{"id":4806,"date":"2024-01-22T13:01:13","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T18:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/?p=4806"},"modified":"2024-01-22T13:06:05","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T18:06:05","slug":"the-forest-welcomes-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/2024\/01\/22\/the-forest-welcomes-you\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forest Welcomes You"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Winter forest<\/a> by Lars-Henrik Snow<\/a> is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
beautiful or ominous music box<\/a> by xtrgamr<\/a> is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For my image, I wanted to use some sort of scenery or environment that I love. I\u2019ve always enjoyed the denseness of forests and the sound of dirt crunching beneath one\u2019s feet, so I went searching for a forest picture that called out to me. Lars-Henrik Snow\u2019s picture of a winter forest has a beautiful contrast of darkness and lightness. I\u2019m especially enamored by the darkness being in the forefront, making the light in the background all that more mystical. I knew my goal going into the assignment was to discover an image and audio that will pair together to completely alter its meaning, which I want to complement with a short narrative. This image was the perfect first step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, it was audio hunting time. I wanted an audio that would change the ambience into something eerie and unsettling. At first I looked into audios where people were murmuring, expecting to use it as an auditory experience for my character\u2019s unsound mind, but none of the audios I found this way felt quiet or isolated enough. Instead, I searched under the keyword \u2018ominous\u2019 and found interesting clips, but xtrgamr\u2019s reverbed version of Rock-A-Bye Baby gave me what I didn\u2019t even know I was looking for. Hit with inspiration, I scraped off the rust on my creative writing skills and came up with this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two nights, three frigid days now. Matthew\u2019s fingers felt numb even beneath his multi-layered wool gloves. The avalanche swallowing Timmy and Gloria beneath mountains of undiscerning white had been cataclysmic, but the following blizzard even more so. He\u2019d holed up in a cave where the walls had accumulated thin sheets of ice and spent the passing two nights blowing warmth into his unresponsive hands and eating measly rations of jerky and sunflower seeds. The storm had only cleared this morning. He hadn\u2019t realized that wherever he had fallen in the aftermath left him with nowhere to go but through the dense, frozen foliage of an ever-expansive forest. He\u2019s been sludging through 3 feet of snow aimlessly for 4 hours. His joints ached or throbbed \u2013 he was unable to discern \u2013 and he heard the crooning of his mother\u2019s favorite lullaby. No\u2026 that wasn\u2019t a voice, but the mesmerizing trill of the music box he\u2019d unearthed when he was six. Where had it come from? It sounds\u2026 distant, back towards the cave. But it was familiar and familiarity is all Matthew has yearned for in the past 72 hours. His feet turned back around and he could not say if it was of his own volition. He followed his sunken boot prints back to the cave, to the warm embrace he was convinced he\u2019d receive. When he was finally back, he entered the belly of the cavern that had not been there. The music stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apologies for the length of this post! I always get wordy when I don\u2019t mean to\u2026 Eerie\/creepy\/horror writing is not one of my strengths and I was starting to rush it, but I hope it was still atmospheric. Thank you for taking the time to read it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For my image, I wanted to use some sort of scenery or environment that I love. I\u2019ve always enjoyed the denseness of forests and the sound of dirt crunching beneath one\u2019s feet, so I went searching for a forest picture...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-4806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student","tag-cc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4806"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4813,"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions\/4813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~lis5313\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}