This week started off with everyone presenting their “Productive Distraction” projects. It was interesting to see people step out of their general thesis direction and create something new and unique. I, on the other hand, did not step away from my thesis, but I did explore something new that I had been planning to do for a little while now. I created a soundscape for the hype sequences in my game, which I discussed in last week’s post. I got positive feedback from my peers on it. The sounds came across and were received exactly as I intended them to be, which gave me a lot of reassurance and validation.
Narrative Progress:
A sixteen-year-old boy with severe, lifelong lung problems wakes up not in his familiar hospital room but in a vast, silent void where his hospital bed floats alone in endless nothingness. There are no walls, no doors, no machines—just an eerie stillness and, for the first time, a body that isn’t in pain and lungs that let him breathe without struggle. At the foot of his bed stands a hooded figure holding a scythe who introduces themself, almost casually, as the Grim Reaper and explains that his heart stopped during surgery, landing him in a kind of purgatory, a transitional “cosmic loading screen” between life and death. As he pieces together his last memories—collapsing lungs, frantic doctors, shouting, bright surgical lights; he realizes that his life may already be over. The Reaper’s behavior, scrolling on their phone, sharing dark memes, and complaining about Wordle, feels jarringly out of sync with his fear and confusion, and eventually, he snaps. Years of frustration spill out: a childhood and adolescence spent in hospital beds, the constant cycle of near-death emergencies, missing out on milestones, and watching his dreams of art school and a “normal” future crumble under the weight of his illness. He insists his future is too broken to repair, nothing meaningful is left for him back in that hospital room, and begs the Reaper to “finish the job” and move him on to whatever comes next, even if it’s nothing. Instead of agreeing, the Reaper challenges him, pointing out that he’s really asking them to make the irreversible choice he can’t fully claim as his own, and presses him to consider whether he could truly choose death if he were awake in his hospital bed, looking his parents and friends in the eye. Cornered by the question and desperate to prove that he’s ready to let go, the boy lunges for the scythe in a reckless attempt to take control of his fate, but the Reaper steps aside, and he slams into the bed, hitting the ground in a heap, failing even at ending his own story. As he lies there, stunned and breathing hard, faint echoes of the real world begin to slip through: the distant beeping of monitors, muffled voices, the sensation of a hand gripping his, and the once-solid void, along with the Reaper, starts to waver and flicker, as if losing its hold on him. The Reaper’s tone softens, and they quietly admit that perhaps this decision was never truly theirs to make at all. As they reach out an empty, unarmed hand toward him, everything dissolves into blinding white, strongly implying that he is being pulled back toward his body and another fragile, uncertain chance at life, even as he remains emotionally tangled in doubt, exhaustion, and fear about what that life will actually look like.
Brainstorming ideas:
For the Grim Reaper, I’m imagining a range of possible designs: he could appear as a scruffy punk-rock character, or even as an elaborate mythical creature, though that might be more time-intensive to create. Another option is to make him just another man in a suit, drawing on Black Mask from Batman: Arkham Origins as a reference, or to twist expectations further by portraying him as a morbid little girl in the vein of Wednesday Addams. I could still nod to the classic image of a skeleton in a cloak, or instead take a more symbolic approach like I did with the antagonist—turning the Grim Reaper into an unexpected, ambiguous figure that leaves the main character confused, unable to realize they’re actually interacting with Death because he doesn’t look like a cliché skeleton in a black robe.
Coming up next…
- After this, I will now be sketching ideas for the Grim Reaper to see which version I resonate the most with and which one makes the most sense.
- I will also work more on the script, trying to wrap it up, and then I will think about the possible ways I can branch it out and bring it back to the same conclusion.