Firstly, thank you for reaching out! This is the kind of response I was hoping to get a lot of because I need all the feedback I can get. I want to try to cover everything in your reply, so I will go through it consecutively.
In my planning stage of this IF, I did have a 50-50 stat bar in personality that was a Defiant/Compliant stat. I chose to remove it because I wanted the Flower Power bar to account for all aspects and renditions of a hippie mindset. Flower Power options arenāt inherently Hippie choices, they just give you Hippie-esque points. The locked and loaded Hippie will be set in action when youāthe readerāmake the concrete decision to be a Hippie.
Dress and optioned character-traits such as meditating, smoking, drinking-tendencies etc, will always be optioned choices throughout. Even if you decide to be a Hippie, these choices arenāt determined by your identity as a Hippieāif anything it is the other way around.
(I did battle with this for a while, so I did in part expect this question, but I was mostly not expecting my IF to do this well and hoped no one would notice to be entirely honest. But I have tried my hardest to make this as complex and nuanced as possible.)
The main middle-ground that I introduced much later to tackle this has been Smart/Ignorant options, which are not indicated like Flower Power points are. Smart choices are indicative of general knowledge but also political awarenessāand/or ability to contribute in conversation with other characters. These will not have any implications in the Prologueāthe Prologue is strictly introductory to the story and a build-up of who your MC may grow to beābut these choices will mildly come into force in Chapter 1.
Smart stats and Flower Power stats will work together in order to enable political action taken by your MC. Albeit rarely, there will be options to be a blissfully ignorant Hippie where I can incorporate as suchāitās just a matter of keeping that Smart stat above 50! Hopefully this clears up your question. If not, feel free to reach out again and I will try my hardest to clarify where I can!
Youāll love the first chapter! Lots of Penn and lots of the film industry world.
Not a mistake! But a great spot. I debated when I was writing to leave it as soprano for Kai, because I know there is some controversy in terms of men being referred to as sopranos due to the fact the sound isnāt the same as womenās. In the end, I decided to forfeit ācountertenorā and keep it as soprano voice since I wanted Kaiās voice to still be quite similar to Kayaās; I essentially, decided it made enough sense as is and didnāt want to overcomplicate the coding.
Thank you for pointing that bug out; that has been the biggest spot yet! I have fixed it, so hopefully it should work nowācross fingers!
In general, your response has been so astute; somehow, it feels like you clocked a lot of my decision-making throughout the writing process in a way I did not expect to happen at all. Scary! But a blessing! Thank you so so much! Also, sorry for such a long-winded answer!
