Connect to outside sources (article/book/podcast/ted talk/blog/website/etc)

• • This is a Text investigation. Consider your essential question in the context of at least two outside sources you have identified that connect to your essential question. How do these ideas resonate with or challenge your own beliefs, experiences, or practices? Be sure to give concrete and specific examples. You may want to address: ways the sources answered parts of your Essential Question, what additional questions were raised, or how your essential understanding of your project was altered or confirmed by the readings you did. Make sure to cite your sources.

One text that I have been using as a reference is 17776 by Jon Bois, which utilizes the format of web fiction in a similar way to me, with the addition of video elements that utilize google maps. Though I did not feel that I had the time to create additional video content that would be to my standard for this project (or that was necessary to the storytelling) I was heavily inspired by the way he was able to create very coherent characters with just colored text, simply by giving them different personalities and typing styles. I think that additionally, his use of research and real world events to lead the reader towards the larger themes of the piece were very influential for me as well, though I have primarily been using a blurry mix of fact and fiction as opposed to his use of fake characters in a real setting.

Another source that I have been using as a reference for the ideas of the piece is Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times edited by Roelof Van Den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaf. This book details a lot of the main ideas explored in the currently surviving Gnostic and Hermetic texts. I have drawn a lot from this book to find these primary sources, which I have both quoted directly as well as used the foundational ideas of to shape the world that the characters in my story are encountering. The use of ideas such as the separation of physical and spiritual realms as well as secret knowledge as the way of attaining access to these higher realms is very integral to my story.