Tuesday 15 October 2013

Character project

This term alongside our group project we have a character project. We get given a theme and and we have to design 3 different characters, a hero, a villain and a sidekick. I was given 'ELDER GODS, WILD WEST' and then the theme 'GOOD AND EVIL'. I'm quite happy with what I got and the more I think about it the more I realize I can do with it and the different directions I can go with everything.
But to start off I thought I would go for researching both elder gods and wild west to get a better feel for what I have and maybe help me pin point the direction I'm going to be going in.

Elder Gods
Writer H. P. Lovecraft created a number of fictional deities throughout the course of his literary career, including the "Great Old Ones" and the "Outer Gods". The Elder Gods are a later creation of writers such as August Derleth, who is credited with formalising the Cthulhu Mythos
An ongoing theme in Lovecraft's work is the complete irrelevance of mankind in the face of the cosmic horrors that apparently exist in the universe, with Lovecraft constantly referring to the "Great Old Ones": a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth and who have since fallen into a deathlike sleep. Worshipped by deranged human cults, these beings are currently imprisoned (beneath the sea, inside the Earth, and in distant planetary systems) and apparently eagerly await the time of their release.
Some of the descriptions that were given to the "Great Old Ones" are as follows; 
  • A grey festering blob of infinite malevolence.
  • A dark, cloudy mass with tentacles which absorbs falling stars.
  • A humanoid torso with tentacles instead of limbs, and a short neck ending in a toothless, featureless mouth.
  • Appears as a gigantic, multicolored toad with one eye, a proboscis, crab-like claws, and tentacles below the mouth.
There are quite a few other descriptions of other "Great Old Ones" all of them describing the stuff out of nightmares really.

In Greek mythology the Titans were a primaeval race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky), that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. They were immortal beings of incredible strength and were also the first pantheon of Greek gods and goddesses. The Titans were overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Olympians, in the Titanomachy ("War of the Titans").
I think for this project I can have a lot of fun with the villain but I do need to keep in mind that I can't make him to all powerful otherwise my hero has no chance against him. 


Wild West
The American frontier comprises the geography, history, folklore, and cultural expression of life in the forward wave of American westward expansion that began with English colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last mainland territories as states in the early 20th century. Enormous popular attention in the media focuses on the Western United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period sometimes called the Old West, or the Wild West. The period after 1775 is sometimes referred to as the Wild West, referencing the largely lawless nature of much of the pattern of settlement which ensued immediately after the Louisiana Purchase opened the frontier west of the Mississippi river to settlers from the established colonies on the East coast.


The next thing I need to do is figure out how I'm going to combine the two themes and start writing my story for these characters, figure out the roles they are going to be playing and how they connect together. 




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