UPDATES AND CHANGES

We have been in a very deep hiatus of late. Part of it is my fault do to my preoccupation with other endeavors of which I am deep into. But I don't want to abandon our Avonlea adventures! Time has definitely past in our fictional world, so as we pick back up with our stories, I would like to apply this passing of time by completely skipping a season or two. I know...Sad. But the second half of the series is my personal favorite and one that I believe has much potential for original storylines and such. Therefore, we will go on to begin the stories from season four with the episode "The Lady and The Blade."

This being said, here are some major things that have happened virtually and that we are changing as we move forward.

1) Olivia and Jasper have been married for a time and have been expecting their first child. Little Montgomery Dale has just been born.
2) Felicity and Gus are slowly drawing closer after this past winter's ice fishing outing and near scare when they were lost to the woods. Felicity has returned home, letting the coveted scholarship at Kingsport Ladies' College slip away from her after lying to the board. Meanwhile, it has been rumoured that Virginia McRae whose scores came in second place at the Avonlea school might be up for the scholarship.
3) Felicity, Andrew, Sally Potts, and Virginia McRae are preparing to graduate from school.
4) Marilla Cuthbert will be with us longer than what RTA portrayed in the series to say in sync with our sister group's storylines.
5) The Pettibones are moving to Avonlea!
6) The episode "Another Point of View" will be combined with a coming storyline in the near future.

As the next weeks march on, I may add more to this list. Meanwhile, I hope this helps us spring forward into a new season of role playing. Have fun! And I hope you all, both players and spectators, can continue to join us!

TIMES ARE CHANGING

This is a bit of an update post to let you all know where we are and where we are going with our group. First of all, thank you all for bearing with us through our hiatus. Priorities in life take first place and I have enjoyed time away to gather myself. I have chosen to step back in however for part of the time at least.

In so saying, here's an update. We last saw our characters in a bit of turmoil as news reached the King family of Andrew's dire sickness. As of now, several months have passed and Andrew has been home for a week as of today's scenes. Also, Stuart McRae paid his first visit to the island during our hiatus to visit his family Virginia and Lydia. Andrew is on the mend but Virginia is yet to hear of his arrival home. During their time apart, they grew their friendship by way of a few letters. Roger King has since remained in Brazil.

We are still in season three and Olivia and Jasper's wedding will commence in the near future since Anne and Gilbert Blythe are now married. Other storylines will be implemented soon!

I look forward to seeing what the future holds for our dear old Avonlea!

THE ROAD AHEAD

I have an announcement to make...We are officially now in season three! Although we were unable to fully complete the hockey game from the season two finale, our storyline has thus taken us beyond that point in time and has brought us to the point of entering the next season. In the actual time span, we would now be in the time that passed between seasons two and three. Season three will be very exciting to say the least! We will have a wedding, a very imaginative substitute teacher, some rambunctious shenanigans, and the blooming of love. Moreover, we will get to see more of our original characters. More on that later in this post. Meanwhile, we do have two episode storylines from season two that were not addressed. The first been Sara's cousin Pigeon Plumbtree and her visit to Avonlea. The second being the regional essay contest for "Mother of the Year." I will surely like to include these in our role playing in the near future! If your character is involved in either of these storylines, feel free to get the ball rolling in whatever way you would like in keeping with the episode's storyline. I look forward to seeing what the future holds for everyone in Avonlea!

About our original characters...Please give a warm welcome to our latest addition @Lydia_McRae. If you haven't already figured this out, Lydia is our first original character Virginia's mother. Feel free to follow her and give her a welcome! And now for a brief survey of family history....

Lydia McRae grew up in Montreal as a privileged young woman. She never married for most of her life and worked as a career woman in various jobs such as a secretary for about six years after she turned twenty. Upon taking a job at newspaper shortly after, Lydia met an up and coming reporter by the name of William Arthur McRae, a widower with two children. At the time, Mr. McRae's eldest child Stuart McRae (wink) was just entering university. Two years later, William and Lydia married. After one year, William was put in charge of a new newspaper office in Halifax. Moving to Halifax, William and Lydia did well for themselves and soon found out that their family would be growing soon after. They named their daughter Virginia Anne McRae. The family was well off for the next decade as William's business soared and provided them with many privileges. But just shortly after Virginia's fourteenth birthday, William passed away in an unfortunate accident. Stuart insisted that he quit his new job at the Montreal National Bank and help his family. Lydia insisted against it, ensuring Stuart that he must continue to build a life for himself. With family in Charlottetown, Lydia strongly contemplated moving Virginia and herself to Prince Edward Island. But she wanted Virginia to spend her most vulnerable years in a quiet place away from the stress and obligations of city living. Noting the small town of Avonlea, Lydia inquired further and decided that she and Virginia should move to Avonlea. And they have thus been there since July of last year in the span of our role playing calendar. Lydia McRae possesses a personality much like that of Janet King or Muriel Stacey with a bit of Marilla Cuthbert's practicality put in there. She is a typical Edwardian lady and loves her daughter and stepchildren greatly. I hope you will all welcome the McRaes warmly to our little community.

In other matters, our Jasper Dale is currently inactive. If any of you would be interested in playing as him for at least the foreseeable future until our original player returns, please inquire to the administrative account. Also, accounts have been made for the following characters: Clive Pettibone, Simon Tremayne, Davey Keith, and Dora Keith. If you would like to role play as any of these characters, you may also inquire to the administrative account on Twitter.

Monthly updates will finally return to normal as my hopes remain that our role playing will pick back up and return to regular activity. In addition, we are in much need of more role players. I don't mind our group being small. But I know there are some more Avonlea lovers out there who would love to catch the vision and join us in our adventures. Several of us are already playing as multiple characters and cannot take on many more. So from this point on, we really would love for more fans to join. That said, spread the word. Invite your kindred spirits who love Avonlea to check out the website here and help spread the word. We are a small community but a community who loves Avonlea and being able to relive the stories we love so much.

I hope you all are looking forward to some exciting days to come!! Have a blessed week!

OUR NEWEST EDITION

Upon reflecting the upcoming storylines and that of some of our current characters, I took notice of Andrew King and the fact that in several episodes, his character will have left Avonlea according to how it played out on the show in actuality. But he will not leave Avonlea permanently as in accordance with our role playing. Furthermore, I wanted to begin to develop his character further. This is where our first original character comes into play.

Throughout RTA, we enjoyed and were enraptured by the stories of love and friendship and the connections that would be made futuristic between Olivia and Jasper, Felicity and Gus, Felix and Izzy, the short-lived romance of Sara and Booth, and etc. But it seemed that Andrew King never had a storyline to identify him with. I will avoid any spoilers found within my storyline, put a future romance may just bloom between our newly-developed character and Andrew King.

Virginia Anne McRae is as you all may have figured by now a relation of Stuart McRae. This will be expounded upon further in the future. Meanwhile, Miss McRae is fourteen years of age and is quiet. But make no mistake. She is a thing of blossoming beauty and has a great personality found within her quietness. As she is the same age as Andrew, she shares also a keen smartness and eagerness to learn. Andrew and her have much in common as this is yet to be discovered later in future. Furthermore, Virginia's mother has chosen to move to Avonlea to give them a fresh start after the loss of Virginia's father nearly one year ago. Her mother has family in Charlottetown that had encouraged them to move. But her mother desired her to have a more quiet life hence the choice of rural Avonlea over the city of Charlottetown.

Please do follow her on Twitter @Virginia_McRae.

I too look forward to discovering more of the character of Virginia Anne McRae as the months and years of our role playing move onward. I as much look forward to seeing where this storyline coupled with that of Andrew King's life will take us as well.

(OCs are now being accepted. But please consult administration before moving forward with your idea. Thanks!)

If you have any questions or comments, DM them or tweet them to our administrative account @RoadToAvonleaRP. Have a blessed day!

IMPORTANT CHANGES

After a comment was expressed regarding the lack on enjoyment in being apart of this group, I wanted to address this immediately in order to bring back the joyous air to our group!

It was expressed that the way we are reenacting RTA by speaking each episode word for word is somewhat becoming boring to several of our members. 

A bit of history: When I first began this group last year, I envisioned a group of loyal Avonlea fans who could come together and reenact every intricate moment from our beloved series. But as it has progressed, I have identified the problem that lies with tweeting each episode word for word. 

CHANGES: 

From now on, we will NOT tweet each episode word for word. Rather we will play out the various events and happenings spontaneously and will let the stories of the series unfold on their own and in their own time. 

I still want to maintain a close tie to the stories of the series and stay chronologically close to the series. I don't want to get into too much fan-fic. But I completely understand how word for word tweeting can become boring.

So to recap, from this point on we will allow all the wonderful stories of RTA to unfold naturally with no specific indication of a particular episode. Feel free to be creative also and do scenes that aren't found in any of the episodes while maintaining what season and point in Avonlea time we are in. For example, Stuart McRae will not come in until later. Where we are now would be much too early for his entrance! But besides instances like that, I completely agree that we should abandon the current way we are role playing! If RPing is boring, then a change like this is definitely needed to bring the excitement back into the group!! I still encourage we use the scripts for reference. But we will no longer be tied down to reenacting each episode word for word. 

A friend of mine even explained that perhaps we can work in new storylines that would include such holidays as today Dominion Day and etc. 

I hope this resolves any issues. I hope you all will have fun continuing to step into the lives of the various characters! Any questions or additional comments and ideas can be posted here in the comments or can be sent via DM to our administrative twitter page. 

ROLE PLAYING CHANGES

The last few episodes have played out beautifully! I can see that each of you love the series and are enjoying portraying it as it was played out in Avonlea! But throughout these last few episodes, I have noticed that, and this includes me, that it feels like we are just saying lines to just be doing the episodes. Now I'm not at all saying that everyone is doing this!!! It is just a personal assessment. In my role playing, I want to feel transported. I want to BE the characters, for lack of better words. Now the is script is still 100% necessary! But I feel that if I prompt you all to begin playing before we begin that days' scenes, then it doesn't feel like the events of the episode are playing out in real life as if we were actually living it all out in Avonlea. Therefore, I will no longer prompt you all to begin the scenes. I will tweet a link to the script ONLY ONCE when I announce we have begun a new episode. But I am leaving it up to you all to "spring into action" and begin the scenes as they happen and in the time frame that each episode suggests. Now, this will all be dependent on our own personal schedules of course. But at any rate, I want to live out these stories to their fullest capacity. 

One example: When Janet goes into labor, I will not tweet her to tell her, "Okay it's your turn to do that scene." Instead, as it flows with her schedule, she will begin those scenes and pleasantly catch everyone off guard and I, Felicity, will happen upon the blessed event, faint, and etc. Now, if it's a scheduled event like a party or wedding or such, I will tweet a schedule announcement to let everyone know. 

Now each week brings it's own surprises in life and adjustments can surely be made. But all in all, my goal is to do all within our power to fully feel like we are living out the adventures of ROAD TO AVONLEA and not just saying words within our tweets. 

(If you have any questions, tweet them or DM them to me.)

THE SAGA BEGINS!!!

Monday, November 25, 2013, time will hencefore be turned back to 110 years ago when, though fictional, a wonderous saga began in Avonlea on Prince Edward Island. Our role play group will officially open the first chapter beginning with the pilot episode of Road To Avonlea!

PLEASE NOTE!!! Many characters are still needed to make this beginning complete!

Alec and Janet, Cecily, Andrew King, Jasper Dale, and Nanny Louisa would make excellent additions as we make this smooth transition into season one. 

Here are a couple pointers for anyone wondering how this all will work:

Road To Avonlea is estimated to have begun in the year 1903 during summer. Due to the fact that in real life, summer is very far away, we will begin the series and "speed" through the first half of season one. What do I mean by speed? Well, on a normal basis, we are "acting" out the series in real time. If an episode happened over the course of two weeks, then we will role play it in two weeks. And so forth. But since we are beginning a bit off of schedule, we will role play one episode in a week to less than a week's  time regardless of how it plays out in the series. This will get us caught up to the middle of season one (approx. episode 7) and will from there play out the series in real life time as it would in the series. Still confusing? I'll be releasing a weekly schedule to serve as an easy guide. But don't worry! It will most likely not be as strict as it sounds! It will simply help everyone to portray their character as accurate as possible so we can relive this great series!!!

For those curious about how we will actually "act out" each episode:

Creativity is always welcome! But we want to stay as close as we possibly can to how the writers of the series worked so diligently to portray the characters and stories as they did. Please take this into careful consideration! Meanwhile, below you will find a few sample Twitter dialogues to give you an idea of how this will work....

(From Season Three Episode One)

Tuesday...in the morning

Olivia: Must get to the new home! There's lots of work to be done. My wedding is on Saturday! 

 

Jasper: All these people!

Hetty: (pulls up to Dale home) I'm not saying a word. Promised I won't mettle. Just come to ask if you need a ride home.

Olivia: (firmly) No, Hetty. I'm fine. 

Hetty: Very well then....

Such a heated discussion, my apologies. But I wanted to illustrate how in one conversation thread, I was able to weave both that scene and a Twitter conversation into one. This is the basis for how all role playing will pan out. If a reader were to look at our feed, they would be able to connect the dots with the season and episode we are playing in and almost watch the entire episode play out over approximately a week's time. 

(From Season Six Episode One)

Felicity: (is angry) It is simply not fair that they treat a female student this way! They are so prejudice!

Felix: I'm not prejudice against women....

Felicity: I'm so behind!

Felix: Yeah, I've been working much harder though! Carrying loads of boxes is hard work!

Felicity: (ignores Felix and continues walking)

Felix: Hey! Wait up!

Felix: (walking alongside Felicity) Hey, look, Felicity! Is that Gus?

Felicity: It is! Over there....

Felix: Perhaps we should go say hello?

Felicity: (Sees him with a lady & jerks Felix as she hides behind a sausage cart) Quiet!

Felix: (Understands the commotion) I guess we won't say hello....

I could continue, but I simply wanted to present a scenario of how a scene can be acted out via a thread conversation that would have no connection with a character actually communicating "via Twitter". 

I hope this helps everyone! I will be posting more as the weeks continue to get everyone used to the idea. Meanwhile, if you have any more questions, feel free to tweet them!