Talk:Offline/Invite Beth as well

Great to see you adding pages to this story! Can't wait to see were you go with these two. I know you don't have much time to really write, but I'm curious how much you have written already that just needs clean up before posting?

Now for some nitpicking just because I'm combing through for details to use in my own contributions. As a reader I appreciate the ambiguity and like that we only know as much as Justice can piece together, but I want to make sure my writing won't contradict your unwritten/unrevealed cannon. So, some fact established on this page: Justice is "'basically' a teenager now", which I take to mean he's 12; Brayden is 9 or 10; Beth is 8.

I think it is rather significant if Brayden is 10 if Nicole is a year younger than Justice making her 11. That makes Brayden only a year younger than Nicole, which could introduce some interesting dynamics I might like to explore. That said, there is enough ambiguity so far that Nicole might actually be 12 like Justice and just off by enough months to be a grade lower and Brayden could in fact be 9, pushing their ages further apart.

In the opening, it is said Emma is "several years younger than [Justice]" and "[Brayden] looks as young as [Emma]". If Emma is 9, I wouldn't say 3 years is "several" years younger than 12, though maybe a 12 year old would. Then again, maybe Brayden isn't as young as Emma given that remark was based on a first impression from a distance and Brayden does seem to look younger than he is.

Sorry for drilling details out of this story when it intentionally has an unreliable narrator. If you can find time to add details to the Contributor's Guide I started, I would appreciate it.

--LukeJ (talk) 10:45, 1 January 2023 (CET)

I can appreciate the ambiguity might be frustrating when trying to piece together your own story but it is somewhat purposeful! It's true that kids often rank themselves hierarchically by age, especially when they are in a hurry to be older, but I like the flexibility that the ambiguity provides. Using allusion and subtext to help steer the mood of a scene not only allows the reader to fill in some of the gaps to make the story richer but provides more options later. So if there's an idea you want to explore then go right ahead! Any contradictions between branches can be chalked up to Justice not paying attention or someone lying or a number of other possibilities, unless it's something like "we're secret half-siblings".

I think 3 years is a huge gap to someone like Justice who is a bit superficial and wants to be seen as cool. It's not as if there's many people for him to impress out there in the woods, but it does come back to that social hierarchy thing. But referring to himself as "basically" a teenager was him mocking his cousins a bit. I could see him as 13 with Nicole being 12, Brayden 10 (and very immature, physically and otherwise) and Emma 9, but again feel free to bend that to your needs! I'll see if I can add to the guide today. --Villenia (talk) 19:25, 1 January 2023 (CET)