The Fate of Alchemy

Chapter 5 Commentary

The fifth chapter of The Fate of Alchemy is a quite interesting one, I find, for it introduces the notion of Alchemy, which is obviously very important in the story, seeing as it is in the title. I’ve recently decided that I’m only going to be the first part of the story with The Sims 2, because I won’t have time to write much more before The Sims 3 comes out. So Alchemy will only be present in about half the chapters of The Donnavi Prophecy, but if I decide to write the other parts with The Sims 3, I think you’ll see the full importance of Alchemy, and what I have planned for it.

I remember Chapter Five, as being the chapter which was easiest to write so far in the series – apparently in contrast with my ever so difficult writing of Chapter 6 now. I wrote it just after I was done with Chapter 4 and it only took me a few days to complete it. I think this allowed it to be quite continuous and well constructed. It’s also a very mysterious chapter, so I won’t explain too many things directly here, since they’ll be later developed in the story.

The whole beginning of this chapter was meant to show how Bella’s frustration slowly climbs. First, the doctors don’t believe what she’s seeing in Hypnotherapy sessions and then her friends seem to consider her memory recovery to be some kind of game, in which she just got a victory. It’s not that Bella is disappointed by what she has remembered but she just misses her family. She’s not saddened by the memory, but by the separation. When she sees her family in the Dream state, she’s happy, but it breaks her heart to wake up in Strangetown without them afterwards.

The scene with Margaretha also serves in the purpose of frustrating Bella (though one could also argue that it motivates her to leave). Back in chapter 3, when Margaretha first appears, you may have noticed how little she said about herself. You’re going to know more about Margaretha later in the story, but I’ll just say that she’s probably the most interesting abduction victim surrounding Bella (though Jack is still more important in the story). This is one of those scenes that have several levels, and I think you’ll be able to fully understand it once you’ve read up to Chapter 8 or 9. One of the most obvious mysterious things in this scene is the girl hidden behind the wall, who you see on the last page. Several people have asked about her, but obviously she was what I was referring to when I said: “One of the pictures near the beginning show something obvious, which is not mentioned in the text. This is a little extra, which will be explained later.” on the first page. I especially put her there, because her presence in the story later may seem a little bit out of the blue, otherwise. This is mainly because she’s not a character I had originally planned to have in the story. Some circumstances in my game made that I had to introduce her in. I’ll explain this better once you know everything you need to know about her.

The moment where Bella drives out of Strangetown, only to drive back into it, is obviously mysterious and cryptic for now. Actually, seeing what you learn at the end of the chapter, you can sort of take a guess about why it happens, but it’ll all be explained in Chapter 6. I must admit it was quite fun making you believe she was leaving, and actually having her come right back. The idea for this scene came to me while reading the Bella Goth interview released by EA Games a couple of years ago, in which she said: “… there's something strange about this town. It's almost as if every time I try to leave, I end up back here.”

My favourite part of this chapter is Bella’s Hypnotherapy session. It’s a very special moment, since it’s the one when Bella begins to remember Alchemy. There’s actually something going on in this scene that you can’t exactly see yet. Well, you can notice that something differs in this hypnotherapy from others, but we’ll get back to all of this in Chapter 6. I also like that it allows me to put a bit of romance in the story, seeing as it’s lacking in that otherwise. I hope you noticed how Cornelia’s passing her hand through the flowers is the first element Bella saw in her vision, in her first Hypnotherapy session, back in Chapter 2. That means that you now know what two out of three of those images were: Cornelia’s hand, and Dina’s smile. The last image will be explained in the last chapter of the story (either chapter 10 or 11), so I’ll explain Bella’s whole vision in the corresponding commentary.

Like I said, Alchemy is supposed to be huge in the overall story. Ironically, for a while, when I was planning the story, I hesitated as to whether I would actually have Alchemy be in it. This was because I knew it would have such great impact on the story. Alchemy isn’t something which can be secondary in the story; I knew that if I included it, I would have to go all the way. I originally got the idea to have something supernatural in my stories (other than the aliens) when I was writing the third chapter of The Fate of Pleasantview, because of something that happened in my game while I was taking pictures. I won’t tell you what it was, because it would make me reveal a future storyline (or at least give you some hints about it), but I just wanted to show you how far back this idea went. While I was writing FOP, I always wondered as to whether I should include some kind of supernatural theme (back then I didn’t call it Alchemy yet). When I started planning out FOA, I decided once and for all that Alchemy would be part of the story.

Alchemy was still a bit blurry for me when I was writing Chapter Five, not so much in content, but in terms of vocabulary. I think I’ve had the idea of what Alchemy was for quite a while now, but I never really put proper words on it, and of course, that’s problematic when I’m writing a story about it. I was sceptical about the use of cliché words like “Magic”, ‘”Witch, or “Spells and Potions”. I did use them anyway, for the sake of making an understandable story. Chapter 5 was mainly about introducing the notion of Alchemy, not explaining it. Chapter 6 will give a lot more explanations about how Alchemy works and so on, but I just wanted you to already get used to the idea that Alchemy would be around.

I was also very dubious at the idea of calling the dimension Alchemy comes from, “The Dream World”. It was a simple turn of words I used so you could understand the relation between Dreams and this dimension. However, the Alchemical dimension is actually called The Hypnos, as you’ll come to learn in Chapter 6. Hypnos is the name of the Greek god of sleep, so it seemed to be an appropriate name. I also considered the names Astral (the name of an actual concept I was inspired of), Celestial and Somnus (The Latin counterpart of Hypnos). I sort of kept changing back from one term to another as I was writing Chapter 5, but eventually, I just used “The Dream World”, to keep things simple. As Bella sort of explains in Chapter 5, The Hypnos is a parallel dimension we all go to at night when we sleep. Usually when you sleep, you’re basically unconscious and in the morning you have a vague memory of your dreams, but what’s special with Alchemy, is that Alchemists learn to be fully conscious in the world of their dreams, The Hypnos. Everything which is part of the Physical, the world we live our day to day lives in, also exists in the Hypnos, but there are things that exist in the Hypnos, which don’t exist in the Physical. It’s sort of like those Russian dolls: The Physical is a small doll, and the Hypnos is a bigger one, which encloses the small one. All of this may seem complicated, and it will be explained in Chapter 6 again, but I just wanted to give you a little heads up about it, so you can get used to the notion. In Chapter 6, there should be enough explanations about Alchemy and the Hypnos to ensure you can understand the story properly.

Lastly in this chapter is the revelation about Bella’s journal. I don’t really like how the pictures came out in the scene where they find out the journal is a fake, partly because the book objects don’t really fit into the Sims’ hands properly. I also had a hard time getting all the Sims to interact together at the same time. I actually had to edit the look on Jenny’s face in the picture where Johnny is holding up Bella’s journal and Jenny’s work papers together, just to make it look right in the scene (originally she was just staring blankly in front of her). Again, the storyline behind Bella’s journal is still mysterious, so I’m not going to develop too much about it. You’ll learn more about it in Chapter 6.

The fifth chapter was one where there was a lot of mystery, and it’s the start of all the unravelling of the story and secrets behind Strangetown. The sixth chapter is going to provide a lot of answers (along with a whole lot more of mystery) so this is one of the reasons, among others, it’s taking me so long to write it. As usual, I’ll keep you updated about progress on the matter.

Alexis, 9th March 2008