One of the genres that I'm working on developing are stories based on events that take place on the internet. They focus on the duality of the internet and the physical world, and how people act differently in each one. They also focus on the problems, and how the events unfold in the internet. Basically, instead of having events unfold in traditional places, they take place on the internet. The characters in the physical world also interact. For example, Alex runs a website for her boyfriend since she knows how, and they don't want their friend Kevin to know about it because he's weird and would write all sorts of weird stuff on it and attract negative attention. He ends up discovering it, not knowing it's run by his friends, and registers on it, but his friends don't know. Alex eventually realizes it's him a few years later and bans him and deletes his stuff. She then decides to troll him, knowing who he is but he doesn't realize who she is. She then decides to send him messages saying where he lives and even goes to his room to get files off his computer to email to him under her username, in order to freak him out. Redacted since it's a bit cruel for her to do as a joke He starts trying to find out who she is, sees that she lives in Germany from the WHOIS database (she uses her sister's address) and concludes that the troll is some "with the same name." Eventually he figures it out, and Alex thinks it was funny and while Kevin is relieved, he doesn't think so. Possibly some sort of drama could result. Edit: I'm thinking that this would be a response to some sort of problem that Kevin caused for Alex, not just her being a jerk. It if seems too much though, I can tone it back.
This is your story, and you should write it however you like. However, I just have to note, particularly with what you've told us of these characters in another thread, that this seems like an extraordinarily cruel action on Alex's part.
I see your point. I took out the thought about having her send him files from his own computer as a way of freaking him out, since that would be a bit far. I'm also going to have Alex's actions be a reaction to problems caused by Kevin, both for her boyfriend's website and for stuff he's done. She'd probably be upset about the fact that Kevin constantly comes to her looking for relationship advice, and then not following it. Probably that and doing a lot of stuff to weird her out. She's very patient with him, but she can only take so much drama being imported to her website, or abuse of the admins and users there before she decides to do something that will make not come back. She also doesn't publicly post his information anywhere either.
Again, you should write whatever you like and find most compelling. It's just that what you've told us about here doesn't really gibe with what you said in the other thread, about Kevin wanting to have sex with Alex, and them being friends. I had the sense in the other thread (and I haven't checked it since I read it this morning, so I might be misremembering or I may have misinterpreted it at the outset), that Alex cared deeply about Kevin and maybe even thought of him almost like a little brother. Although she didn't want to sleep with him for her own good, as well as for his, she still cared for him and wanted to look out for his best interests. What you described here doesn't give me that same feeling. And that's okay -- it could be that you want to make it seem like she really cared for him, but eventually turns on him for some reason. You just have to be aware of those inconsistencies and be sure that that's where you want to take these characters.
Your story doesn't make sense. Why would Alex delete and ban Kevin "several years later"? If Alex has only just found out Kevin's on the website, then clearly Kevin couldn't have been causing any trouble all those years, so what's the reason for banning/deleting him? And it wouldn't make sense anyway - as the person running the site, you'll likely be the administrator, which means you'll need to approve user accounts, meaning Alex would see Kevin's email address right away and deny him access right away anyway. This sounds like a really petty, petty scheme - just really childish. Depends what happens and how you write it, I guess. EDIT: and if it's several years before Alex discovers Kevin on the site, how old are they by now? I can't imagine a half-intelligent student doing this, so Alex would have to be 16, 17, maybe 18 at most when she bans Kevin and starts trolling him. (the older you get, the better the reason for banning/trolling would have to be) So how old was Alex when she learnt how to run a website? 13? 14? Now I'm not sure cus I'm not of that generation anymore and kids these days do know a LOT of technology, but I'd double check if that's realistic, to know how to run a website - to a greater extent than her peers - by age 13.
To clarify, Kevin joins Heinrich's (Alex's boyfriend) website in 2008 when they're 17. Alex and her friends running the website don't know that he joined. He writes several weird articles, but Alex and the other admins don't notice. MediaWiki (Wikipedia) doesn't require account approval by default. Account approval requires a software extension, as does the ability to look up user email addresses from the web. So when Kevin registers, no one would notice anything. When Alex is in sophomore year of college, she discovers one of his stories while hungover (I wrote about this part in a story in German) one morning completely by accident. She then looks up the contributions of the user who wrote it, and sees all the other stuff that he wrote. I was thinking that Kevin's stuff would have created some sort of problem with other people who saw it. She then realizes that Kevin had infiltrated their website and removes all his stuff. I'm thinking that her trolling of him would be designed to keep him off her website, and also the result of having endured too much of his weirdness. While she does love him, she can only take so much of his objectification of her. I think that having the ability to run a website and understand MySQL and scripting languages is definitely something that someone who is 12 or 13 could achieve. They start in the story when they're 15. I thin that someone who's 19 or 20 could definitely troll, especially a friend who they often make fun of as a manner of interaction. It's not like she trolls as a hobby, just one person. She also doesn't do it constantly, just as a one time thing. She doesn't just troll him after finding his stuff either. She deletes his stuff, and after having a discussion with him about it online, he starts saying a lot of nasty stuff about her, not knowing who she is.
I care about making events convincing, and don't want to do anything that would seem odd without having a reason for it. Alex does view Kevin almost like a brother, but I'd view it more as an equal relationship. She still holds him accountable for what he does, and tells him if he's doing something totally weird. I was also planning on Kevin reacting badly when Alex tells him she deleted his stuff and starts insulting her.
