For Sonia
A pale dawn breaks upon the day,
Wisps following behind, not yet led astray
Cascading down the brae
And off to seize tomorrow.
The pallid sheen of an achromatic dress
Will it lead to an egress
In the affection I feel from one’s caress?
Will it bring me sorrow?
After what was probably the most academically rigorous year of my life, I can officially call myself a Master. And that’s pretty cool.
From start to finish, the focus of my time in graduate school was my thesis, a culmination of all my years of research, composition, passion, and abilities as both a writer and a gamer. It was obvious to me what the topic of my thesis would ultimately be, having spent much time defending the merits of video games to my friends and family. This thesis, where I explore how game narratives, specifically Mass Effect, are the pinnacle of modern storytelling and justify their utilization of active participation and hypertextuality, was both a joy to work on and an immense pressure off my shoulders. I am glad that I can now share it with you all today.
Read Player-Response – On the Nature of Interactive Narratives as Literature
Special thanks to Morgan Read-Davidson, my thesis advisor, and Jana Remy and David Winnick, readers on my thesis committee.
A primary characteristic that underscores much of Alexander Pope’s work is humor. Rather than acting as just satirical asides, Pope’s utilization of farce allows him to focus “attention on the discrepancy between the ideal and the actual” (Parkin 1953, 197). By making a comparison between what is and what ought to be (or ought not to be), along with being entertaining, Pope is able to reach his audience and communicate his ideas in a clear and precise way, trivializing what is important and underscoring what is frivolous. Rather than making a scene less serious, humor is used as a device to enhance the content of his work, allowing him to discuss topics in a refreshing way. His narrative poem, The Rape of the Lock, operates along these similar lines. However, rather than solely making the content humorous, Pope’s control of mock-dramatic elements allow him to move beyond creating a sardonic text. His parody of the epic acts as an early model of the deconstruction of the typical narrative format.
Continue readingRead this story, and more, in the upcoming collection Terminus.
He could not tell whether the salt on his tongue came from his fervent perspiration or the frigid sea spray. It filled his mouth, drying his cheeks and cracking his throat. He burned, ached for the relief of even a droplet of fresh water. Nonetheless, he persisted, pulling the length of frayed rope down, releasing the mainsail of his vessel. Raindrops spattered on his head like needles and soaked through his linen shirt and breeches, which stuck themselves against his sore flesh. It was enough to bring down a lesser man, but the image he created of her, etched forever between the sulci of his brain, drove him forward. She had ignited the fire in his chest, a furious blaze that charred his lungs and spilled ash throughout his capillaries, an inferno which the raging sea could not quench. The sail was free at last, and as the roaring winds blew into the rugged cloth and bore his ship forward, he knew victory was almost at hand. He let go of the ropes and, his hands chewed and blistered, grasped onto the splintering mast at the center of the deck. He squinted his eyes and fixed his firm gaze on the pallid horizon, and the vision of his prize filled his head once more. The island cannot be much further, he told himself. Soon, his bow would breach the craggy shores and she, the Ashskin, would be his.
Continue readingAbstract
The ghost story genre, though historically well-received, reached a new level of popularity in the Victorian era. Much of the appeal of the genre stemmed from finding some escape from the malaise of the fin de siècle. Oscar Wilde, a critic of and commentator for his time, would take this much beloved genre and adapt it into a unique style consistent with many of his other works. This essay consists of a close reading of Wilde’s 1887 novella, “The Canterville Ghost,” in order to examine his attempts to invert the conventions of the typical horror story. Though the primary focus will be on the comedic elements prevalent within the text, there is a deeper complexity that belies the surface humor. Much like other Wildean works, the story will be shown to be a reconciliation with the genre, not a rejection of it. In the end, “The Canterville Ghost” will be shown to operate as a hybrid, borrowing aspects from comedy, horror, religion, and even romance, creating a completely unique story that has remained influential even until the present.
Continue readingAs part of my graduate studies, I was tasked with overseeing and completing a research project on a topic related to the field of composition. I knew I wanted to look at how writers write, how the changes one will make from a first draft to a second affect the reading of the final product, how a piece of writing evolves from a concept to a publication. Starting only with a basic proposal, I received approval from my university’s Institutional Review Board, acquired writing samples from the test subjects, and began my investigation into how first-year writing students modify and adapt their compositions, in order to create an improvement.
If that wasn’t enough, this project was also presented at the 2018 College English Association Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida, as part of the Attitude, Access, Advocacy: Overcoming Obstacles in First-Year Writing panel. This was my first time presenting at an academic conference and, as nervous as I was, I hope to return one day with more pertinent research.
Read Composition Processes of First-Year Students
Please keep in mind this was a project meant to be small in scale and completed within a period of three months. As such, this research project is limited to a case study of three individuals.
Special thanks to Ian Barnard, the professor and principal investigator overseeing the project, and Meghan Kemp-Gee, the professor who lent me her students as subjects.
Another project I worked on for a short time was called Astrae, a puzzle platformer set deep in an alien installation. The player is a young explorer who gets embroiled in a conflict between the last two avatars of the Rhakaa, a long-dead civilization of avian warriors. My first task was to write about what Rhakaa life was like during the reign of their empire.
Unfortunately, my graduate school studies cut into my ability to work on this delightful game and I had to step away from the project. Please give the development team some of your time and check out the progress they made on their unique property.
Continue readingI was born on July 22, 1993, in Los Angeles, CA. I am the youngest of four sons. My older brothers consist of a law professor and blogger, a filmmaker, and a neuroscientist. I am a writer and a gamer. My parents are obviously proud of me.
I’ve been writing stories ever since I was very young. Mostly, they consisted of weird tales of what happened if Mario and Luigi got caught in the Spawn universe, but at least I was on the track to come up with my own original stories. And I did. I wrote and wrote and wrote, coming up with fantastic worlds with interesting creatures and back-stories. Most of my tales were based in fantasy or science-fiction worlds, which probably helped influence my passion for gaming.
I remember the first film I ever saw: Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Most kids my age started off with The Lion King or Barney. Not I. I dove head-first into the galaxy of Jedi and Sith, of Republic and Empire, and never came back. From that first captivating text scroll, I became a nerd, obsessed with fantasy, science-fiction, computers, books, films, and especially video games. The first game I ever personally owned was Pokemon Pinball, but I remember sitting with my older brothers watching them play Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. These games were not only extremely fun, but they created experiences more powerful than books or movies could ever hope to achieve. By direct interaction, the audience is causing the events of the game to occur, and through that interaction, the audience can experience stories and characters that reach out and touch us at our very core, at what it means to be human.
As Carl Sagan once said, “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding people together who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic” (Cosmos, Part 11: “The Persistence of Memory). Writing is one of the most essential forms of human connection, to be able to reach out and touch someone only with your ideas. That is why I love writing, and that is why I decided to post my writing here, online, so that, even if I only reach out to one person, I have influenced them in some way and touched the very core of what makes us human.
But enough with all the serious stuff. I hope you enjoy what you read here and come back for more.
Though this project ultimately never came to fruition beyond a short demo, We’ll Save the Princess! was a fun strategy role-playing game I designed, tasking players to traverse a fantasy world and complete random confrontations within a certain time frame. Part-Oregon Trail, part-Final Fantasy, this game would feature over one hundred unique encounters, ten playable classes, and multiple endings and milestones to reward players across playthroughs.
Continue readingDo you have what it takes to safe the internal city of Christown from viral threats? In this short tower defense game, players take the role of Anne T. Bodie, a gunslinger who uses her immunoglobulins to protect her home from bacterial invaders.
This was another project on which I was designer and producer, creating different tower and enemy types. Part of my goal was to give the game a sense of “realism”, giving the units names and properties that attempted to match their real-world counterparts. Each tower is a different form of white blood cell and enemies are different viruses.
Special thanks to Joshua Smith, Kevin Hewitt, Sasha Conaway, and Ellen Beizer, for their roles in developing this short project.
LAFworks 