Adventurer's Journal

Journal #2 The Magical Underwater Realm: Freedom and Life

Note: This entry contains some spoilers for the writing composition portion of this activity. I recommend reading "Acting on Principle"  first.

The Second Blogging challenge of "Ultimate Trinket Adventure [Mainland]"  as I navigate through the second world "The Magical Underwater Realm" is a quote prompt.

I actually completed the review category for this challenge reviewing a lot of poetry and short stories under the Inspirational, Philosophy and Experiences categories first. A lot of these dealt with the ideas of Freedom, perseverance and experiences in life in general. It immediately inspired me in the Writing Composition portion of this challenge. I knew that I wanted to write a story about Freedom, Perseverance, Determination and the choices involving them.

There were two quotes that really fit with the themes I was hoping to write about:

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." from Nelson Mandela

and

"If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor." from Eleanor Roosevelt

Though I took some inspiration from the Nelson Mandela quote as my story wound up dealing with perseverance, I wound up choosing the second quote by Eleanor Roosevelt for my story because it tackles the idea of freedom and the choices we make. Life never goes exactly the way you want it to go but it also raises a good point that life would dull if it was predictable.

I think a lot of us relate to the fact that life can be unpredictable and it doesn't always go the way that we wanted it to go. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. One example I can think of from my personal experiences is that when I graduated from College I was unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. I tried multiple temporary jobs before I went for my Master's degree in Computer Science and even after I got my degree, it still took me awhile to get settled into a role I was happy with. That said there was a lot of experiences I received that were a part of the journey and important moments which I may have missed if I had taken a more direct route to where I am now. For example I got to teach abroad in Thailand for a term and made a lot of friends in all the positions I was working in between getting my degree.

For the writing composition story I wanted to have my character struggle with making a decision and make an unpredictable choice as well. I thought back to a Social Studies class I was taking in the 12th grade where they were discussing the Tiananmen square protests and one of the pictures highlighted from that time period was an unarmed protestor blocking the path of a tank. It lead to a thinking exercise the class did regarding what would cause a person to put their life on the line standing in front of a tank like that. It inspired me to write a story where the character would put their life on the line in a similar fashion. Another historical context that I also helped to inspire this story was the French Resistance during World War II which I learned about from my French and history classes.

Keeping with the unpredictability of the Eleanor Roosevelt quote, I wanted it to be a mystery how the story would play out. I wound up giving the story a much more hopeful outcome than I originally intended. Though the lead doesn't know if the character he wound up helping ultimately survives, there is the possibility that his actions helped. My original version was to have the lead become a martyr well aware that what he was doing would ultimately not make a difference.

To reflect the happier segments of Eleanor Roosevelt's quote I added in the Resistance member Al. Al is based on two of my childhood friends. I wanted him to be able to portray the mindset that a life without freedom is bland and flavorless. The character is meant to remind and convince the lead that there are things worth fighting for. It is something that the character ultimately grows to accept over the course of story.

For the science fiction and invasion elements there are two movies/books that helped to inspire this storyline. One was the film Independence Day which deals with an Alien attack and the second was the diary of Anne Frank with deals with the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam during World War II. There was an additional 2 part Elseworld's comic from DC that deals with an Alien invasion that serves as some inspiration for this story as well.

Word Count: 771