The Making of The Monarch Papers – Episode Three, Obenhedge!
All about Traveler, The Minnying of Ojorad, and everything that went wrong!
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This week’s shownotes are thanks to dear reader, Viviane!
This episode goes behind the scenes of Fragment 3: Obenhedge. CJ, Simon, and Johnny recall the design of the puzzle, how it all went wrong, and how the solution to the problem influenced the future episodes of The Monarch Papers.
The Fragment 3 puzzle took place alongside Fragment 2, when a character known as “The Last Traveler” began posting lines from a poem to Dierdre Green’s blog. Readers worked to assemble the poem, “The Minnying of Ojorad,” the elements and characters of which would make several reappearances in later fragments. Johnny discusses the creation of “The Minnying” and its inspiration in “Jabberwock-esque” nonsense poetry and music icon David Bowie.
The first social media advertising during this fragment also brought in a wave of new recruits with ARGexperience, prompting an explanation of how The Monarch Papers model of “responsive fiction” differed from typical Alternate Reality Games. The group also discusses how an oversight in website design ended up creating the first big opportunity to fulfull “The Promise of the Premise” (a screenwriting concept found in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! books and Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio’s website, Wordplay) by making Cole Sumner into an ally for the Mountaineers, and ultimately tying the fragment puzzles closer to Deirdre’s storyline.