The Fate of Alchemy

Chapter 3 Commentary

It’s time for another commentary! So, let’s talk about Chapter 3. In general, I think this will be my least favorite chapter of the whole series, though that remains to be seen of course. I don’t think it’s particularly bad, but it is possibly a bit dull. I wanted this chapter to really show how Bella was settling down into a calm and rested life, and so that meant there couldn’t be any big stuff. As you come to learn in Chapter 4, five years go by before Bella has anymore action related to her past, so it was necessary for me to close all the hanging storylines (temporarily) in this chapter, so that she could be off for five years of mundane town life.

This was, so far, the hardest chapter to write. I had two first versions, which both ended up being discarded. I knew I wanted to have a conversation between Bella and Nervous, but originally, it didn’t come in at the very beginning. I had started the chapter by summing up everything that happened during the month that passed between chapters two and three. Every time I wanted to get to the dialogue between Bella and Nervous, I was blocked, so I ended up just putting it up front, and making it longer, to include all the summed up action into it. But apart from telling the reader what had happened, I imagined this conversation to show the emergence of Bella’s will to create the Youth Association: she finds out that children have no childhood in Strangetown through Nervous, and is worried about her own kids.

In this chapter, I introduced Astra, who I don’t think will ever be a very important character in the story, but you’ll see her around. I decided Pascal would have a daughter quite a long time ago, around the time I was still writing FOP. Of course, you never saw Pascal in FOP, but back in the day, I had played the Curious brothers a bit, and Pascal had had a daughter (who I named Maeva at the time). Ever since, I always imagined Pascal would have a daughter. However, something unexpected did happen in my game, because I made Strangetown and Pleasantview become one neighborhood, concerning Pascal’s pregnancy. I won’t tell you what it is just yet, but I did have to take it into account, and it changed a part of my story (in a good way). You’ll learn about it in future chapter (In chapter 9 if I’m not mistaken).

This chapter introduced Group Therapy as well. What I liked about it, is that while journal entries and hypnotherapy are very interesting for Bella’s past and make you discover more, group therapy is more about the future, and about creating a life in Strangetown, which was really the theme of this chapter. That’s why I left group therapy for Chapter Three. All the characters you see in group therapy have a little back-story of course, which you’ll also learn about in Chapter 9. Some may appear more often than others throughout the story, though most of them generally are secondary characters. I decided to make Kristen Loste an abduction victim, even though that’s not really what Maxis planned for her. I didn’t really know what to do with her, and with a name like Loste, I thought it made sense.

But of course, the most interesting part of group therapy, is the introduction of Jack Storm. I was amused to see some people speculate as to whether Jack could actually be John Burb, from Pleasantview. I actually hadn’t realized how similar John and Jack looked. Well, no, Jack is really Jack, and he’s got a past of his own. I actually don’t even think there will ever be a scene in FOA where Bella and John Burb will interact. Currently (at the time of chapter 3 that is) John is living in SimCity with Jennifer and Lucy, in complete oblivion of Bella’s situation.

As you can start seeing in chapter 3, and as it is shown in Four, Jack is a much more important character that the others presented in group therapy. Some people have wondered a bit about Jack and Bella’s relationship, and whether they might be falling in love. In truth, no, there won’t ever be anything romantic between Jack and Bella – I don’t see it in Bella’s character to cheat on Mortimer, despite the fact she can’t remember him. There is, however, good chemistry between these two characters, which is what remains, of an originally planned affair between Bella and Jack. Jack is actually a character I created before I decided to write FOA. I originally created him when I was planning the fifth chapter of FOP.

Indeed, at first, Chapter 5 was entitled "Goth vs. Caliente" and it dealt entirely with Dina’s trial. The problem was that all the evidence seemed to be against Dina, which wasn’t very fun, because there would be no surprises. So I had created the character of Jack, who would have been an ex-lover of Bella’s. Basically, it was revealed that Bella had cheated on Mortimer, shortly before she mysteriously disappeared. The big intrigue of it all was that she had planned on taking a secret trip with Jack, the day that followed her disappearance. Dina would have gotten her hand on this information and would have used it against Bella to say the whole alien abduction story was really just a far fetched invention. Indeed, just around the time Bella came back, the firm where Jack worked went bankrupt and Jack was found dead in his apartment in the city, presumed by suicide. So Dina’s defense was that Bella had actually left Mortimer for Jack, but when all the money was gone, she had come back to Mortimer, leaving Jack alone, and ultimately leading him to suicide. She would have invented the story of an alien abduction and a remote and unheard of desert town, to not have to reveal the affair.

Of course, Bella had really been abducted by aliens, and while the affair was real, a large part of all these circumstances had actually been orchestrated by Dina. Indeed, back when she used to live in the city, Dina worked in the same firm as Jack. It was thanks to Dina that Bella and Jack would have met, at a New Year’s Eve party where they were both invited (a scene which I have since transformed for FOA, to create the meeting of Bella and Don). Bella would have developed a relationship with Jack, because she was lonely – Mortimer spent all his time in the lab. It was Dina who suggested to Jack that he take Bella for a trip, conveniently on the day that followed her plan to abduct Bella. When Dina found out that Bella had been seen back in Bluewater Village, she immediately planned the bankruptcy or her old firm, and went to kill Jack herself. Yeah, she was truly evil, I know. Dina stopped at nothing to get things her way, and she had quite good relations to get the job done. Finally, Bella would have returned to Strangetown, to get Poli to testify for her, proving her theory about aliens, and sending Dina to jail (sentenced for the murder of Jack Storm as well).

So, I suppose you can still see a bit of that original storyline remaining in the relationship between Jack and Bella, even more so in Chapter Four. I ended up cutting out the whole trial, because I was having a hard time writing it correctly, and that the lot I was using for the scene was making my computer lag a lot. So, it was pretty useless to keep the storyline about Bella’s affair in the story then, so that was cut out as well, and ever since, I have grown attached to the Mortimer / Bella couple, so that I’m now sure neither of them ever cheated. One thing that I find interesting is that the scene from chapter five, where Bella and Don talk on the rooftop of the Goth manor, was originally shot to fit the storyline with Jack: it was the evening after the affair had been revealed in court, and everyone in the family was pretty mad with Bella, so she went to stargaze, and Don wanted to make sure she was okay. I liked their conversation so much, that I decided to keep it in the story, slightly changing it to fit the context. Jack can just be grateful to me for cutting the storyline: it allowed him to stay alive!

So, that’s enough talk about FOP, let’s return to Chapter 3. A very intriguing scene in this chapter, possible my favorite, is the one with Olive Specter, which was expected since the Chapter 2 cliffhanger. It probably didn’t bring as much answers as you would have hoped, but as I said, this chapter has to give Bella temporary closure. Of course, those who know Strangetown a bit can already tell there’s something more to this story than Olive is admitting. Again, you’ll have to wait until Chapter 10 for a full story. Now, I’m going to get you all anxious for Chapter 10. Well, the tenth chapter should be the last one of the story (I may do a separate epilogue, if I can’t fit one into 10 directly) so it is going to be the one where you get all the explanations for unresolved plots.

Everything that comes after the scene with Olive Specter is pretty much about getting Bella ready for four more years of normalcy. I always saw Jack as the person who would concretely help Bella create the association. You may be a bit surprised by the introduction of this association, and whether it is really relevant in the story. I know there are some people who already hate it, because it represents Bella’s life in Strangetown and they want to see her go back to Pleasantview. First of all, I thought it was very necessary to give Bella a stable life in Strangetown, and that meant giving her a job and a home. The choice of the Youth Association is pretty relevant later in the story… starting around Chapter 6, I think. Well, Bella’s choice is explained in the chapter; I meant the choice I made to give her a youth association.

The cliffhanger for this chapter is the first which is a bit breath taking, though it’s still anchored in quite normal life stuff, compared to what’s going to follow. Chapter 4 is already available as I write this, and if you read that, you’ll see what I mean. If you haven’t yet read it… I hope you enjoy it!

Alexis, 11th November 2007.