Itex ARG

[EndOfTheEarth]

ARG --- Alternate Reality Game

A project to recreate Itex-era documents showing the rise of Itex as a company, and the creation of the Maximum Ride characters. Initial discussion on "What are you doing" thread starts HERE.

The story will chronicle Elena Mueller (known by her internet alias "Valentine") after her return from a trip to Germany, and the discovery of the various Itexicon files.

(I'll start updating this OP over the weekend to start compiling the files)

[EndOfTheEarth]

Elena works, Valentine...not so much. Figure another name with German origin, Gary would need to know some amount of German or care somewhat about Germany to wind up with Alice tB.

Also, I'm digging through the source code of the main site. If I could give you the actual file names (.jpg and all) of the file names, would that help? I haven't had any luck on a direct link.

[nathan_p]

I'm looking for the pictures from these two entries.

Valentine could just be her internet nickname (derived from, say, Vincent Valentine -- what lady doesn't love a vampire who runs about being emo in a dirty cloak :\ ). As to real last name: Bauer, Mueller, Baum...

[EndOfTheEarth]

Here's the one for the first picture:
http://www.maximumride.com/blog/secretfiles_blog/secretfiles_B.png

Here's the file path for the second picture...
http://www.maximumride.com/blog/secretfiles_blog/secretfiles_C.png

And, crap, they both lead to the front page of MDW.
Maybe if they have those files archived somewhere...we'll it's a start.

Sure, Valentine. Her real name is Elena, and her username is Valentine. Pink fluffy hearts and all that. Innocent, happy, unsuspecting. Ironic. Perfect.

[nathan_p]

Thanks... I tried using the Internet Archive to access even that subdirectory, but no dice.

Fluffy and cheerful and implies an accepted degree of fangirlism for an accepted target. Heh heh heh.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Elena Mueller. We'll work with it.

In the meantime, if you can set up a site, I'll see if I (tomorrow) can set up an e-mail that spits auto responses. In theory, if we can make enough of these (shouldn't need more than five or six) we'll be covered for the duration of the ARG.

[nathan_p]

Sounds good. Technically the U would be umlauted in German, but lazy Anglophones can write it just UE.

A forum-type site for us to work on this, or what? Tell me what you want and I can get to it.

Right now I'm editing my scans of the bonus SOF material.

[EndOfTheEarth]

I was thinking blog with comment section available, just like the Fly On blog, so the squees don't spam it out once we get a hold of it. If possible, we want most of the discussion to occur on MDW.

Nice.

I'm headed off for the night. Can't wait to see the scans!

[Dual]

Thought.

We could do a recording of the interview in book three with the flock.

Thought:

References to the flock being dead. (Books take place in 2005-7, depending on your version of canon. Flock is fifteen tops at this time. Current date is roughly 2011. Do das math.)

Thought:

Itex buys Hatchette.

[EndOfTheEarth]

One small problem:
It's three years in the future. We don't know what Patterson has in store. For now, our best bet is to stick to the plot as much as possible. No future speculation. For now, we're assuming the story got swept under the rug as, hey, you don't see that many people even so much as mentioning Itex in books 4-6.

[Dual]

I see.

Thought: We actually contact Hatchette and let them know what we're doing. Maybe they can help?

[EndOfTheEarth]

If they say no, we're screwed.
Which is why we won't contact them beforehand. We'll make a show of drawing attention to it when we launch the thing, and then either Hachette will throw support behind it, remain neutral, or tell us to shut down. This way, we have some time to get the ball rolling and get the attention of the community. Trust me, if this gets the kind of attention we're hoping for, we'll know within a week.

[EndOfTheEarth]

So, I've gotten gmail's auto response figured out. I like it.