Alcyone and the transmedia narrative structure

“Cheap, deep, or massive-audience, pick two.” P.106

I intend on going cheap and deep with the Alcyone project. After all, this is a locally focused narrative and I lack a large budget that a marketing department would have at its disposal. Given that she’s a pretty defined character in my head, and one that I have written works with before, she already has a back story and distinct attitude.

“If you background and strength lie in text, then stick to that. Focus on books, blog posts, emails, and updates on social media.” P. 109

Text will likely be my main means of interaction with the audience, as I don’t know very much programming at this point. I may record some audio posts, but if we’re pairing with theater students, I may select an actor to portray Alcyone. I will write up some of her hallucinatory encounters as journal entries and perhaps a few to be performed. It will be for the viewer to determine if Alcyone really have supernatural sight or is simply experiencing hallucinations due to her neurological condition. (She has temporal lobe epilepsy, and seizures can manifest in a number of ways, from feelings of déjà vu and jamais vu, as well as sensory perceptive effects.)

With regards to redundancy discussed on p. 123, Alcyone will communicate frequently with other members of MAPI, partially because having moved recently to Morgantown and run away from her previous connections in life (her parents and doctors), she doesn't have very many friends aside from Fachtna. While she enjoys hanging out with the monster in her closet, his hobbies of bad television and trolling the neighbors only provide so much entertainment and interaction for her. Alcyone is kind of a lonely person. Her desire to reach out may have her grabbing for a number of story elements, or the Chekov’s guns,  just so she feels less alienated. On this note, I may have her interact with audience members through social media for this reason as well. Hopefully I would have the opportunity to get players to mine information from her as discussed in social engineering challenges on p. 143.