Assignments

October 12th SDA

October 12th SDA

November 14th SDA

A Shattered Reality

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." . This quote by Lovecraft is the very foundation of his works and as a byproduct, cosmic horror itself. Cosmic horror focuses on the readers and the protagonist's lack of knowledge on something, the fear of the unknown. The fear of what's in the dark. Cosmic horror though, takes it up a notch. It feeds on the imagination of people. It is at it's strongest when most of something is left out, with only a vague description being given. It is a tough balance to achieve, but Lovecraft did so quite well in his works. He gives out enough information for you to get a picture, but only a blurry one, or one with missing spots. The missing spots are very intentional, and often very important spots. Ones that a person can't help but ask about. And when they start asking is when the dread of realization comes in. Instead of getting the heart racing like a slasher movie, cosmic horror gets the mind racing. When your imagination is given a small thing and is told to go off, it can get quite wild. What if that small thing though was something reality shattering? What if it shook the very core of your being? Then the imagination goes off of that, and it spirals and spirals into more and more wild things. You start to imagine what an ancient civilization of eldritch gods bigger than mountains and with minds that can comprehend the true nature of the universe. Most characters, and humans in general, have a strong belief in the world around them, and they believe they control that world. Humans think themselves to be the apex of Earth, which is a pretty big thing sprawling with billions of other lifeforms. But when the characters encounter the things they see in Lovecraft's stories, this reality, this foundation of understanding the world, is shattered. They don't know what to believe anymore.  They aren't the oldest. They aren't the strongest. They aren't the smartest. They aren't the apex. And they are not alone. Is anything they once thought even true anymore? Lovecraft loves using this foundation of people's reality in order to scare, or unsettle his readers and drive his characters to insanity. He uses the inflated ego of mankind and breaks it by showing them that they are nothing in the grandest way. Michael Myers doesn't do that. Cosmic horror exploits the curiosity of man and weaponizes it against its readers. The characters and most humans are curious, cosmic horror just shows when that curiosity goes wrong. When the word discovery no longer has a positive connotation. The only problem with this is it might not be terribly relatable, it's hard to think of something you can't even comprehend. But I want you to think about the concept of infinity, just think really hard about it. How can something go on forever, what numbers does it reach? How can something go beyond time? It might not do anything to you, but for me perosnaly, it's gets a little unsettling when I think to hard about it. And Lovecraft wants you to think hard about, because that's the scary part of the universe, not some dude in a mask.

SDA #2 Reflection

I'll be honest, this SDA sucked. It wasn't really much of an SDA to be frank I answered my original question sure, but in no way did I convey why someone should care about this and very little creativity was put into this. I'll be honest again, not a lot of time was put into this either, most likely another contributing factor. The 5 C's were not hit very well, and there isn't much to be proud of in this. But I did learn something. I learned where I want to go, by learning where I don't want to go. This SDA was focused around a very straightforward question and had a rather bland and straightforward answer as a result. It was based on research, more than just reading someone else's work for inspiration. I don't want to go in the research direction. I want to go into the more creative direction. So from now on, my SDA's and journals will look a little different. Each SDA will now be a chapter for a book. The journals will help in guiding my way into writing better and narrowing ideas down for the book. With this I feel a lot more "free" in my decisions and feel I will have a lot more fun by going down this route, instead of just studying Lovecraft. The book of course will still be inspired by him and his offshoots of cosmic horror, but it will go beyond just his works and writing. Others inspired by him will also be used as well. 


Midterm Reflection

Characters.

I think that my characters were pretty well introduced. I tried to get across what I could with each of them. I got most of it through dialogue and the way they talk or the choice of words they use. I think I got the motivations and goals for the characters, but only a little introduction into the conflicts. I think I got Dr. Sol's indifference and aloof nature down. Something else I wanted to get down was her strong distaste of stupid or meaningless questions. I made sure to choose her questions carefully because I wanted her to have a full reason for asking the few that she did. Jack, I don't think I developed or introduced as well, but I like the small hint of his strong truth seeking nature.

Setting and atmosphere

This one is a little more tricky. I tried my best to build the world without a huge drop of exposition, although I did use some, I wanted to make it natural by using dialogue and making sure it's something that Jack could learn, not just the reader. So that was reserved for knowledge that wouldn't be common in the world. The place and time is vague, but I did that intentionally, as a.) I don't think it doesn't truly matter, except for Pohmiblis of course and b.) the setting of the world is like ours, but not the same, if you notice I took the Taylor Swift thing out, because I switched up the kind of world I wanted. I really like the aesthetic and setting of cassette futurism. The word is similar but different, and that's for plot reasons. It's because of that, that I chose to never mention a specific city or university.

Plot and pacing

I think the plot is engaging, I also hope I dropped enough hints at future things in order to keep the readers intention. Although I fear that I focused too much on the word building hints then the plot ones, which are intertwined but are different. The worldbuilding hints might engage some people, but it might not be essential to the plot. As for pacing, I'm a little fearful on that front. I wrote around 2,500 words, or around 4 and 1/2 pages. That doesn't seem like a lot to me, and yet I crammed a lot in there. But I don't really get the sense that it feels rushed either. So I can't comment on it too much right now without an outside opinion.

Voice and Style

My narration was something I only really thought about part way through. It's technically in the 3rd person, but it follows mostly Jack. I think I chose the third person to give the reader a more broad viewing of the story, but I think it's best told from Jack's perspective. I'm pretty sure there is a word or term for this style though, I just can't think of it. Either way it was consistent and I plan to stick to it for now. As for the writing style, it's not as close to Lovecraft's as I originally intended, but I do think it suits me and enjoy writing this way. It is developing as I go however.


(Also as a side note, I have been thinking of inserting sketches of my own for each chapter, I just don't know what specifically to draw yet.)

March SDA Reflection

This chapter was my hardest yet. I think part of it stems from the fact that I knew the ending, and the beginning, but never the middle. And this chapter was right dead set in the middle. I didn't know exactly how I wanted things to play out. That left me writing, and re-writing this chapter quite a few times, around 3 times to be exact. Eventually I decided to just think on it for a while. I used my notebook to write out different outlines and main points to hit, until eventually I fell into one sequence. That's where I ended up in this chapter. One reason I chose this one is because it seemed to line up consistently with word count the most.  I of course didn't know what the exact word counts for each of these would be, but I had a sense and some of the other ideas I had were too long, and I might still take some of their ideas and add them to the next chapter. I mostly wanted to stay consistent with my word count though, and I plan to continue to work around it unless it greatly impairs an idea I really want to do.

Leading from word count is pacing. My pacing I think is okay for the amount of words that I have. I do feel as though I am going a little fast, but I can think of many good ways to slow it down without having to greatly extend to word count, which is meant to be at a minimum of sorts. Other than that, pacing is not my first priority and I do not have a terribly good sense for it, so it is something I would like to work on. As for characters, I chose not to have as much dialogue in this chapter, focusing on the thoughts and observations of Jack. I do not think that Jack went through much development in this chapter, other than perhaps edging closer to madness, but he is still very curious, which may be a bad trait to have in Pohmiblis. As for Dr. Sol, I think she went through more development, being less annoyed with Jack and his questions, growing more social and open with him. I think I showed it well, but I do have a feeling that there has not been enough between them for this development to happen in the first place. Maybe I can explain it later, perhaps a Dr. Sol chapter? Dialogue for me is still a big part of plot development, but this time I wanted to experiment with things like the engraving, the text on the screen, and the note by the hallway. Although thinking on it, those things were not really focused on plot advancement, but more world and character development. GROP was something I  originally wanted to have a bigger role, but decided to drop it as I thought it would add an element to the story that would make it too long. So instead I went with a more world building/lore background sort of thing with it. I am glad I did include though, I liked the idea. I also seem to fall back on the exposition by way of unaware charcer (Jack) and having a more experienced character (Dr. Sol) explains certain things, which I do not terribly like. Another one of my ideas included what I think was a better way to show that GROP was no longer around, but it did not explain who they were. Maybe I should've went that route instead and had only a little explanation by Sol, or have Jack figure it out himself.


(Side note. A lot of things in this world are very inspired and almost like nods to other things that well... inspired me. GROP is based off of the SCP foundation, the prophecy comes from the same one in Gravity Falls, and the magnetic diskette is a reference to Signalis. Along with of course, inspirations from Lovecraft, that book that was mentioned has a name, and it'is supposed to be similar to the Necronomicon.