whatever you decide to write will be something I will be happy with.
I still feel there is a lot to explore in your Donor world, and it is always best when the tour is conducted by the author rather than dictated by others.
Whatever you decide to do, even if it is nothing, you will be supported. 
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You guys are the absolute best. 
I’ll keep this thread posted when I’m ready to take on another project.
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Well I didn’t get the sam route and bait isn’t for me
Did you just say readers have “way more insight” than the author into the author’s own creation?
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Insight, maybe. “Way more insight”? I doubt it. And I don’t accept that it’s always the case that the fan has more insight into a song, either. Look how many people still haven’t figured out that “Every Breath You Take” isn’t a romantic love song or that “Born in the USA” isn’t a feel-good patriotic anthem. As for your bystander/perpetrator, that’s … a really bad example, given how notoriously unreliable eyewitness testimony is.
I do agree that it’s good for authors to listen to what their fans have to say - but they are the authorities over their own worlds. They are the ones who have to spend hours of hard, and sometimes tedious, work fulfilling that creative vision.
You’ve made it clear what you’d like to see. Others have made it clear what they would like to see. Ms. Hearty has promised to take everyone’s ideas into consideration, but ultimately she needs to do what she feels is most true to her personal well-being, her creative drive, and the characters and world she has created. Repeating over and over again what you want is no longer providing useful feedback.
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While this is true, as far as accepting and using feedback, you as a creator have the vision, skills, and know-how to create the work in the first place.
Elena is our eyes, our soul, and our heart in learning about her creation.
To try to take her vision as your own as a fan and become the eyes, soul, and heart of her creation is taking her creation from her and denying her ownership of her creation.
Everyone in this community knows I encourage authors to listen to feedback and take what they hear and use what they can to improve.
Elena, in my experience, does this very well, and I have faith in and believe in her to execute her vision to its greatest potential.
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It’s been so long since I checked in here, but a game about Sam would be delightful. I’ve always had a soft spot for “child of previous MC continues the story” type of media, because while it’s related to the previous piece of media, it’s also independent enough to stand on its own legs.
However, it is kind of risky because it’s going to have to meet the same kind of greatness as the previous media, or it risks riding the coattail of the previous media too hard (see for example: Boruto). It also risks “ruining” the previous MC for people (like for example, Harry Potter).
But people change, especially when they grow older and become parents. If you really do consider making a Sam game in the future, I’m on board. Especially considering the potential comedy if Sam is like completely oblivious of her messed up circumstances, “yeah so I was raised by murderous vampires in my early childhood but honestly, it wasn’t THAT bad”.
Although, having the option to play a self-aware Sam would also be kind of funny and heartbreaking. I’m curious to see how Sam would handle that kind of trauma, considering how well you write dark topics (duh, I mean you’re THE Elena, author of Donor).
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Not even sure where to begin. But here goes…
First, I 100% agree that once a work of fiction is published, the characters belong just as much to the readers as they do to the author. And I love receiving feedback - either positive or negative - because it means someone cared enough about the story to share their thoughts. That’s huge.
I haven’t encountered a single suggestion that I didn’t like on this thread (really!!), and I tried to incorporate as many as I could when crafting the game. I couldn’t use all of them, however. Not because they were “bad” ideas, but simply because I wouldn’t be the best person to execute them.
My novels (all two of 'em!) follow a 5 act structure (approximately 2 chapters per “act”), which is honestly the only way I know how to organize a story. So my next project would need a suitable conflict to fit this structure, and it would need to be something I found personally compelling enough to write about in the first place. And, by and large, the stories I find most compelling are ones that feature unexceptional people in exceptional situations.
That doesn’t mean I won’t wake up some morning in the next few months with an amazing story idea that features the MC as a vampire, but the conflict would have to be exceptional for me to be interested enough to follow through. The same could be said when it comes to me writing romance. 
Hope that makes sense!
@AletheiaKnights @Eiwynn @Fay @Jender
Thank you so much for your amazing support. 
Just seeing your names on this thread makes me smile.
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You’re welcome, and as @Eiwynn said the other day, you have our support no matter what you do next - you’ve already given us some amazing work and we’re forever grateful. Plus, you’re one of the most consistently awesome people on a forum full of some of the awesomest people I know - seriously, you’re like a ray of sunshine, if I didn’t know better I never would have guessed you had a talent for writing charismatically sadistic characters. 
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Just a heads-up, one of the rules of this forum is abiding by the decisions of the moderators. If you have a problem with a moderator’s decision, there are ways of dealing with that, but reposting the thing you already posted that got deleted and taunting them to delete your post again is definitely not it.
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I’m not a moderator. So far as I can tell I wouldn’t have the ability to delete your posts even if I felt it were my place to do so.
I was doing you a favor, believe it or not. You clearly either haven’t read the rules, didn’t understand them, or decided they don’t apply in this case, and I strongly recommend you read them and take them to heart. I didn’t flag any comments because I disagreed with your viewpoint. I didn’t flag your comments that were deleted earlier, I flagged your comments just now because you’re breaking the forum rules. If you were willing to agree to disagree in a civil manner, so would @Eiwynn and I - we both do it all the time around here - but breaking the rules and deliberately baiting people is a good way to get yourself suspended or banned.
P.S. DMs are flaggable, too.
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@Elena_H – I am happy to be a fangirl of yours!
You deserve the support you get through people like @AletheiaKnights , @Fay , and @Jender .
I also appreciate your approach to feedback and fandom. Other authors can learn from your example, in my opinion.
@AletheiaKnights is correct in saying it is okay for people to disagree and to agree to disagree.
What happened in this thread over the past couple of days went beyond that and entered into the breaking of rules and terms of service territory. This is being addressed by the moderation team, even as this is written.
Let’s return Elena’s thread into a place where we fans can express our support and our appreciation, for both the author and her works, and put the other stuff behind us.
.
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Didn’t realise this game had a thread! First CoG I bought! After spending years re-playing Alter-Ego I played this one, the mini-games were fun even if I died a bunch from them!
Adore the Sam ending so much! Felt just the right balance of fucked up and sweet and if there is ever a game involving Sam I’d love it. Genuinely impressive how well built up the world felt given you spend most of it in one location and the characters were brilliant! Had a lot of fun exploring the different routes and seeing just how bad things could get.
Also the entire sequence with the other woman as they debated who was it and then the bit in the crem were so tense! Haven’t felt as stressed as I did then during any of the other CoG games!
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God, I would love to see Sam as the next MC. I feel like it would be such a wild story, though I can’t imagine Paul and Richard being the antagonists that time around. Unless it revolved around her realizing what messed up crap they were into.
But honestly, I’d love anything you wrote. You’re such a funny, talented writer and I come back around here to check out this thread and see if anything has changed.
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Played the game a lot yesterday and today. Got most of the endings. It was a fun read. The Sam ending was my favorite, but they all had something “nice” about them. Gotta read the novel sometime next week. Anyway, great job.
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OMG you too! This forum really is the best.
Ugh I so don’t deserve this but I’ll take it. 
Thanks again for everything - your support, your feedback, your outlook… just being there. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.
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Aww thank you so much @Hightower! Lol and apologies for all the mini-games… went a little nuts there 
So glad you enjoyed the game @Affchan! And I can’t remember if I’ve also got free links to the original novel up top, but hit me up if you want a digital copy. Pretty sure it’s also free on Kindle Unlimited.
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I’ve still got a lot work to do putting an outline together, but this is definitely the front runner. I promise to keep everyone posted.
And holy shit, thank you @FoxalypticWorld! I literally don’t have words… always puts a smile on my face to see you in this thread.
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