Branching Story

It is one of those days where half the sky is overcast and grey, and the other half is shiny and bright, almost serendipitous. Mila notices the yin yang sky as she walks down the cement trails known as the streets of New York. Mila dreaded her walks to meetings, because for her, the sidewalk cracks were gaping dangers. If she walked over the crack with her left boot first, she had to walk over the crack in a circle four times to correct it. If she didnt, logically she knew she could not control anything by walking over a crack a certain way, but emotionally her brain convinced her something bad would happen. At around 4 she found out that this way of magical thinking, was also called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Mila believes that her OCD is the reason she is so creative, but it is also her least favorite thing about herself. When you look at Mila, she has that corporate america, sleek-sorta-look, that gives you a little bit of exestential dread. She is very put together and wears her hair in a slick braid every day. But the truth is, the braids are part of her OCD too, and she feels like an insane mess every day. [[Mila's Job]]

Today, Mila is heading to a meeting with all the large streaming service companies CEO's, which she often does. She is a freelance film artist, so she will pitch innovative and creative film ideas to different streaming services, and work there for a few months as she completes the film writing portion of her pitch. BUT, she is especially excited about today's pitch because she bvelieves that she may have invented an industry breaking idea. Her pitch is to create a film that allows viewers to interact with the narrative, Mila calls is "Interactive Narrative Fiction." [[The Meeting]]

As Mila is presenting, she feels more excited than anything else, especially because she is pretty familiar with this crowd and has worked for every person in the room for at least one project. As she looks across the room, she does not see as many interested and excited faces as she had hoped. She was pretty shocked that the Netflix CEO seemed to have no interest, she had originally anticipated Netflix to be the person to sign on this idea. She thanks everyone for coming, and concludes the meeting A FEW DAYS LATER... Who does Mila hear back from? [[Netflix]] [[HBO Max]] [[Hulu]] [[Peacok]]

"Sweet! I thought Max Cintar seemed interested during our meeting," Mila thought. Although Mila always had liked HBO Max the best, she took the deal. Hulu would pay better anyways! Mila had one week to pack up her stuff, and head to Hulu's LA office, where she would spend 3 months completing the screen-writing portion of the movie. Then, Hulu will produce the film, and she was promised a pretty high percentage of the profits, HOORAY!!! [[UGH Packing]]

Mila was so excited when she got the call from Mark, HBO's CEO. She loved working for HBO in the past, they pair her fairly and the community there was always amazing. SOOO, Mila had one week to pack up her stuff and get her ass to the LA office. HBO planned to pay her for four months, though Mila thought she could finish the screen play in three. [[Packing]]

Mila had done a job with Hulu before, but never in the LA office. She had arrived in LA late last night and her temporary housing was pretty drap and sterile feeling, but she was excited anyway. Her apartment was only where she had to sleep, she could deal. She woke up, got dressed, and braided her hair to perfection. She then headed to the office, taking an uber, because why the hell not she could treat herself the first day! Two ubers were in her area, did derik or erika pick her up? [[Derik]] [[Erika]]

Mila's cubicle is the most drab ugly uninspiring place. At this point Mila is looking for anything, anything at all, that she could do to help the office be some place she is excited to go and create. She thinks about decorating, but also can't decide if the money would be well spent on a place she would only be for three months. Plus, nobody else in the office has decorate... MEN UGH. Was she really going to make herself stick out even more? [[Decorate]] OR [[Deal]]?

Mila decides she will head to the store, and find decorations that make the place feel more HER. Her hope is that the decorations will make the place much more conducive to the artistic process. She pops over to target and found a decent amount of cheap decor, pops over may have been a bit of an exaggeration... the cracks in the sidewalk on the way took a lot of spinning, she kept stepping over them wrong. She gets back an hour later, right at the end of lunch. Much better! But the tech bros are still a problem. [[Eek]]

The place sucks but Mila has been trying to save money, so she decides to stick with the gray ugly cubicle. Mila can make do... hopefully! [[Failll]]

Even with the decoration, the place sucks and the tech bros are suffocating. Unfortunately, after days and days of no inspiration, Mila misses the first deadline Hulu set for the first draft... This is a BIG NO NO in the film industry, and Mila knows it. She gets called in to the big man's office and, to no surprise, she gets fired. Getting fired lead to Mila having a really hard time finding future job opportunities and she ends up being an accountant. [[Begin]]

Mila's place sucks and the tech bros are suffocating. Unfortunately, after days and days of no inspiration, Mila misses the first deadline Hulu set for the first draft... This is a BIG NO NO in the film industry, and Mila knows it. She gets called in to the big man's office and, to no surprise, she gets fired. Getting fired lead to Mila having a really hard time finding future job opportunities and she ends up being an accountant. [[Begin]]

Mila walks into the office and is immediately greeted by smiling faces, some familiar, a few not. Her good friend Jake greets her with her favorite coffee order and a warm hug. Her and Jake catch up as he walks her to her beautiful cubicle with a bright shiny window with stain-glass accents. Mila already has a good feeling about this place being conducive to her creative process, but notices a lot of people habe decorations around their cubicle. "Could make it more homey," she thought. But also could just be a waste of money given that she will only be there for four months max... ha, get it. Which does Mila choose: [[Yes, decorate]] OR [[No, waste of time and money]] ?

[[Co-worker bonding]]

About an hour before lunch time, Mila is ecstatic about all her new and old co-worker friends. She decides to invite them all to do something during their shared lunch hour. [[Invite them to coffee]] [[Invite them to lunch]]

[[Boss Man Calls Mila In]]

[[Boss Man Has A Question]]

Unfortunately, because she missed the co-worker lunch plan, and is now known as a flake, the comradery in the office has dwindled. Mila is more of background noise to her peers now. And as the weeks increase, her noise becomes less like background noise and more like a muffle. "Well screw the co-worker relationships," Mila can still make this work and get the job done... it will be easier to leave anyway. [[Well...]]

Mila is weirdly excited each day to wake up and go to work... maybe it was her awesome friends, or her awesome new cubicle with pretty windows... No, it was definitely because of Jake. [[Work]]

As time passes, and your narrative fiction idea BLOWS up, Mila and Jake reinvest the money from it to open up their own firm as private contractors known to make new, ground-breaking, film ideas. The even cooler part is that while working on narrative fiction projects Mila was hired to do after her first one was released with HBO Max, Mila realized narrative fiction is how her OCD thoughts always manifested. Thinking she can control what happens to her by doing certain rituals, just like choosing your next action in the movie and having it lead to winning or losing. [[Happy Endings!!!]]

So, things really worked out in the end for Mila. Narrative fiction led to her meeting jake, becoming well-known in the film world, starting her own business, and healing her OCD.

Mila gets the job finished, and in three months like she had anticipated. This means she gets an entire month of pay while not working, WOHOO! She is slightly worried it is not her best work, the lack-luster co-worker friendships she had took more of a toll on her creative process than she had expected. [[Mehhhh]]

The movie makes virtually no revenue, probably an outcome that resulted from her "flake" reputation with her co-workers, which led to dreading going to work, but Hulu saw it and liked it and so Mila has been hired to try again, maybe the next time will go well. [[Hulu]]

Mila spends 3 awesome and exciting months writing the narrative fiction outline on twine, and today is her last day... [[Going-Away Party]]

Mila gets a mysterious message from, GUESS WHO, Jake, in the middle of the day. The text tells her to be at the office today at 7:30, in formal attire. At 7:30 she arrives to see that her co-workers threw her an awesome surprise party as a farewell. Did her co-wrokers buy [[Champagne]] OR [[Martenellis]] for a farewell toast?

Wohoo, party on! [[A Night Out]]

The night was innocent and fun... AND... you and Jake finally kissed, AHHH!!! Mila decides to head home early, with Jake of course, and they spend a couple hours together snuggled up watching each of their favorite movies. [[It's Looking Up]]

Mila and the co-workers end up getting much more intoxicated than expected and the night turns into a bar crawl. When everyone finally decides to call it a night, the inhibitions are out the window. Mila, drunk off her ass, gets home and posts to her instagram about how excited she is for her movie to premiere tomorrow. [[The Aftermath]]

Mila wakes up with a raging headache and little memory of what she did last night. Her phone is buzzing off her nighstand so she grabs it to see what all the commotion was about. Uh Oh... a text from Jake read, "Mila...you were really drunk last night so I am just going to let you know, in case you dont remember, you posted about the movie last night... remember the NDA you assigned..." FUCK! She rushes to her instagram... FUCK! She deletes it hoping her boss never saw it, and gets ready to start packing. Soon enough, she gets the call she has been dreading. She is told that because of the drunken mishap she legally cannot be recognized for being the brains behind the show, but, she will still recieve the agreed upon compensation, like orginially promised.

WRONG, netflix was not interested, remember? [[Begin]]

WRONG, peacok didn't care for the idea. [[Begin]]

Although Mila is super excited about moving to LA, she can't seem to get past the dread of packing. Packing already sucks for normal people, and then add on OCD. Mila's OCD tended to flare up to an extreme when she knew she would be leaving that place for good and could not undo any rituals, if needed. Thus it took her every hour of that week to pack her things, with folding each piece of clothing 48 times before putting it in a box, spinning every bottle and kitchen utensil four times, and tapping every pair of shoe 4 sets of 48 times... and Mila had A LOT of shoes. [[The Morning Of Mila's First Day At HBO]]

AHHH THIS CAR STINKS, Mila thought to herself. The car was seemingly ancient and both Derik and the shitty toyota smelt of cigarrettes to a point Mila did not know a car could smell that strongly of. Derik said he was new to the area and Mila immediately thought, OH NO. Of course, Mila showed up 20 minutes late to her new job, as Derik got lost over and over and OVER again. And now she reeked of cigarrette smoke... great. She shook it off and headed up the elevator of the cold and grey building, to her new office. [[The Elevator Doors Open To The Hulu Office]]

Erika was awesome and seemingly Mila's age. They hit it off, and agreed to get lunch Thursday afternoon during Mila's lunch hour. She arrived at the office building with 10 minutes to spare. It was cold and grey, but she hoped the office would be very different than the lobby of the building, she headed up the elevator. [[The Elevator Doors Open To The Hulu Office]]

Unfortunately, the office matched the lobby, cold and grey and dark. There was a weird aroma to the whole building. AND, even worse... the office was full of clean-cut, cocky-looking, tech-bro's. OH GREAT. The temp greeted Mila and led her to her assigned cubical. [[Mila's Cubicle]]

Mila wakes up and rips open her drapes in her temporary housing. It is a bright and sunny day and the sun warms her face almost immediately. She is frantic and excited, she has worked in the office before, and loves the people and the location. She is hoping her old friend Frankie is still working there. HBO has set her up in housing two blocks from the office so as soon as she gets ready, and braids her hair, she heads out the door. [[Walking to the Office]]

Her walk to the office was brisk, and warm. AND, to Mila's surprise, there was very minimal cracks in the sidewalks to step over wrong, on her route to work, SCORE. [[Office First Impressions]]

The boss calls Mila in just before her lunch hour, he wants Mila to sign a non-disclosure agreement that Mila will not tell anyone outside of the office what her and HBO Max is creating. He specified it was only in place because he predicts this "Narrative Fiction Idea" to be industry breaking and he doesn't want anyone to do it before they do it. Mila is a little reluctant, it feels quite formal and slightly odd to her. Do you [[Sign]] OR [[Dont Sign]]?

Cool! Now Mila is off to coffee with new friends! She picks a cute coffee shop, about two-blocks from the office. Jake, a familar face, sits down next to her left, and a new face, named Joy, sits to her right. The group has an awesome time, giggling and relating to one another. Mila cant help but think that she did not remember Jake being so charming last time they worked together... [[Wohoo work]]

Mila feels really uncomfortable, and after some discussion, she decides not to sign the NDA, worried it will land her in hot water... potentially. [[Are You Really Sure]]?

Mila discusses it with the boss to make sure she is not getting herself into a sticky legal situation, and completely loses track of time. Unfortunately, she misses lunch and now she is known in the office as a "flake". Whatever, Mila thinks to herself, if they are that quick to judge, they would not make good friends anyway, so... dodged a bullet there!

Mila feels really uncomfortable, and after some discussion, she decides not to sign the NDA, worried it will land her in hot water... potentially. [[Are you sure?]]

[[Yes]] [[No]]

FAIL!!! Refusal to sign the NDA resulted in HBO firing Mila. [[Begin]]

Mila changed her mind after some convincing, Mila knows her boss decently well, from previous projects, and knows he is not an ill-intent sort-of guy. PLUS, he specifies that refusal to sign means she would not continue the project with HBO... So... Mila signed it. [[Mila's Co-Worker Situation...]]

[[Totally]] [[Nah, Mila Decides to Sign It]]

FAIL!!! Refusal to sign the NDA resulted in HBO firing Mila. [[Begin]]