9/20 (Sean Devaney, Eater of Worlds)

What We Did Today --

In class today, we examined the "tone" of text, and how it affects the message and "Medusa" of a work. The tone will always determine the mood of the speaker, and therefore the story and the message it projects as either being optimistic, pessimistic, realistic, whatever the writer intends.

That being said, the "project" we had today involved everyone writing a tone of their choice on a note card, explaining what it meant. Everything from "Diabolical" to just plain "Happy" was written on the cards. Then they were shuffled out again, and everyone got to write the plot of a sci-fi text based around one scientific topic: The implementation of self-driving cars with the encouragement of the government, along to the given tone we received.

We all lined up in order from "most cheerful" tone to "most negative," and we all shared our stories (didn't finish, we're gonna wrap it up tomorrow).

I got "Cynical," and everyone agreed that my twisted story of mechanical indoctrination was the most "negative" tone because of it.

I noticed that somewhere in the middle, between optimistic tales of adventure in time travelling cars and stories of... far more evil cars bent on killing people and ruling the world, there was more of a "confused" tone, in the form of Mystery. There's a conflict in those stories, but it isn't necessarily critical, or embracing of the topic at hand. This could be compared to texts like the Metro book/game series, where the setting is post-nuclear Armageddon, yet this is never directly shamed, nor is it praised. It just... is. And the conflict of the story is more around something in such a universe, not the universe itself. Yes these self driving cars are the future in these worlds, but that's just a catalyst, not the real problem.

Meanwhile the more Negative tones reflected Player Piano and Terminator, stories about machines being assimilated into society, or taking over the work force. And the stories were more happy and fun, like Back to the Future, a story about a couple of protagonists learning to respect and make use of new technology to do amazing things.