I really, really enjoy the older chapters. They seem to come at great times when the current storylines are getting particularly stressful, so I appreciate them even more. However, I just don't want them to hinder further story progression. How do you feel about writing them? Are they a welcome escape or maybe too bittersweet?

I love them they give us a much better insight to the characters before the story began in 1067. Plus I enjoy seeing some characters in better graphics, genes, and clothes.

OMG, is this Alwy I'm seeing in the banner ???

~The Princess Ogive Get More Chapters Foundation : waiting for more karma~

Nimue (and Aelgifu who suggested it elsewhere), that's another reason why I wanted to do this chapter now: I thought we needed something fun and light-hearted for a change, and aside from a few brief, comical moments in upcoming dramatic chapters (à la the priestly "Mine is bigger than yours" conversation in the recent Alred meltdown / Malrua shocker chapter), I don't see ANYTHING in January. I'm trying to cut out all the fluff to get the story moving again, but for now the only chance of fun seems to be in the fluff. Or in a well-timed prologue chapter. (Note that "Getting us moving" also means "Getting us to spring and the arrival of The Fabulous Yware," whereupon bounteous floods of tap-dancing, jazz-handing humor are expected to break loose in the valley.)

Also, let's face it: the next Egelric / Finn chapter is going to be really difficult. Given the place we're at in Egelric's life story (and Finn's, for that matter), this chapter has to mark a turning point in their relationship. And furthermore they're both men, which means they can't just talk about their feelings... they have to express everything obliquely in grunts and nods and monosyllabic comments on totally unrelated subjects. Hugely challenging dialog to write. And these are... yes, I have to say... my two FAVORITE male characters right now. I owe them my absolute best writing. So I may be procrastinating a little.

(There's also the 4th Lotherian Anniversary on Sunday, which I have no idea how to celebrate otherwise than by briefly resurrecting Alwy. We'll see if I make it on time.)

Thanks for asking how I feel about these prologue chapters. I probably don't get as much out of them as you Prologue-Chapter-Fans do. Honestly, although I voted "OK once in a while", I am probably more in maruutsu's camp from a storytelling standpoint. We, who have read up to 1086, don't need them, and they only distract me and you from the current storylines. The current storylines are the ones that keep me up at night thinking. The past is behind us. I no longer hear the voices of Alwy and the other dead characters. Devin asks me "What would Elfleda do?" and I have no freakin' clue because Elfleda has been dead for so long that I don't even remember what she was like. I can't explain how my storytelling brain works, but it doesn't waste any time on nostalgia and "What Ifs", I'll say that.

However. I am also writing for people who haven't even discovered this story yet. For those people, the so-called Prologue Chapters are the first thing they're going to read, before they get dumped back into my nearly-four-year-old prose and more-than-four-year-old video card. I don't want to rewrite the whole story from the beginning, but I would like to establish a nice introduction to get people interested in the story and the characters. People who read Sims stories nowadays expect SO MUCH MORE than they did in 2005.

Any sane person would have started a new story by now (probably several) but we're all so attached to these characters that I just keep going with the same. I mean, there is a certain crufty "crazy cat lady" charm to a story with over two million words, 1700 chapters, hundreds of characters, published regularly over the space of four years... but it gets more and more intimidating for a new reader to jump into. You've read enough of my angsty hair-pulling ranting about how I can make this story more approachable and more readable, so I won't go on about that here. But it is one of the reasons why I have been adding these prologue chapters on occasion.

So I guess I will summarize my latest hair-pulling rant as follows.

Why do I write the prologue chapters?

• To provide a more compelling beginning to the story for new readers
• As squee-inducing "bonus content" for long-time readers
• To give us a break from a string of tense, dramatic chapters
• To retroactively "fix" some subtle problems, such as "Why did no one ever mention Leof if he was such a huge force in Sigefrith's life?"

Some reasons why you might think I write them, but which aren't true:

1. For nostalgia's sake
2. Because it's fun
3. To provide new information that you never knew but which saves my ass in the present

Other than seeing my beloved Matilda again, I don't get much out of this from a nostalgia standpoint. (See above.) Likewise, it's more fun to write NEW chapters with NEW storylines than to revisit the past. And for the third... I'm really trying not to do that. A few mentions of poor dead Leof, yes. Hints of Alred-Sigefrith jealousy, yes. OMG Iylaine's mom planted a magical bomb under the castle that is set to go off on Easter Sunday, 1086? No.

That's why I'm actually a little sorry I got us calling these things "Prologue Chapters". Since (1) I don't like prologues and (2) only the chapter literally titled "Prologue" is intended to work as a prologue. That chapter sets up new readers to expect something that old readers TOTALLY did not get. Namely: OMG ELVES! who knew that Sigefrith and the men were coming!

All of the subsequent, non-prologue "prologue chapters" are intended only to present information we already know in a more story-like format, rather than all those expository introductory chapters that existed in the beginning. That is all.

OK this is definitely looking like procrastinating, so I will try to go write some actual story now. Thanks for your comments, everyone.

You're right about Emmie! I forgot I have a potentially amusing (in an awkward, squirmy way) chapter with Emmie that's standing firm for January.

I should do another poll about the angst I think. I don't know how many back-to-back drama chapters people like to read. Except for Cubby's run-in with Gwynn the Wild Sow, there hasn't been much humor around here in... ages. To be honest, it probably wears ME down more than it does you guys. After writing a chapter like "Twilight's End" I feel wrung-out like an old dish towel. And after getting into Ris's head for a week, I feel like I need therapy myself.