When we launched this year’s Hypergrid Story Project, our goal was to bring together creative minds from various grids to tell an immersive and interactive tale. We wanted to highlight what is special about Opensim: NPCs, OSSL functions, and the collaborative community growing up around the hypergrid. We sent the following det to all the creators who expressed an interest in joining us:
Task Set for Team
Story themes to explore--Identity as human and avatar. Who are we ? In the virtual world and in the real world. There are aspects of our identity that we see and no one else sees. Aspects others see that we never see. Aspects everyone sees. Aspects yet to be discovered. How does falling in love change our perceptions and projections of who we are? Masks is a term used to refer to how we present ourselves to the world and cyberspace presents an opportunity to create elaborate masks. But if you are the creator of the mask, then isn't it simply an expression of some true facet of yourself?
Driving Dilemma
In cyber everything's a lie and nothing is.
Story Synopsis
They met as text on a digital page. An ocean between them assurance that they could be who they wished they were in their lover's eyes. Love's illusions fashioned in ones and zeroes texted across the transatlantic cable. No warning that the god-helmets they experimented with would fuse their consciousness to digital bodies, thrust them thru a portal, plunge them into unreal realities. Now they are on a journey to find home and themselves. But as they progress through different avatars and evolve into evermore unique cyber beings, the desire to live in their ordinary mortal skin diminishes. As they overcome obstacles and face challenges they fall more deeply in love. The fear their lover will reject the imperfect human they are grows. To survive and return home they must embrace those imperfections. At the end of the journey readers must choose the destiny for the pair.
Community told stories tend to be a crazy quilt rather than a seamless flow of ideas. That did not happen with Immersive Edge. I am in awe of how the storytellers immersed themselves in the process and delivered a one-mind experience.
~Nara Malone
Nara Malone is an award winning novelist and poet, with 6 novels and a game published. Spirit Walkers, an adventure game, won the Silver award from Pocket Gamer and has had more than a million downloads on Google Play alone.
She has been called one of a kind, who walks to her own set of drums. She describes herself as a late bloomer who found acceptance late in life.
Growing up she was the dreamer in her family, something not always thought of as a positive thing.
As a child she would draw and build stories around her pictures, so writing was a natural extension for her.
Recently a family member told her that from now on she would encourage those dreamers she knew. Stating with hard work and focus dreams can come true. Shannan Albright is proof that dreaming can be a positive thing.
When not writing she spends her time oil painting, reading and designing in her latest love. Opensim and virtual worlds as a whole. She loves writing paranormal, urban fantasy, historical and fantasy romances because of the world building and rich characters she finds. She loves dark, edgy heroes and heroines overcoming impossible odds internal and external.
She is a "hopeful" Romantic who believes a healthy relationship is built upon respect. For her, a strong partnership is the key to a happy ever after.
Shannan Albright went to college torn between becoming a teacher or clinical psychiatrist. In the end, life held other plans for her. A professional dancer in ballroom and jazz, she also wrote and took odd jobs as a free-lance illustrator. To name a few of her endeavors.