a scary little walk

Wow, drawing trees is hard. I gave up on that. I planned to open the chapter with an image of the point-of-view of the characters, looking up through the trees. I could never get it right.

Additionally, the writing of Chapter 3 ended up being a larger task than I anticipated.

Oddly enough, this is my longest chapter, and it was the least planned at the time I actually sat down to type. I started with a single sentence I sent myself in an email, some time ago, when I realized I needed to describe the journey to town.

"When they see the town he says now we're really in danger."

Working backward from there, I realized I needed to craft some danger along the way, or the joke wouldn't have any impact. That meant finding ways to write scary things.

When I brainstormed ideas of how to think of scary things, a couple stood out. First, perform a thought experiment, and describe things that evolved under different rules of evolution. Those things could appear alien and discomforting to us, because they displace us in our understanding of the world. Second, write about things people do already, but make it seem like animals do them. Whether it be farming other things for sustenance, or bulldozing a path through the woods to make a road, it can be horrifying to imagine an animal with such power, because it displaces us our understanding of the food chain.

I intended for this puzzle to be simple, while I planned later ones. But designing it was a creative challenge. It took a lot of fine-tuning.

Speaking of fine-tuning, I spent a lot more time on dialogue than I ever imagined. It's very hard to describe the jokes I have in my mind, and I hope I succeeded, maybe time will tell.

Either way, I'm having fun working on the site as a whole. I'm attempting to pace myself, as it takes some coordination to effectively design the story, the puzzles, and the blog. I've managed to begin some early planning for a couple of the larger puzzles, and researching and buying some of the things we'll need.

When we get more people I have plans for you all to help control the characters. Maybe that will be a scary journey together, because we'll all be navigating entertainment in a way we don't understand. And when we get far enough in the experiment, maybe you all will control me.