Eviction

(Formerly "Exploring a Creepy House")

Some things I'd like to clarify through discussion:

* Characters

* Character relationships

* Reasons for exploring the house

* What kinds of paranormal events will occur in the house



Will post more in a little.

Characters

If we're writing this from a first-person perspective, we should each take one character. Who will control events and descriptions as our characters see them? Should each of us, as we write in turn, detail what we are seeing, hearing, the events that are happening?

Paranormal Events.

The only way you have a haunted house story is if the characters either A) Have to be there, or B) Cannot escape. Otherwise, a person would flee at the first sign of danger or mischief. Usually.

Old house, always an old house.
Family Issues. Physical Disfigurement among one or more family members, great for illustrating ugliness of situation, tensions among the family.
Revenge against other family members is very common in family ghost stories. Something darker in tone might bring a different, uglier flavor to the story, bring more attention to the human aspect of why the house is haunted, rather than 'Oooh, the TV glows and sparks'.

House? Hospital? (Silent Hill movie) House + Insane Asylum? (Thirteen Ghosts). Can stick with house, or go with other types of buildings. Hotel? (1408).

Just thoughts.

The perspective bit will require some thought... Let's look at what else is on the one-on-one boards and see what they do and talk from there?

My idea for a character kind of addresses the problem with "why don't they leave the house if it's so scary?!"

She's a photojournalist recently laid off from her job, in her mid-twenties. She thinks back to her days at college and work as the only exciting time in her life and can't imagine herself doing anything else. She is bored stiff. Grew up with a regular family with no particular problems and is aching for some excitement, wants to be disturbed and sees horror as exciting. This outlook will obviously change as the true nature of the building reveals itself... But by then she'll already be trapped!

This is a bit of self-mockery here because I am a privileged white person who tends to be fascinated by fucked up things in the world while I have it pretty easy! But she won't be an entirely joke-y character.

I like the idea of a hotel or other large building with a lot of sections, because we can keep going through different rooms and sections and explore that way - those are some of my favorite areas in horror games.

I tend to go for more mundane or vague images and material than the stuff found in Silent Hill and the like, though.

Have you watched much David Lynch? I love his stuff.

My favourite movie of all time is the movie Dune that he directed a couple decades ago. I haven't watched much else of his work, but I know of him.

What do you mean by mundane or vague images? As opposed to... shock horror? A mysterious sound versus a bloody corpse hanging in the hallway?

A mysterious sound versus a bloody corpse hanging in the hallway?

Yes, exactly!

Or even a guy just walking around like nothing's wrong, talking about something he did that day, but it all comes off wrong and feels threatening. Lynch is the master at that kind of thing - if you liked Dune you might really love his other stuff, I highly suggest the show Twin Peaks

But anyways, the distinction you made is exactly what I was trying to express.

I'll start working on a first post tonight. What are you thinking of for your character?

After reading up a bit, it seems like third-person narrative is the best way to go. First person might get messy. You still interested?

Yes, definitely still interested. Sorry, I'm on a schedule that only allows about 3 hours of posting time in a 24-hour period. You ought to consider this before committing me to this roleplay. I would still like to participate in the development of the idea though, if I may.

For a character, I'd like to insert myself into the story. Play myself. I don't do it often, but I'd like to see how I react in the situations a haunted house presents.

Third-person would be great for me. Are you going with the insane asylum? Our characters don't have to know going in, in fact, we can have the true nature of The House be a mystery. That would give us time to decide what we want!

But hey man, it sounds like the inspiration is taking you, so feel free to make the first post while the ideas are fresh and the motivation is strong!

Limited time to post is fine, I can go at any pace. I'm just a hyperactive guy. I think a slower pace will help, actually, so my ideas will have more time to take shape.

Playing yourself is cool - sounds interesting!

I also agree about its true nature being a mystery - leaving us plenty of room to improvise is definitely my style.

I will post this afternoon after work.

I'll be ready!

I posted here, but I've moved it to an IC post right here here here.

Hey bud, great first post! Very awesome, I like how you were able to bring in alot about her past and what her personality is kind alike, all with the "Recession" thing. Human brains work like that, you give them one word and a minute of silence and they can ponder away.

When you get a chance, you should throw out Sheila's hair color, eye color, clothing, stuff like that. It's cheating to write it here, of course, you have to do it in your post!

Great stuff! I'll write some more tomorrow. Had class today for 4 hrs after work, hoooooooooooooh.

I only know OF the place, and just because an Uncle mentioned it once. I will be just as new and unfamiliar in Kurzweil's school as your Sheila.

Where'd you get the name Kurzweil from? Just out of curiosity?

And I'm glad you're playing a girl who can actually get scared! Don't worry, my guy will be prone to some fear too, I won't play a boring "Fearless Hero".

But I won't leave Sheila behind either.

Kurzweil

I was hesitant to use his name because I don't want to seem anti-semitic. But that shouldn't be too much of a problem because I don't want to make the school entirely Evil, just complex and dangerous.

He's done some great things with assistive technology, but his philosophy is pretty whack. Check out the "later life" section. I don't know much yet, but he's one of those futurist singularity guys it seems.

Two questions:

I originally put the title "Eviction" because I was thinking we'd do an apartment complex or something like that. Then, the school idea came to me. Do you think we should come up with a new name or just leave it? Is it even possible to change the title of the thread?

Secondly, I've been doing some research about...Well, I actually just made up my mind. The way I'd like to do this: I'll introduce the things I've learned as appropriate through my character, but then once it's out there I'll provide links here for further reading if you wish

The title is fine, I have no problem with Eviction. Doesn't sound like a horror though, more like a TV Drama about... well... eviction, heheh. It's totally not a problem though, I'm not concerned one whit about the title.

And I'm completely fine with you withholding the sources, makes it more exciting to discover them! This'll go well.

And if I'm being too obvious with my attempt to link our two characters together (he knows the way, but can't describe the directions), let me know and I can try and make it more believable. I think it makes sense, but I'm not one for subtlety.

Don't a lot of horror/thriller movies use mundane titles nowadays, though? Like [REC] or Cloverfield or stuff like that. Those movies are mostly as mundane as their titles, though Or what about The Tenant, or Rear Window?

The introduction / reason for linking makes sense to me. I'm not too worried about subtlety in anything besides the characters. Everything else can swing wildly from realistic to totally unbelievable and crazy. I think that kind of flexibility will keep us both engaged and creative.

Speaking of which, I'm very happy about how it's going so far! I hope you're having fun too.

Hey man, I've been loving this idea since the start. What I DON'T want is to allow myself to get anxious. If I get too excited, I might overstep the boundaries of 'suspense' that we can capture with this story. Shock and horror are great, but its the build-up! You know this, I'm mostly writing this for myself.

I came up with an idea. I think we should probably wait on it and save it for future role plays so we don't mess up a good thing here, but it goes like this:

Two separate threads for one roleplay. One is the usual third person past-tense narrative describing what's going on in the story. The other uses any textual technique to depict the inner world of the two (or more?) main characters. This might get messy with a lot of characters in an RP, but I think with a two-person RP that could be a neat thing.

It also opens up interesting avenues for psychic characters who can acknowledge having access to that kind of information, but without it being directly stated in the main RP thread!

This could be useful later in the story I'm thinking up. All I'm sayin

Just so you know, I ran into a busy weekend with much thought and consternation and that sort of thing. Not about RP but about real life stuff

Will update tonight.

A couple things:

Is there anything you'd like to change about the pace? Is there anything else you want to know about Sheila?

If figure the walking scenes could explore the geography and setting a bit more now that we have established character.

Also, watch out for your tense; you slipped into the present on the last one not important, but could get a bit confusing.

Bugger. So are we doing this in past or present?

I think anything I want to know about Shiela focuses on appearances. I've been trying to do it subtly, like "The wind blows at Graydon's brown hair", but there's more I need to present about what he looks like. Hrmm.

Past is the way to go, I think - at least, that's what other people seem to use. Since we've done past tense thus far let's stick with it.

I'll try and put more physical traits and details in there. It is difficult. In my writing I generally avoid descriptions of people, so this is a good opportunity for me.

It's not a requirement or anything, it just helps me to visualize what you want me to visualize. Really, its up to you. Do you present to the reader exactly what you imagine, or do you leave room for them to see their own character, their own visualization? Totally your call.

By the way, and I don't know if you noticed, an admin named Eternity docked you in our story. Gave you a Red X, citing that you didn't have enough sentences in one of your posts. Have to have 10. I'll admit I was a little surprised that someone took the time to read through our story and count, but I guess we're on the radar for a while, considering we're still newbies. Such is this place and its standards, or so I am seeing. No worries.

I have fixed the infraction.

It's good for me to challenge my writing skills, and I'm enjoying creating a character, so I'm sticking with it.

Hope you have a good weekend.

I'll be around, but for all of tomorrow I'll be at the Richmond Zine Fest.

I hope that you had a good time!

And I can't wait to see what you have in the alley. If we're going with a slow buildup, (and heck we're not even at Kurzweil's yet) then I'm not expecting some hulking monster, but maybe something bothersome, if only for a moment... hmmm

Just a quick update. Been a very busy week so far; writing a research review paper and a bunch of other responsibilities. But it's good, we actually ended up going on an 8 mile hike in incredibly beautiful wilderness over the weekend. I loved it.

I'll do a next post ASAP - probably tonight or Thursday (I have class on Wednesdays)

No problem bud, you do your thing.