Artist's Statement

I came up with this character long before this assignment, actually. When I was still in high school, I would pass time in class by drawing and coming up with stories and characters. One drawing I came up with was of some sorcerer wearing a suit-and-tie. I really liked the design so I started drawing other characters in that setting. Ever since then, I developed the character more and more to the point where he now was a professor of anthropology teaching people about ancient occult practices while actually doing those very things in secret.  As I was coming up with this assignment, I remembered that I based the character heavily on Doctor Strange and he ended up becoming a superhero. The most consistent conflict of superheroes is centered around the hero’s want to do their own thing, usually just living a normal life with friends and family. Sometimes, they just want to use their powers to goof around and use them for only superfluous reasons. But what they need to do is to utilize their powers for the greater good and to protect the world around them. So I came up with these various conundrums that conflicts with Dameon’s want to explore and be a teacher versus his need to protect his world from nefarious forces.

            What Dameon wants is to explore the multiverse and acquire as much magical power as he possibly can. He wants power beyond all possible sorcerers before him or after. And that is why he wants to explore the realms, so he can gain that power and knowledge. He also really enjoys spreading knowledge and teaching people about this field of study he so enjoys. It makes him proud to know that he is helping someone to become smarter, even if it’s just a little bit. What Dameon needs, however, is to utilize his powers for the protection of the world. There are always many forces and beings in existence that want to enter our world for whatever reason, be they good or bad. Someone has to protect and safeguard the people of Earth who are completely unaware of all the terrible things that want to kill them. That is what Dameon needs to be doing, protecting those people who don’t know.

            The two first choices at the beginning of the story, whether to go to his job or to skip the day and go explore, are centered around what he wants to do. He either wants to go to his job and do it well or he wants to go explore other dimensions. Originally, these choices don’t impede on his growth because his call to action has not appeared yet. The alert on his armband is that call and whether he heads it or ignores it depending on what he wanted to do in the beginning. If he ignores it while going to class, he becomes absorbed in the works of academia and the world falls to ruin. If he went to explore and keeps going, he goes too far from home and ends up being consumed by a Cthulhu monster. If he answers the call, then he does what he needs to do and saves lives and/or the world from ruin. But at the end of the needs route, he does face some reprimands. This is to indicate that doing what we need to do is sometimes more difficult than doing what we want to do.

            I came up with the story beats based around cause and effect but also noting that there would have to be an instance in both sides where the need had to come through. If he goes to the college to do professor work, then he would end up teaching students and having to grade assignments and other things.  If he goes to explore, then he spends time in various fantastical dimensions and lands. Then, his call to action appears. If he heeds it, then he discovers the source of the problem and solves it. If he ignores it, then he meets a terrible end depending on the environment he chose to go in to.

            In all honesty, the most difficult part of creating this story was simply just sitting down and putting pen to paper. I had plenty of ideas about what I wanted to do and the setting this would take place in. I had so many places I wanted to have revealed and secrets to be uncovered. I think I went through about three or four different drafts before the final one and they all were just a bunch of jumbled up messes that had absolutely no connection to what the assignment was truly about and went on and on to nowhere. It felt incredibly difficult cutting down on so much I wanted to talk about such as multiple passages on alternate dimensions and worlds but those took too much focus away from the story. I had to draw myself back in for it to be a cohesive narrative that made sense.

            I figured that any person playing this game would realize this is a story based around a sort of superhero and that they would want to do the right thing. So doing something such as answering an alarm that the player knows links to the Bat-Signal (Metaphorically speaking) would result in some form of heroic action and that is something that needs to be done. People like playing as a hero and want to save the girl on the train tracks. So I made choices that would coincide with that desire. I also made the “wrong” choice reflect what happens if they do not act like a hero: The villain wins and everyone dies.

            


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