Your Favorite MotA?

        

Guest post by "mythtress"
Whew.  Favorite is hard-- I fell in love with the story and the unfolding world.  The first is a great introduction, to the characters, the world, the whimsy and the magic...  The second must be loved for being turtles "all the way down", and an amazingly powerful catharsis, despite being both abrupt and brief.  The art and the writing worked well together in getting that through.  The third is just delightful, with great character development and some piquant satire.  The fourth, well, I do love a good creation story.  The fifth had lots of great opportunities for everyone to do what they do best, and its always fun to see a crew in action.  The bad guys' crew seemed like interesting characters in their own right, and the smooth accomplishment of the adventure ( if that's not an antiphrasis) was surprisingly well counterpointed by the rough emotional difficulty.  This was almost my pick for favorite for that reason.  I'm going to pick the sixth as my favorite, though, because even though this chapter's been a little focused on Chrys and Theresa, it feels like the story is really getting traction.  I love the exploration of the Fool, the sense of the card's meaning in the structure of the place.  I love the way Theresa very matter-of-factly sets Chrys up for doing what she wants.  I think that sense of traction is from a good balance of the whimsical with the creepy or powerful.  Yes.  That balance is at the root (ha ha) of everything I love about this chapter: the exploration with the "best equipment", Theresa's maneuver, the signpost, the poetry, the squirrel war... I honestly expected Mr. Myst and Mr. Eerie (mystery or eerie mist?) to be the same entity.  Still not sure they're not, somehow.
My least favorite was Chapter 4, in minor part 'cause i can't see Theresa choosing a strappy little dress for any reason -- where's she gonna put the gun?  But mostly because I love a good creation story and this one felt... incomplete.  Maybe it *is* incomplete and she's still gathering stories, but the presentation made it seem as though it were full and final...  Aspects of it I really liked, e.g. the Major Arcana being born from the dreams of the living (!); and others just didn't seem to click together, or click into place, or something...  I could go into length about the questions the story raised for me, but that might be better done in another comment, or an email... this seems to have run rather long already.

Submitted February 12, 2016 at 1:09AM

        

Guest post by "Seth"
My memory of most of the chapters is hazy or worse, so take this with a grain of salt.  I agree with KFox that chapter 4 was the low point, on the general principle that narratives beat infodumps.  My favorite is harder to choose, but I'm leaning toward 3, because the detailed sci-fi setting sticks out in my mind, and because I liked seeing Mandrake take a bigger role.

Submitted February 12, 2016 at 3:09AM

        

Guest post by "Gunsolo"
My favorites are chapters one and four.
I like world building and origin stories, as well as rescues, heists and other fun action stories. I also liked the Terminator-style robots in the Devil arcana.
Oh, and discovery of superpowers, those are always nice too.

I think my least favorite is chapter five.
I thought the pacing was off somehow, and I really didn't connect with the intruders. Not knowing anything about who they were, why they were attacking and what they were after didn't help either.
After all, heroes are only as good/interesting as the villains that they face, and Baron Sir an his lackeys (and that one glimpse of his boss) were not up to par with the other antagonists in my opinion.
I did like my cameo though.

I wouldn't call chapter five bad though, mind you. I just think it's not as good as the other ones.

I reserve judgement of chapter six until it's actually finished and can be seen as a whole.

I agree with JD that the hiatus was not fun.

Submitted February 12, 2016 at 6:03PM

        

Guest post by "SelenticSurface"
Chapter 5 is my favorite thanks to emotionally complicated heroics and epic foreshadowing...

Chapter 4 was probably my least favorite due to the (so-far!) unneeded origin story explication/exposition that seemed to go on forever... and the ~year long hiatus! But hiatuses happen, so I cannot really fault that...

Submitted February 13, 2016 at 5:44PM

        

Guest post by "Lukkai"
I'm having a real hard time choosing here...

I think that, if at all, chapter 5 will come out slightly on top. With chapter 2 being a close contender. Mostly for the character development visible in both. (Not that there was none in the other chapters. Those were just the two where it struck me the most.)
Can't really name a least favourite one.

Submitted February 14, 2016 at 12:22AM