A community of curious and thoughtful people passionate about self-reflection.

We are an online EdTech organization bound by a common motivation to practice personal storytelling and emotionally literate communication. Conceived in 2018 by founder Jenny Liu Zhang as her undergraduate thesis, the name "Plot Twisters" comes from the idea that all of us go through "plot twists," or challenges and conflicts as we navigate life, and that a little emotional regulation, awareness of our thoughts, and understanding of our values can go a long way. "Plot Twisters" was henceforth born to be a movement to bring about tools and practices that nurture us to better understand ourselves, tell our stories, and build our journeys toward wellbeing.

In 2020, we officially took form as a co-design collective and have been developing case studies in topics like social-emotional learning, identity building, and trauma-informed therapy to build up to the launch of the Plot Twisters game world. Our team members bring insights from diverse walks of life, neurotypes, and backgrounds: we are user experience researchers, artists, software engineers, pedagogy designers, writers, psychologists, community organizers, and information scientists. Driven by a vision of a society in which people are free to learn, work, and play based on their intrinsic motivation, we see the need for regular self-reflection. The Plot Twisters game world will be one digital destination where our members and the general public can come to document our life stories, connect dots between our curiosities and values, explore our decision-making models, and foster sustainable relationships with each other.

We believe in the power of personal storytelling for healing, creativity, and dialogue.

We see a huge problem: people of all ages lack freedom to engage with their personal and social narratives to make genuinely self-motivated decisions. Our education and labor systems frequently fail to nurture our capacities for critical decision-making, self-awareness, and consent. This starts at a young age in modern schooling and credentialization, then continues into labor institutions that reward select strengths like obedience. This problem perpetuates the systems of domination in many humanitarian issues of today.

Organizationally, Plot Twisters moves away from demanding top-down authority and toward creativity guided by our interests. As we create Plot Twisters, we are simultaneously building our own methods for consensual, co-creative dialogue, using our own tools to communicate with each other, negotiate expectations, and advocate for our needs, all in the spirit of playful storytelling. Our projects thus far have been informed and guided by a culture of open and emotionally literate communication, and we operate as a transparent and strengths-focused mutual aid organization when we have members in physical, financial, or emotional need.

Today, we are a close-knit community of 20+ people from all over the world, led by a core executive team of six. If you are interested in joining our community, feel free to reach out and tell us more about yourself. Though we are not actively looking for new members, we will keep you in mind if we have an opportunity for you.