ABSTRACT
Drawing from analogies with other tropes in fiction such as memory erasure, memory suppression, time reversal and time travel, this chapter discusses the uses and effects of the relatively rare trope of ‘unhappening’ in fictional narratives. The defence mechanism of the six-legged Svengali affects memories and ideas about the turtle, regardless of how firmly established those ideas are in one’s memory and consciousness. In relation to works of interactive fiction, it is important to observe that the player typically takes a perspective that is both internal to the fictional world and external to it. Works of fiction rarely present their plots in ways that follow the development of fictional events in a completely linear and straightforward temporal manner; rather, they often use devices such as flashbacks, flashforwards and ellipses to pursue a variety of expressive effects.
