This was academic synopsis of my story, Houseowner was created as a final project for my humanities class in Fall 2023.
Introduction:
Houseowner is a story I started developing very recently with a cast of original characters, Johnny/Persona being the protagonist and created on my 18th birthday in 2021. The very first draft was written on a whim about a month ago after I scrapped nearly every other project I was working on to dedicate all of my spare time (outside of uni) to. Its current story is not set in stone and is ever changing in form with its media of expression also flexible.
Its cast consists of
More informally, Houseowner is a story detailing the protagonist (or me/lack thereof): Johnny C. and his dive into absolute rock bottom. It contains subjects of idealism in regards to my own interests, wants as desires in terms of individuality, fantasies and as well as a consistent battle against delusion, trauma, mental illness and with the eventual acceptance or allowance for Johnny/I to merge with such aspects.
An individual; “Neighbour” repeatedly knocks on his door at aprox. 7:30 AM every Tuesday, before Johnny leaves for class. The individual has the same request each time: they ask if they can purchase his house, to which Johnny declines each time, this would follow a string of night terrors he would have almost every night.
One night while restarting the generator during a snowstorm, Johnny notices another room that has appeared across from the guest bedroom in the basement. The new room is completely filled with various construction supplies and a desk with a notebook containing aerial diagrams of both floors of his house. While Johnny is asleep he has visions of very expansive layouts of the house in the same notebook. Tormented, Johnny returns to the room, only to find the desk absent now with a door that leads to a dark void.
Under the realization that his dreams were indicative of blueprints to expand the lower half of his house in the void, despite having no skill in construction, Johnny begins to construct rooms within the void room. They are initially shabby and held together flimsily, the rooms would magically reinforce themselves overnight.
After constructing several rooms, Johnny stops entirely for about a week, which resumes the nightmares and the Neighbour visiting at the same day and time. It comes to the realization that the people involved in Johnny’s murder-dreams are actually turning up dead and happen to be tenants of the Neighbour. Johnny must continuously build rooms to circumvent it, little does he know that the one carrying out these killings is someone with a face similar to his, known as Self, who inhabits the mirror in his basement.
Figure 2.
I lived in Ontario when I was 12-17 years old. Houseowner serves as a reflection of the differences between where I live now + where I lived three years ago. I’ve had such a weird attachment to that house I lived in at 15 that I have the layout of it memorized like on the back of my hand, I revisited the neighbourhood while I was over in that province to find out they tore it down and replaced it with what was like this huge fucking oversized brick and i genuinely got so irrationally pissed off that I feel compelled to write this in some way, I don’t ever want to let myself forget about the house if my life depended on it.
Houseowner is a genuine effort for me to reexamine myself as well as preserve the memories of times where I could still find solace in everyday life as a younger, untreated person in 10-11th grade. Partial influence was genuinely everything going downhill since the pandemic and the absolute trainwreck I experienced 2022-2023.
Figure 3.
As a story writer in a community with like minded individuals where we all collect characters and develop intricate stories for them, there’s a constant conversation on how exactly would we express these stories (whether these be through an animated series, an RPGmaker game, published novels, etc.
Houseowner only exists within paper, numerous writings on character document sites, as well as any drawings I cultivate around it. One medium I have been expressing the characters is through animated videos, usually with audio or songs from other pieces of media.
This is an unfinished (hence the cut in the middle and absence of visuals towards the end) lyric/tweened video of the song "Shark Attack" by Cheers Elephant. I made this while developing Evie and Scolex in the earlier/first drafts of Houseowner.
Development art
