Presencing – as described in an earlier entry – is a type of synthetic engagement that extends contemporary entertainment. Fan fiction illustrates how Presencing utilises traditional entertainment spin-offs within “amateur” arcs. The Urban Dictionary describes Fan Fiction as:

1. “A piece of fiction within a fandom utilizing characters and situations from a pre-existing work including (but not limited to) books, television programs, films, and comic strips.”

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2: “…Fanfiction is when someone takes either the story or characters (or both) of a certain piece of work, whether it be a novel, tv show, movie, etc, and create their own story based on it. Sometimes people will take characters from one movie and put them in another, which is called a cross-over. ”

The Cylon Twittercast is Presencing that creates a type of “nesting fiction” similar to nesting functions employed in computer programming. The Cylon Twittercast uses the 2003 -2008 Battlestar Galatica series [which is in itself reimagined from an earlier series] as a procedural plate from which to construct a “character-based RPG over twitter”.

This RPG is made up of microblogged output from BSG personas, both Human and Cylon. Some characters are known [intentional], some are unknown [self-initiated] and some are yet to be represented. Several of the Twittercast players choose whether to adhere to the plot developments and conventions established by the TV series. An example of this mirroring where certain BSG TV series script/semantic markers ["Frak" and "Gods"] are employed by Twittercast players:

The Cylon Twittercast promotes character development through extensions that accommodate alternate characterisation, elastic narratives and fandom overlays. Twittercast participants operate as character controllers or puppet-masters which acts to push this RPG into conventional ARG territory. Feel free to participate and shape the resulting narrative/player architecture:

“…it’s a pretty anarchic situation — there’s no Laura Roslin on twitter as far as I know….I’m open to the idea that she could participate in some way. and Leoben and Galen are off amusing themselves — I’m sure they would appreciate having someone else to talk to. make a big entrance, if you’re going to jump in? I could help? Tory was just about to show Laura around the baseship”.