Hello Internet,

So we’ve done a crosscurricular project that combines math, science, socials and English all into one. This project basically consisted of creating a “math monster” and a “Frankenstuffy” (a creature made from pieces of cut-up stuffies), writing an epistolary story about them, and then turning part of that story into a video. The constraints for the plotline of the story were that the Frankenstuffy must adapt to some environmental change, that the story must take place in a specific region of Canada (which we were assigned), and the aforementioned epistolary formatting.

I initially focussed pretty heavily on my math monster in my story, but later evened it out so it focussed evenly on the monster and the Frankenstuffy, and didn’t even use my math monster in my video. I actually thought that my story, and the inclusion of the math monster, was much stronger than my video, but I think they both went alright.

This is my storyboard:

This is how the story ended up going:

1.

Hey sis,

I think I’ve finally found a place that would be okay for us to stay. I’m going to stay here for a while, maybe a few weeks or so, and try and create a suitable place to live. Right now I’m exploring; it’s partially tundra, partially snowy, and there seems to be a large body of water curving around the area, like a river, but stagnant enough that it’s frozen completely solid. I’m thinking of trying to melt a hole in the ice at some point; it looks deep enough that there might be fish.

There aren’t really any landmarks around here; the tundra is covered in a lot of grasses and shrubs and not much else, and I haven’t seen that many animals. I did briefly see an arctic wolf who seemed to be exploring the area, just like me. At least I think it was exploring, because it looked a little lost, and it didn’t really seem to have much of a purpose. I don’t really know how to tell much about other animals around here yet.

I haven’t really considered how my changing the area might affect other animals. I’ve been so busy trying to get away from humans that I pretty much forgot other animals existed– I’ll have to keep an eye on this wolf if I see it again. I don’t want to interfere too much with the established life around here, although I guess that’s inevitable if I’m messing with the environment. I’m mostly just aiming to fit in without massive negative consequences. I hate to admit it, but I’m actually a bit scared.

Anyways, how are things with everyone there? Its kind of lonely being the only yeti around, but if it means getting away from the potential danger of humans, it’s worth it. I miss you all already, but I promise to write everyday– I just wish I could actually send these letters to you somehow.

That’s okay. I’ll give them to you when I see you again.

I promise to be home soon,

Your brother,

Marshall.

P.S.– I don’t really want to keep referring to the wolf as “it”, so for all intents and purposes I am now calling the wolf Snowy. This is assuming that I’ll actually see Snowy again at any point, and that I’ll even be able to identify the same wolf twice, because otherwise giving a name to a totally random wolf is completely pointless, but it makes me feel slightly less alone.

2.

Dear Diary,

Today I saw a strange creature, one I’ve never seen before. It didn’t seem particularly threatening, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling it was watching me. I haven’t seen any fellow wolves for three days, and I’m starting to wonder if something has gone very, very wrong because I thought they would be here.

I had a near-death experience today! I noticed that there was a hole in the ice that wasn’t there before– probably something to do with that strange creature I saw, come to think of it. I bet it was a trap. Anyways, if it was a trap, it worked, because I fell in, and I’m not sure how it happened, but I got stuck underneath the ice, and I totally thought I was about to die! Good news, though– I made it out alive, and there’s no way I’m making that mistake again. I’m sure this strange new creature can’t mess things up for me too much.

You have no idea how scary it was almost drowning. It’s so… cold. I mean, living in the Arctic, I’m used to the cold, but this was different. Sort of an internal cold, like all of the life had been drained out of me, and what I could feel was death seeping in. It’s weird, because I should have been frantic, clawing and scratching at the ice above me, fighting for life, trying to get out, but for a few seconds, I just felt this strange calm… Maybe it was the smothering silence of being underwater keeping me from moving, and maybe it was the darkness, and maybe it was the cold, but there was a moment before the panic set in where I felt like I could have stayed where I was forever…

Maybe there is something wrong with this place.

Oh, well. There aren’t any other wolves here anyway, and it’s not like I’ve been here long enough to form a lasting attachment to this place; if things get too bad, I’ll just move on. For now, though, I think I’m going to stay– I’m not a huge fan of wandering from place to place all the time. I like to know that I have a home that I can come back to, somewhere that feels safe and predictable, where there’s enough food and not too much danger, and where people aren’t setting traps for me to fall into!

It probably wasn’t a trap. I don’t know. I don’t trust that strange creature…

Anywho, if I can make it through tomorrow without any surprise swimming sessions, it will be significantly better than today. Even if it involves swimming, and just not almost dying, it will still be significantly better than today.

Sweet dreams, Diary!

3.

Hey, sis,

So, today I melted through a patch of the ice, and I’m pretty sure I saw a few fish swimming around, so there’s a potential food source there. I’m not sure how I would get at them though; my main hunting method at the moment consists of freezing birds in the air to kill them, and then warming them up enough to eat. The ability to control temperature has been very convenient for me. I kind of feel like there should be a downside.

Well, I guess there sort of is a downside: Snowy fell in the water at least once, and possibly more times, and got briefly trapped under the ice. Arctic wolves aren’t bad swimmers, and Snowy was able to get out okay, but getting trapped under the ice seems like a potential way to drown. Like I said in my last letter, it’s inevitable that I’ll cause some problems trying to settle in here, but almost drowning the creature I chose to personally observe isn’t a great start.

Besides almost drowning the only creature I’ve developed an attachment to, things have been going pretty well here. I still wish you all were here with me, or that I could be back home with you, but I guess that will happen soon enough.

Sorry to cut this letter short, but I just saw a bird flutter past, and my stomach is grumbling.

See you soon,

Your brother,

Marshall.

4.

Dear Diary,

Okay, so you remember how I fell through a hole in the ice a few days ago and said that I never wanted to make that mistake again?

Of course you don’t; you’re a diary, you don’t have memories, but that’s not the point.

The point is, I haven’t been able to sleep since. I’ve been up for days with this awful stomachache, and my mind has been going a mile a minute thinking about the feeling of being underwater. I know I shouldn’t go back, but I’m sure as long as I’m careful it can’t hurt. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but there’s something very intriguing about the water… Something that perhaps deserves further investigation.

To some extent, I just want to lie here, because of the stomachache and all, but I honestly don’t know how long it’s going to last, and I’m tired of doing nothing but thinking. It’s kind of weird that I have a stomachache. I mean, I don’t understand what it’s from– I haven’t eaten anything weird recently, just the regular hares and foxes, and pretty much all fresh meat.

I’ve seen the strange creature a few more times, but it only seemed to be passing by; I didn’t get the feeling that it was watching me like I did the first few times I saw it. Maybe it’s given up on me and gone to watch something else. It must be pretty boring watching someone with a stomachache, actually, because I’ve been trying to avoid moving as much as possible for a few days now. Hopefully this means that the strange creature really has moved on, and that at least one good thing has come of all this useless pain.

Anyways, I’m hoping that by tomorrow I’ll be feeling well enough to go take another look at the water, because there’s no way I’m getting any sleep until I go back and convince myself that there is nothing of interest to me there. Well, actually, there might be fish, which do interest me. It’s been a long time since I’ve had fish. Back when I lived near the sea–

But maybe I’ll talk about that later.

Right now, it’s time to fruitlessly lie awake for the night.

Sweet dreams, Diary.

5.

Hey sis,

So, I’ve been expanding the hole in the ice. I’m hoping to find a way to get at the fish; I don’t really want to swim, and I can’t reach them on my own, but perhaps if I can construct some sort of device to act as a spear or a net I can kill them using a technique similar to what I’ve been doing with the birds. If I find a reasonable way to get at the fish, I might try and create some more gaps in the ice. More potential food sources are usually a good thing, and that will hold true even more once the rest of you get here.

I’ve also been working on thawing out some of the dirt in the grassy/shrubby area here. It’s not completely frozen solid, obviously, or the grass and shrubs wouldn’t be able to grow, but I dug into it a bit and further down its pretty much frozen. I’m hoping there’s a chance of getting some more plants to grow here; it’s very barren, and I feel strangely exposed being here by myself.

I have, however, built myself an igloo to sleep in, so it’s not quite as barren. It’s actually been nice being in an enclosed space; I’m not as lonely if I can pretend that everyone I care about is actually just outside and not hundreds of miles away.

Speaking of being lonely, I haven’t seen any sign of Snowy lately. I’m starting to worry that she actually may have fallen into the water again and drowned. Hopefully that’s not the case; I may have mentioned this in a previous letter or something, but I really don’t want to be responsible for Snowy’s death.

Tell everybody that I say hello, and stay safe. I’ll be home before you know it, and then you can all come back here and see this new world I’m putting together.

Miss you lots,

Your brother,

Marshall.

6.

Dear Diary,

So, I’ve discovered the reason for my stomachache: I’m growing fins.

When I woke up today, after finally falling asleep, they were there, growing in like new teeth, slightly bloody from breaking the skin of my stomach open, but otherwise completely normal looking.

Unsure exactly what to do with this discovery, I decided to carry on with my original plan of going back to check out the water again.

When I got there, I discovered that the hole in the ice had gotten much bigger, and that there seemed to be a set of stairs crudely cut into the edge of the ice leading down into the water. So, I did what anybody would do: I tentatively made my way down the steps.

I stayed there for a few moments, gazing blankly into the water. It looked inviting; refreshing, and now there was more room to swim, and this staircase here so it would be easier to get out. It could be like swimming in the sea again; not trapped, not drowning, just swimming. And the fact that I had fins growing out of my stomach had to mean something, right?

So I stepped into the water. And it stung, because my stomach had just been ripped open by the two fins growing out of it, but after the immediate pain wore off, it began to feel okay.

And I swam. I swam underwater, and I found that I could now hold my breath comfortably much longer than before. I sunk into the water, and into the perfect silence, and I basked in the calm.

I don’t know exactly why what’s happening is happening, or what’s going to come next. All I know is that being underwater feels like a place where I belong.

So you understand why I have to go back again tomorrow. Why I have to see exactly what the extent of my new abilities is.

Sweet dreams, Diary.

7.

Hey sis,

So, good news: I saw Snowy again today, and she was swimming, happily. Snowy has literally grown fins. I didn’t drown her after all! In fact, I think I made a positive impact on this place.

There are still a lot of things I don’t understand about this area, and there are still some things I have to do over the next couple of weeks, but… I think this will be my last letter before I leave this place.

And I’m leaving only to come get you guys and bring you back here with me. I know I’ve said this before, but I really think this is a good place for us all to live. And it’s almost ready, and I cannot tell you how happy I am that soon, I will be reunited with everyone. It’s been very weird being alone, and not always pleasant.

But it’s been worth it if it will keep everyone safe.

Anyways, I’ll be seeing you soon. I hope you like fish.

Like I said, I’ve still got some work to do here before I can come get everybody. I’m only partway through the designs for a fish-catching device, and I may decide to leave the fish to Snowy if I can’t get a working plan soon.

So what I should really say is, hope you don’t like fish.

See you soon,

Your brother,

Marshall.

8.

Dear Diary,

I think I’m going to like living with fins. I mean, it won’t always be as fun and cool and exciting as it seems right now, but once the initial euphoria’s worn off, swimming still feels like where I belong.

It’s funny, going from almost drowning to being able to swim better than ever. It’s not so scary now as it used to be. I said before that being underwater felt cold, like the life had drained out of me and death was replacing it. But now it just makes me feel alive.

There is a reason that I am where I am, far away from other wolves, and from the place that I used to call home. Someday, maybe I can write down the things that brought me here. I can’t do it right now, because it still feels like I’m drowning in those memories.

That’s okay, though. I’ll keep learning how to swim.

This whole area looks different to how it does when I got here. But it looks better, somehow, like the whole world changed for me; growing me a home out of a barren wasteland. I still don’t trust the mysterious creature who showed up at about the time all this started, but I suspect that it’s not setting up traps for me to fall into.

Sweet dreams, Diary.

I cut a lot of the plotline out when I converted my story into a video, due to a lack of time, and the fact that my math monster fell apart. The end product, which focussed mostly on the adaptation of my protagonist, and less on the cause behind the environmental changes, looks like this:

Toodles!

So, about two months ago, as part of our unit on Fantasy, we took a trip to Florida, and while there, we visited Walt Disney World.

The purpose of going to Disney World was to help us get footage and interviews for a project we were doing about how Disney’s imagineers used rides and shows to bring fantasy to life. Each of us chose a specific ride, and made a video about how that ride made fantasy “real”.

I chose to do my project on the Haunted Mansion; I enjoyed the dark and creepy feel of it, and the fact that it was created not based on a movie or show, but rather as its own little word, meant that it was perfect for the project I was working on.

One of the issues I didn’t think about when I chose the Haunted Mansion as a ride was how difficult filming in the dark would be. A lot of my footage ended up being unusable, so most of the footage in my video of the actual ride is footage I pulled from YouTube videos.

I went through a few different drafts of my video, mostly to add more information or replace visuals in order to make them more effective. However, the actual content video stayed pretty consistent throughout all the drafts, since it mostly focussed on the requirements I’d had from the beginning: give some background information on the ride, explain how the ride makes fantasy “real”, get some interviews with other Disney World attendees or with cast members.

My final video ended up looking like this:

The main things that I feel I could have improved about my video are that I wish more of my own footage had worked out, and that I wish I could have gotten more information on how the mechanics of the ride worked. Overall, however, I think the video answered the question and showcased the ride pretty well, so I’m happy with how it ended up.

Toodles!