A brief chat about comments

Hey folks!

I think I need to have a quick chat with you about some of the comments I've been getting as we've reached the climax of Volume 4.

What spurred me to write this particular post was a comment expressing frustration at the protagonists being "totally helpless," seemingly because the chapter ended with the antagonist telling them they were totally helpless.

Guys—you don't need to believe the bad guy when they say that. They're the bad guy.

I understand that frustration around cliffhangers can be tough to deal with, especially in serial storytelling where you can't go right to the next chapter and see what happens next. But the nature of storytelling requires that characters experience setbacks in order for their triumphs to be more exciting. It seems like the serialized nature of the story is giving some people strife. On tension-building chapters, I get pages of comments complaining about powerlessness or perceived plot holes that will be covered in future chapters, and then during chapters where the protagonists successfully triumph and make progress, those commenters return to silence, only to resurface during the next obstacle.

When these comments show up, they read to me as a lack of trust, and--at the risk of sounding conceited--I feel like I've given you reason to trust me.

I am happy to engage with critique of the story at a macroscopic level, but this is a recurring complaint that I flat-out disagree with. I have read MANY serialized stories that seem to give into the complaints their serial-experiencing audience furnishes, and while it may provide more satisfaction on a per-update basis, it hugely weakens them in the long accounting. Meaningful tension cannot be built; effective or long-term antagonists cannot be set up. It's one of my storytelling pet peeves to encounter a narrative where the protagonists cannot fail without backlash. I would go so far as to say it is my number one problem with serialized fiction. I used to never understand why authors would tell their stories like this, with the trajectory only ever up-up-up. Now I'm getting the same kind of comments and I see that part of it is peer pressure.

So here's the thing, gang, and I'm saying this out of love and the desire to give you the best story I can:

I cannot tell a story where the problems are resolved within the same chapter they're introduced. Stories need peril. They need to dip before they rise. Our heroes are not going to look cool without meaningful, scary danger to be cool against.

All I can request is that, before you post a comment of this nature, you take a beat, reexamine the flow of the story in its actual flow, and not the chopped-up flow in which you're perceiving it, and give me some time to land the arc that I am writing.

If experiencing this story on a per-update basis is giving you enough strife that you're making these complaints every time, you are harming your overall experience of the novel. I suggest you step away from it and read it once all the chapters are out. If you're monthly and upon reading this you decide that this is not the Patreon for you, DM me and I will refund you the latest month you paid.