I spent literally hours on the dialogue on this page (and the next, which is the final page of the Prologue.) True story. 🙂
Look below! We’re now at $165 towards the next bonus page!
Special thanks go out to long-time supporters Renee N. (who makes their second donation to The Young Protectors!), Marie G. (who makes their third donation to The Young Protectors!), Caroline O. (who makes their fourth donation to The Young Protectors!) & Vanessa B. (who makes their fifth donation to The Young Protectors!) and a warm welcome and grateful bow go out to new supporters Olga W., Desiree H., Jonathon B. & Amy R. for their generous donations over the last few days!
Big hugs go out to new friend of The Young Protectors Arista W. for their super-generous $25 donation!
Thank you all so much! 😀
In other news, there’s a new version of the Disqus commenting system out there. (I use Disqus for the comments on this site.) It has a bunch of cool features, such as real-time updates that let you know about new comments without having to refresh the page, a more sensible threading format that doesn’t shrink threads into spaghetti-thin strands, and a bunch of other nice things. But I’ve chosen not to upgrade yet. Why? Well, in part because I want a little more control over how things look and how comments are sorted by default. But mostly because the new system forces you to include a down vote button for each comment (in addition to an up vote button, of course).
***ACTIVATE SOAP BOX***
While I can see uses for it, I don’t like the idea of a “Dislike” button for comments. I don’t like the idea of a Dislike button that keeps a running tally of how many folks dislike a comment. And I especially don’t like that these down votes are completely anonymous, which I think leaves the feature open to abuse. But even if it wasn’t abused, I don’t like the tone it would give our comment section. Say what you will about the evils of Facebook, there’s a reason they don’t have a Dislike button. Now, I don’t think that Disqus should get rid of the down vote option for everyone (for some sites, it might be awesome), but I’d like the option to disable it for our community.
When I’ve written Disqus to ask them about making this feature optional, they’ve let me know they don’t have any intention to do that. There are apparently a lot of users who like the ability to down vote other commenters and those are the ones who have been giving Disqus feedback. So if you, like me, think that down voting should be something a moderator (like myself) should be able to optionally disable for their community, please let the folks at Disqus know using this Feedback form. Tell them that you are talking about the “Disqus 2012” upgrade and why you think down voting is something you would not want in your Disqus community. Perhaps include your contact info so they can follow-up with you. If enough folks share how they feel about this, they might just decide to listen.
Whether we succeed or not in this, I imagine at some point I will upgrade to the new system because it is so superior. (If you’d like to see what the new commenting system looks like, take a look at the comments under this blog post.) But, with your help, I’d like to at least try to change their minds on their inflexibility around the down voting option. Thanks!
***SOAP BOX — DEACTIVATED!***
So! Just one last page of this prologue and then we’re off to Chapter One proper!
This is mostly a silent page. Kyle watches The Annihilator go, touches his lip, looks at his hand… But I bet there’s subtext and stuff. What do you believe Kyle is thinking on this page?
EDIT 7/22/12 6:15 PM: DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! Holy cow! Thanks to your stunning generosity, the donation target has just been reached and that means there will be a bonus page this Wednesday, July 25th! It will be page 27, the last page of The Young Protectors Prologue. And that means this Saturday for the regular update I’ll be posting up the first page of Chapter One! Woot! You all ROCK! Hope to see you there!
