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Author’s Note: This is my personal love letter to r/nosleep lol. I tried to insert as many references to the tropes found in so many of these horror stories that strive for believability. The beginning especially was highly inspired by the dramatically read youtube videos I used to watch as a kid. I definitely cut it a bit short bc it was almost 10 pages, so towards the end it might feel a but rushed, but maybe sometime I’ll expand and post it to the subreddit myself.

1.What is the name of the game?     DOOM. 2. Does the game have a narrative?     Yes, although there is very little content in game about it. The narrative is mainly just the sequence of the character fighting monsters and zombies on different parts of a military base and ultimately, hell. It consists of 4 main episodes that take place on Mars' moons, hell, and then end with an invaded Earth (to be continued in DOOM II). In between each episode, a brief text screen is displayed to provide some exposition before gameplay starts up again. A detailed background is given in the physical instruction manual that came with the game. Instruction Manual 3. How does the game negotiate the aesthetics of choice with its narrative?     The only goal of each episode is to make it to the teleporter at each base to travel to them one by one. Other than survival, there are no objectives. However, you do encounter many enemies and get to swap between multiple weapons through...

 Mechanical difficulty: In other narrative forms, this could be equivalent to reading comprehension/fluency. Ability to read any kind of narrative or process it is contingent on your ability to understand the language it is written in. Interpretive difficulty: Ability to interpret writing that is more ambiguous. Requires more experience dealing with narrative and understanding how to read between the lines, understand figurative language, etc. This also ties to poetry, as it also relies on a certain level of deeper understanding of the form. Affective difficulty: How a reader interacts with works based on their own preferences. This is similar to how pacing works to hold a reader's attention and the difficulty that comes with reading works with varied pacing. 

 This was a shocking and sad piece about grief. The narrator describes snippets from the time her brother's girlfriend was hit by a car while crossing the street and passed away. Then, years later, his next girlfriend was killed in a car accident. It is a take on grief that emphasizes the disconnect between the people affected by the deaths.