{"id":426,"date":"2026-09-24T21:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T21:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/?p=426"},"modified":"2026-10-08T17:16:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T17:16:05","slug":"week-1-2-my-four-research-topics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/2026\/09\/24\/week-1-2-my-four-research-topics\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 1-2: My Four Research Topics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The four research topics I decided on was MUSHROOMS, GEOLOGY, INSECTS and COASTAL GOTHIC <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am very passionate about the natural world we inhabit. It’s the inspiration for all of human societies, myths, culture, cuisine so it also helps us understand more about ourselves. Even ostensibly minor topics hold a huge wealth of information that people can spend whole lifetimes studying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My topics were also tailored to things I’m already interested and fairly knowledgeable in so I could use it to my advantage. At this point, I am not even thinking about anything related to games, merely letting ideas float by me to save for a later point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research began with mind maps and traditional mediums, of course. During my trip to the AES exhibition (Which i will expand on later) I picked up a few books that were only a couple of quid each that would aid me with my studies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(book picture)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Above is a large poster I drew in market as I was researching geology and fungi. I chose to do that info-dump style as my insect research was in my sketches and my field trip, the coastal gothic research would be conducted in photography, reading and writing. I was also less knowledgeable in the former topics in general so I just wanted to know the basics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving on, I began my powerpoint for the presentation on the 5th. I was very conscious of time, as we only had around 8 minutes to deliver our spiel. So I wanted to keep my slides to a minimum, but make sure they were packed with information so I could be more flexible in the delivery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below are my powerpoint slides and my explanations. Unfortunately, PPT for the web is incredibly frustrating and only exports them as low quality jpegs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GEOLOGY<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

I started with the topic of geology. I had purchased a book from the AES fair that was dated to 1850, and a sticker on its front informed it of being a part of an orphanage’s boy’s library. The book was very informative despite its age and existed at a point in time where creationism was beginning to take in the nuances of scientific research that pointed to an extremely ancient Earth. I also learnt of a feud in the early 19th century between two schools of geology, “Neptunists” and “Plutonists” The former believing the Earth’s geology was formed due to the slow draining of a giant ocean. The latter more closely resembles the modern day conception of geological activity like volcanoes being responsible for the Earth’s landscape instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I drew a diagram of the rock cycle. It’s something I remember covering in geography early in my secondary school career so it was surprisingly nostalgic to me. I’ve also looked into plate tectonics before in order to have realistic worldbuilding projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MUSHROOMS<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

I have a book called The Little Book of Fungi which is packed full of information that I referenced for most of the information in the slides. I sketched a diagram of a mushroom so I could understand what each part of this ostensibly simple organism would look like. I had known of the mycelium being the bulk of a fungus’ biomass but it was crazy to see its statistics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The largest organism on earth IS a fungus in Oregon. It’s 8,000 years old and stretches for 2,000 acres, which is roughly 8km squared. That easily dwarfs a blue whale. https:\/\/allthatsinteresting.com\/humongous-fungus-oregon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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INSECTS<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This was one of my favourite topics to research. We see insects and other arthropods everyday but never stop to consider their amazing biology and lifecycles. With almost a million species (and probably more to discover) it’s one of those topics you could never finish learning about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The second and third slides is about my field trip to the AES annual exhibition. It was in the Kempton Park Racecourse building (though I abhor any kind of animal sports) I brought my camera with me and took a lot of photos, which I’ll show more of below. It was really fun, the weather was really nice and I even got to buy some of my own isopods, a species called Armadillidium vulgare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These are sketches I’ve done of insects on my tablet in Infinite Painter using photo references. They are surprisingly addictive to draw and require a completely different approach to drawing as opposed to the softer bodies of verterbrates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Below are some more photos I took at the fair. I loved that stick insect, they have such a great character to them,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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COASTAL GOTHIC<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

For my final topic I wanted to explore something more based in emotion than a scientific discipline. Coastal\/Seaside Gothic is a subgenre of gothic, from the literary genre. As someone who is very interested in writing the very emotional way of writing and the role the coast plays in that connection is something that draws me into that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway, it was a short book about 100 pages long. I really enjoyed the writing, the very visceral and grounded descriptions that both covered an opposition and connection to the natural world. I’ve also started reading To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, which is very long and meandering in its prose in a way that makes me feel as though I’m pulled along as smoothly as the current itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The final slide is a collection of some of my photography I’ve done recently. I<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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PRESENTATION AND EVALUATION <\/h1>\n\n\n\n

When I was called to present to the class, I suddenly felt very flustered. This is natural, of course. One of the things that made me feel that embarrassment was the niche terminology I had put in my slides. For some reason, alienating people with my language is a bit of an insecurity of mine. Regardless, I pushed through it. I kept an eye on the time and managed to finish at exactly 8 minutes on the dot which I was satisfied with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards, Adam said that my presentation was “the gold standard of research” I didn’t expect that kind of praise but I’m happy to know that what I’m doing is heading in the right direction! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We used nodenoggin to deliver feedback on everyone’s presentations. The above screenshot is the feedback that I received. I think people were interested in Seaside Gothic the most but also the mushroom suggestions were interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the comment that sparked my interest the most was the one about coastal erosions and the Isle of Wight. I also want to look into the Woman in Black stage show, which ties into being cut off by the tides. Even if the other suggestions regarding mushrooms aren’t directly relevant to the direction I want to take, I think it would be interesting to look into them anyways to see if there are themes or aesthetics I could incorporate. (Like with mushrooms\/fungi for example I could use ideas of rot, connection and recycling)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So moving forward, I want to proceed with my research topic being about the coast<\/strong>, especially the British coastline, as I can draw from my own emotions and experiences and learn more about it. In my next post, I’ll develop my initial research plan and the questions that I want to answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The four research topics I decided on was MUSHROOMS, GEOLOGY, INSECTS and COASTAL GOTHIC I am very passionate about the natural world we inhabit. It’s the inspiration for all of human societies, myths, culture, cuisine so it also helps us understand more about ourselves. Even ostensibly minor topics hold a huge wealth of information that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-proposal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/er7g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}