“How odd!” The Fandom Princess exclaimed as she looked down at the Prince’s hands.

“Aren’t they exquisite?” The Prince asked, a smile plastered on his handsome face.

The Princess nodded. “That they are.” Her gave remained looking down at the Prince’s hands, in which he held three large eggs. The eggs were not normal eggs from a chicken, however. They were a bright gold, with jewels encrusted along the smooth edges. The Prince had found them while he was sailing in the open seas surrounding the island of Macedonia, the land of treasures. The Princess had always read of places that had mountains of gold on the island, but had never thought that they were true.

Seeing the treasures in the Prince’s hand, however, made her eyes shine with wonder.

“What will you do with them?” she asked quietly, taking her delicate index finger and stroking one of the warm eggs.

“Well, I think they might hatch,” The Prince said.

The Princess instantly looked up and grinned. “What kind of magical creature will come out of them, do you suppose?”

The Prince merely shrugged and leaned over to peck a kiss to the Princess’ cheek. “I don’t know, my darling. We’ll have to wait and see.”

So, for the final ds106 assignment, we are required to produce a story around a single character, and then put together different forms of media in order to actually create the story. This is something similar that I’ve been doing the whole semester, but to be honest, I’m looking forward to getting the chance to do it for a different character.

Step one of this project preparation was to come up with a character. I actually sat and thought about this for a while, as there were pros and cons to the various options. I could come up with a completely fictional character, which would give me liberties in telling everyone what kind of person this character is, pretty much designing them to my liking. The historical figure didn’t appeal to me, so I knocked that one out pretty early on. The last option was to pick a character from a movie or a play. This appealed to me for various reasons. Mainly, I would already have some guidelines on how the character acted/behaved, which would make things just a little easier on me.

After I decided that I wanted to do a character from a movie, picking the character was the hard part. I am a movie buff (I mean, I only want to write screenplays one day in the future), so I had to narrow down who to pick and from what movie. I consulted my various fandoms, no lie, and let them speak to me. I didn’t want to use someone from LOTR because I didn’t know how modern I could make it, and I knew I wanted to have these mediums take place somewhat in a time frame I can adhere to. Star Wars was also out for that reason. It came down to Disney and Harry Potter. Harry Potter just didn’t seem to fit right, and Disney had a broad array of characters.

FINALLY, after countless minutes of thinking and narrowing, I decided not to stray too far from my some of my favorite Disney characters, which is a LOT if you don’t know me and how obsessed I am with Disney. In the end, I decided to use my favorite Disney princess, Princess Tiana from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. She’s such a great role model as a princess and I love her southern charm. Even now as I sit writing this, I know that I’ll have a bunch of fun making assignments with her as my heroine.

Next was to think about the sort of narrative Tiana would have. I knew that I wanted to use her best friend, Charlotte “Lottie” La Bouff, in the story, and even have some appearances from Naveen. And then it hit me; everyone loves weddings. Or, I’m just a girl, so I LOVE weddings and planning them.

So, my rough narrative idea is such: Charlotte finally found a man who has proposed to her and who she is content on marrying (and of course he’s a Prince of a distant land.) Tiana is her maid of honor and has helped her plan everything from the ceremony to the reception, but on the Wedding Day, Charlotte is nowhere to be found! Tiana and her friends cannot find her anywhere. I’m thinking the narrative will have some sort of conflict where Tiana will have to go search through the bayou for Charlotte, and maybe build it up to so much that Tiana is going to have to tell Charlotte’s fiancé that she is lost, but then it turns out Charlotte got locked in a shoe store or something like that. They are able to have the wedding and boom!

Happy ever after – well, there’s a question for you there Professor. Is this an okay ending and how come we’re not allowed to have a happily ever after ending if we still add conflict to the narrative? I mean, an arc has to have an ending that’s not glum, right, depending on the character? Just let me know.

As far as what assignments I’m going to do, this was the fun part because I figured I would be able to use assignments that I really liked from the past, but just re-do them and add them to a completely different story. So far, this is what I’m thinking of having (at least three of them anyway):

Web: Inspired by Storytelling Within the Web, I want to remake a Pintrest board that shows everything that Tiana and Charlotte talked about having in the wedding ceremony/reception.

Audio: This is from the assignment I posted, but I want to create a mash-up of the love mix that Charlotte’s fiancé made to play during the reception (with a little help from Naveen, of course.)

Video: The inspiration came from the assignment Song Visualization. I want to pick a song to represent the montage (through pictures) of the places where Tiana, Naveen, Louie, and Mama Odie are searching for Charlotte.

Design: Inspiration comes from the six-word memoir assignment. Instead of having this being a memoir, though, I want to try and make Tiana’s speech that she reads at the reception to Charlotte six words to get the whole of their relationship across.

Audio: Inspired by Make ‘em Laugh. Naveen can be a very funny person, and loves jokes. While they are searching for Charlotte, I’d like to record my best interpretation of him telling corny jokes to try and lighten the mood.

Design: Inspired by Your Big Break. One of Tiana’s wedding gifts to Charlotte is a CD that she recorded. The album has 10-12 recipes that Tiana has recorded herself giving instructions to for Charlotte. I want to design the album cover/back.

Visual: Inspired by the A-Z Photo Challenge, I’d like to create a collage of (either)all the decorations/gifts/things that Tiana and Charlotte ended up using in the reception/ceremony OR the food that Tiana cooked — yumm.

Whew. Lots of assignments so far. I’m sure I’ll think of other examples if I’m in need of other things to help tell the story, but so far, I would like to use the majority of what’s given above. Of course, I’m open to suggestions though!