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Yeah I really don’t see any downside to making Ayvex and Nova (the crow), gender-flippable. I have never written flippable characters before, but I realize here that their names are already gender neutral, and really their bodies/forms wouldn’t have to change based on gender either (yes, a male falcon technically would be a bit smaller), so basically it just comes down to using a few pronoun variables. Their essential character traits won’t change based on gender. It seems like a lot of bang for the buck in this case.

Okay I will definitely dig into those quote mark issues.

I’m glad you’re liking the flow thus far. Subsequent days will be shorter, but I had a lot to establish in “Day 0.” And no, Sorin and Conk will stay gender-set. They aren’t romancable. Sorin is too elitist and old and would never be interested in an owl anyway, and Conk is your (tiny!) platonic sidekick.

And I’m glad you like Ayvex. I want this character to be the best villain I have written, and I think there is potential for that to happen.

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Okay I almost have Chapter 9 done. This week was not terribly productive due to other responsibilities but we’re entering “Summer Camp Season” in the Moser household on Monday, which means I can either sleep until 7 each day (yay) or wake up at 6 and have an hour of total peace and quiet to myself (also yay). Either way…yay.

And I’ve been watching a disturbing number of bird videos. These barn owls are some scary mofos. I think I seriously had a panic attack watching this.

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Glad to hear things are coming along though! And I must admit, they’d be scarier if they were Pigeons. Can you imagine a Pigeon screaming at you? I can.

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Actually pigeons would be very scary if they were just eagle-sized. They wouldn’t even have to scream (though it might help)

Imagine hoards of those bad boys dive bombing tourists in DC or New York. My youngest is already terrified of them. In Paris, we were eating burgers on the Champs-Élysées and they got so aggressive for our fries.

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Yeah that was me. Sorry bout’ scaring ya but them fries are GOOD.

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What’s really disturbing is the hissing/gassing noises in the background. Are those sounds from the owl? or from the guy recording this? Cuz honestly i don’t see the owl opening their beaks and letting all that hissing noise out. Without the hissing, i’d just be super interested in those owls’ defence stance

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Update is live! Chapters 8-9 wrap up the first 25%, or Act 1, of the story. Link is in the OP.

Both Ayvex and Nova (the raven prosecutor) are “gender flexible,” meaning the player/reader picks the gender of these characters, who are both potential romantic interests in a “slow burn” type of way. To be clear though, even though you pick these characters’ gender, you do NOT have to be attracted to them regardless of your gender preference. It took me a while to go back and code pronouns for Ayvex, but I think the result is totally worth it!

If anyone catches any errors, please bring them to my attention as I’d like to keep things as clean and debugged as possible all throughout the process.

I’ll update again when I finish Day 1, which will be Chapers 10-12. It might be a few weeks before that happens, considering I have the NarraScope conference this weekend!

And @Pigeon, we don’t mind ONE of you, or even two, but when you invite every pigeon you know to accost us, then yes we flee (with most of our fries)

@TheWarsOfStars, and yes that is absolutely the barn owls making those hissing noises. Barn owls use this distinctive hiss, coupled with the “leg extension” trick to intimidate enemies. In the novel version of Talon City, the MC was specifically a barn owl but I switched back to just “generic owl” for this project to give the reader the ability to imagine themselves as whatever kind of owl they like best.

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That is super interesting. Like how the northern owl will either enlarge themselves to intimidate other birds or shrink themselves to hide away from bigger owls.

btw I found some minor typos here and there along with a missed pronoun error in the new update

Spoiler alert
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Thanks so much for the catches! I’ll fix them for the next update. I swear I go over these files several times before I post updates, and thankfully CSide detects most spelling issues.

The only two that weren’t really “errors” were the mistakes made in the Statement of Misdeeds. Those are really intentional typos, showing how Conk struggled to perfectly copy Winthrop’s shaky writing, but…I’m thinking that inserting intentional typos is pretty tricky to pull off and probably just a bad idea. I can just have Conk say that it took her a while to decipher all the words.

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I might be misunderstanding Conk’s character, but given that the MC comments a handful of times on her competency as an assistant, it might be better to forgo the intentional errors but have Conk say some of it was largely illegible but she was able to piece together the missing words from context? Give her a nice little success moment, and emphasize her value to the MC a little more

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Yup I think that is the way to go. I need to keep showing why the MC hired Conk, given some of her limitations. Frequent displays of competence, with an occasional screw-up/flash of brilliance, should be Conk’s MO.

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Talon City is just taking a brief respite. If I don’t get around to posting more content in the next few weeks, I’ll temporarily close the thread.

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