Bullies

In my story, Bullies, we are faced with three main characters. The main character, Sean, followed by his friend, Jared, and the antagonist, Hector. As the title states, this is a story about bullying. As you traverse the story, you’ll tell that you’re playing as the main character, Sean, who deals with Hector bullying him. In this world, we play as Sean, who has to go through the day at school getting bullied. This follows a stereotypical day story about what kids go through when they get bullied, in a school setting.  

I created the wants and needs for Sean to be obvious, at first. He wants to stop the bullying by interacting with Hector but what he doesn’t realize he actually needs, is that he has to become friends with Hector to overcome the obstacle of the bullying that’s happening within the story. The main wants and needs differ from one another because it may seem like Sean wants the bullying to stop by speaking up for himself and defuse the situation but instead, he needs to adapt to the situation by accepting the fact that the bullying won’t stop, until he takes Hector’s sides of things. When we play through the story, we are faced with different outcome with what will happen. Depending on which route you take within the story, you’ll be able to see how Sean’s wants and needs will change through each possible outcome. 

I came up with the story based on my experience growing up, at times. Getting bullied at recess, knowing I had to be nice to the bully in order to overcome the bullying. The bad routes differ from reality, transitioning into fiction. I feel like this was a fun route to take, especially with the mom, offering different stories for the player to traverse. Rather than having a nice happy ending, perhaps the reader will take the evil road down to see what will happen between the characters. 

For me, the most difficult part was deciding on the endings. How exactly did I want the paths to end? This took a while to brainstorm, knowing each ending had to be clear. In two of the different paths, if you take the wrong one, you’ll actually be transported to a previous card, making it clear you took the wrong path. It was hard for me to come up with these endings because I didn’t know how I wanted the stories to end. With multiple endings including good and bad options, I feel like I had enough diversity for the player to be content with either path they went down. Having multiple endings like this invites the reader to play again, and traverse down a different path to see what other options are available rather than their initial choices. In the end, I overcame the difficulty by taking time to brainstorm all of my options. 

As known, bullying is a common problem within schools nationwide. Kids are faced with this problem and live day-to-day dealing with students that harass them. I felt like this was a great way to create a story, with a fictional spin on it, giving readers different choice to choose from, changing the story. With the topic of bullying, I thought it would gain the reader’s interest, giving interesting options to choose from, with some being more gruesome than the other. Although this is a real-world problem that students face, there’s a fiction twist in the story that aims to keep the reader engaged. 

 In the end, I created this story to align with real-world problems that the reader could venture through, and see how the bully and the victim interact with one another. With multiple paths within the story, the reader will be able to choose what scenarios will take place and what outcomes will happen. Upon the first read, I hope to create that connection with the reader, giving them the motivation to want to go through it again, choosing different paths.