Sunday, July 23, 2017

7/23/17 Quick Update (mostly Contestant 25-related: Main character change)

-New main character in Contestant 25, Darien Wilder, previously Dakota Warren. Thanks to LittleBigPlanet 3 a month ago, I have decided to keep my word in terms of what I said on Twitter in 2015 when I announced the novel (which was Agent 25 at the time) that the main character was female.

-Darien can be traced back to the 1999-2000 year, from a weird, strong dream had in 2000 after eating fishsticks for dinner, which resulted in me getting sick a few days later, I think, was a combination of stress and food poisoning. I was also in 8th grade at the time of the dream.

-As with the post from six months ago, the storyline is still the same. Darien is a 14-year-old charged by her U.S. Secret Service Agent parents with the task of saving the world from the villainous Sterling clan and the evil Japanese megacorporation they work for, 3654Tech, on her 15th birthday. The story still focuses on the history of video games, and still has a wacky cast of characters determined to keep Darien on her toes as she finds out the cause behind the case of missing video game controllers and consoles from history.

-This story has taken me 22 years to get perfect (yep, that's right--1995 - the year I started writing at the age of nine).

-Darien is inspired by my personality. Since she came from a dream I had in the 1999-2000 year, she is inspired by actresses Larisa Oleynik (The Secret World of Alex Mack, 10 Things I Hate About You), Jewel Staite (Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Space Cases, Firefly) and Katie Holmes (Dawson's Creek).

-Other inspirations include Amanda Kimmel and Parvati Shallow (both Survivor), Ciji "StarSlay3r" Thornton and Kat "Mystik" Gunn (both WCG Ultimate Gamer), Jessie Graff and Michelle Warnky (both American Ninja Warrior), and finally Cara Maria and KellyAnne (both MTV's The Challenge).  She is also inspired by my time playing as Blaze Fielding from Streets of Rage and Tyris Flare from Golden Axe on the SEGA Genesis--the first video game console I ever owned, respectively.

-The story also revolves around two mysterious Arcade Sticks: Magenta (whose "guardian" was female) and Azure (whose "guardian" was male). This idea came from dreams I had between the years of 1993 and 1995--a couple of months before I started writing when I changed schools. More on those characters later.

-I am now writing this and The Racer Diaries in Google Docs instead of Microsoft Word. From now on, all new writing projects will be written there.

Got a busy schedule, so I'll stop the entry here. Until next time, WM86/DFW