Project Five Final with Metatext

LOL WUT

LOL WUT is an Alternate Reality Game that uses  writing and multimedia to create a zombie attack on Morgantown (We've all hoped it would happen, I just brought it to life). First, everyone was invited to the Facebook Event that contained the details of the game, then they were invited to create their version of the events in Morgantown. Not everyone responded, and sometimes the responses came from unexpected places. Anyway, without further ado, I present, LOL WUT.

The Facebook Event

The Inciting Incident

• Halloween

-Jennifer Dempsey

• A Story without Explanations--Sorry

-Zachary Santer

• Natural Selection

-Ann Finley

• Griping, Dancing and Pasta Eating Zombies

-Paige Parrack/Hannah Lilly

• Screamo, Death Glares and the Questionable Antagonist

-Talia Blankenship

A "brief" Metatext.

Project Five

For Project Five I created a Facebook event in order to try and make a Alternate Reality game that people can submit ideas to.

The link is Facebook event and it has another link on it to a scenario that I invented and posted onto my blog.

I started thinking about this idea when Sandy mentioned Lost in class. The thing that always amazed me about the TV show Lost was that even though there are hundreds of hours of the show, the writers never actually reveal very much about what is happening "on the island," they leave what is happening up to the imagination of the viewers. My friends who are addicted to the show spend countless hours a week on the message boards about Lost looking up theories for what is happening and trying to find trusty spoilers for future episodes so they can know "what is happening" ahead of time. This is the type of universe I wanted to create, a universe so vague and confusing (although on a much smaller scale than Lost) that it is open to any number of different interpretations. I encourage people to use multimedia in their project, and to make it as off the wall and insane as they want. I already know several people who are working on it, and I'm hoping it turns out really well.

A Morgantown Mystery?

It was a cold, September night. Early September, when it should have been warm--BUT IT WAS COLD. I ventured outside to consume some delicious Burger King in short sleeves, only to find the blast of wintry air was too much for my frail frame to endure. To combat the frostbite slowly seeping it's way up my torso I decided to dance on my way to the Mountainlair. As I was dancing down the street, I noticed several people running by me at breakneck speeds, with a fearful look in their eyes. I quickly stopped my warming dance (for the novices out there, that's like a rain dance, only with heat) and stopped to figure out what was happening.

The moment I stopped dancing everything went to hell.

A giant tremor shook the earth and I hit the ground along with the twenty or thirty others who were out and about. A great shadow rose up from the direction of University Avenue, and I felt my blood run with an ice that had nothing to do with the ice collecting between my toes. Everyone was screaming and the shadow rose up, high enough to blot out the moon and the stars. I wasn't waiting to find out what was happening, I turned my head and ran back towards trusty Stalnaker Hall. As I reached the top of the stairs I ventured a look back, but a heavy fog had rolled in and was obscuring the majority of the city from view. A faint green glow was emenating from the fog, and as I could still hear screaming, I quickly entered the friendly confines of Stalnaker Hall.

The scene inside Stalnaker was completely different from the one outside: basically, it was calm. The worker at the front desk was calmly reading Faulkner, the piano lounge was bustling with some form of student organization, and there was a smattering of students studying for various science classes. As I turned the corner to enter the staircase, I noticed a light was glinting off the windows of the Honor's Office. I thought about asking them for help, but I decided that the light was probably indicitive of a late night for someone, and they were likely to be in a grumpy mood. Thinking that I might stop back by at a later date, I proceeded up the stairs and to my room.


So here I am, with my window open, I can still distantly here the screams fliting through the screen. My room mate is missing, I can't find any of my other friends, and I havn't seen anyone else for a while. What did it all mean? The giant shadow from Stewart Hall, the green light, the mist? What was happening. What IS happening? I'm worried because there's no one on this floor.

A knock at my door.

I'm rolling the camera. Things are getting fishy.....

More Project Five Ideas

For my fifth project I'm still thinking about doing a zombie/thriller spoof similar to Cloverfield. "Surviving Morgantown The Night of the Zombie Attack." As the story unfolds, I'm hoping it will involve a bunch of elements of parody etc, and as the night continues, you begin to find out more and more about the shady happenings around morgantown and the conspiracy the university is complicant in. Likely I'll start a facebook group and get people to email their email addresses to me, and I'll start sending them details, or I might just get them to email me stories and then post them on the blog, being explicit about each story continuing the narrative. It's all deadly.

Project 5 ideas

Basically, my ideas for project five revolve around a zombie-conspiracy story involving WVU officials. I'm not totally sure the direction I want to go on it, I might make it sort of collaborative, and also try to incorporate some kind of shooting element where you blow up zombies. I've got some friends in Computer Engineering who might be able to swing that (if they haven't already written their own zombie shoot 'em up game). Not totally sure, although looking at the alternative reality games today helped me to think of some ideas. I'd like to make it a person by person account of one night when a scandal goes down in the honors college dorm (where I live) because it would be the University's main base of operations for the zombie project. Either way, zombies, WVU and a lot of silly videos. Should be pretty gooooood; I'm excited.

Project Four Final with Metatext

Steph Alex Brittney Nadia Marci Andrea
Amy Paige Hannah Laura Amanda



For this project I had several people in the dorm where I live (Stalnaker Hall, as the picture indicates) make a list of the items that they had in their desk. I'm trying to use very boring, mundane things to create a sort of story in this project. The idea came to me when I was filling out a sheet in Chemistry Lab about the items in my desk. The university's goal in doing this was to make sure I hadn't broken or stolen any of their expensive equipment, but what actually happened was this idea was formed. I wanted this project to sort of play with the idea about how we are big into measuring and counting things, and how the things that we are counting, are obtaining throughout our lives come to define us. I didn't have these people create any kind of narrative, or tell me anything about themselves (in fact, some people failed to even write their name on their list), all that defines them in this project is the collection of pens, papers, and paperclips located in their drab, unexciting brown desk.

The trick on this project was that it was collaborative, and so people would constantly ask me what they should put on the list, how they should do it, etc. I told them again and again, "do whatever you want; if I tell you what to write, it will be my writing, not yours." This was frustrating, but the collaborative nature of the project turned out to suprise me--it worked far better than I thought. People's personalities really began to shine through their lists. For example, one girl wrote her name in an exciting pattern with a star symbol turning it into a fantastic design. This fits this person's personality perfectly, and turns my project almost against me, for I was attempting to make everyone look silly by summing up their existance through a list of school supplies. I guess that's the beauty of collaborative writing, because they showed that people have so much depth that even when they do something incredibly mundane, their individuality shines through.

Project 4 "Drafts"

For project four I'm feeling very optimistic. I want it to basically be about Identity; to consider that perhaps everyone's Identity is not what they think and is maybe too caught up in objects. I'm a tutor/mentor in Stalnaker Hall this year, and every single student who lives there has an arbitrary desk full of their school things. The idea of this project is to get them to list everything that is in their desk, along with pictures if they like, and then one large picture of them. I'm then going to link everything to my blog and tie it all together, starting with a picture of the person that links to a "personal description," only this personal description is nothing more than a list of items in a desk.

It's coming pretty well, I have four or five people's already, I just havn't compiled them online yet.