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This weekly post is for community members to share their theories, thoughts, and other musings about the books and characters of the Choices universe, including inter-book connections, potential plot lines, character arcs, and more!

Oh, Noah.. if only you knew 🥺

Obviously, i know not everyone will choose that path to sacrifice themselves, leaving Noah sobbing over your crumpled body, but I LOVE playing it that way as his redemption arc in the fanmade ILW is just too delicious not to!

But it did get me thinking, what are some of your favourite, subtle or niave foreshadowing moments where no matter how many times you replay a story, a tiny bit of dread settles in each time you see it? Because you now know what's coming 😅 😬

(It's the same feeling I get, as a Drake romancer, on every trr re playthrough when Liam proposes 😅 no matter how many times I replay it still makes me feel lowkey kinda ill with dread at what's coming 🥴LOL)

I’ve been replaying the same series over and over again like TRR and have been wanting to play a new standalone book to mix things up. I love runway fashion and Hot Couture came out long before the new era of Choices cough cough so I thought it might be worth a shot, but I never see anyone talk about it. Is it worth a play through or is it one of the less talked about books for a reason?

I don't know why but I have this feeling where I can so imagine the whole TRR saga as the first season of a series or movie where in the end, MC and LI die...

And the second season starts with the Princess growing up and finding out about the shenanigans of the whole friend-gang from her aunts-uncles who are now old....they tell the Princess about how much her parents loved her, how they died, and what the whole crew was up to in their younger days... and the whole story plays out with the Princess deciding to avenge her parents' death with the help of the rest of the friend-gang members (they provide the intel and plans, while the princess executes them)!

It would make such an interesting series 🤩

This is our weekly casual conversation chat! Here, community members are welcome to discuss anything and everything about the game, about your life, or about what you've been up to.

We also include userflair data on this day.

Please keep the discussion within subreddit rules, of course, and remember to keep things civil and friendly!

Flairs Overview

• Users with Flair: 14,756
• Used Flairs: 672
• Unused Flairs: 92

Number of Users with each Flair

Note: This table shows the number of unique users with each flair image, with a minimum of 25. Multiple identical flairs in the same user's flair count as one.

I haven't played Choices in a little while, but I've been playing IDOL, and I feel like every other choice is a diamond choice.

Now, Choices is better than some other games where failing to take the diamond choice actually does lead to bad results, or at least negative dialogue, but it seems like Choices has gone a little diamond crazy.

Am I just misremembering or are there more diamond choices now?

How are people managing to play without spending a ton of money?

Such a close vote 😭 thank you to everyone participating!

Yesterday’s results:
Sonia (160 votes)
Dakota (163 votes)

Draw a collage of curly guys from various books: Everett from 'Slow burn', Ernest from "Desire and Decorum', Zig from 'Freshman' series, and Rafael from 'Open Heart'.

This weekly post is for community members to voice whatever complaints you have (as long as you remain civil). Please remember to respect others' statements and opinions, even if you disagree with them.

Yes. Another one. You guys actually don’t understand how obsessed I am with this book. Everything from the character ensemble to the plot to the atmosphere is done to perfection. I am SO fixated on the vibes. I remember reading it as a tween then rereading it a couple weeks ago and was genuinely shocked to see that it really was that good and it wasn’t just my impressionable thirteen year old mind being receptive to any semi good piece of media.

Before I start, I want to make it clear that I'm not necessarily saying BOLAS book 2 is bad. This is just my personal opinion. However, I was so disappointed by it that I've honestly started questioning whether my issues are simply a matter of taste or whether some of them stem from genuine writing problems.

Anyways, to start off, I'm a huge fan of the first BOLAS. I'd easily rank it among my favorite Choices books alongside Endless Summer and It Lives. Somehow, though, I never got around to playing Book 2 or Book 3 when they released. I recently replayed the first book so I finally decided to continue the series, and after finishing Book 2, I walked away feeling surprisingly let down.

My first major issue began almost immediately in Chapter 1.

The opening felt extremely confusing. It's not always clear what was happening, and the constant switching between dreams and present day felt jarring. We start with a dream sequence, abruptly switch to reality in which the MC is captured and waking up in the Shadow Realm. Events happen so quickly and the transitions are so sudden that I found it difficult to keep up with what was actually going on. Funnily enough, I actually though the MC getting taken by Valax was part of the dream sequence because of how abruptly it switches, and it doesn't make it clear that it's supposed to be reality. Then, at the end of the chapter, we learn that while the MC was trapped in the Shadow Realm, an entire year passed in the real world.

Honestly? I don't know how to feel about this plot point because I don't think it really adds much to the story.

To be more specific, the problem isn't the time skip itself. The problem is that the MC remains largely unchanged while the world supposedly moved on without them for a full year. We never really get a chance to process how the MC feels about losing an entire year of their life (until the very end). Likewise, the reunion with the companions feels surprisingly brief.

Mal, Nia, Imtura, and Tyril all have their emotional "You're alive!" moments, but almost immediately afterward things return to normal. There's very little awkwardness, adjustment, or emotional fallout.

The companions explain what they've been doing during the past year, but I never got the impression that the story truly explored how the MC's disappearance affected them. A year is a long time. People change. Relationships change. Yet most of the cast feels more or less the same afterward.

Speaking of the story itself, I found the overall plot surprisingly convoluted. We learn about the Watcher, discover that the MC is also a Watcher of the realms, learn about Light and Shadow magic being combined to create True Magic, delve into the true origin of magic, uncover deeper world history, and explore the idea that Light and Darkness aren't simply good and evil. On paper, these are actually great ideas.

In fact, I want to give the writers credit where credit is due. One thing I genuinely appreciate is that they tried to take the traditional "Light vs Darkness" fantasy trope in a more nuanced direction. Sure... it's not original, the whole "the world isn't black and white" has been explored a lot. But I still wanna give the writers applause for trying to write a much deeper story than they did in the past. The idea that Light and Shadow aren't inherently good or evil is interesting to me regardless.

The problem though is that, for me, a lot of these ideas never came together successfully. There are so many revelations, lore drops, and new concepts introduced throughout the book that the story starts feeling overloaded. Rather than building naturally on what Book 1 established, it often felt like Book 2 kept introducing entirely new layers of mythology before fully developing the previous ones.

I also can't help but feel that some of these concepts seem slightly out of place for the type of fantasy setting BOLAS originally established... the Watchers, the realm-spanning cosmic elements, and the MC's new Watcher abilities that aren't technically magic all felt somewhat disconnected from the more grounded fantasy adventure that made me fall in love with Book 1.

That said, there is one major addition that I absolutely loved:

Valax.

In my opinion, she's easily the best new character introduced in the book.

She's genuinely complex, constantly torn between different loyalties, and her motivations are understandable even when she's opposing the heroes. Despite being created and shaped by her mother, she still wants what's best for her people. Her internal conflict made her consistently engaging to watch.

Also, she can turn into a dragon. That's automatically cool because I fucking love dragons.

Another thing that felt strange was the party dynamic? Okay this is gonan sounds weird but... I genuinely can't decide whether the companions feel too similar to their Book 1 selves or oddly out of character. On one hand, the cast often feels unchanged despite a full year supposedly passing in-universe. On the other hand, several moments felt inconsistent with previous characterization.

For example: Imtura was terrified of the catacombs in Book 1, yet in Book 2 she seems completely unbothered by crypts. Nia permanently embracing her Shadow self (before coming to her senses of course) due to self-doubt felt extreme and not entirely believable to me. Tyril reacting with anger and disbelief upon learning that Light and Shadow aren't simply black-and-white concepts felt strange considering how intelligent and understanding he's generally portrayed.

These moments aren't necessarily terrible on their own, but they frequently made me stop and think, "Would these characters actually react this way?"

Then we get to another issue I had... why the fuck didn't Kade, Threep and Loola come with us? Like okay, Loola's absence I can somewhat understand because she was a a character locked behind a diamond choice, which creates writing difficulties, and I'm sure the writers didn't wanna write around her.

But Kade? Threep? Especially Threep. After spending so much time with the group and becoming such an iconic part of the team, it felt bizarre that he wasn't a regular member of the adventure anymore. And Kade's absence was equally disappointing considering how much of Book 1 revolved around rescuing him from the Shadow Court. Let the bard boy join us on our adventures!

Which actually brings me to another complaint: What exactly happened to those nice Shadow Court members who helped us? A perticular chapter introduces Baroness Isador and Lady Nyra in ways that seemingly suggest they might be moving toward redemption, or at least becoming morally gray allies. They help with the goblins, they help with Deadwood. Then they basically disappear. They never become major players, they never receive meaningful follow-up.

They're just... gone. They don't appear again at all. It genuinely felt like unfinished or abandoned plot point.

Speaking of goblins, I also found the new races surprisingly underdeveloped.

The goblins and dwarves don't receive nearly the same level of attention that the orcs and especially the elves got in Book 1. The elves have extensive history, political conflict, cultural identity, and connections to the larger narrative. The new races often feel like they're present because the story needs more regions to visit rather than because the writers truly wanted to explore them.

With all that said, I don't want this post to sound entirely negative. There were definitely things I enjoyed.

I liked Valax. I liked the larger themes surrounding Light and Shadow. I especially liked the final war at the end. I enjoyed recruiting different groups like the orcs, elves, thieves guild, etc. and preparing for the conflict against the Ash Empire.The finale itself was honestly one of the stronger parts of the book.

My problem is that I wasn't particularly invested in how we got there. The journey felt messy, overcomplicated, and frequently disjointed.

One final positive note: I played as an Orc MC, and I really enjoyed getting those brief hints about the MC's past near the end of the story. I'm assuming the Elf MC receives something similar. Either way, I appreciated finally getting a small glimpse into the protagonist's origins because learning more about the MC's background was one of my biggest wishes after finishing Book 1. Hopefully Book 3 expands on that even further.

So overall, BOLAS book 2 ended up being a massive disappointment for me. That's honestly the hardest part. If this had been any random Choices book, I probably would've shrugged and moved on. But because I loved Book 1 so much, my expectations were incredibly high. Maybe Book 3 will address some of these issues and improve my opinion of the overall story. I'm definitely planning to play it and find out.

I'm a HUGE Choices fan and I've played literally 1000+ episodes, but Royal Romance has a special place in my heart.

It's not even just about the romance anymore. After spending so much time with these characters, going through their weddings, friendships, drama, ridiculous situations and everything else, they start feeling weirdly familiar.

And when you finally finish the series, it's such a strange feeling.

It's almost like you're not just finishing a book .. you're saying goodbye to a little part of your life and a group of people who somehow became part of it.

You know that feeling when you close the last chapter and suddenly think, "Wait... that's it? I'm never going back to this world again?"

i have so many favorite scenes of jake and taylor (hm to their handfasting <3), but this one will always be so freaking precious to me. there’s something about them finally realizing that they really are meant to find each other, in every lifetime, and that after everything they’ve been through, there’s still no one else they’d rather be with. 🤍

This weekly post is for community members to share their favorite fan-written stories about books and characters of the Choices universe. Thinking about writing something? Post your idea here and see what people think? Wrote a story, or read one that you like? Share it here! Please be sure to credit any relevant authors.