I've been catching up on the two threads.
I have sympathy with your being upset by participants getting in your way, AC, but I think I agree with those who've said already that the motivations of both posters you've mentioned weren't intended to be made with any sense of ill-spirit - that's been my interpretation of their posts anyway.
I think, rather, that you may have been a victim of the format. Better control of the story as it went along would have been granted to you if you had worked it as a RPG, setting out rules and gameplay at the start and inviting FoLCs to volunteer to take on various characters. That way you would have been in charge and no one would have misunderstood the parameters of the project or stepped on your toes.
With the chosen format, however, I think it was probably inevitable that you would never have control over events and that participants would leap in as and when they saw fit. So there probably wasn't a lot you could do there to prevent control slipping from you, unfortunately. The only way you could make your wishes known to participants and keep control of the story flow was, unfortunately, to break character and start this thread. Which was a bit of a shame, but really I can't see that you had any other way to let your concerns be known, under the circumstances and within the limits of the chosen format.
It's a shame that some negative responses have dulled your fun with this one - I hope at least that those disagreeing with your breaking character were polite about their objections.
- and that it hasn't dented your enthusiasm or enjoyment too much. It's clear that those participating have enjoyed it and had a lot of fun with it.
LabRat
