For fall, break working on the database into smaller interconnected vignettes that build on each other. Possibly build a randomization system to cross reference these tropes with the Fussing about fiction returning from northern ontario and each other (but don't feel married to it.)
Narrative tropes
unreliable narrator
researchers opinions change over time, commenting on themselves Read the Dramatic 17th-Century Memoirs of Alice Thornton, Who Wrote Four Versions of Her Life Story
researchers falling asynchronously in love with another, revealing the original narrator starts talking to them The Shaman, the Outsider, and the Diet of Worms by LITHOBREAKERS, Stanwixbuster, COMPUTERMILK
researchers(entities in disguise) start talking back to you, asking for help, and releasing edit access (how games move us ref)
an early chapter without interactivity or meta - pure lore
prompt player to follow up ofln finding as much as they can about a specific researcher who's fate is hinted at. Balance abstraction (genderless, without physicality - you watch them loose their physicality and feel a certain way about jt) and specifics (time period, friends, job, disposition). How much do you invest in their handwriting and initials?
researchers criticising the values/similar focus (the annals) of previous (thinking they missed important info, Athenian murders), affectionate teasing (shriek an afterward),
player needs to heavily invest real identity into username (how?!)
take identity away
database tropes
mechanics I have available to me (probably)
other notes
Silly
Tech of writing sept 26