Critique and Advice; the treadmill of adventuring.

Thanks a bunch for all the feedback. Just continuing the story on your own was what I figured the move would be, just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be committing some sort of social faux pas.

In retrospect I can really see how the prompt was poorly worded. My original thought process, iirc, for ending the update there was that I wanted to telegraph that I was planning on ending the scene so that readers would have a chance to ask/do anything that they wanted to at the last second before the dream actually ended. Also I figured that if the amnesiac was going to wake up anyway, it would be more fun to spend an update or three on a weird dream logic way to wake up than just writing 'and then you wake up'. Obviously that didn't end up playing out.

So I guess the problem is that I didn't realize it would come across as a situation where player input didn't matter. I should have been more explicit about my intent re: giving a last chance to do dream stuff. Like I said, looking back I can totally see how someone would come to Fogel's conclusion about lack of agency. And in the end no matter what the guy was waking up eventually. But on the other hand, the suggestion I did get made the waking up process- and what came after- take a totally different turn from what I set out expecting to write, so I can't say that the readers didn't actually have power.

Actually though, this discussion works a perfect springboard into a tangentially related topic I was wondering about! How do you reconcile character consistency with reader agency? For example, in my adventure, two characters are attempting to enter a city. There are lots of valid ways to try and do that, and other things to explore in the meantime, but ultimately- assuming that they don't fail completely which admittedly could happen- no matter what path they take the end result will be about the same. They'll be in the city. This is just by virtue of the fact that characters have goals and are unlikely to act in ways that would go against them.

Additionally, there's the matter of the fact that different in-universe personalities would react differently to suggestions, or even refuse some outright. That also limits how much effect the readers can have on a much more immediate basis.

So what are different ways of resolving this conflict? Personally I've kind of found that over time readers tend to give more 'in character' suggestions, so does that aspect of the issue just kind of resolve itself? What about the matter of long-term character goals- is it actually a problem at all or just a fact of certain styles of adventure?

I'd be interested in hearing other peoples' takes on the matter.
Edit: holy fucking shit this is a lot of text sorry