Gothic Grandma.
Ever wondered what it is like to be...?
...be their muse and guide their story.
Ever wondered what it is like to be...?
...be their muse and guide their story.
Building empathy, understanding, and equity through interactive storytelling that lets anyone viscerally experience life from any perspective—powered by authentic psychological simulation.
The MUSE Psychological Simulation Platform is our core technology—a scientifically-grounded software ecosystem of specialized tools allowing us to model authentic human psychology, biological needs, and environmental contexts, giving rise to emergent character behaviors and social dynamics. This universal platform powers multiple potential applications across entertainment, education, healthcare, and research. Our first application is MUSE Living Worlds: interactive storytelling experiences where psychological authenticity creates unprecedented empathy and understanding.
CYPHER's visual "Constructor" design interface where psychological and biological systems are created by connecting computational nodes—allowing the Gothic Grandma Laboratories core team to focus on scientific modeling, not fixing bugs in code.
MUSE Living Worlds is a digital interactive storytelling medium where you guide narratives paragraph by paragraph, experiencing life as any character. Unlike choose-your-own-adventure books or game simulations, characters in MUSE have psychologically authentic needs, emotions, memories, and relationships grounded in biological and physical reality—shaping how they respond to you, to each other, and to their shared world.
We believe empathy emerges from truly feeling what it's like to be someone else—not just reading about them. By making characters behave like real people (drawing from cognition, psychology, and neuroscience research), we create experiences where perspective-taking isn't optional—it's inevitable. Anyone can embody any character: different ages, abilities, cultures, identities, or even fantastical beings.
We don't tell stories using large language models or black-box AI that spread bias, make things up, and forget. MUSE is built on transparent, scientifically grounded biological, psychological, and environmental system models that we can modify as human understanding grows. We partner with diverse communities to ensure authentic representation, making interactive storytelling universally accessible regardless of reading level, language, ability, or background.
GLYPH is our MUSE Living Worlds interactive e-reader interface featuring professional typography and intuitive design that doesn't get in the way.
MUSE Living Worlds aren't just our stories—they're a platform for diverse creators to share theirs. We believe authentic representation comes from communities telling their own narratives, not corporations interpreting experiences from the outside.
We partner with Creative Directors—cultural storytellers, genre masters, community organizers, and lived experience experts—who guide the creation of Living Worlds. These aren't consultants we pay once and forget. They're collaborators who:
Creative Directors shape the narrative, characters, and cultural context of their Living Worlds using CODEX, our content creation tools. Gothic Grandma provides the technology; creators provide the authenticity.
Upfront payment for development work, plus ongoing royalties from every sale of their Living World. When your story succeeds, you succeed—not just Gothic Grandma.
In our CALLIOPE marketplace, Creative Directors are featured with headshots, biographies, and their creative vision. Your name, your story, your community—prominently celebrated, not hidden in credits.
Whether you're preserving folk tales from your heritage, exploring disability through lived experience, or mastering a narrative genre—if you have a story that deepens empathy and understanding, we want to help you tell it. Gothic Grandma serves as curator and enabler, ensuring quality and scientific grounding, but the creative vision belongs to you.
This isn't extraction. This is partnership. Revenue flows to communities. Attribution respects contributions. Authentic voices lead authentic stories.
Co-Founder
Chief Executive Officer
Co-Founder
Chief Research Officer
Co-Founder
Chief Operating Officer
Nathan is a computational systems neuroscientist and Chief Architect of the MUSE Platform, which powers MUSE Living Worlds. PhD in Rehabilitation Science (Washington University, 2020) with 15+ years of research across diverse clinical populations including stroke survivors, individuals with Parkinson's disease, and amputees (fellowship awardee from the American Heart Association and American Parkinson Disease Association). This breadth of experience with varied individual contexts directly informs Gothic Grandma's commitment to universal accessibility. Nathan designs the foundational architecture and guiding principles that enable psychological simulation at scale, translating neuroscience and psychology principles into production software systems. Combines deep understanding of sensory processing, motor control, and embodied cognition with full-stack software development to create scientifically-grounded interactive experiences. Previously co-founded health-tech startup Proprio and secured federal funding (NIDILRR) to deploy telehealth monitoring technology (alongside CRO, Benny Chen).
Benny is a full-stack data scientist with PhD in Rehabilitation Science (Washington University, 2019) and 15+ years of experience spanning research and production environments. Currently a Senior Data Scientist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, supporting 13+ clinical research projects with scalable digital health solutions. Expert in statistical analysis, machine learning deployment, data pipeline development, and wrangling complex data from diverse sources. His experience deploying systems for real-world patient populations—wheelchair users, stroke survivors, individuals with sleep disorders—ensures MUSE is built for authentic human diversity. At Gothic Grandma, Benny takes system designs from concept to validated implementation: building, testing, deploying, and scaling solutions while verifying that psychological models create authentic and compelling character behaviors. This validation process ensures simulated entities behave as real people do across diverse contexts and populations. Co-founded health-tech startup Proprio, securing federal funding (NIDILRR) to develop wearable sensor monitoring systems for post-stroke rehabilitation.
Yasmine is a neuroscientist bridging research insight with operational leadership and inclusive design. PhD Candidate (Emory University, expected Spring 2026) and NSF Graduate Research Fellow investigating cognitive changes across the lifespan. Yasmine has contributed to foundational work in multi-modal neuroimaging, is an award-winning teacher and mentor, and a nationally recognized leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Yasmine's extensive community engagement experience—including research working with Atlanta's older adult community, leadership in the international Arabs in Neuroscience organization, creation of accessible community initiatives such as Atlanta's first Brainhack in 2019, founding Georgia Tech's International Student Task Force, and collaborations with multicultural student organizations across institutions. Years of community organizing ensure Gothic Grandma's cultural authenticity comes from genuine partnership, not assumption, representing the full spectrum of human experience.
Our team's diverse backgrounds and lived experiences directly shape Gothic Grandma's commitment to universal accessibility and authentic representation. Collectively, we bring fluency in English, Arabic, French, Mandarin, and Taiwanese, enabling us to build multilingual systems from the ground up rather than as an afterthought.
Our personal experiences span chronic health conditions, neurodiversity, cross-cultural navigation, LGBTQ+ identities, and the realities of displacement—Yasmine and her family moved back and forth between the U.S. and Lebanon throughout childhood, evacuating as refugees during wartime when she was younger, being displaced back to the U.S. to seek safety. Nathan lives with ADHD and Type 1 Diabetes. These aren't credentials we claim abstractly: they're experiences that inform every design decision, from how we approach cognitive accessibility to why we prioritize authentic cultural representation over stereotypes.
Our combined work has engaged communities often overlooked in technology development and creative endeavors: stroke survivors, individuals with Parkinson's disease, wheelchair users, amputees, people with sleep disorders, aging populations, and those facing cognitive decline. This experience taught us that academic publications alone cannot bridge the gap between scientific discovery and lived benefit. MUSE is our answer: translating decades of multi-domain research into embodied experiences that anyone can access. We're making the fruits of neuroscience research universally available—not through academic papers that may reach only a few, but through immersive interactive stories that everyone can feel. We don't just study diverse populations—we build for them, informed by lived experience of what happens when technology fails to account for the full spectrum of human variation.
MUSE Living Worlds advances equity by enabling anyone to viscerally experience life with different abilities, chronic conditions, or from marginalized perspectives through authentic psychological simulation. Whether used for entertainment, education, or healthcare training, every story builds embodied empathy. We envision a platform where experiencing diverse realities drives understanding, reduces bias, and expands what's possible in entertainment, education, research, narrative medicine, and health communication.
Ever wondered what it's like to fight a dragon?
Take a glimpse at what we are brewing at Gothic Grandma. Laboratories
Gothic references the literary tradition—not dark aesthetics, but psychological depth, hidden truths, and complexity beneath the surface. Gothic novels explored what it means to be human through multiple perspectives and moral ambiguity.
Grandma represents storytelling wisdom passed across generations, the warmth of shared narratives, and accessibility for all ages. It's cozy, inviting, and universal.
MUSE means you're not a puppet master controlling characters—you're their inspiration, their muse. Like classical muses who inspired artists, you sit in your character's mind's eye, suggesting possibilities. They respond based on their authentic needs, emotions, and memories. You experience their reality from within, not above. You guide, inspire, and influence—but the story emerges from genuine psychological simulation, not your commands alone.
MUSE is designed to feel natural and effortless. You communicate with your character using everyday language—type or speak what you want to do: "I'll walk to the grocery store" or "I want to talk to the blacksmith about his daughter." Your character responds based on their physical state, emotional reality, and circumstances.
You experience the story by reading elegant text or listening to narration—whatever works best for you. It feels like reading a novel, except the story unfolds uniquely based on your choices and your character's authentic responses.
Think of it as a book being written as you live it. Every session creates a unique narrative shaped by biological reality, not predetermined branches. No complex interfaces, no stats to manage—just you, the character, and the world responding authentically to each moment.
We're working towards a novel literary medium where anything is possible, but the experience remains as simple as reading and speaking naturally.
Unlike AI-based platforms that use black-box algorithms prone to bias and hallucination, MUSE uses transparent, scientifically-grounded biological and psychological models. Characters behave authentically because their actions emerge from simulated needs, emotions, and memories—not pattern-matched text generation. Communities can verify how they're represented, and the system improves through research, not just more training data.
We partner with communities as co-designers, not consultants. Through paid partnerships, community experts guide how their cultures, languages, and experiences are represented in the platform. Our transparent simulation architecture allows communities to verify and validate representations, ensuring authenticity rather than perpetuating stereotypes. Yasmine's extensive community organizing experience leads these partnerships with genuine reciprocity.
Traditional interactive fiction offers branching paths with predetermined outcomes. MUSE creates emergent narratives where character responses arise from authentic biological and psychological states. You don't just choose Option A or B—you experience how hunger, fatigue, stress, memories, and relationships shape every interaction in real-time. The same choice leads to different outcomes based on your character's internal state and environmental context.
Gothic Grandma Studios creates our flagship Living Worlds, starting with entertainment experiences and expanding to education and healthcare applications. We're building tools that will eventually enable community creators to build their own Living Worlds while maintaining quality and authenticity standards. All content undergoes validation to ensure biological accuracy and cultural authenticity.
We're launching on desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux) first, with mobile and web versions planned for future releases. Our goal is universal accessibility—we're designing for low bandwidth, screen readers, multiple input methods (keyboard, voice, touch), and 50+ languages from day one. A dedicated e-reader device is in our long-term vision.
MUSE serves multiple applications. Entertainment experiences provide engaging narratives. Educational applications use the same platform for empathy education, literacy development, and perspective-taking. Healthcare applications train providers in patient empathy. Research applications enable studies in psychology, sociology, and behavioral science. The universal platform adapts to each use case while maintaining authentic simulation.
Our transparent, model-based approach means bias can be identified, verified, and corrected—unlike black-box AI systems. We ground systems in peer-reviewed research and validate outputs with diverse communities. When communities identify inaccuracies or stereotypes, we adjust the underlying models. Our architecture prioritizes scientific accuracy over reproducing existing biases in training data.
We're currently in active development and community validation. Sign up for launch updates at hello@gothicgrandma.com to be notified when we're ready for early access. We're prioritizing quality and authentic representation over rushing to market.
Universal accessibility is foundational to our design, not an afterthought. We support screen readers, adjustable text sizes, keyboard navigation, voice input, and multiple output modalities. Our team's lived experience with ADHD, chronic conditions, and neurodiversity directly informs accessibility features. We're working with disability communities to ensure MUSE serves everyone, from ages 5 to 105.