Synopsis

The process by which this electronic literature came to be has been a result of a collaborative effort between two authors switching between different platforms and narratives. To begin, we decided to use the twine platform after exploring a wealth of other electronic literature experiences such as The Uncle Works for Nintendo by ztul. Our piece was not directly inspired by these projects , but rather lent themselves to be seen as avenues for our own venture. We were particularly taken with the idea of incorporating sound and music into our experience as we felt it would help the user integrate into the experience better in line with how My Uncle Works for Nintendo did. Once we had chosen our preferred platform, we then moved onto storyboarding our narrative.  

The first conceptions of this project actually surrounded the ideas of creating a dating simulation, where the user would have to engage with different types of AI’s , Cyborgs, and machines to try to find their perfect match. This was intended to be a follow-up to the ideas explored in our previous project. However, this concept was scrapped rather quickly because of the amount of options that would need to be created to accommodate such a robust text conversation. Moving from that concept, we decided it might be more effective to create a narrative that was narrower in scope and execution to better accommodate our deadline. We then decided it might be an interesting experience to have the user be confronted with a troubling scenario. 

We conceived with the idea of having one of the options for the narrative to involve a serial killer of some sort. The serial killer ending was then minimized to become a stalker of some sort. It was at this point we had the intention of combining the dating simulation with the stalker element as the main danger towards the user. As we went through creating the storyboard for this narrative though, we fell into a series of overwhelming options concerning how we would make the user’s character more interesting. At first, we had thought it would not be engaging if the user had no relation to the stalker because it could be misconstrued as a lack of user agency. At this point we had enjoyed the idea of there being an omnipresent danger, but needed to find a means of having the user’s character engage purposefully with the narrative overall. 

Eventually, we decided to scrap the dating simulation altogether. Instead, we were inspired by an episode of NCIS: New Orleans and the hacker storyline that it used. Following up with that inspiration, we came up with new endings for our Twine. In addition, we also decided to transition away from a more expansive storyline spanning multiple days/weeks to telling a story that would occur over the course of one single night. We also ultimately declined to include music due to time constraints, but we were able to include images in order to make the visual experience more enhancing overall.