An informal chat on how (or if) to replace Interactive 8th Year (Patreon)

So with the poll for the final chapter of Interactive 8th Year nearing its end, this seems like a decent time to talk about what we do once it's done.

I've talked about this before, but I feel like that story kind of lost its steam towards the end as far as keeping a healthy number of nominations coming in, especially in comparison to the other polls we run here. The number of votes never really dipped, but the nominations definitely did. That's why I'm consulting those of you at the Nominator and Snapshot tiers to get your thoughts on what to do in the post-Interactive 8th Year period. Whatever we do, I want it to be something that will have steady interest from you.

February will be a Harry Potter general prompt poll in that spot, sticking to the monthly tradeoff we've been doing there where one month that slot is filled by Interactive 8th Year and the next it's an HP general prompt poll. But what will we do with that slot in March? I've got a few general ideas in mind as to how we can handle the schedule going forward, and I'd like to hear what you think of them.

A) We don't really replace Interactive 8th Year at all, and the HP general prompt poll just fills that slot every month instead of every other month.

B) We attempt a new interactive story where each successive chapter builds off of the previous ones just like 8th Year and hope it can maintain interest. Maybe we try something with a bit more of a plot to it as opposed to 8th Year which was pretty much pure smut (though undoubtedly there would still wind up being tons of sexytimes.) Possibly it could be something in a post-Hogwarts setting, where Harry is an auror on an investigation? That's just an idea off the top of my head; we can discuss other potential settings if people like this option, and of course any of you can suggest one as well.

C) We do a story with a general established premise, but it runs as more of an anthology where each chapter/poll is self-contained rather than having to work off of the ones that have come before it.

I actually have an idea along these lines that I've been kicking around in my head for several months now, wherein Harry becomes 'master of death' after living his life, and this power basically allows him to become an immortal 'watcher' of the multiverse. He would be given the power to intervene in any world at any given moment, but once he did so he would lose his memory of this power and live the rest of his natural life span in that world. Only after he died and returned to his 'watch post' would he remember his power, and then the cycle would begin again as the next chapter would cover a different 'life' that was unrelated to the previous one.

To give you an example of how this might work: say one month the poll winner is Harry traveling to Westeros to stop Daenerys Targaryen from becoming an evil dictator. He makes the choice and appears in that world remembering nothing but this goal, becomes a dragon rider, marries her and rules with her, etc. Maybe the nominator writes something about sex on the Iron Throne or something. After he lives out that life he returns to his post, and the next poll is won by an HP AU where Susan Bones is the Girl-Who-Lived and he supports her as her best friend and eventual lover. They’re two parts of the same anthology, but they’re connected only by the general concept.

My basic thought here is that this would lend itself well to crossovers, AUs, traveling to different points in time, etc, so it would offer nice variety while providing something different than just doing the HP general prompt poll every month. And this format would also mean that each chapter would reset fresh and nominators could come up with whatever scenario they liked without needing to worry about any chapter that preceded it.

I’d love to hear what you all think about any of these potential options, any suggestions you might have to offer, potential ideas of your own, etc. Ultimately you’re the ones who would be submitting the nominations for the polls no matter what we do going forward, so I want to go with something that you’re interested in. You can give me feedback here in the comments or privately by whatever means you generally communicate with me. And again, don’t hesitate to offer up your own ideas if you have any.