About Underland

Underland is a narrative website experience created and self-published by me, S Siou! I created this site as a portfolio project for my online new media class in my fourth semester at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Bachelor of Creative Writing program. However, the story I created it to tell existed months before I got the opportunity to bring it to life. 

How I came up with it goes like this: one bright September day at work, there was a lull in my duties as the funeral service went on (I work at a funeral home company), and so I sat at the grand windows that overlook the cemetery. As my mind was drifting while I watched the crows play amongst the sunny marble headstones and well-manicured trees, I got the notion that all the fixtures throughout the grounds looked sort of like chess pieces on a giant board. And that was when it hit me: turning my beloved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into a death story would be a wonderful—or underful, if you will—idea. Visions of a shovel-wielding Alice battling crow-like monsters, cloaked in a long blue coat much like my own long black coat which I wear for drizzly gravesides, immediately came to mind—as did the vision of her tumbling into a freshly dug grave (a nightmare scenario which has been recalled to me by several unfortunate funeral directors) instead of a rabbit hole. 

From those few ideas and a little workshopping with my best friend flowed the rest of Underland, until the entire place was rendered in all its dark and deceptive glory. It was only by reflecting on that best friend’s past projects many months later that I decided a narrative website would be the best way to present it, not just for the purposes of my assignment, but for the sake of blending my passions for writing, art, and new media into one strange experience! And I am very pleased I did. I hope you are pleased as well! Underland is extremely near and dear to my heart, and it means the world that I could share it with you. Please enjoy it!