Genre 1-do you? you do.- I wrote this song based off of personal experiences. When I was in a dark place. For an eighth grader, I know, a paper cut is a dark place, but trust it wasn't a pleasant time for me. I had all these friends who loved themselves and we're happy. I was the complete opposite all the time. They weren't narcissists, but they appreciated themselves. It was something I wanted and was jealous of. This song it about that basically. Someone, quite sad, hating everything they "do or say" and seeing someone just not. Wanting that "nirvana" peace in mind. Not the band, the buddhist word. Though they're great too. It's one of the best pieces I've made that's "ok" for school. In general, I'm really proud of it.
Genre 2-Emotions & Friends.- I wanted a place for people to acknowledge their emotions. That's one way, I learned, where you can let yourself be healthy and feel them, but not let them control you. And there's so many different feelings. I feel bad for the words that have the job of meaning something letters can never capture. It must be difficult. But since negative emotions are normally put in bad light. I wanted to show why you feel them. Why did nature make sure, to be healthy you have to feel these sometimes gut-wrenching, sometimes wonderful~things. I also used orange and blue, to represent cool and warm colors, like how emotions are portrayed symbolically in many different medias.
Genre 3- I'm really proud of the idea I had for this. It was much better quality in general in my mind. The concept is still there. I wanted pure emotion to be shown throughout. Just mood swings in a video, basically. But also show the main point of my project, because "emotions" is very vague. The happiness spell, as I call it throughout my project or just societies glorification of "positive" emotions and making all the others seem not needed or bad. That was basically the voice over.
Genre 4- The memes. I'm not even sure if they're funny. I'm not even sure if I can be funny on purpose. I sort of just blurt things out idiotically and people think I'm joking. These are also sort of depressing-like any meme without heart emojis done by a teen. But I wanted to show the stupid teenage ways of dealing with feelings. Which I think I accomplished.
Genre 5- Flash Fiction. I really hated writing this. With a passion. There were so many things I wanted to do that couldn't fit in 750 words. Oh, it could've been a novel if I had more time and less of a word limit. My intro was originally 800 words. When It comes to fiction I don't play around. I actually might finnish this as a short story or novel over the summer. I really like the idea. The room was supposed to be his mind. How he keeps all of his feeling there starved. So when he got a good emotion the crows and hawks and vultures attacked it. Showing that not taking care of your emotions can lead to break downs. Also when his mom tells him he needs to clean his room, she's talking about his mind being to messy to be a healthy space for emotions to thrive.
Genre 6-Painting. I really enjoy watercolor, so this was one of my favorite genres to make. I wanted to show someone having a really good few days. The yellow boxes represent this. They are calm and structured so the boxes are thin and more precise than the rest. Then, they have one bad day. Though you can see the happy days start to fade before it. They try to stay happy instead of dealing with these feelings and so the box is a greenish color. Then to cover the weakness of being weak the box moves forward from blue and turns purple. Showing it's turning into red. The lines get thicker but less visible as their daily life gets less structured. Then it's just an outburst of feeling and emotions. I included colors I had not used before that point.
Genre 7- My Sonnet. I don't know how I really feel about this one. I'm mostly proud of how this turned out. I think I just don't like the rhyme format. I prefer an AA BB CC or AAA BBB CCC kind of format. I wanted to show that even if you were perfectly happy all the time you wouldn't be. There's no storms, now there's no flowers. Or everything is bright, which can represent happiness or joyful, now it's hard to see the stars. I just liked that type of idea. You could also interpret it as people always try to make it seem like their life is perfect but it's really not. They cry and poop. Just like you; they're human.
Genre 8- Recipe & Argument. I really liked how this turned out. I knew going into this I didn't want to do an essay because they just ruin my mood and I wanted to do something creative. So I basically took the idea of the "What Guys Like" Book. The book that said what guys like on the cover but taught girls to love themselves. Real book. Good book. And since people are known for stress eating. I figured if we're talking emotions I'll draw you in with cookie recipe. Then I'm basically just arguing my point, that realizing emotions regularly is healthy and a nice way to make sure they don't end up in control.