HUB post for Circe's Favor CYOA Bidding

Happy Thursday everyone!

Today is going to be the first day of bidding for the new CYOA series, ‘Circe’s Favor’. In the post below I’m going to cover the overall process along with outlining what needs to be sent and where if you’re interested in submitting a character. While I try to cover all my bases if you do have any questions do feel free to ask and I’ll be happy to help.

As mentioned previously, the first five (5) slots will be open to my Patrons only. Once those slots are filled and the bidding is opened to more people, the same rules will apply. I’ll be taking bids as direct emails to this address: katemarquetCYOAsit@gmail.com . Messages should include the character’s information, a bidding name you want to use, and bid amount (in dollars $ US) formatted like will be shown below. All slots will start at $50 and bids can be made in increments of $5. You’re allowed to keep bidding until you wish to bow out or are that highest bidder. The highest bidder as of the deadline will win that slot for their approved character. The winning bid amount and bidder will then be posted before moving onto the next slot.

For the first round of bidding, I’m going to set an end time of noon (EST) on Monday the 21st of February. Going forward for future slots, this time period may be reduced. This longer period for the initial slots will hopefully allow for the fact that all will be presenting their characters for initial approval and I’ll have to go through each. Once you have a character that is approved, you can focus solely on bidding. Even if you don’t win a particular round of bidding, you can bid for another slot with that same character without the need of getting it approved again. If you win one (1) slot and would like to bid on another, you can use a new character. However there will be a limit of two (2) slots per bidder in order to ensure we have a wide range of participation.

I will keep both this post updated with the current highest bidder and bid. This will be the same for every slot and I will make sure this information is kept as up to date as possible.

If you have the winning bid, I will notify you and from that time you will have 48 hours to make payment for that slot via PayPal. If payment is not received by this time then the slot will go to the next highest bidder. If you win one slot and plan on bidding on another, payment for the first must be made before the second bid can be placed.

Once all twelve slots are filled, I’ll announce the full cast and then take some time to formulate the first chapter of the story, which will introduce the first group of contestants, to have it ready by late March/April. Then the story will continue exclusively on my Patreon with voting to determine the outcome of the story and characters. Once the story has completed, the finished piece will be assembled as a novel to be self-published with all winning bidders along with Patreons in the related tier and up receiving a copy of the complete story for free. So to be clear, you DO NOT need to be a Patreon of mine, or continue to be, in order to participate in the bidding. If you want to have some control of the story’s direction, read each new chapter as it debuts, or discuss the story as it unfolds with others, then being a Patron would be the way to go.

So to be clear, winning a slot entitles you to:

1) Having your approved character added to the ‘Circe’s Favor’ story.

2) Once the tale is complete, receiving a free copy of the finished story.

One thing I want to make clear to any potential bidders is that you have to be fine with two extremes in a story like this. The first being that your character may not make it past the second chapter. The other is that the character makes it to then end in (mostly) one piece. The amount of money bid for a slot will have no bearing on a character’s chances so far as the story goes. If you’re going into this with a specific or an expected outcome for your character(s), you will probably be disappointed. This is because I want to keep the story unpredictable while allowing the voters to really control the direction of things. So if you would be uncomfortable or unhappy with your character in either of those extreme cases, or not getting a particular transformation, this may not be the story for you. If you are totally fine with this or love the idea of not knowing what’s coming, then I will at least promise to make sure no one has any cheap sort of “off screen” transformation. I will be aiming to make every character and chapter and choice matter.

As for the characters you’ll be bidding with, I’ve mentioned having an “approved” character and what I mean by that is simply one that works within the given world, which is one effectively the same as our current reality. To that end, the only real limits are:

- Be human.

- Aged between 18-70.

- Be believable.

The first two points are self-explanatory but for the third, what I mean by believably is someone that could reasonably exist in our world. That means a character with no flaws, perfect body, IQ of 5,000, and a photographic memory isn’t going to work because they’re not believable and quite honestly, they sound boring.

So with that said, the format I’ll be looking for when it comes to character bios is:

- Full Name.

- Age.

- As detailed physical description of the character as you can give. Things like height, weight, gender expression, or a limp qualify here. The more the better. Added visual references are awesome too. ^^

- General personality traits. Feel free to list adjectives here, including both the good and bad of your character. Also, read the first chapter in order to get an idea of the situation the character is starting off in when framing traits.

- Basic backstory.

- Useful skills the character might posses.

- Reason for competing. If the cureall shot, explain who it would be for and if the money, explain what they want to spend it on.

- Transformations you DO NOT want happening to this character. For anything completely off-limits. List shouldn’t be too long, given the story’s many possible outcomes.

- Transformations you’d like to happen to this character. The more options you list, the better.

- Character’s slogan or words they live by or them in a nutshell. A short sentence, quote, idiom, or something that you feel encapsulates your character.

-Bidding name. This will be used publicly and will show up in the case of you being the highest bidder. If you bid for two slots you will be using the same bidding name for both.

As for what sorts of transformations will be covered in the story, the plan is to focus primarily on full animal (with no complete mental death) changes as well as partial (anthro or furry) and gender swaps. I will be taking every winning bidder’s likes and dislikes into consideration as well.

One thing I will note from above as far as transformations you DO NOT want: while I can guarantee I won’t change a character into something from their DO NOT list, I can’t make the promise that it won’t appear in the story and potentially happen to someone else. Especially if that’s a transformation someone else likes. So if you don’t want a pig transformation occurring to your character, I’ll be sure to accommodate. But if someone else turns into a pig due to their preferences, try not to be surprised or angry. I’ll be doing my best to tow the line between all the winning bidder’s preferences and keeping the story unpredictable and entertaining.

Character sheets won’t be made public just so that certain details, like transformation preferences, won’t steer voter’s opinions or choices.  I’ll keep everything organized on my end as the storyteller and will try my best to keep characters true to what details you provided.

A few final, related points to keep in mind:

- I’m looking for a well-rounded cast of characters and while I won’t choose winning bids based on the approved character, you should have in mind things that make your character different. With a larger case, I’ll be breaking people into groups mostly based on personalities I think would make for good reading so having a lot of qualities is good.

- Especially in the first round or two, I’ll likely be dealing with a lot of character sheets so I might take some time to reply but I will be active throughout so I will get back to all. ^^

-If there is still active bidding between individuals when the deadline comes, I’m fine with keeping things going between those individuals until a winner is reached.

-In the case of matching high bids, as there is only one slot available at a time, highest bidders will be asked if they want to make a higher bid. If all high bidders keep their current bid, then I will take the one who made that high bid first as the leader as the tie-breaker.

-For any new round you bid, you will be sending a new email to the address rather than replying in a previous chain. If you didn’t win a previous round but would like to use an already approved character, just include the approved character information in the new message rather than replying in an ongoing chain which can get messy with possible multiple bids across several rounds.

-While the story is progressing and exclusive to the related Patreon tier and above, I won’t be answering email questions related to updates about your character, plans I may have for the story, or otherwise as the content is meant as Patreon bonus.

- While I can’t begin to give an estimate to a final word count for the story, ‘Dr Daring’ finished over 90k words so that should give a good idea. Also, I couldn’t begin to give a time frame for how long the story will take to complete since that’s very much up to how voting and the story goes. The aforementioned Daring story took a year and a half to reach the final vote for reference.

- With some experience from the last CYOA I have some new ideas and things I’m excited to try out with the story in an effort to keep things constantly moving and the end a mystery.

- The story itself mentions fifteen (15) contestants but only twelve (12) slots will be available. This is due to those last three spots being characters I’ll create with the purpose of rounding out each group personality-wise along with creating some fun conflicts.

- Future posts as slots come open will refer back to this original post as I won’t be including all these details each time. If you have any general questions or comments, feel free to reply to this post or message me directly.

- As slots close and new ones open, I’ll be posting updates on the site until all slots are filled. So keep an eye on my feeds if you’re interested in one of the slots as updates will come frequently this month.

Current Winning Bidders:

Slot 1: Eduardo

Slot 2:

Slot 3: 

Slot 4:

Slot 5:

-KM