Embedded Files
Our first dramaturgy session in June 2023 - guided by Alex and written by Imran - sought to explore some of the backstory of our main character, Qainaat Latif, as a foundation for discovering her motivations and character arc. We began by imagining her public biography, then her appearance and finally a timeline of the key events in her life and potentially the arc of her character's journey.
Public Biography
Public Biography
Founder of BLVR Labs, a spiritual computing startup and the inventor of Shroud Computing technology and the notion of veiled realities. Her name translates as “gentle or kind universe”; she is sometimes jokingly referred to as “Quantum Leap”. Like many activist entrepreneurs, she exhibits messianic tendencies and is hyperbolic and arrogant about her work, but deeply protective of her Muslim heritage and feminist activism. Curiously, she doesn’t wear a veil herself…
Inspirations include… Nathan Bateman (Ex Machina), Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) and Forest (Devs) - she’s prone to say things like:
Aesthetic
Aesthetic
A young woman with long, black hair that is styled in a messy bun. She is wearing a traditional Pakistani kurta with ripped jeans and a leather jacket. She has a nose ring and a few tattoos.
A photorealistic young Pakistani woman with a punk aesthetic, looking somewhat like Urvah Khan, or Saira from We Are Lady Parts.
You can learn more of our visual exploration of Qainaat's aesthetic in our character study of her and in some of the images below…
Timeline
Timeline
Broadly we’re attempting to create her personal narrative - something she knows about herself, rather than what‘s public, describe what we know of her life, in the form of thumbnails of incidents from her lifetime.
2015
Birth
She is Generation Alpha, born in 2015, ten years before the City of Culture, a year before Brexit, five years before COVID-19.
Family
She has no siblings, her father is absent and leaving her life during childhood, but was someone who always pushed her forward, perhaps towards something she isn’t.
Perhaps her father is still around, but distant/absent and. Her mother died when she was young, a formative trauma. This drives her need to shield herself and control what’s around her.
2020
School
Early years school education is disrupted by COVID-19, she understands how to learn independently.
2022
Ms. Marvel
As a 7-year old, she idolises Ms. Marvel as a person where power, feminism and faith give her agency.
2025
City of Culture
As a ten year old, she sees the potential of her home city celebrated.
Deep into her life, she wears a faded Bradford 2025 t-shirt, like Theo’s London 2012 top in Children Of Men.
2028 - 2030
Hostility & Discrimination
Faces some kind of origin trauma - hostility, marginalisation, discrimination in her early teen years.
2033 - 2037
Education
A journeyman education that bounced between formal (MIT Media Lab, SoDA), countercultural communities in the ruins of The Line and seasteading billionaire technologists.
2037
The Line
Her experiences amongst revolutionaries and dissidents atThe Line forms her embrace of faith as it evolves from the collapse of the Saudi state and its retreat from petro-wealth.
Some of these influences are seen as heretical in mainstream Islam, embracing Speculative Selves and emerging technologies.
2037-40
BLVR Labs
Has the idea for a semi-sentient veil, bringing together her formative influences.
Encouraged by benefactors, VCs, investors, faith-based influences - from fashion, tech, military and materials - some with good intentions, other venal or opportunistic, some from her time at MIT, The Line and other places.
Founds BLVR Labs.
Returns to Bradford - a city that never bloomed from 2025, but has a countercultural arts+tech spirit that survives and can work under the radar in a familiar place. Much like Magic Leap., in fact her secrecy and that of BLVR leads to a backer jokingly nicknaming her Quantum Leap.
2040
Veiled Reality
Our interaction with the story begins.
What is the state of the world? Commonplace AI, unemployment, geopolitical glitches in shift to electrification?
She is months into testing her prototype and under pressure from investors to show something publicly.
Character Arc
Character Arc
The story of Qainaat is fundamentally a tension between vulnerability and power. Where she saw the Islamic veil as a protective shield, a filter or a barrier, ultimately she understands that it connects her more deeply to others, mediating realities and being a source of strength - that’s her central revelation.
There is power in what you wear.
Upon wearing it herself, something surprising and revelatory happens to her and changes her relationship to it. What has the Veil done and how has it affected her? A power that she wasn’t expecting and an immersive sense of immanence.
Conversing with the player character about the Veil and Q’s backstory starts to shift Q’s view from a shield to a companion. Less RoboCop/Ironman keeping things out, but more about letting things through and in. What makes you vulnerable can be powerful.
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