A preview of the Alcyone story

Where is Alcyone in development?

I feel that Alcyone is developing pretty well. She has a very distinct presence in my head, with a sardonic sense of humor and a haunted sensibility about her. I hadn't known that St. Valentine was the patron saint of epileptics, which may call for a post from Alcyone regarding her condition, her lack of a "normal relationship", how her perception of time and reality affects her relationships with other people, and maybe some insight into her dynamic with poltergeist buddy Fachtna, or even her desire to have as much pink colored cake as she could possibly eat. I will need to do more research on epilepsy as well. I have some outside knowledge since two of my siblings are epileptic, but medical accuracy is a point to check.
She'll have some trouble coming her way later on. I intend that some aspects of her past and the people she left behind in Pikeville will catch up to her. Her parents are actively searching for her, and want to bring her back to the church, even if she really detests this idea and everything the church stands for. Will they be able to accept that she is an adult? Do they think that her neurological condition is reason to always treat her as unable to know what is really best for her? Will they still love her knowing she is not a Christian or will they disown her? Considering how controlling and manipulative they've been, did they love her in the first place?

Things to keep in mind

I have found the Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling to be a valuable resource not only for the class project, but personal writing projects as well. A number of the methods referred to within the text could be employed for Morgantown Association of Paranormal Investigators as well as Albireo Star Charmers (a transmedia work in the magical girl genre that I am currently forming with my collaborator in Charlotte, NC).

1.       Story archeology will be an important factor. Alcyone will leave notes on maps aside from the MAPI to talk of her unusual experiences within the town, and the audience will need to look for these, as well as checking the personal blogs of other MAPI members since she longs to have someone to connect with and to have someone believe her about the strange things she see. With regards to Star Charmers, the eventual goal is the have a virtual Morgantown to explore to find components of the plot.

2.       Fostering an audience connection could be done in a number of ways. Alcyone will respond to comments left on her blog, when she gets them. I may have to get the ball rolling on comments by creating some other characters for her to interact with, and demonstrate that she will respond to the audience.

3.       For Alcyone, I would like to incorporate real life objects within Morgantown as part of the interaction. I suppose one easy way to do this could be QR codes showing her trails around town. She enjoys walking in the park and going to local eateries. Curious passers-by would be able to scan the code and find a link to her blog or Google maps.

4.       Expanding on the real life objects, I may try making some props of hers to be left at key locations, maybe art of Fachtna, diary pages, and articles like her decorative cigarette case or “forgotten” items of hers.

5.       With world building in mind, I intend to use Alcyone’s reaching out through her writing and connecting it through the above mentioned techniques to ground it in the town we see around us.  Perhaps I could build a site for the fundamentalist church that her parents attend, old doctors’ records from the hyper-religious quacks they would take her to in hopes of assuring care in line with their religion, regardless of her actual wellbeing and denying her actual condition.

6.       Chekov’s guns, multiple possible plot thread to be activated later, will be of great importance. Alcyone will mention a number of things that strike her as unusual about Morgantown, but how much of what she’s seeing is real and how much is simply in her head? Which aspects will the readers want to investigate?

7.       The element of time is something I still wonder about. Alcyone largely writes about things after they occur, but Star Charmers is intended to occur in real time along with the audience guiding the girls.

8.       Voice is most certainly an element to pay attention to. Alcyone is a foul mouthed Wiccan who is just now allowed to cut loose without supervision of her parent and doctors. She has a tendency to overdo things as a result and overcompensate for her insecurity by acting tougher than she is. She also likes to end her blog posts with “Blessed Be” and indicate the music to which she is listening. The girls of Star Charmers, being young, will be likely to use emoticons frequently, but their tones will be very different. Studious and methodical Maris’s writing will reflect her proper nature and passion about science. Carefree and flighty Estelle writes with a more stream of consciousness style, reflecting her preference for unusual structures and poetry and her love of art.

9.       The audience in Alcyone’s story would have a role as possible pen friends of the young woman, even as she discusses simple things like her favorite films. She has her own email address for interactions now. I may make a Google + account for her, as her email is Gmail based. Within Star Charmers, the audience may take the classic magical girl role of the cute animal companion and mentor for the pair of superhero witches in training, guiding them as they learn magic.

10.   Story bibles are something I have some familiarity with, as I have been working on one for a larger comic based project for a while now. They are of great help when considering world building and all the elements of the story to keep track of for believable continuity. I will need to finish writing Alcyone’s profile and history to distribute among my fellow team members, as well as a number of her possible plot threads.

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.

Questions of transmedia narratives

1) Star Wars is a transmedia narrative because different parts of the story of the Star Wars universe are told through different media. The novels contain more detail for different story and character arcs, the films tell the main story thread, and the video games and television series (like the Clone Wars animated or even the Droids cartoon) allow different stories to be told within the narrative's world. There's even an online game to allow fans to interact with each other within a recreation of the Star Wars universe.
2) Characterization can be shown through writings from the character's perspective. Illustrations and descriptions of the character's surroundings and demeanor obviously give insight to who the character is. Characters should have a distinct voice.
3) Some suggested means of developing a character concept is to write about types of people who are familiar to you, while avoiding characters who are stereotypical or the same boring or offensively poorly written stock characters. Traits that play against the type aid in avoiding some of these pitfalls. Your character, even if a meant to be boring person, should at least be within an interesting situation. The character should have a history of their own to consider.
4) Characters can be more distinctive with details thought through such as their profile, what they would use as an online pseudonym, their daily habits, and so on. Do they have a particular time of day that they like to tweet? How does your character usually talk? Are there any particular structural patterns to their sentences or words they frequently use? Make certain that your characters don't all sound the same.
5) Extra material can be used in transmedia narratives. Maps indicating where events occurred, letters to or from your characters can shed more light on events throughout your story. Tweeting can cover an event in real time, or an event can be conveyed after it occurs within the timeline.

So who is Varney? Who is Alcyone?

Varney is an androgynous candy demon with enormous claws and a love of art. Varney's preferred pronoun is "they," being a gestalt of many people who died in the forest dreaming of escaping an oppressive small town environment. The collection of energy started within the coalfields, where they stayed for some time, and picked up a thick Appalachian accent and the habit of collecting coal figurines as a result. They are fascinated with how it is formed and the process of its extraction. “Dead stones workers dig from their graves.” They have a fascination with its utility of the corpse past death, the scale of time it represents for how long something has been dead, how old a graveyard is, all part of a major fascination with geology and funeral rites. Varney feels that the earth is sacred, and has great reverence for nature. Of course being a combination of many dead souls that may have been incorporated into a forest spirit, they feel a great connection to the ecosystem.

They advise people who stumble upon their Hobbit hole like cave. Their attachment to nature does not mean that they don't appreciate modern comforts. Most who go there do not expect Varney to have a VHS cassette player, and less so that they prefer it to DVDs. Snack foods are also a greatly appreciated gift that are occasionally given in return for advice or what some have perceived as protection from the forest spirits. Their favorite snack foods are Pitch Black Mountain Dew, barbecue chips, and grape taffy.

It is highly probably that Varney's appearance of being a cutesy mix of a rabbit, kangaroo, and assorted types of candy comes from the fact that many of those who compose their form died as children, leading them to feel very protective of children they find, to the point of vicious violence towards those who would be abusive. To illustrate an example of their humor and easygoing nature, as well as part of their past: "I wanted to be a kangaroo when I grew up. In that respect, I guess I'm doing better than my peers did for their goals. Maybe drowning in the river was the best thing to ever happen to me."

Alternately, I may go with Alcyone. Alcyone is in her early 20s and working as a projectionist. While very clever and sometimes sarcastic, she frequently comes across as in a world of her own. This is largely due to her somewhat shaky grasp on reality. She has been accompanied by the monster under her bed from the time she was about 11, and they've gotten along perfectly well having a similar sense of humor. Her companion, Fachtna, has now moved into her closet in her new one bedroom apartment. Having been institutionalized for a short time, she now knows not to talk about her "roommate" with others or any other supernatural beings she sees, or may in fact be hallucinating. She is kind of insecure, finding her own place in the world, finally free of doctors' orders and the watchful eye of her helicopter parents. Sometimes this insecurity manifests as a tendency to present herself as tougher than she really is and a somewhat aggressive or over the top manner. 

Games and reality

"The brilliant masterstroke of Chore Wars is that it convinces us that we want to do these tasks." While the concept of Chore Wars is interesting and it had the author cleaning at odd hours, and may work better for more competitive sorts, I couldn't be prompted to scrub my bathtub via an online game. Perhaps the participation of her husband is what furthers this response. I do participate in SuperBetter, as an ally to my sister in her efforts to improve her health, and the interaction of the game does prompt me to check in on her recovery more often in addition to our usual chats.Her point of connecting activities to a larger social experience does stand in my own use of this website. Encouraging participation in this manner creates a communal experience and makes an activity more rewarding, both through the interactions and the rewards of the game (such as avatar items or improved character capabilities), as well as tangible real world rewards in the form of the social experience and in the case of Chore Wars a cleaner area or better health with SuperBetter.This participatory factor has educational and work applications as the audience is more engaged, and more likely to pay greater attention and contribute a greater effort. From my own engagement in the SuperBetter game with my sister, to a biology teacher who had distributed a ROM hack of Pokemon with curriculum information added into the dialogue and Pokedex (which the instructor had posted about on tumblr), the benefits of games and social interaction in real life are quite apparent.