A comic that I made some time ago was the starting point for this final. Is a story contained in a week, about Adam, a dog that is addicted to bitting his own tail. He character relapses on a Sunday and the story goes on his struggle to maintain sobriety until the next Sunday. He meets a roach called Franz, they become friends and Adam helps him get a place in a species-phobic city. There is small interactions with wild characters that talk about God, information, repetition and normality. On Saturday they go to a party that ends up in a shootout, they survive but this triggers one more relapse.
I adapted the comic to fit a format of narration where lines are the building block. Each day is a new line, most of the actions too. Some dialogue is long but that is the exception. Finally, a relapse is just a single word on a line. There were 239 lines in total.
For making a novel out of this source material, I implemented a simple probability system. First, the source material repeated itself continuously 52 times, the amount of weeks in a year, line by line. Then, every time there is a new line, a small chance of alteration is coded, replacing the original line for another one in the source material. Finally, every week that passed made the chance of alteration go up and the amount of lines per week go down, also the chance of introducing a line saying -RELAPSE-.
This produced some interesting materials, where the fragmented character of the source material were reinterpreted, making new scenes or giving new meaning to the original ones.
Original comic. Dog relapsing.
Generated text inside the novel, interpolating Relpases, dialogue and actions each day of the week.
Sample of a day in the original comic.
Fragment of Week by week
Computer generated days of a character, made up of dialogue an interactions taken from other days, written by a human.
WEDNESDAY
“And here we are, fools of our own desires, what we pursue is nothing but vain, yet we are raising our demise.“
-RELAPSE-
Time passes and then Adam remembers
I will change
Adrenaline kicks in and Adam is sober as a horse before a race.
Should I go home?
Outside, Adam remembers.
THURSDAY
Day goes.
FRIDAY
silence
Time passes and then Adam remembers
Small noise on the closet door
“You know, I have been followed today“
-RELAPSE-
They go for it and run outside.
Crazy eyes
“I’m not a conservative, you know? Just wanted to get to know you, and also, it’s ok to be a roach, it’s ok to be a dog, this is NY, the melting pot of species, “