Just general notes to myself before I actually go attempt to archive these notebooks, I just want to note what I found for myself.
So I was looking for a specific binder, which has a poem on the cover that was about the original inspiration for Terry’s character, and kind of ended up causing the inspiration for Alophie’s plotline, and parts of Cippie’s, but it’s an earlier version of Terry’s character, where he was a lot more morally grey, and a lot more vague, before he became someone supportive. That poem was from when the series focused on Cippie rather than Alex. The binder itself contains a notebook, with the original cover picture for the Ally Series taped onto it. The cover was a photo copy of my Global History textbook from 9th grade (a class which inspired a lot of this), and in big letters written in sharpie, it says Ally. Underneath the name, it says “failure won’t kill you, Ally, just try your best”, which was one of the over all themes for the original story, because the main part of Alcippe Smythe’s character was that she was afraid of failure. Something which has kind of been lost of the years, as I stopped giving a damn about the false concepts of success and failure, but should probably be something I write back into her.
I think it might also contain my very first original story, written in the form of Alcippe’s diary. Originally starting on November 24, 2008, it was later switched to February. Which is what it continued to remain. I don’t think those dates line up anymore, but that was when the main character was centered as Cippie rather than Alex, which was several versions ago.
Terry is referred to as Mr. Harrsen, which is interesting because I don’t remember having his name as that ever. He is called that on page 1, entry 1. But by page 2, he is being called Mr. Hassen. I’m not sure when I morphed from Mr. Hassen to Mr. Hassan but I don’t think it was on purpose.
Characters mentioned include: Jaci, Ian, Cippie, Matt (who is clearly based on a real person named Matt, and was written out later because he wasn’t relevant, but I should put him on my character list anyway), Tristan, Hemming, Birtch
In this version, Jaci is supportive of Cippie’s insane plan. She’s also the genius behind it, which is a job that later ends up moving to Alex. Ian is aware of the thing happening, and Tristan works on the experimental project. For some reason, his name is listed as Tristin or Tristen. Jaci is also the one who somehow gets a hold of Terry’s sperm for their ridiculous scheme and when she eventually tells Cippie, she says that Ian got it. Which is an interesting twist I don’t remember.
It contains a lot of poetry, because I was into poetry at the time. A lot of which is not relevant, and about death. But usually focused on something that can be related back to the Global class.
Cippie has been having a lot of dreams about Mr. Hassen. They seem to be relevant to the story because they’re showing up every few pages. They’re mostly about him, but there’s also been several mentions of a dream about an abandoned McDonalds that doesn’t involve him, that seems relevant although I’m not sure why. I don’t know if the assault happened in this version, or if he was responsible for it. Cippie is also an atheist, and I’m honestly not sure if that changes in later versions. I always have the thought of her being religious but I’m not sure it’s been written down anywhere.
Cippie is clearly delusional, and there’s mention of the clone named Erica delusion, which actually made it’s way into several of my early stories, although it was never fully explained and I have no idea where I got that from, but it was just like a thing I did. The terrorist rumors also make an appearance, which is interesting because my friend keeps mentioning that I did that in real life, but that’s not how I remember it happening.
It’s mentioned that Terry is married, and this version is old enough that I think he would be married to Alcyone Raptis, with Aliet as the side chick with the kid she never told him about until Alex finds out. But actually, no, Aliet and Lani wouldn’t appear until the next draft. It would just be him and Alcyone this draft.
The false pregnancy starts on March 15, 2008 in this version.
Someone beats Terry up for “getting Cippie pregnant”.
Cippie is honestly a little bit of a psychopath here, tbh.
Terry is arrested on May 5, 2008.
Ah yes, the assault did happen in this one, but it isn’t revealed until near the end, and it wasn’t the one that Cippie told everyone about. It was one that happened years earlier, the same one that I’m reworking to fit in the new version of the story. But in this version, Terry did it. And Cippie doesn’t remember it at all. It was still the day she found out about her dad, but Terry was the social studies sub.
Also, in the margins, it says: “Do they have strippers in ancient Greece?” and I’m not sure the relevance of that question, but I’m pretty sure the answer was yes.
Birtch is introduced in this version as the sub that takes over Terry’s class, and he’s not very good at teaching. Cippie doesn’t like him.
Interestingly, I picked out Ally-Cassie’s name right away as well, before any of the other characters were introduced. She was Ally Cassandra Hassen, although it also lists other potential names.
It ends on June 17, 2008 with the story unfinished.
Overall, the draft is 44 hand written pages, entirely in the form of journal entries. It was my very first draft, and while I assume I have it typed up somewhere, I’m not actually 100% sure of that. After I reached page 44, I stopped and decided to to switch around POVs. So I think that those 44 pages constitute draft 1, and the next segments, which seem to be more e-mails between Cippie and Jaci, with a few journal entries as well, would count as draft 2.
Draft 2 is only about 8 pages.
In between the two of them, the character list also includes Alyx (which is the original mention of the character who turns into Alex), Bobbi Kirche, Ella and Andi, even though they are not mentioned in any of the journal entries from Draft 1 and I don’t think I’m seeing them in Draft 2 either.
And then Alex is introduced, so I’m going to pause this post and then make a new one about that, because it ends up being a big game changer.
