kel: The maps! bane of my motherfucking existence.

lise: Oh, the *maps*. These, done by kel, were just sheer brilliance. So simple, and yet they work so well. The idea of the maps and the last scene, actually, with the thumbtacks, we had written out before nearly the entire rest of the story. So I was so thrilled to see how kel managed to pull off exactly what I wanted to see from the graphic. We had so many more about the Justin sightings, too, that we never got to use.

kel: I made a livejournal entry about trying to make the maps before we posted the story.

In the comments, Katie and I are talking about the map. Originally I tried to do it by hand, but the resolution was for shit. I tried to convince Lise to learn how to do image mapped roll-overs, but she said, "Bitch, please." So this was the final product. I think it came out okay.

lise: Did I say that?

lise: ...I won't deny it.

kel: Well, figuratively speaking.

lise: Like how we argued over the "has sent" and the Remus story.

kel: The two maps, I think, are the parts of the story that are most influenced by The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood.

In The Blind Assassin, there's a little bit of multi-media in that each of the sections of the novel starts with a newspaper article about the family in the story. The thing that struck me when I was reading the book, though, is that whatever the article was at the beginning of the section? It would basically give away what was going to happen before the section starts. A couple of the articles are obituaries and they come at points in the narrative where the character hasn't even died yet. And so there's something there (and also here, with the maps) about giving away everything but explaining nothing, and how you can show what's behind the curtain but still have a story to tell.

lise: next.