redorchids | Decisions, decisions...

So. Here's where things are right now.

The Ryden backstory is completed. (going from 6 years earlier up to 2 months before the murders start)
This story is kind of ridiculously romantic, hopefully in a good way. :)

The Joncer backstory is almost completed. (going from 2 years earlier up to 2 months before the murders start)
This story has a very unhappy ending in its current version, because it's only the first half of the entire Joncer arc (and if you've read Nightingale, you know that things between Spencer and Jon are pretty bleak as the murders take off).

The Spyro backstory is written up until Christmas 2008 (Murder arc starts September 2009) and is kind of on a slow upgoing trend, where the relationship is starting to work a little better after having been through quite a bit of twists and turns.

Now, the ENTIRE arc for this story (in my head) spans for about 4 years longer than the murder arc. Because hearts take time to heal and so on. And there are elusive killers to catch (which will go into the Pete/Patrick dynamic post-Nightingale a bit as well). So it's a total of 15 years all-in-all, which, yes, pretty huge.

The original plan, as you know, was to tell the rest of the Nightingale story in two mirroring parts, one intervowen with the Joncer backstory, one with the Ryden one. ~~And then probably do a sequel with what happens after the murders up until the ridiculously happy ending.~~ The difficulty with this plan, as I've discovered when trying to puzzle the murder story and the Ryden backstory together, is that there is already SO MUCH character stuff in the murder storyline for Panic that when you add the backstory to it, the murder mystery kind of gets swallowed by it. Which I'm not totally comfortable with. (Also the pacing gets totally fucked, and this way, none of the murder stories will have actual closure in the sense that you get to know what happens with the killer.)

So now I'm wondering if it wouldn't actually work better to do it the other way around: do ONE Panic mirror, that handles both the Ryden and the Joncer arc (and the Spyro friendship in the background), which starts at the first murder, goes through the events of Nightingale in its first part and then continues into the aftermath and merges with the sequel. Meaning the backstories of how everyone met would be stand-alone prequels.

On the plus side:

+ I think it would actually make the murder arc more cohesive, because there would be more room to concentrate on the CSI stuff and to make the victims actual characters and tell some pretty cool backstories there.
+ I'd be able to post the stand-alones way sooner, like ready-for-BBB soon. (probably post the Ryden one for BBB and the other two during the summer)

One the minus side:

- The mirror wouldn't have the same format as the Peterick version, and there would only be one of them (though probably twice as big as I have a lot of story still to tell in the murder arc).
- Both the Joncer and Spyro prequels would end in kind of crappy places, since they're only parts of the overall story and the resolutions in them come in later.

Basically, this is a very long, rambly post to ask: If the story format was changed, would it make you guys less excited about it? :)

Cast your votes...

And here's a pretty picture of Brendon. :D