The Fate of Alchemy

Chapter 1 Commentary

I’ve taken the habit of writing little commentaries about my chapters just to share a few thoughts, background information and such, with The Fate of Pleasantview. I used to post these in my blog but now that I have a website, I’m actually going to take advantage of having space. I’m not sure anyone really reads these, but it’s a good opportunity for me to reflect on what I wrote. I would feel frustrated otherwise!

Of course, this chapter is more important than the average one, since it is the start of a whole part, and a whole series with that. There are many things in this chapter that you won’t see, or understand, upon reading it for the first time. I won’t say too much about this, by fear of mentioning something too precise, but there will come a time when you’ll be able to read this first chapter again and look at it differently.

I had to make two covers for this release: one for the part and one for the chapter. The cover for The Donnavi Prophecy is a mix of things that are important in the series. The main characters appear of course, though there is one you don’t know yet. Well, technically you don’t know who are the three on the right either in the story, but anyone who’s read my FOP stories, or played Pleasantview, for that matter, can pretty easily identify them. The man on the right will appear in the third chapter so you can expect him soon enough in the development. There are a few hidden things in this cover that you won’t be able to make out until I point them out I think.

The cover for the chapter is much simpler. It was a picture that I really liked from an early photo shoot I had done sometime in January, and I wanted to include it somewhere. Indeed, in a first version, the chapter would open on Bella’s awakening in the desert, realizing she was amnesic and attempting to walk towards Strangetown, before being rescued by the Smiths. I actually liked what I wrote for this scene, but it ended up being too long and too complicated to actually keep in the story, so I just started three weeks after her arrival.

I especially chose to have the story start three weeks after Bella’s abduction because it allowed her to already have gotten her bearings a bit. When I started the chapter directly at the moment where she wakes up for the first time, it was very difficult and slow, because Bella was very lost at that time and constantly doubted everything, so it was hard to get moving. Three weeks gave her enough time to gain a bit of perspective already. It also allowed me to create the whole suspense at the beginning, where she realizes there’s something important about her appearance in Strangetown, which I was unable to do before.

From that original photo shoot, I only kept two pictures: the cover and the one where she’s lying on the ground in a puddle of blood at the beginning. Of course, both these pictures aren’t in canon with each other, since there is no Blood puddle on the cover. The cover picture is just symbolic; Bella never actually woke up in the desert: her first memory is in the hospital. I just liked the picture too much to leave it lying in the back drawers.

If you read the chapter in its Exchange version, you will see that the description isn’t the same as the one on the site (for the very simple reason that the exchange descriptions have to be very small, which is not aesthetic on this site). In the exchange album, it goes:

Being unconscious is a most peculiar state of mind… the problems begin, when you wake up.

This is actually how the chapter was supposed to begin at first, in its first version, where Bella would wake up in the desert. I hadn’t wanted to start the chapter directly with her waking up, but I wanted a first page where she was still unconscious. The whole page went like this:

Being unconscious was a most peculiar state of mind. It wasn’t so much the fact that she felt light, or disconnected from her body, but just the fact that she couldn’t feel at all. She had no awareness of herself, her being; she just streamed through black clouds of nothingness, with her empty thoughts. It was as though she was a piece of electronic equipment and someone had turned the power off. She merely existed, lost in a world which itself did not exist. For one brief second, she realized that she was unconscious but of course, the irony of the matter was that it instantly forced her to wake up. It was not a pleasant awakening: as though she had been dropped from a very high altitude and uncomfortably landed back into her body.

I realize it was quite complicated, but that’s actually what I liked about it. The uncomfortable part of this beginning was that Bella didn’t know her name, and therefore the narrator didn’t either. For twenty pages, I had to refer to her as “The woman” or “she”, which was quite limited and awkward. I was quite relieved to use her real name in my second version. So much, in fact, that it was the first word I used.

Usually, I don’t really like shooting scenes in hospitals. For some reason, hospitals don’t inspire me. That’s why when I first wrote the chapter, I decided to have them leave the hospital as soon as possible. However, this time around, I actually liked my hospital set, which is a good thing because I’m supposed to use it quite a lot throughout the series. You’ll see more of it as soon as Chapter 2, and I’m pretty sure it’ll appear in the following two chapters as well. I’ll eventually upload it, though I still need to finish furnishing it.

The main part of this chapter I suppose is the big explanation dialogue between Jenny and Bella. It took me a while to think up the explanations for everything in it… especially because I had to think about all the other stuff that I haven’t told you yet! The biggest problem, I think, was when I realized Glarn had been married twice. Since Glabe doesn’t appear in any family trees in Strangetown, I hadn’t really noticed her, until I saw the pictures and realized there was a red-headed woman, and a blond one. One of the idiotic things about this scene is the explanation I gave for aliens. Well, it isn’t stupid itself, and it’s even quite creative I think, but it’s something I made up sometime in January; ever since, the Seasons expansion pack came out, and Plant people entered the game. I suppose that plant people are supposed to have chlorophyll in their skin, making them plant-like. Well, I don’t plan on having plant people in my story so I suppose it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Even if I suddenly feel the need to have a plant person, I’m sure I’ll manage anyway.

One of the big issues I had was choosing a location where the story takes place. For the sake of realism, I feel the need to have this story take place on Earth… not some parallel Sim dimension. The Sims is an American game and really fits the American lifestyle, so the United States felt like the most obvious place to have the story take place. However, I couldn’t choose where in the United States I wanted the story to take place. The Sims World represents that whole nation quite well in my opinion so it was difficult to decide on a specific location. I wondered whether I should create an imaginary country on Earth where the story took place, but of course that went against my want for realism so I was torn. In the end, I compensated and chose to go halfway between realism and invention. The story does take place in the United States (which is implied at one moment of the story) and I’ll try to avoid mentioning a precise location if that’s possible, though if I ever do need to talk about what state the action is taking place in, it’ll be an imaginary 51st state, called Sim State (a name suggested by the University expansion pack).

I wanted to explain why I decided to have Poli freak out about the coupons, at the breakfast scene. Well, obviously, it was an element of comedy, but it’s true that if you haven’t played Strangetown, you might be somewhat confused as to how the idea came to me. It actually comes from Poli’s biography in the game which mentions he loves gardening, collecting coupons and caring for his family. I wanted to show these three qualities about him, which would make him somewhat mundane and normal (despite the obvious obsession, with the coupons). While gardening and family were easy to fit in through descriptions and conversations, the coupons were harder to bring up in a conversation. So, in the search to add some lighter moments I decided to show the coupon thing under an overdramatic and therefore comedic moment.

Some of the hardest pictures to edit for this site were the ones where Bella is lying on her bed. It was so difficult because it required merging two pictures into one. The hard part was getting Bella to be in the same proportions as the bed in each picture, so that it looked like she was actually lying on it and not just pasted on top of it. I think she’s a bit bigger on the first one than the other two, but it’s not too much of a problem. In general, there was a lot of picture editing for this chapter. I’ve never had to do so much! Well, I was on vacation when I did it so I had a lot of time and I like to edit pictures so it was fun, but I just hope I don’t need to do as many when I’ll be back in school, because I’ll have a lot less time to do it.

You may have noticed that I changed the appearance of two of the characters in the story from how they originally are in the game: Johnny and Chloe. When I started writing Johnny, I was having a really hard time describing his hair. I actually went on the BBS to ask people if they thought this hair was usual for a guy; everyone agreed it wasn’t. So, I decided to change it to something close enough, because it really made my day easier. Chloe’s makeover was more for characterization. I thought her appearance wasn’t contrasted enough with her sister’s and they’re supposed to be opposites. Anyway, it looked good on her so I thought why not?

I just want to finish by setting something straight about the last picture. Several people told me they could see an alien space ship on it, and they wondered what this was supposed to mean. I want to clarify that it’s not a spaceship but… a lamp! It’s simply one of those green railing lamps that come in the base game. If you look further along the railing you can even see another one. So, don’t speculate about that. I know I said I leave clues in my chapters but this was not one of them…

That being said, it’s time for me to wrap up. At the time I’m writing this Chapter 2 is already available, so enjoy!

Alexis, 7th July 2007.