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Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
15 October 2012
06 December 2011
WIP Worldbuilder notes
I was preparing the worldbuilder notes for a modern-themed steam punk story to do as my final short story for creative writing... and then the professor said in class that we should do straight up literary fiction as opposed to genre fiction.
o.0
But I kept the notes, and I thought I'd post them, 'cause some of the stuff (I thought) is pretty clever, and I just turned in my non-steam punk final today - oh, sorry, that breeze you just felt was my profound sigh of satisfaction - anyway, here they are:
protagonist: young, sheltered girl working to become a creative writer
world: modern steampunk
plot: briefly meets a person whose philosophy changes her outlook on life/internship w/Conclavical Refractographic?
Ephemera: constantly writing "fantasy stories" about character named Harrigan. no excerpts or direct information, we only hear about these stories through dialogue protag has with best/childhood friend (male) also working to become writer
Sub-atmosphericals - airships. protag's father worked on some while in the Aerotime Forces
loving but somewhat maddening parents; mother keeps pointing out to protag that many famous writers were originally painters who failed art school (the only implication that protag ever wanted to be painter); father and protag never know what to say to each other, so father will randomly pick out topic of conversation - usually either historical or technical
Celebrities: ruler of New Year's Conclave, Pamela Bean (who single handedly started a craze for cooking with sea-serpent fat), E. S. Swintenberg, author of the reigning popular fantasy series, Fisticuff Master (needs work) - as in, "Well, we can't all be ESS now, can we?"
PudgyBird Press, Conclavical Refracographic
"New homes at Laborer's mudpuddle!" "Hearts of Romaine, in (needs work) prismatriums soon!"
Refractography = photography
o.0
But I kept the notes, and I thought I'd post them, 'cause some of the stuff (I thought) is pretty clever, and I just turned in my non-steam punk final today - oh, sorry, that breeze you just felt was my profound sigh of satisfaction - anyway, here they are:
protagonist: young, sheltered girl working to become a creative writer
world: modern steampunk
plot: briefly meets a person whose philosophy changes her outlook on life/internship w/Conclavical Refractographic?
Ephemera: constantly writing "fantasy stories" about character named Harrigan. no excerpts or direct information, we only hear about these stories through dialogue protag has with best/childhood friend (male) also working to become writer
Sub-atmosphericals - airships. protag's father worked on some while in the Aerotime Forces
loving but somewhat maddening parents; mother keeps pointing out to protag that many famous writers were originally painters who failed art school (the only implication that protag ever wanted to be painter); father and protag never know what to say to each other, so father will randomly pick out topic of conversation - usually either historical or technical
Celebrities: ruler of New Year's Conclave, Pamela Bean (who single handedly started a craze for cooking with sea-serpent fat), E. S. Swintenberg, author of the reigning popular fantasy series, Fisticuff Master (needs work) - as in, "Well, we can't all be ESS now, can we?"
PudgyBird Press, Conclavical Refracographic
"New homes at Laborer's mudpuddle!" "Hearts of Romaine, in (needs work) prismatriums soon!"
Refractography = photography
29 November 2011
Bad Guys and Good Guys and Good Bad Guys and Bad Good Guys
...Not to mention Bad Bad Guys and Good Good Guys.
I'm just wondering if I might be thinking about something in one dimension.
For Creative Writing, I have to write an 8-22 page short story (by Dec 9th! Yikes!) and I thought a campus alert e-mail sent out over this last summer would make a good starting point.
A person was accosted by three guys, one of which had a gun. They took the person's car, but before they left, one of them told their victim that the reason they were doing what they were doing is that their mother was sick, and they couldn't think of any other way to get money to help her.
Now, whether or not what he said was even true, the reaction of the victim cries out (to me) to be explored. What would you say to that? What would you be too afraid to say but would think? "Oh, well, that makes everything all right - wait! Here, let me give you my wallet, too" or "Pull the other one chum, it's got bells on."
In an idea workshop, I explained this to the rest of the class, but they didn't seem to get what I was getting. One person wanted me to write about the guy who told the victim about his mother instead of the victim. But one of the most important things about the scenario to me is not knowing whether or not he was telling the truth. It doesn't matter whteher or not he was telling the truth but knowing if he was or wasn't would spoil the whole thing for me.
And then I started to think about why this had such a pull on me. Am I being too one-dimensional? Seeing all bad guys as just bad guys, or was I justified in thinking that life is not an episode of Flashpoint, and sometimes bad guys really are just bad guys? Or do I need to step back and look at my assumptions?
Well, that's always a good idea.
So. I admit that life happens, even to people who are otherwise good, clean upstanding citizens. What would I do if MY mother were desperately ill and my family had no way to help her? Not armed robbery ( I don't think), but I'd definitely let my grades go to hell... which in my family is probably worse than armed robbery.
*sigh*
Ok, I'll admit it: I'm only here because I'm in super-procrastination-ninja mode. Why yes, I did just work the word ninja into a sentence about paper writing procrastination, yes I did.
I'm just wondering if I might be thinking about something in one dimension.
For Creative Writing, I have to write an 8-22 page short story (by Dec 9th! Yikes!) and I thought a campus alert e-mail sent out over this last summer would make a good starting point.
A person was accosted by three guys, one of which had a gun. They took the person's car, but before they left, one of them told their victim that the reason they were doing what they were doing is that their mother was sick, and they couldn't think of any other way to get money to help her.
Now, whether or not what he said was even true, the reaction of the victim cries out (to me) to be explored. What would you say to that? What would you be too afraid to say but would think? "Oh, well, that makes everything all right - wait! Here, let me give you my wallet, too" or "Pull the other one chum, it's got bells on."
In an idea workshop, I explained this to the rest of the class, but they didn't seem to get what I was getting. One person wanted me to write about the guy who told the victim about his mother instead of the victim. But one of the most important things about the scenario to me is not knowing whether or not he was telling the truth. It doesn't matter whteher or not he was telling the truth but knowing if he was or wasn't would spoil the whole thing for me.
And then I started to think about why this had such a pull on me. Am I being too one-dimensional? Seeing all bad guys as just bad guys, or was I justified in thinking that life is not an episode of Flashpoint, and sometimes bad guys really are just bad guys? Or do I need to step back and look at my assumptions?
Well, that's always a good idea.
So. I admit that life happens, even to people who are otherwise good, clean upstanding citizens. What would I do if MY mother were desperately ill and my family had no way to help her? Not armed robbery ( I don't think), but I'd definitely let my grades go to hell... which in my family is probably worse than armed robbery.
*sigh*
Ok, I'll admit it: I'm only here because I'm in super-procrastination-ninja mode. Why yes, I did just work the word ninja into a sentence about paper writing procrastination, yes I did.
14 April 2010
Dredge
A school paper from last semester...
Frost and Snow Fall, Mingled with Hail
Ubi sunt? Where are they now? Winter becomes a personification of Death; falling snow as an emblem of loneliness. A snow covered, wind-battered wall as a picture of man’s infinite sorrow. And yet, in the distance, the light of hope in heaven is pinpointed on the horizon, and the wise man sits “apart in private meditation” (Greenblatt 113). These are some of the stronger themes and motifs in The Wanderer, a poem of lament from pre-tenth century England, enriched, as is characteristic of poetry of the time, with beautiful and creative kennings, a formula of descriptive words used to stand in for a noun. The elegiac poems of Old English literature shared much in common while still displaying a certain individuality, laying the groundwork and using many of the same themes and ideas as later writers such as “Donne, Arnold, Tennyson, and Milton” (Greenfield 2). In turn, Greenfield conjectures that the De Consolatione Philosophiae, written by an imprisoned Christian awaiting his execution might have influenced the authors of Beowulf and The Wanderer (34). The Wanderer and another elegiac poem The Seafarer “were, in earlier criticism, disintegrated into pagan and Christian strata” but now are both “viewed as unified structures and the product of the cloisters” (Greenfield 217).
The theme of Ubi sunt pervades such poems as The Wanderer; mournful cries of “‘where has the horse gone? Where the young warrior?’” echoing throughout (Greenblatt 113). Traces of the lament can even be found in Beowulf, which has sometimes been described as an epic, although in his essay The Monsters and the Critics Tolkien declares that “no terms borrowed from Greek or other literatures exactly fit” and rather describes it as “an heroic-elegiac poem; and in a sense all its first 3, 136 lines are the prelude to a dirge … one of the most moving ever written” (31). With such a powerful emotional pull being even stronger in The Wanderer, it is hard to believe any other ideas could have room to breath, and yet the entire poem is full of vivid imagery that stand in good harmony with each other and with Ubi sunt. The first part of the poem shows the unnamed protagonist as a broken, weary soul who longs for close companionship and family to unburden his sorrows on, mourning, “often before day dawned I have had to speak of my cares, alone: there is now none among the living to whom I dare clearly express the thought of my heart” (Greenblatt 112). The haunting sea that the protagonist seems doomed to roam forever, empty and restless, is a symbol of the wanderer’s exile.
After this, the poem changes directions in two ways; namely that the character of the wanderer seems to have undergone a change to be more thoughtful in a philosophic way and less self absorbed, and the language of the poem itself varies slightly in that it only once more references the sea; all other notations as to allegorical surroundings site things to do with dry land such as horses, walls, and “snow, the herald of winter” coming to bind the earth (Greenblatt 113). And all this leads up to the poem’s end; an exhortation to look to God and the next world to provide the stability that this world lacks.
Greenfield claims that the syntax of the verse’s opening lines suggest that Christian values are already being hinted at through delaying the “conventional association of ‘wretchedness’ and ‘lone-dwelling’” and replacing it at first with “often the lone-dweller experiences mercy” (76). But just as easily, the reading could be interpreted as avoiding reference to Christianity, and slowly revealing the wisdom the wanderer finds through his long years of suffering and his final philosophical conclusion, almost as if the listeners – or, today, readers – were experiencing both the pain and the somber joy for themselves.
While Beowulf is a mixture of the heroic and elegiac, Greenfield again points out that The Wanderer is “in the tradition of the Classical and Christian literary genre of the consolatio” (218). However, it is interesting to note the distinction made by another author, Hill, who compares Beowulf to two other poems of a slightly later period; The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon. He states that while these latter two were “composed carefully by makers who understand complexly the situations and persons involved” they are “simply much more polemical when compared to Beowulf and its inset stories. They are shaped more as arguments than as presented worlds, arguments regarding entirely justified violence” (Hill par 9). According to Hill, these other stories have a political undercurrent where “traditional loyalties are appropriated to model new ideas of loyalty to a state” (par 5).
Regardless of how one interprets The Wanderer, its inherent beauty of imagery remains unchanged, and the human sorrow of the nameless exile calls out to the reader; the poignant image of emptiness and loss captured in the wanderer’s dream of home when “he wakes again, the man with no lord, sees the yellow waves before him, the sea birds bathe, spread their feathers, frost and snow fall, mingled with hail” (Greenblatt 112).
Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.
Greenfield, Stanley. A Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press, 1965. Print.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984. Print.
Hill, John. "Shaping Anglo-Saxon Lordship in the Heroic Literature." Heroic Age 3 (2000): n. pag. Web. 30 Nov 2009..
Frost and Snow Fall, Mingled with Hail
Ubi sunt? Where are they now? Winter becomes a personification of Death; falling snow as an emblem of loneliness. A snow covered, wind-battered wall as a picture of man’s infinite sorrow. And yet, in the distance, the light of hope in heaven is pinpointed on the horizon, and the wise man sits “apart in private meditation” (Greenblatt 113). These are some of the stronger themes and motifs in The Wanderer, a poem of lament from pre-tenth century England, enriched, as is characteristic of poetry of the time, with beautiful and creative kennings, a formula of descriptive words used to stand in for a noun. The elegiac poems of Old English literature shared much in common while still displaying a certain individuality, laying the groundwork and using many of the same themes and ideas as later writers such as “Donne, Arnold, Tennyson, and Milton” (Greenfield 2). In turn, Greenfield conjectures that the De Consolatione Philosophiae, written by an imprisoned Christian awaiting his execution might have influenced the authors of Beowulf and The Wanderer (34). The Wanderer and another elegiac poem The Seafarer “were, in earlier criticism, disintegrated into pagan and Christian strata” but now are both “viewed as unified structures and the product of the cloisters” (Greenfield 217).
The theme of Ubi sunt pervades such poems as The Wanderer; mournful cries of “‘where has the horse gone? Where the young warrior?’” echoing throughout (Greenblatt 113). Traces of the lament can even be found in Beowulf, which has sometimes been described as an epic, although in his essay The Monsters and the Critics Tolkien declares that “no terms borrowed from Greek or other literatures exactly fit” and rather describes it as “an heroic-elegiac poem; and in a sense all its first 3, 136 lines are the prelude to a dirge … one of the most moving ever written” (31). With such a powerful emotional pull being even stronger in The Wanderer, it is hard to believe any other ideas could have room to breath, and yet the entire poem is full of vivid imagery that stand in good harmony with each other and with Ubi sunt. The first part of the poem shows the unnamed protagonist as a broken, weary soul who longs for close companionship and family to unburden his sorrows on, mourning, “often before day dawned I have had to speak of my cares, alone: there is now none among the living to whom I dare clearly express the thought of my heart” (Greenblatt 112). The haunting sea that the protagonist seems doomed to roam forever, empty and restless, is a symbol of the wanderer’s exile.
After this, the poem changes directions in two ways; namely that the character of the wanderer seems to have undergone a change to be more thoughtful in a philosophic way and less self absorbed, and the language of the poem itself varies slightly in that it only once more references the sea; all other notations as to allegorical surroundings site things to do with dry land such as horses, walls, and “snow, the herald of winter” coming to bind the earth (Greenblatt 113). And all this leads up to the poem’s end; an exhortation to look to God and the next world to provide the stability that this world lacks.
Greenfield claims that the syntax of the verse’s opening lines suggest that Christian values are already being hinted at through delaying the “conventional association of ‘wretchedness’ and ‘lone-dwelling’” and replacing it at first with “often the lone-dweller experiences mercy” (76). But just as easily, the reading could be interpreted as avoiding reference to Christianity, and slowly revealing the wisdom the wanderer finds through his long years of suffering and his final philosophical conclusion, almost as if the listeners – or, today, readers – were experiencing both the pain and the somber joy for themselves.
While Beowulf is a mixture of the heroic and elegiac, Greenfield again points out that The Wanderer is “in the tradition of the Classical and Christian literary genre of the consolatio” (218). However, it is interesting to note the distinction made by another author, Hill, who compares Beowulf to two other poems of a slightly later period; The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon. He states that while these latter two were “composed carefully by makers who understand complexly the situations and persons involved” they are “simply much more polemical when compared to Beowulf and its inset stories. They are shaped more as arguments than as presented worlds, arguments regarding entirely justified violence” (Hill par 9). According to Hill, these other stories have a political undercurrent where “traditional loyalties are appropriated to model new ideas of loyalty to a state” (par 5).
Regardless of how one interprets The Wanderer, its inherent beauty of imagery remains unchanged, and the human sorrow of the nameless exile calls out to the reader; the poignant image of emptiness and loss captured in the wanderer’s dream of home when “he wakes again, the man with no lord, sees the yellow waves before him, the sea birds bathe, spread their feathers, frost and snow fall, mingled with hail” (Greenblatt 112).
Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.
Greenfield, Stanley. A Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press, 1965. Print.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984. Print.
Hill, John. "Shaping Anglo-Saxon Lordship in the Heroic Literature." Heroic Age 3 (2000): n. pag. Web. 30 Nov 2009.
13 April 2010
Baba Yaga
I can't seem to figure out how to load my final project for my World Literature class onto Blogger, so I'm linking to my youtube account, which is how I plan to play it for my professor. This is a professor I've had for several other classes, and she's very easy-going, so I felt free to get a little silly with the captions. I hope you enjoy!
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