Group Discussion - The Story

The Basics:

Once upon a time there was a________,

Everday___________,

Until one day, ________________,

Because of that _______________,

Because of that ______________,

etc.

Themes

*Consequences grows aggressively.

*Embracing differences fosters Appreciation.

     ->Character's may not love everything by the end.

     ->Sam: It's difficult to see the World through someone else's eyes; difficult to see clearly.

The Back Story (Brain Storm)

John: Old World vs. New World

Children come from a well to do family - royalty. Kept within a lot of limits - not allowed to go out into the forest because that's where 'unspeakable things' are. 

Perhaps they have a maid that opens that world to them (like how Jaffar is the inciting incident Aladin). 

What they run into the forest is in dicrect contrast to what they've grown up with in royalty. Wealthy and rich are exposed to this slum-nature-rich world.

Crow: "HELLOooooooo, wouldn't you want to go into the forest? Come this way there is knowledge."

Girl: "But, parents said that..."

Sounds familiar?

Josh: During the industrial revolution? Maybe Babayaga has a store in the city that brings in children.

Sam: Men have triumphed the Elements, perhaps. But that doesn't mean men is evil. What the story is about is that there's something in this world that's unexpected.

*Don't take anything Sam says seriously...? Jk, it's Brain Storm Time.*

John: The forest is magical - it represents curiosity. 

Sam: Maybe have the town up on a hill, and surrounding the village is an enchanted forest. So there needs to be a descent. 

Garret: Maybe the girl is trying to get up and out, so she's always climbing trees. 

(The Critical Question) Sam: Why is the girl unhappy? Does she feel trapped? Is her Father a general, and they're at a stockade. Like the Sound of Music - the Father is fine with being around the army with all the marching, but the mother(?) is very unhappy.

John: The human world has been conquered already. Maybe the girl wants something to explore, but the boy wants to conquer. 

We like the idea that we start playing the game as one of the characters, and the other character is a nuisance. Then we find an object (glasses) that let's us experience the game through another character - then we as the player are invited to empathize.

John: She wants to meet people. 

Aubry: Maybe she's a builder, but they don't have any resources. So people say she can't. So she's like a flint lockwood. 

He is more like an engineer, and she is more like a scientist. She's willing to test things, even if it means opening Pandora's box. "Let's create a black hole! THat'd be awesome!" But the boy wants to work with what is known.

His mind set - this is working really well, our city has been safe for two hundred years. Let's focus on that. She would counter this and think that there's solutions to the problems that the city faces/boy faces that haven't been found yet.

Maybe the story is more of a metaphor for the boys and girls relationship and they sort out their differences. Maybe all the problems they face now lead to this metaphoric future that exists in a warped reality in Babayaga's house. Maybe the boy is in the house too - as an old stern crazy man.

*******Maybe the crow comes and endows the girl is the next babayaga. Maybe the old babayaga has gone crazy, and the girl needs to replace her to restore order.

The human mindset is the human contract thing, but babayaga represents more freedom of choice. We're showing the good things about both of them. The kids that are taken by babayaga that wanted this freedom, but it essentially ruins them.

If the girl is going to be the next babayaga, and then how does the scientist thing play into it? There is curiosity in science, but there's the checksums. Maybe the boy represents the checksums of curiosity. There is no progression to the girls discovery

There's something about the human achievement part and the magical forrest, and their relationship, that points to a need for the two to understand each other.

It would be nice if the story is character driven, and less world driven. let the world be an expression of the character's relationships.

John: Another take on their upbringing - they could be orphan children who are both facing the same problems but they are approaching it differently. They don't have parents, and they're trying to fill that void. The boy has a strategic and practical way of solving that problem, but the girl has another way - maybe escapism? The house can be their first experience of a home. Maybe that compenent isn't neccessary but the underlyhing need for a home is something that should stay. Maybe one of the parents are missing - the mother is perhaps dead. And they only have a father that's very militaristic person, so things are out of balance. The hat can belong to the father and is a symbol of... safety or something... yeah... I don't remember everything...

John: Maybe the sheep are being stollen, or people are going missing, while a suspicious growth is infesting the vlliage. People think it's just a bad year, but then the girl thinks that there's something more behind what's happening. She goes into the forest to save the town. Maybe the citizens in the town are talking about babayaga and how they have to stay away from her. But the girl's mentality is that she wants to go into the forest to confront babayaga.

We could consider the possibility of multiple endings:
What happens when the boy gets his way?

What happens when the girl gets her way?

What happens when the two ending mesh in the way that is really satisfying?

Danny: Maybe she picks up a town and that becomes her new house. People aren't a blight on the land, but they're more like an ant colony, and she just picks them up because she feels they fit in her world - although really don't. The idea of torturing ant colonies aka, humans, is something she finds delightful - madam mim without being madam mim.

Maybe... she's carzy, and has unchecked curosity. Always mixing together just to see what happens. She's not just a pack rat, she's doing things that are legitimately cool. She creates doors with multiple door knobs, and depending on what door knob you use takes you somewhere.

Maybe there's different keys that take you to different levels through the same door located in a centeral room in the game. Maybe a different key will take you to a different ending. 

John: Your interpretation of her changes through the story. She starts off as the goddess of cleptomania, but then she can do amazing amazing things. You may even side with her, but cannot help but see that though she might exist on a weird, sort of moral high ground, it still has undesireable consequences. 

Video Game mechanics:

We're following our story line of the girl becoming more like baba yaga. Now you lose contact with the boy. Now she follows the path where she ends up like babayaga. Once she finds what her curosity has led to, babayaga can reintroduce the spectles to bring in contact with the boy, and then leave it up to the player.

Maybe the boy needs to solve the problems caused by the girl's curosity. 

If we follow the girl though the story, the girl wants to balance babayaga. But the boy has to say goodbye.

If we follow the boy, babayaga is the villain.

Filtering Time

*The Call:

???The girl should be responding to a presence. 

The girl is the protagonist.

??The boy is also responding to the presence because he wants to keep the town safe?

Until next time.............