<aside> 💡 This page walks through the brainstorming and narrative revisions created on the way
</aside>
‣
With this mind map I began exploring specific themes that I could research on for my essay.
I was leaning more into the idea that I wanted to focus on the idea of culture representation.
With personal experience within this, I thought it would be more interesting to focus on my own culture’s history, beliefs and practices. In a way, choosing my own culture was directly affected by the lack of representation I see of the Philippines and filipino people in circulated media unless I actively search for it- thus making it a reasonable area of interest.
After doing some research I decided that I wanted to go with a comedic and palatable modernization of the story.
This was my first idea, I knew I wanted to explore potential resolutions to the Bakunawa climax presented by the myth. As stated, there wasn’t many feasible sources I could find so I decided to tackle it in a more modern perspective. In doing so, I made sure to focus on how school students could achieve this inconspicuously.
The theme of loud noises (originally done by banging pots and pans) left many possibilities, but at the end I decided to focus on the idea of an event that required music and fireworks. By combining these two ideas together, a festival or some sort of fiesta felt most feasible. It also tied into the research provided by the Aswang project (figma mindmap above) that proposed the possibility that precolonial filipinos had a fiesta dedicated to the moon goddess: Haliya.
One of the ideas i wanted to navigate was the idea that the main character (Maria) was tasked with organising an upcoming festival within the student council to host for the local community. After having a very unusual dream she was reminded of the rich culture that precolonial filipinos had- especially regarding old gods and creatures. This would then give her the idea to theme the story around that.
This was done in my sketchbooks as it helped me to compile ideas together quickly and more flexibly since it was portable: