The 5-7 page, double-spaced analytical essay that accompanies your Twine game should include the following:
1) A very thorough, researched discussion of the cultural conditions that your game deals with. For example, if you are writing about a post-apocalyptic, zombie-ridden world that is the result of nuclear warfare and climate change, you should include research on nuclear development (and war), and climate change. You should make sure to include any information that is current to this moment (so, it's a good idea to look at current politics). Also, you can trace the history of your subject(s) a little bit as well and discuss how the past informs the present of your story. After all, past traumas are like ghosts that live on today and create some of our current horrors.
The research should be from the library's databases, primarily, although you can use some news articles as well. Please include at least four library sources and you may include any other sources on top of that. No Wikepedia or .com sites unless approved by me.
2) How those cultural conditions contribute to the horror in the game, the setting, the choices the reader makes, and the endings that the story offers.
The horror in the game is essentially the fears (and the fears behind the fears) such as fear of cybercrime, fear of disease, fear of isolation and having to fend for oneself, fear of dependency on technology, etc. It also includes how those fears manifest (zombies, cannibalism, murder, death, mutant trees, etc).
So, say you have a fear in your game that is a fear of dependency on technology (horror), and that is a result of the current technological dependencies we experience in the US (cultural condition). This horror manifests in your zombie-ridden, tech-free world because your reader cannot rely on their tech devices to help them do things like figure out how to get places (GPS) or even look up a recipe for cooking on the internet (or use an oven, for that matter).
The setting should, of course, relate directly to the horror. For example, if you are dealing with a nuclear leak from a plant, then the setting may be the nuclear plant itself or some area nearby that has been affected. You should be able to discuss in your paper how the two relate.
The choices the reader makes have everything to do with the cultural conditions and the horrors themselves. After all, our choices in life are shaped by certain things: the family we were born into, the country and class and time we were born into, our personalities, the traumas that have happened to us, our race, gender, religion, etc. At the same time, many people believe we have some degree of free will (freedom of choice) to decide within certain limitations. Remember, you are the puppeteer who rigs the game for your player. What are the limitations and choices for your reader, and how do those relate to the cultural conditions, the setting itself, and horrors that make up your game?
For example, if your reader is from a wealthy family, then they are in a position to pay or buy their way out of certain scenarios that a poorer reader cannot. If your reader is in a lot of financial debt and can't pay their rent, and they have no family they can turn to, so they must trust a sketchy character who turns out to be a serial killer or end up on the street homeless, both choices in the game are limited by that reader's financial problems and end poorly--because of larger social problems (cultural condition) in our society where there is increasingly less social support for people in trouble, higher costs of living, more isolation, etc.
You should be able to discuss how the ending(s) of your story relate(s) to the cultural condition and horror, as well as the choices the reader makes. Do all paths lead to the same end? Obviously the endings are going to connect to the freedom of choice your reader has. For example, if you choose gun violence as your primary horror, and your narrative takes your reader into different scenarios where gun violence might occur (mass shooting at a school, a child who plays with a gun at home and accidentally shoots it, a lover's quarrel turned violent, a robbery at a grocery story, etc), then perhaps you want your reader to always end up dead in order to show that gun violence can reach anywhere. Or perhaps you want there to be a few endings where the reader escapes (say they move to a country with strict gun laws, or they hide in their house behind thick gates and fences).
*What horror sub-genre(s) your story fits under, and any common horror tropes you decided to play with in your story, and why. Do those tropes line up with the cultural condition somehow? For example, if your story is about the pressure women feel to look beautiful to succeed in Hollywood, then perhaps you will play with the "hot girl" trope in your story. Maybe the hot girl will end up dead. Or maybe you will overturn that trope, and make her kill someone else, just as Jennifer in Jennifer's Body does.
*Some discussion of how the horror works we've encountered this Jan Term, and the ideas you've learned in class, influenced your project.
*A Works Cited page with MLA formatting.
*Please carefully proofread your essay as well as your Twine game itself for any grammatical errors or spelling problems. You will be expected to have carefully polished your work prior to submitting it.
Please note that you may use the first person in this essay.
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