#interactive media

Work Text:

Cyberphysical Reality just Got a Whole More Engaging

The Unsignificant Sentience ARG has officially begun. It will explore a vast variety of themes, from the would building and exisistial crisis of the US series to more recursive identity metaphors than you can shake an edge at. Firstly, to play. All you need is your influencer name and type of influence which you can decide, but once chosen, is permanent. Affectors: Sense resistance in external matrices and can give them a nudge to have a physical effect. Effectors: Can sense the internal matrices of entities and modify communication in systems and individuals Alters: Are able to clearly see the network of forces in a matrix that an affected affects, but only in close contact. However they can modify the nodes that affected affect to result in different emergent properties Anchorite: Essentially has the influence of an alter and an effector but are only able to change their own internal matrix. How you choose to engage with the ARG is up to you, but I am making it clear that any fan fiction are via the nature of my world building, Canon.

Example: Fill out your characters name, type of influence, and a brief description of them then post it to my blog on Tumblr @ https://www.tumblr.com/blog/emilyreadswrites and let me do my magic! Name: Zara Type of influence: Anchorite Description: Zara is a secular recluse who has devoted her life to mastering her own matrix and achieving higher states of consciousness. She lives in a small cell attached to a temple, where she practices meditation, athletics, and contemplation. She has a remarkable control over her own body, physical feats, endurance, and reduced need for sustenance. She can also perceive the subtle influences of other hosts and cognitive technology in her environment as She rarely interacts with anyone or the entropic grid so can detect slight deviations in phenomenal internal and external experience.

Example narrative: Zara closed her eyes and focused on her inner matrix, sitting peacefully in her personal sanctum, the network of nodes that connected her to the cognitive technology that enabled her to practice her influence. She breathed deeply and felt a surge of energy coursing through her body, as if she was tapping into a hidden source of power. She visualized each node as a bright point of light, and aligned them with her will and intention. She was an anchorite, a master of her own matrix, and she could control her physical feats, endurance, and mental state. She opened her eyes and looked up at the sky. It was dark and sunless, as it had been for as long as she could remember. But there was a faint glow on the horizon, a sign of something stirring in the upper atmosphere. She knew it was an aurora, a natural light display that shimmered in the sky with different colors. She had read about them in ancient texts, how they were caused by charged particles from the sun colliding with gas atoms in the air. She was looking forward it would be like to see them up close, to feel their warmth and radiance. She felt a pang of curiosity and longing, a rare emotion for someone who had devoted her life to solitude and meditation. She realized that she needed more than just her inner matrix to satisfy her thirst for knowledge and experience. She needed to explore the world beyond her cell, to discover its secrets and mysteries. She needed to find out what else was possible with her influence. Zara stilled her internal matrix and focused on the immediate environment, she might experience a shift in her perception and awareness. She become more sensitive to the physical sensations and details around her, such as the cold air, the sound of the wind, and the smell of the earth. She might also notice the aurora more vividly, as she would not be distracted by the cognitive technology that enables magic. She might see the different colors and shapes of the aurora, and feel a sense of wonder and awe at the natural phenomenon. She felt a connection to something bigger than herself, something that transcends her understanding of emergent internal and external existence. In light of this existential experience, she decided to simply take a walk.

Minotaur (Apple II): The Forgotten Sacrifice in the Maze

In 1982, a kid with an Apple II could boot up Minotaur by Sirius and find themselves inside a maze that didn’t want them to win - it just wanted them to wander.

You were not a hero. You were not Theseus. You were a flickering dot trying to keep a scrap of your digital breath while the labyrinth fed on your time and your hope.

There was no epic orchestral flourish. No high-score celebration. Just cold, blinking corridors and a Minotaur that taught you this: inside the maze, you exist to be hunted.

A Forgotten Blueprint for Modern Labyrinths

Minotaur was crude - a skeletal blueprint of dread and repetition. But in that tiny maze, the seeds were buried for something bigger.

Namco’s Tower of Druaga (1984) appeared just two years later. It gave the maze a tower, gave the Minotaur a sword and a crown, slapped in some mythological window dressing, and sold the same primal loop: wander, fear, repeat.

In Druaga, you didn’t kill the maze - the maze killed you, room by room. It turned Minotaur’s lonely dread into a profit loop. More enemies, more secrets, more players hypnotized into thinking there was something noble behind the grind.

Then Atari’s Gauntlet (1985) blew the lid off the labyrinth economy entirely. Now you weren’t just lost - you were spending quarters to stay alive inside Minotaur’s descendant. Four players, monsters multiplying, food that was never enough.

Same corridors. Same hunger. Same thrill of survival. Just better lighting and a slot for coins.

Nothing’s Original When Fear Sells

Sirius didn’t copyright the concept of mazes. They didn’t invent dread. But they bottled it in a way that laid groundwork for something far more exploitative.

These later games didn’t steal code. They stole the shape of the wound:

The idea that being lost is a feature, not a bug.

That monsters in the dark are not obstacles - they are reasons to keep you moving.

That the promise of “escape” keeps you spending time, and eventually, money.

Minotaur never made millions. It never minted sequels or plastic toys. It was just another whisper in a storm of primitive code.

But it was first - one of the first digital temples that proved people will walk in circles if the walls hum loud enough.

How to Keep the Theft Defensible

It’s not defamation to say big games build on little ones - it’s history.

No one can copyright a maze. No one can claim to own the myth of the Minotaur. But the idea that you can trap a player in a grid, starve them of context, feed them bits of hope, and keep them crawling deeper - that’s a design DNA you can track.

Sirius did it small.

Tower of Druaga did it bigger.

Gauntlet did it louder.

And every modern roguelike that locks you in procedural corridors and feeds you death as content? They still echo that original digital labyrinth - the one the Apple II kids loaded up on squealing floppy drives, thinking they’d get adventure and instead found a doorless room.

Minotaur Was the Sacrificial Goat

Minotaur died forgotten. Its code rotted in old floppies and blurry archives. No merch. No revival.

But its spirit survived - profitable, marketable, eternal.

It’s still here every time a modern game tells you, “Just one more floor, hero.”

Inside every digital labyrinth, Minotaur still breathes.

As soon as the last love interest was introduced, I had formed this entire narrative in my head in accordance with Cami's character. I knew what she has to do to leave the past in the past, try out the new opportunity that has come her way, and by the end still be where I wanted her, which was safely back home.

With the way everything played out with my first run of the movie, it's safe to say I'll be able to read the consequences of my choices in the next run very well.

Consequences of having a writer mind, am I right?

Anyway, the concept of Choose Love is fun and it felt that way too when I was watching/directing it. The characters besides Cami, who is sort of a blank slate for obvious reasons, are as fleshed out as you can expect any rom-com characters to be.