My story actually focuses on the vitriolic effect that the Internet and the media have had on political discourse, which makes it well suited to an e-lit conversion. An audio loop, similar to the one featured on the introduction page of “These Waves of Girls,” would play throughout the entire story. It would be comprised of a mashup and remix of recorded arguments on the House and Senate floors from C-SPAN. The intention would be to set the inflammatory tone of the story as well as to make the content difficult to focus on. This would reinforce the story’s suggestion that legitimate debate is being stifled by those who shout the loudest or have the catchiest phrases (and sometimes, the most money).
In conjunction with the audio, I would utilize color in order to help set the mood. The story describes red hellish glows, fires and otherworldly entities. By contrast, the background would be blue and the text white, and there would be red stripes running along the side. This effect would conjure the sense of ill-defined patriotism that runs so prominantly through the types of advertisements and stump speeches my story attempts to critique.
Hyperlinks would be used in order to clear up some of the ambiguities in the story. Certain phrases would be hyperlinked to image generators, with each click leading to a picture of a different politician’s face. For example, the phrase: “with the dispassionate craving of self-preservation,” could be attached to any number of elected officials known as flip floppers, in order to underscore their visible desire to be reelected rather than serve the common good.
In “Up Against the Screen Motherfuckers,” the protagonist, a soldier, flashes across the screen as sounds of broken machines and images of shattered monitors play. In my story, the antagonist, who destroys the story’s symbol of broken political discourse, would flash across the screen while on the story’s page, briefly obscuring the content. Each “antagonist,” is, in this case, a different Supreme Court Justice, as they bear responsibility for the influx of campaign money that has made the current state of campaign affairs possible. They also have the power to overturn their own rulings, and the reader of the story has the power to vote for a party which influences justice nominations.
Finally, instead of the last line of the story, spoken by the protagonist, I would include the source of the quote:
“I am sorry,” said God. “This is the way it had to be.”
The girl’s retort emerged as ephemerally as the substanceless clouds which made up the ground beneath her feet: “I am not a witch“
If I knew how to embed within WordPress, the Christine O’Donnell video would be embedded rather than linked, so that the quote would have to be stated aloud during a “read” of the story. The ad and its maker are some of the better real world examples of the issues I raise, and an integral part of the narrative. It makes sense to feature them explicitly.