For my final project in this class I am to aggregate everything I've learned from this class and express a coherent whole out of it. I like some of the examples given, such as the comic strip suggestion, but sadly, as I am extremely strapped for time, this is going to have to take the form of a rambling stream-of-conciousness essay punctuated by linkspam.
On the first week of Weblogs and Wikis my true love gave to me... err, I mean, we got organized and introduced the concept of a Personal Learning Network. The most concise definition of PLN I can come up with is a system an individual creates for themselves to improve their efforts of self-education, taking advantage of modern social media technology. Here's a bit of further reading that I did, which expands on the concept a bit: A scholarly article on the theory, a good article on how tweeting and PLNs.
The second week, we started to take a real look at the wider view of the concept of social networking and how very vital it is becoming, as well as getting a head start on the theory and practice of blogging. Some of the issues involved, like the "rise of the amateur" complaint, which stresses that news bloggers don't count as "real" bloggers, struck me as wildly and hilariously reactionary, and reactionary over something that is borderline mainstream by now even. TV Tropes has a fun article on this phenomenon: New Media are Evil. We see here that this mentality has a long and storied history, which inevitably ebbs when the next big thing comes around. So don't be afraid the next time some state starts considering legislation to license journalists, they'll forget about it soon enough. Also, Twitter makes you immune to human suffering, donchaknow.
Week three was actually about just that.
Week four, we got started on wikis. Wikis are a fun subject, though I think it's the sort of thing where you can learn how to format things in wikis but you can't really learn more than that without spending a lot of time contributing to them. Still, we learned a lot about wikis, like the history of the wiki and the technological limitations that originally impeded reaching that ideal, and the implications of using a true hypertextual medium now that it has been invented. We can see a bit of that New Media are Evil prejudice against wikis now (how often have you heard "But ANYONE can edit Wikipedia" as if that were the most terrible thing ever?) but I became increasingly convinced that this represents a vocal minority nowadays.
Week five was also wikis.
Week six was a day of reflection, you can find my reflection here.
Week seven was when we learned the corpro-speak-sounding term "produsage." It's kind of a confusing term, but I'll try to define it. Produsage is a portmanteau of producer and user, or rather, that gets us produser, who creates produsage. It's essentially the same concept from above, in the wiki section - instead of living in a world where there are producers and consumers of information, we have the potential (and are slowly starting to) live in a world where the lack of a significant cost for publishing information (that is, the simplicity of putting information on the internet, instead of printing it off and mailing it, as was our only option not too long ago) means that everyone who consumes information also has the potential to produce information on the same level. Moreover, it becomes increasingly easy for the produser to produce something out of something that someone else has already produced (which might be called annotating, refining, or stealing, depending on your point of view). Here's the website of the book that coined the term.
Week nine was the point where we were sort of let loose, having been introduced to the class's two major topics and most of the themes involved. We talked about Japan, and how the recent disaster displayed some of the effects of an increasingly wired, social-media-involved society. As a personal anecdote, my girlfriend was anxiously trying to contact her brother, who was in Japan at the time, using Facebook and found out he and his family were ok only a day after the initial disaster (It took them awhile to get access to a computer).
Week ten was when we got into the fun Privacy debate, concerning the implications of widespread social sharing and Facebook's wonderful privacy issues. I ended up penning a somewhat extreme and fantastic opinion piece that sums this up better than I can do here, so check it out.
In week eleven we got into more of the reactionist social worries, the classic "texting is ruining grammar" debate. I don't really have much to say about this. The fact is, as long as language is understood by the intended audience, then there's no problem with it. The way we communicate online is mutating and changing something fierce, and in a lot of different ways, but I've never heard of any situations where this actually causes problems, so it's not really worth worrying about. And I'm a writing major, I get to decide these things.
In week twelve we learned about crowdsourcing. I'm cynical about this. It seems in a lot of ways like a cynical attempt to get other people to do your work for you. This isn't necessarily the case, but that's how everything I've read on the subject seems to frame it.
Finally week thirteen was about cell phones. [expand]
I do hope this is complete enough. It seems to me that one of the problems with using a Personal Learning Network in a college environment is that your study is largely self-guided, but your grading...isn't.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Long Work Second Half
This is even iffier than the first part, I'm afraid, but it's due tomorrow, so whatevs. I planned this as the start of a longer story, though it is unlikely I'll ever get back to it.
Claire was awoken by a blast of thunder. Her mind, still half-asleep, whirled about. What just woke her up? Why is her bed so weird? Oh, she’s not at home, she’s at grandma’s. Why are my feet hot? I think that was lightning? What time is it? She blinked and drilled her knuckles into her eyes until she could see the clock on the nightstand next to the fold-out bed in Gran-gran’s living room. It was 7AM, but the cluttered, cozy room was still pitch black, the only visible details the windows, floating panes of flickering grey like damaged television screens. She’d regained her senses enough now to detect the tiny ball cowering under the sheets, at her feet. She reached under, fished out Shawshanks, and carried the cat with her to the window.
The world outside the window was an insane swirl of cold grays. A snatch of the lawn was the only recognizable thing out there – everything else was a confusing mix of rain and swirling cloud. Lightning arced from thunderhead to thunderhead, sometimes distant, sometimes terrifyingly close, and with more frequency than Claire could ever remember seeing. The constant, rumbling crackle of thunder formed an insane melody supported by the howling of the wind and the rattling of window panes – of the whole house, really. The ripples of water running down the panes distorted her view even further, but as she stood there, trying to keep the terrified cat from clawing his way from her arms, Claire noticed another light, a steady pulse almost invisible against the wild, random thunder. She leaned against the window and tried to see up higher.
“The signal light?”
She turned, dropping Shawshanks back on the bed and grabbing her black oilskin coat from the back of Gran-gran’s old smoking chair. The cat thudded off the bed and scrambled beneath it with a bit more celerity than she’d credit him. She pushed her way through the door, navigating the house by memory, the flickering blue light from the windows, and only a few banged shins. She wound her way up the iron steps, clutching the rail (Jesus, the whole island feels like it is shaking) as the small windows that spiraled up the tower passed by, points of thunderous light illuminating the white plaster for a few feet before fading back into blackness. A flash, bright enough to illuminate every corner of the building, served as a split-second harbinger to a blast of thunder so loud she could taste it. It threw her from her senses, her knees banging cruelly against the steps. It felt like every molecule of the lighthouse was still shaking when she pulled herself back to her feet and let out a nervous laugh.
“Well…thank God for lightning rods, then. Granny! Are you up there!”
She continued climbing. The hatch at the head of the stairs was open. As she approached it, she saw her grandmother, her wild white hair glowing in the signal light. Claire staggered over, the turning light blanking out her vision for a moment.
“Granny!” she shouted over the storm, “What are you doing up here?” The door to the catwalk surrounding the top of the lighthouse was open, and the wind whipped so hard Claire was having trouble keeping her coat closed, but the old woman stood impassive, wrapped in a blanket, looking out the open door though a pair of old birdwatching binoculars.
“Y’see that, girl?” she asked, her voice soft, but somehow defying the wind. Claire squinted in to the direction her grandmother was watching. There was nothing out there but wild storm. Yet…Claire thought she might just see a darker shape looming ahead, huge, but invisible save for the fact that its outline was far steadier than anything else around them.
“Is that…Gran-gran, is that an island?”
“Yes. Roanapur, if I’m not mistaken.” Gran-gran lowered her binoculars and glared into the howling heavens for a moment. “Get your things.”
“Things?” Claire followed her grandmother back down into the lighthouse, stumbling to keep up.
“I bought this property twenty-three years ago. The man who sold me it said he calculated it’d be a century before the island was in danger of drifting into another landmass. But we ain’t supposed to be anywhere near Roanapur right now. And I’m sure we’re getting closer.” Gran-gran stopped at the foot of the stairs just long enough to give it a quick scan. “So, get your things.”
“My things? Granny, we’re not going to go flying out there?” Claire didn’t receive an answer, as her grandmother was already rooms away. She looked around her, at the dark, loud, quivering house, the windows blazing with lightning, holes in a decaying birdhouse. She took a deep breath, wet electric air steeling her, and marched off to the living room.
Minutes later, at the short wooden scaffold behind the lighthouse, the two women tied down their bags and bundles into tiny, a free-floating dinghy. Grandmother had a suitcase full of money and bank papers, followed by clothes, food, and the few sentimental things Claire could convince her to pack. Lastly was Shawshanks, wrapped in a wool blanket with only his terrified face peeking out. Gran-gran pulled one of the knots, leaving the boat floating in the wind like a great, slow windsock. Claire held it steady and helped her grandmother in, putting one foot in herself before she found herself paralyzed, the barely visible red stripes of the lighthouse taking hold of something deep inside her. Her grandmother shouted at her, voice mixing with the deafening roar of the storm. Gran-gran heard something that sounded like “Wait! We forgot…” and suddenly she was gone, run back off into the darkened doorway. Her grandmother’s gnarled hands squeezed the boat’s sides, her dress and cloak billowing around her with a ferocity that rivaled that of the storm. A torrent of rain washed over her face, but she didn’t look away. The signal whirled and pulsed, she could almost see the bright greens of earlier that morning with each sweep, but just as soon the nightmarish darkness returned. A bolt of lightning arched miles away, the light suddenly silhouetting the enormous chunk of rock looming up behind her home. Finally, her granddaughter appeared in the doorway. She ran across the lawn, one hand holding up her billowing skirt, the other an old brass birdcage. Claire dropped it on a seat and swung herself up.
“God damn it, girl!” her grandmother shouted into the wind, “God damn it you stupid girl!”
“I love you too, Gran-gran” Claire replied, a flash of lightning glinting off her teeth. She pulled the last knot, and the boat flew off and up, tumbling about in the storm. Gran-gran yanked the cord of the outboard until the old, rusty jet turbine roared to life, steadying the boat and guiding it up to the edge of the storm. Far below, the whirling signal light cast out twin beams of illuminated storm. The two women watched as the lighthouse, just for a second, lit up Roanapur’s craggy edge. Then, a thousand tons of stone collided with several million tons, the blast scattering clouds and rain and sending a cloud of debris in all directions. The tiny dinghy jerked under the sudden shockwave, knocking Claire from her seat. She hit the boat’s bottom, her elbow hitting the birdcage, rolling it against the boat’s wall. The door sprung open, the goldfinch inside flying clear and disappearing in the time it took her to realize it. Claire pulled herself back into a sitting position, staring forlornly after the bird as far below her, the storm shrunk against the nation of Roanapur like a fading bruise.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Fiction II Long Work
Ok, so this is what I've been working on all day today. It's the first...half of the piece I'm working on for a fiction class. What I'm trying to focus on right now is finding a way to give long, elaborate descriptions without coming across as ponderous or corny. The teacher also says I should try focusing on characterization, and finding ways to reveal characterization through world details. What do we think?
The tea was hot and bitter, almost gritty, but there was a subtle undercurrent that might be mistaken for lemon. This surprised Claire – Gran-gran’s approach to food was so minimalist that pepper would have seemed out of place in one of her dishes, but there it was. She supposed the leaves could have just been stale. She drank it slowly, religiously, letting the tea flow through her belly, chest, and shoulders like charcoal and antivenin, letting out a satisfied sigh as she put the cup down. A soft breeze stirred.
Claire looked into the breeze. A few yards away stood the short fence that marked the steep dropoff at the edge of her grandmother’s island. Beyond, in all directions, was nothing but a fantastic sea of sky. The sun hung, heavy yet glorious, in the clear sky above, tendrils of vaporous clouds becoming thicker and more numerous as the eye traveled downwards. A cumulus bank had been edging slowly closer all day, but it still parted frequently enough to reveal mountains, valleys, whole empyreal nations of clouds spanning out to the horizon. Even lower, beneath the island, the clouds swirled still denser, in an impossibly deep spiral of blue, white and grey. Floating alone in this beautiful skyscape was a rough chunk of earth, an inverted teardrop capped by grass, fruit trees, and the repurposed lighthouse that served as her grandmother’s home.
Claire loved how her grandmother almost never bothered mowing. There was something deeply endearing about shaggy grass, weeds and mushrooms layered about the lawn surrounding Gran-gran’s home, a bizarre paternal sensation she felt when she looked at the plants curling around the legs of the wrought iron table her tea set sat on. The breeze set that carpet rippling in waves. There was a hiss and a soft thud as it slid through the nearby tree, knocking an apple loose. She leaned back into her wicker chair and closed her eyes, letting the wind snake beneath her dress and across her skin, her head filling with that wondrous plant-smell. It was better, she thought, than going to a spa, and not just because it was cheaper. The breeze died – she opened her eyes, resting them on Gran-gran’s house. The red and white barber’s pole paint scheme had faded and cracked wondrously, a leafy hand of climbing ivy slowly grabbing more and more of the tower. In a few places, it even completely engulfed one of the windows, wood-shingled awning and all. Claire wondered if her grandmother understood what kind of beauty her laziness was engendering. At the very top of the tower was the signal light, sitting in its black-roofed house of leaded glass. It still worked – Gran-gran said that if she turned it on when the island was in a cloud, it was bright enough to make a rainbow circle the island. She couldn’t do that now, though. The Office of Travel complained about her endangering planes and airships with a false signal light. So it goes.
Think of the devil, Claire thought as the front door swung open. Gran-gran hobbled down the short flight of stone steps, a tray of sandwiches in her hands, her white and gray tabby Shawshanks weaving about her feet. Claire loved her grandmother. She loved her face, a mess of scowl lines, splotches, and lip fuzz, harpoon nose almost sharper than her gaze. She looked like a gargoyle, like something an antediluvian holy man would put in front of his temple to ward off dark spirits. Thorny wisps of white hair framed her face, escaping from her tyrannical bun and beetle-black bowler. Her plain slate dress held down an artlessly patterned petticoat, and she had bulbous shoes with big steel buckles Claire coveted desperately. She always wore so many layers, treating her soft squishy center with the awkward, feigned contempt that a perfectionist parent would their clumsy child. Most of all, though, Claire loved her smell, that unique, inscrutable old-person smell that spoke more than a history book ever could. Though, of course, Gran-gran would horror to hear Claire say that – she lacked the senility to treat her history as a prize rather than a burden.
The tray thudded on to the wrought-iron table – Claire picked one up and examined it as her grandmother dropped into the other chair.
“Mayonnaise and lettuce? Gran-gran! I do believe you wouldn’t treat the Empress herself to such luxury!”
Gran-gran let out one of the ornery but meaningless chuffs she had perfected so well. “Good mornin’, Clarity. I see you’re wearing too much black again.” Indeed, her granddaughter’s whole outfit was of a solid jet black, right down to her ear studs and stockings. The dress was such an elaborate cut, but with everything the same color one couldn’t even make it out without studying her closely. Gran-gran realized to her horror that that might even be the point. And how would you even keep something like that clean without fading it? She was so pretty, with her mother’s elegant features and flawless skin (made far paler by the contrast of her clothing, she had to admit) and her father’s rich brown hair and dark grey eyes. The thought of what modern fashion was doing to her beloved granddaughter made Gran-gran seethe. At least her hair, held up with a single (black) hair claw, was still that wonderful color. If Claire ever went to visit her grandmother’s island with black hair, she’d probably get thrown off the edge.
“I can’t help what’s in style, Gran-gran.” Claire said, beaming. “Oh, and it’s noon.”
Claire’s grandmother shoved half a sandwich into her mouth, speaking between gritted teeth. “The last time I got up before ten was when your mother gave birth to you. I ain’t ever gonna get up before that again. So, it’s morning.” It was all Claire could do to keep from kidnapping her grandmother and keeping her on a shelf with her stuffed animals.
“So how’s university?” Gran-gran asked, pouring herself some tea. Claire picked up Shawshanks, who was busy tangling himself around her legs, and settled him in her laps.
“Oh, you know.” She replied, “It’s school.”
“What d’you mean by that?”
“It’s coming and going, and I’m learning things, and constantly frustrated at how little I’m learning, and I’m making new friends, and I’m learning the value of solitude, and I’m busy and I’m bored and I’ve got things going on that I can’t really seem to form an opinion about.”
“You mind saying that again?”
Claire didn’t say anything. She was too busy scratching Shawshanks under the chin.
“Come on. Teacher troubles? The work too hard? Your parents antagonizing you again?” Shawshanks had twisted himself into a bizarre pose to angle his chin just right.
Gran-gran sighed into her tea. “Honestly, girl, it seems you’re built just to aggravate me. I know respecting your elders isn’t in style now, but at least a little courtesy would be nice!” Shawshanks was flopped belly-up over Claire’s legs, paws twitching as she ruffled the fur of his belly.
“There’s really nothing to talk about, Gran-gran.” She said, her face awash with poise. “Thank you for having me over, by the way.”
“You’re quite welcome,” the older woman replied, shifting about in her chair to face the edge of the island.
“It’s quite beautiful here.” Claire said, not looking up from the pile of cat on her lap.
“I suppose it is.”
Clarity followed her grandmother’s gaze to the faraway clouds. There was a flock of geese, right at the edge of her vision, about to disappear out of sight.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Week Ten Wheeeeeeeee~
Going to fill the rest of this out later today, but here's a quick thought on this week's subject: The reason I'm annoyed with Facebook deceptively recording and selling my demographic information isn't because I particularly mind corporations having all my data - though I understand why people would - but because they're effectively making money off of me without informing me or giving me a chance to profit as well, which annoys me for some reason. I also recognize that I may end up hurting my chances at getting a job if a potential employer Googles/Facebooks me, but I'm naive enough to think that if a prospective employer doesn't want to hire me based on the beer helmet I was wearing in that one photo (which isn't likely because I don't drink, but I'm speaking generally here) then I'm better off not working for them. I recognize that few people would be comforted by that fact in this economy but, well, we're supposed to be dogmatic for this assignment, right?
So, let's get to the assignment proper. Let's see, I don't think I've actually Googled myself before. Aaand...Weird, the first thing to come up is my Twitter account. I almost never use that, though. Next is the twitter account of my much cooler and more popular friend, who weirdly doesn't mention me at all. Why would that come up? Aaaand...the rest of it is my involvement on the campus Geek Club's FaceBook page. Ooh, and there's my FictionPress account that I haven't touched for ages because I'm too busy pursuing my Creative Writing degree to write anymore! Nothing really here I don't mind anyone knowing, though I'm not terribly active on the internet under my own name. In fact, let's check up the screenname I usually use. And...Nope. Nada relating to me. An advantage to using a Dungeons and Dragons in-joke as your alias.
So, I'm reading through some of the literature provided, the Google page with the little slideshow about Debbie getting in trouble because the ten year old children she taught, who friended her on FaceBook, could see the photos posted / was tagged in / commented on / otherwise was socially connected with concerning her wild party life. There's a whole lot of analysis out there about what this means, and Google and a bunch of other companies (according to the comments) are planning on working around this kind of "problem" by allowing people to separate their online lives into groups like they can their offline lives. The problem I have with this, that I've never seen anyone really examine, is that the problem with the above situation isn't that the social networking site Debbie used wasn't too transparent, but because our culture still has a lot of unnecessary baggage surrounding sexuality, and personal accountability, and...well, a staggering amount of things, actually. This may sound weird, but the problem isn't that Debbie's little students can find out that she likes watching half-naked men dancing around on tables during the weekend, but that's still thought of as a problem. Deception is such a cornerstone to human society (and, I think, is becoming more and more so, with growing complexity allowing growing corruption) that when something arises that could help us abandon it, we immediately and reflexively recoil from it. Is it too idealist to think that maybe the forced connection that the current model of social media engenders could be a good thing, forcing humanity to abandon old prejudices and grow closer as a whole? Probably, but I still like the way that sounds.
This is a little short, but that's really all I have to say on the subject. I know a Commu-fascist super-liberal like me should be more worried about corporations getting their hand on my data, but in the long run I think abandoning our old notions of privacy will be for the best.
So, let's get to the assignment proper. Let's see, I don't think I've actually Googled myself before. Aaand...Weird, the first thing to come up is my Twitter account. I almost never use that, though. Next is the twitter account of my much cooler and more popular friend, who weirdly doesn't mention me at all. Why would that come up? Aaaand...the rest of it is my involvement on the campus Geek Club's FaceBook page. Ooh, and there's my FictionPress account that I haven't touched for ages because I'm too busy pursuing my Creative Writing degree to write anymore! Nothing really here I don't mind anyone knowing, though I'm not terribly active on the internet under my own name. In fact, let's check up the screenname I usually use. And...Nope. Nada relating to me. An advantage to using a Dungeons and Dragons in-joke as your alias.
So, I'm reading through some of the literature provided, the Google page with the little slideshow about Debbie getting in trouble because the ten year old children she taught, who friended her on FaceBook, could see the photos posted / was tagged in / commented on / otherwise was socially connected with concerning her wild party life. There's a whole lot of analysis out there about what this means, and Google and a bunch of other companies (according to the comments) are planning on working around this kind of "problem" by allowing people to separate their online lives into groups like they can their offline lives. The problem I have with this, that I've never seen anyone really examine, is that the problem with the above situation isn't that the social networking site Debbie used wasn't too transparent, but because our culture still has a lot of unnecessary baggage surrounding sexuality, and personal accountability, and...well, a staggering amount of things, actually. This may sound weird, but the problem isn't that Debbie's little students can find out that she likes watching half-naked men dancing around on tables during the weekend, but that's still thought of as a problem. Deception is such a cornerstone to human society (and, I think, is becoming more and more so, with growing complexity allowing growing corruption) that when something arises that could help us abandon it, we immediately and reflexively recoil from it. Is it too idealist to think that maybe the forced connection that the current model of social media engenders could be a good thing, forcing humanity to abandon old prejudices and grow closer as a whole? Probably, but I still like the way that sounds.
This is a little short, but that's really all I have to say on the subject. I know a Commu-fascist super-liberal like me should be more worried about corporations getting their hand on my data, but in the long run I think abandoning our old notions of privacy will be for the best.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Week 7 stuff.
Not sure if I'm doing this right, but what else is new?
For this week we're supposed to view some user-led content creation devices and study/comment on them. I figured I'd talk about something I'm already vaguely involved in - the Let's Play scene. Here's a few links as an introduction.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lets-play
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitle8zx0nomxzqc5
Essentially, a Let's Play is when someone records him or herself playing a video game, with their commentary dubbed over it. It's distinct from a walkthrough in that the commentary is generally meant to be entertaining in an of itself (though the 90% of everything is crap rule applies - they tend to devolve into boring stories from the writer's day and talk about how the recorder can't think of anything to talk about). In fact, the best Let's Plays tend to be of games the recorder has never played before. This is interesting from a few angles - you've got the weirdness of the video game's assumed user, the player, producing (aha!) a product from their own playing of the game. The majority of people involved in LPing just subscribe to their favorite LPers and watch their videos whenever they come out, but a few make their own videos after being inspired by discovering the subculture (is that the right word?). I tried, personally, but ran into too many technical problems. Anyways, I guess that could arguably demonstrate the "producers and consumers merge into a single prosumer" idea. What's also interesting is how much interrelation there is between the maker of the LP and their viewers. The best LPers strike up a dialogue with their viewers and let them vote on various gameplay decisions - on something as simple as to what game to play next or what to name the character, to how the character should be built (if they're playing an RPG), where to go next, and even accept impromptu challenges from their viewers.
I think the Most Triumphant Example of this confusing entangling of producers and users would be this LP, in which popular LPer Raocow plays a game made for him by his fans, using a hacked and repurposed version of Super Mario World, which itself incorporates content that Raocow himself produced back when he was still making his own games.
Raocow plays A Super Mario Thing
The game itself starts with a sign reading "Hey there Raocow, this is everyone," mirroring Raocow's catchphrase from the start of all of his videos, which strikes me as incredibly cool.
Anyways, let's go down the vocabulary list and make certain I've touched everything.
Open Participation, Community Evaluation. If you've got a video game, a decent computer, and a microphone, everything else you'd need to make an LP and show it to the internets is free. There's a whole, surprisingly huge subculture surrounding it, with good LPers collecting fanbases, and occasionally pointing their fans towards under-appreciated LPers.
Fluid heterarchy, ad hoc meritocracy. I am reminded of the sad fate of once-famous LPer Proton Jon, who practically became a pariah after he became too busy to make LPs at the same rate. Still, while the guy making the LP ultimately has control over it, community participation is becoming more and more common, and I've seen channels dedicated to collaborative LPs, with multiple recorders swapping saved games, popping up more and more.
unfinished artifacts, continuing process. While most LPs end when the game itself ends, there are lots of games (like MMOs and the Elder Scrolls games) that don't end, or are so vast they can take what seems like forever. I don't think I've seen a case of an LPer doing just one game constantly, or of another LPer picking up where another one abandoned a project, but it's not hard to imagine.
Common property, individual rewards. Again, the guy making the LP usually is thought of as being the sole owner and the audience as just the audience, but audience participation is becoming more and more important. There are sites that seek to aggregate their own body of LPs with multiple contributors, which could be considered a form of this as well.
The class appears to be filling up again, but that's really all I have to say. I hope it's enough...
For this week we're supposed to view some user-led content creation devices and study/comment on them. I figured I'd talk about something I'm already vaguely involved in - the Let's Play scene. Here's a few links as an introduction.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lets-play
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitle8zx0nomxzqc5
Essentially, a Let's Play is when someone records him or herself playing a video game, with their commentary dubbed over it. It's distinct from a walkthrough in that the commentary is generally meant to be entertaining in an of itself (though the 90% of everything is crap rule applies - they tend to devolve into boring stories from the writer's day and talk about how the recorder can't think of anything to talk about). In fact, the best Let's Plays tend to be of games the recorder has never played before. This is interesting from a few angles - you've got the weirdness of the video game's assumed user, the player, producing (aha!) a product from their own playing of the game. The majority of people involved in LPing just subscribe to their favorite LPers and watch their videos whenever they come out, but a few make their own videos after being inspired by discovering the subculture (is that the right word?). I tried, personally, but ran into too many technical problems. Anyways, I guess that could arguably demonstrate the "producers and consumers merge into a single prosumer" idea. What's also interesting is how much interrelation there is between the maker of the LP and their viewers. The best LPers strike up a dialogue with their viewers and let them vote on various gameplay decisions - on something as simple as to what game to play next or what to name the character, to how the character should be built (if they're playing an RPG), where to go next, and even accept impromptu challenges from their viewers.
I think the Most Triumphant Example of this confusing entangling of producers and users would be this LP, in which popular LPer Raocow plays a game made for him by his fans, using a hacked and repurposed version of Super Mario World, which itself incorporates content that Raocow himself produced back when he was still making his own games.
Raocow plays A Super Mario Thing
The game itself starts with a sign reading "Hey there Raocow, this is everyone," mirroring Raocow's catchphrase from the start of all of his videos, which strikes me as incredibly cool.
Anyways, let's go down the vocabulary list and make certain I've touched everything.
Open Participation, Community Evaluation. If you've got a video game, a decent computer, and a microphone, everything else you'd need to make an LP and show it to the internets is free. There's a whole, surprisingly huge subculture surrounding it, with good LPers collecting fanbases, and occasionally pointing their fans towards under-appreciated LPers.
Fluid heterarchy, ad hoc meritocracy. I am reminded of the sad fate of once-famous LPer Proton Jon, who practically became a pariah after he became too busy to make LPs at the same rate. Still, while the guy making the LP ultimately has control over it, community participation is becoming more and more common, and I've seen channels dedicated to collaborative LPs, with multiple recorders swapping saved games, popping up more and more.
unfinished artifacts, continuing process. While most LPs end when the game itself ends, there are lots of games (like MMOs and the Elder Scrolls games) that don't end, or are so vast they can take what seems like forever. I don't think I've seen a case of an LPer doing just one game constantly, or of another LPer picking up where another one abandoned a project, but it's not hard to imagine.
Common property, individual rewards. Again, the guy making the LP usually is thought of as being the sole owner and the audience as just the audience, but audience participation is becoming more and more important. There are sites that seek to aggregate their own body of LPs with multiple contributors, which could be considered a form of this as well.
The class appears to be filling up again, but that's really all I have to say. I hope it's enough...
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Week 6
I can never figure out how to start these. I guess there's no correct MLA formatting for writing blog posts for classes, but I still feel floaty when I try to write something for a class. Anyways, I'm going to try and blitz my way through the Week 6 stuff for Weblogs and Wikis now. I still have a five page paper to write for another class tonight too, argh. I feel like I'm really falling behind in this class, but what can I do? I've already cut absolutely everything but eating and sleeping from my schedule to make room for schoolwork and I still barely have time, so...
Anyways. let's see...
I've read The Complete Guide to Wikis and most (I think it was 1-6, 8 and 9?) of Blogging. I've also read various things linked to and made in class, mostly on the wiki and the things the teacher points out in class, though I probably haven't been reading enough. I don't think I've posted comments on other student's blogs - I should look in to that. I made my page on the class wiki and that one page trying to collect a concise list of everyone else's student page, and tried to contribute in some way to the other pages students made for the project last week (or was it the week before?). I get the feeling this is supposed to be more specific, but I can't really remember specifics.
Now, I need to annotate the significant items. Um... so it looks like I'm either supposed to talk about the implications of social networking, or talk about what I've learned in class so far. I'll save the former for when I have to write a longer paper. I guess I've learned a bit about how to use a wiki? I spent a lot of time editing the TV Tropes pages before taking this class, so I already understood how to make pages and format and such, but I think I understand the underlying structure of wikis now a bit better.
Right, now I need to create some artifact summing this up and trying to project where I should go in this class from here. But what is there to express? I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to figure out the absolute bare minimum I need to pass and hope to God I have time for at least that. I guess I'll read this tools for reflection page and try making a mind map on Mindmiester. I'll edit this entry with a link once it's done.
EDIT: I went with bubbl instead because Mindmiester just screams "we will spam the hell out of you to make you buy the full version," but it seems bubbl is very unstable and will crash, taking your work with it, at a moment's notice =_= It probably subverts the point of the class, but I'll just recreate the simple mind map plan I made here.
Duncan's Master Plan
Step 1: Use time after class to study the workings of the various social networking tools (particularly social bookmarking and the peripheral tools like Prezi, as opposed to the core wikis, blogs, twitter, social bookmarking) until you have a firmer understanding of how to work with them.
Step 2: Use time after class to study what other students are writing in their blogs and as projects. Make at least an attempt at contributing or commenting more.
Step 3: Use the knowledge gained from Step 2, and your own research, to start exploring the theoretical implications of social networking (which will be really fun, hopefully).
Step 4: WORLD DOMINATION
Not terribly deep, but I feel more confident now.
Anyways. let's see...
I've read The Complete Guide to Wikis and most (I think it was 1-6, 8 and 9?) of Blogging. I've also read various things linked to and made in class, mostly on the wiki and the things the teacher points out in class, though I probably haven't been reading enough. I don't think I've posted comments on other student's blogs - I should look in to that. I made my page on the class wiki and that one page trying to collect a concise list of everyone else's student page, and tried to contribute in some way to the other pages students made for the project last week (or was it the week before?). I get the feeling this is supposed to be more specific, but I can't really remember specifics.
Now, I need to annotate the significant items. Um... so it looks like I'm either supposed to talk about the implications of social networking, or talk about what I've learned in class so far. I'll save the former for when I have to write a longer paper. I guess I've learned a bit about how to use a wiki? I spent a lot of time editing the TV Tropes pages before taking this class, so I already understood how to make pages and format and such, but I think I understand the underlying structure of wikis now a bit better.
Right, now I need to create some artifact summing this up and trying to project where I should go in this class from here. But what is there to express? I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to figure out the absolute bare minimum I need to pass and hope to God I have time for at least that. I guess I'll read this tools for reflection page and try making a mind map on Mindmiester. I'll edit this entry with a link once it's done.
EDIT: I went with bubbl instead because Mindmiester just screams "we will spam the hell out of you to make you buy the full version," but it seems bubbl is very unstable and will crash, taking your work with it, at a moment's notice =_= It probably subverts the point of the class, but I'll just recreate the simple mind map plan I made here.
Duncan's Master Plan
Step 1: Use time after class to study the workings of the various social networking tools (particularly social bookmarking and the peripheral tools like Prezi, as opposed to the core wikis, blogs, twitter, social bookmarking) until you have a firmer understanding of how to work with them.
Step 2: Use time after class to study what other students are writing in their blogs and as projects. Make at least an attempt at contributing or commenting more.
Step 3: Use the knowledge gained from Step 2, and your own research, to start exploring the theoretical implications of social networking (which will be really fun, hopefully).
Step 4: WORLD DOMINATION
Not terribly deep, but I feel more confident now.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
More Weblogs and Wikis stuff.
Here is a page I made on the Weblogs and Wikis wiki. Wiki wiki. wikikikikiki. Yeah.
http://erhetoric.org/WeblogsAndWikis/StudentPagesHub
http://erhetoric.org/WeblogsAndWikis/StudentPagesHub
Sunday, January 30, 2011
More writings.
Here's the second assignment I wrote for my Advanced Writing class. It's a little woo, but I like it. Now all I have to do is write another full assignment from start to finish in the rest of the day. Blergh.
Dreamscrape
It occurred to me recently that I don’t dream. Well, that’s probably not true – you’d have to have an exceptionally debased psyche to literally not dream – but if asked to recount one of my dreams, I can offer nothing but a blank stare. My practical side wants to say that this is an effect of how much I sleep – I sleep entirely too much, and it seems that dreams manifest themselves in our conscious memories easiest if we’re woken early, which in this day and age is almost always. I’ve imagined, from time to time, that my inability to remember my dreams past the point where they’re useful could actually be an improvement on the baseline human mind, similar to how lactose intolerance is caused by a person lacking an enzyme-altering mutation common in most of the population rather than technically being an affliction itself. Or perhaps this is the result of some symbolic manifestation? By noting that I never remember my dreams from each night, could The Narrator be suggesting that my head is so deeply in the clouds I may as well be dreaming while awake? Or to signify that I don’t have a purpose in life? Well, probably not.
Recently, however, I did have a dream. It came after a very long period of being trapped in my room, staring at the monitor, trying desperately to think of something, anything, I had to say. I dreamt I was navigating a sailing ship through a shimmering, starry sea. I stood at the prow, a much younger I, dressed in auspicious purple finery, holding a gleaming sextant. I still don’t know what a sextant is even for, much less how to use one, but it didn’t matter – I was a being of pure sensation, still on good enough terms with the world to survive just by standing there.
There was a twisting sensation, as if someone spun my inner ear about like a globe, taking my consciousness with it. Suddenly I was lying at the outskirts of a car crash, or a collapsed building – something grey and twisted, flecked with red. There were paramedics there, frantically doing very, very medical things to me. It was no use, I thought, it was like arguing with a physicist. The whole scene struck me as terribly sorrowful and melancholy, depressing enough to merit some sort of award, though at least this time I had the decency to admit I don’t actually know anything about the paramedic’s craft. The camera blurred and panned, frantic stock phrases were shouted, and as one of the doctors stuck an enormous hypodermic into my grey matter, I felt that mental shifting again.
Now I was in a desert. Or a badland. Whatever the specific term may be. A ghost town, most of it burnt, charred timbers stretching towards the sky. The blackened, craggy textures of the burnt buildings struck me as curiously organic. As I wandered through the town I felt a curious awareness, a sense of self-determination. I’ve heard of lucid dreaming before, but no one has ever given me an acceptable definition of “lucid,” so it must suffice to say I felt I was actually living this moment, rather than just remembering it. I came across one of the few standing buildings. A man, wild hair and beard the same color as the ancient boards behind him, slumped in a fragile white rocking chair, a shotgun or fishing rod or something leaning on one leg. He asked me where I was going. I told him I was trying to figure out where all my dreams went.
“Ain’t no use for dreams around here, boy.” He said, hacking and wheezing. I told him that, while they aren’t exactly in fashion anymore, I thought dreams were valuable nonetheless.
“Well, think in one hand, and shit in the other,” he said, between a cough and a spit, “and see which fills up first.” I silently took my leave, past his house towards the distant fence.
“A fool and his honey are soon parted!” I heard him shout over my shoulder, “Love is an insanity curable by marriage! One hundred percent of everything is crap! I’m not prejudiced, I hate everyone equally!”
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” I thought to myself as I passed the fence, little more than random wood held together with wire, “The definition of a cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
The desert was wide, a great plain of rolling dunes broken only by the occasional cactus (I was aware enough to rage at my subconscious for this botanical oversight). Soon, the town had completely disappeared, empty desert as far as the eye could see. Was it Dali, if I remember, who popularized the image of a desert as a metaphor for the human imagination? Somewhat inept, I thought, as deserts have very little to build with in them. Still, as I walked through the great desert, stretching hundreds of imaginary miles, I decided I’d like to take it with me when I awoke, if I could. Desert flowers bloom but rarely, but they do bloom.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Princess and the Shrew
I'm finally done with this story I promised myself I'd write for my New Year's Resolution. It's...kind of awful, there's some issues with the plot and flow and the characters are annoying. But! It's a complete narrative, and that's all I promised.
The cell door slammed shut with an echoing, metallic blast. Princess Bianca struggled dimly to the nearest wall and collapsed against it, numb to everything save the heaving pain in her chest and throat and the fearful tears welling in her eyes. The gown her mother had given her just for this night’s ball was already wet and streaked with grime, a terrace of white ribbons torn free to trail behind her. She curled up and hugged her knees, the welling in her throat growing stronger, when a rough, squirming shape started crawling its way around her skirts. With a scream, distinctly unladylike and born more of catharsis than indignation, she kicked the filthy rat clear over to the other side of the cell. The creature struggled back to its feet and scurried dizzily for the cover of a pile of rags when a grimy hand shot out and seized it. Before the Princess’s widened eyes, the figure in the pile shifted forward. She was dressed all in rags, quite easily concealed in a pile of trash, and though the Princess could discern arms and legs, the cloth draped over the figure’s head like a hood meant only her hands and lower face were visible.
“The guards here think they’re real sadistic bastards,” the figure said in a voice creaky yet curiously youthful, “they love denying the prisoners food to keep us weak, and brag about how they never bother sending ratcatchers down here.” The figure, Bianca thought it was a woman now, looked at the squealing rat from under her makeshift hood. With a quick, sure movement, she grabbed the rat’s head and twisted. A muffled snap rang out in the cramped room. “This works against them, y’know.”
The figure sunk her teeth into the rat’s underbelly, casually ripping out a mouthful of fur, meat, and guts. She slurped up a trailing entrail and began chewing noisily through the gristle before noticing her cellmate was staring at her, wide eyed, and seemed to be trying to push herself back through the wall.
“What?” the figure asked, watching the Princess with heavy-lidded eyes. The Princess pressed her face into her knees and shook her head. In a moment, the gruesome sounds returned, and the Princess took a deep breath. Part of her wished she hadn’t, as the air in the cell was cold, clammy, and smelled of mould tinged with rat blood, but it cooled the fire in her chest. Eyes only slightly damp, she looked about the cell, trying to ignore her cellmate. The same rough, wet masonry dominated all of the barren cell. The ceiling was high, with a single tiny hole set towards the top of the ceiling to provide light, two iron loops that presumably once supported manacles, and very little else. Streaks of rust ran down the walls wherever any iron fittings were set in them, speaking of the decay the wet, darkened air inevitably brought.
A few minutes passed. “So, what are you in for?” the figure asked, pulling a leg bone from the half-eaten rat and examining it closely. “Get caught porking with someone important? You’re not an assassin, and I can’t imagine anything else a partygoer at the palace could get thrown in for.” The Princess remained curled up in a tight ball, stiff, shaking slightly. The figure shrugged and tucked the bone away somewhere in her robes.
“I…I don’t know what’s going on. I was at the party and…and there was all this sudden shouting. The guards grabbed me, and when I asked what was happening they…” The Princess touched the lump on her head and winced, fresh tears staining her gown. She looked up at her cellmate and sniffed, blinking her reddened eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
The figure looked closer at the Princess. She had dirty blonde hair, quite a bit dirtier now, and freckles dotting her cheeks and about her collarbone. An upturned nose and upper lip. Skinny as hell.
“Now that I get a good look at you, you’re one of the Princesses, right? Sabrina, or Allegra, or…”
“Bianca.”
“Ah, the Princess Bianca. Well…” the figure leaned back into her rags and looked up at the tiny window high up the wall. “In my professional opinion, I’d say you’ve gotten wrapped up in a coup.”
“A coup…?”
“Yeah. One going real deep, if at least a bit of the royal guard is in on it. I’ve been hearing skirmishing for awhile, but now it sounds like most of the city is a battlefield.”
The young Princess looked up towards the dot of light near the ceiling, but the silence in the cell deafened her.
“A takeover? But that means…Father…and everyone…” The Princess gritted her teeth, forcing back bile. “Who would do such a thing?”
“Well, girl, you’re in the royal family, you should know. Some bastard princeling, a greedy Duke, even an ambitious military officer. Anyone with power and at least some dim claim to the throne.”
“Then…then what would they want me for?”
“I dunno, to ransom you? Use you as a political pawn? Maybe they just want to play with you.”
Bianca’s hand dug in to her gown, fingers almost tearing the delicate silk. Her cellmate looked like she was going to say something, but her face shot to the doorway and she wormed her way deeper into the rags, quickly becoming invisible. A few seconds later, voices echoed from somewhere outside, and torchlight flickered under the door. There was a loud click and the door opened, the conversation suddenly clear.
“…there just her then?” a gruff voice asked. He stuck his head in and did a quick sweep of the room, his eyes coming to rest on Princess Bianca, now huddled tightly in a corner. She recognized him as he set in; Meadows, an adjunct to the captain of the guard.
“What’s going on?” she asked, surprised by how steady her voice was. Meadows leaned out and said something to someone in the hallway, then slid into the room, closing the door behind him. He had on the short purple cape of the palace guard over elaborate dress maille, and his waxed goatee curled down into two bars that looked like fangs.
“There’s no need to worry, Princess.” Bianca pushed herself deeper in to the corner.
“What’s going on?”
“All this will be over soon, Princess.” There was something evil in his voice, something she didn’t like in his eyes. The Princess’s looked from Meadows’ face to the pile of rags and back a few times. He was standing right over her. He opened his mouth to speak again, when suddenly two grimy hands flashed over his shoulders, wrapping a rusty chain around his neck. He was pulled backwards, almost doubling over. The Princess turned away and closed her eyes, though this forced her to focus more on muffled gags and desperate shuffling. Seconds, minutes passed. There was a soft scrape of maille on flagstone. The Princess opened one eye. Her cell mate was standing over Meadows’ prone form, wrenching the chain a few times for good measure. Her “hood” had fallen off, revealing a mess of shaggy black hair. The woman’s eyes were dull black pinpricks. She dropped the chain and started searching him, a crooked non-smile splayed over her face. She might have been pretty, the Princess thought, had she not looked like she was constantly doing an impression of a shark. The woman drew forth a jeweled rondel from Meadows’ hip and regarded it fondly for a moment. Bianca’s insides squirmed as the woman suddenly looked her in the eye. She placed a conspiratorial finger to her lips and crept to the door with an oily grace. Silently, she slid out the door. There was the ringing crunch of maille being severed, a loud thump, a clatter, a shout that became a scream, and a string of wet thuds. The Princess rose, fear, anger, confusion, frustration, and hope building an unaccustomed fire in her gut. Her cellmate pushed the door open and grinned wildly at her, a hunched, rag-covered ghoul against lurid yellow torchlight.
“Come on, girl! You want to sit in that cell forever?” The Princess managed to not spare a glance at Meadows as she lifted her skirts and stepped over his body. Two guards were sprawled in the narrow hallway, the white plumes of their palace guard helmets clashing with the pools of spreading blood. Her companion was already flying down the hallway, heading deeper into the dungeon rather than towards the distant stairway to the palace proper. The Princess sprinted to catch up with her, fine white shoes clacking loudly against the cobblestones as torch after torch flew past them. She saw that her companion held one of the guard’s swords in her off hand now, in addition to the dagger.
“I never got your name!” she said, panting slightly.
“It’s Griselda! They called me Griselda the Shrew!”
“That’s a bit odd!” the Princess said, struggling to keep her skirts out from under her feet.
“Tell me about it! Stab a few guys to death while female and suddenly everyone’s got you typecast!”
The two rounded a corner to find themselves facing a thick wooden door. Griselda slid her weapons into her ragged cord belt and took a knee, fiddling with the handle and examining the lock closely. She pulled a pair of rat bones out from somewhere among her robes and started wrenching them about the lock. Cursing under her breath, she tossed the thinner one aside.
“Girl, give me a hairpin or something.”
As Griselda scraped the hairpin and thick rat bone about in the lock, the Princess hugged herself limply and looked about, though there was nothing to look at. She felt she should be worried, dismal over the possible fate of her family and friends; was the assassination attempt at the ball successful? Was the whole city really engulfed in war? And yet, she felt curiously exhilarated. Escaping from that abysmal cell and forced so far out of her comfort zone left her feeling slow and excited, like a child being taught a new game.
The door creaked open a few inches as Griselda peeked cautiously about. Crouching low and moving with infinite care, she crept in to the wider cellblock, senses probing every corner and shadow. With a shriek, the door opened the rest of the way, and the Princess Bianca clomped in behind her. Griselda rolled her eyes and padded towards the far door.
“My God…” The Princess said, her voice echoing about the chamber, “what kind of a place is this?”
“What’s it look like? It’s a cell block” Griselda replied distractedly, her whispered voice carrying to every inch of the chamber regardless.
The Princess walked slowly about the cell block, eyes wide. There were tiers and tiers of cells – a dozen levels of cell-lined square ledges going up and down into the darkness. A single shaft of blueish light from some window high above left the chamber feeling terribly cold and sorrowful. Chains hung over the pit, a few holding narrow cages suspended over the darkness. A skeleton slouched in one cage, its head having slipped through the bars and fallen out.
“Why? Griselda, why in the world would my father need this many cells?”
“To house prisoners, you think?” Griselda growled, stooping over something by the door. “At wartime, he’d probably need all the cells and torture rooms he could get.”
“Torture rooms…?”
Griselda muttered under her breath and turned towards the Princess.
“Girl. Do you really think the King has never had cause to torture someone? To raze an inconvenient village or two, or poison a political rival? I know you weren’t exactly raised for a life of politics, but naivate must have a limit somewhere.” The Princess leaned back against the balcony rail and stared dejectedly at the floor.
“There’s no excuse for that. Never an excuse.” She said distantly. Griselda missed the thoughtfulness in her voice.
“If you ask me, the problem is he wasn’t brutal enough,” she said distantly, “Otherwise, maybe he wouldn’t be facing a coup right now.”
With a scrape, the lock yielded, and Griselda pulled it open with a grin. The head of an axe cleaved the air she had been a moment before, hacking a spray of stone out of the floor. Griselda rolled aside and came up in a low crouch, struggling her blades out of her belt. The Princess looked frantically about as three palace guards piled out of the doorway, but they fanned out wide, and would surely catch her if she did anything but leap off the rail to certain doom. The one with the axe took another swing at Griselda. She dodged out of range, then slipped back in low, amazingly low, sliding across the floor like a shadow, the tip of her sword digging in to his stomach. Though his hauberk absorbed most of the blow, the pain made his frantic attempt to knock Griselda’s sword away clumsy, and he paid for the lowered guard with a knife expertly jabbed through his helmet’s eyehole. Griselda ripped her knife out of the guard’s head, throwing him to the ground, and surged towards a guard trying to grab the Princess.
He turned just in time to get one clumsy swing of his sword at her, but she was far too low and fast. She tackled him, sword-first, her blade sliding into his stomach up to the hilt, and kept going, trying to bowl the swiftly dying guard into his comrade like a gruesome shield. The force of her charge knocked the guard back, slamming him into the bars of a cell, but he blocked the body of his fellow guard with his halberd, stopping the blade sticking out of his back inches from his own stomach. With a grunt, he shoved the body aside and swung at Griselda, who barely managed to pull her sword free in time to dodge out of range. The guard pressed his advantage, rapidly jabbing at Griselda, who could only backpedal frantically while swatting at the halberd with her sword. She ducked into the door the guards had barged through and the guard followed, taking a wild swing as he stepped out of sight. There was more clashing of metal, the sound of blade rending maille and flesh, and indistinct shouting – from more than one person.
The Princess gripped the rusty handrail she was leaning against hard enough to draw blood from the palms of her hands, her chest heaving. The sword of the soldier who had tried to pin her lay at her feet. She looked at the open doorway, at the indistinct battling shadows in the flickering torchlight, and reached for the hilt. Griselda crashed against the door as she ran full-tilt back into the cell block. She’d lost her own sword somewhere along the way.
“More coming! Lots more!” she shouted as she sprinted past the Princess and vaulted over the rail. The Princess gasped as Griselda, rags flailing, fell past floor after floor of cells to disappear into the darkness below. The jangling of maille turned her back to the door for a heartbeat before, gritting her teeth, she hauled herself over the rail as well. The Princess flailed and grasped at the rushing darkness, her scream slowly fading as she disappeared from sight.
“How many more sewers do we have to crawl through?” the Princess Bianca asked miserably.
“These aren’t sewers, they’re aqueducts.” Griselda replied. “They ferry water from the underground reservoir the castle is built on to the rest of the city. Normally they’d have bars at regular intervals to keep people from breaking in, but it looks like whoever organized the coup removed them so they could sneak spies and assassins in and out.”
“That’s an awful specific assumption, I think.”
“Paranoia is a useful trait,” Griselda said, flashing her a sharklike grin, “but it’s not very ladylike.”
The Princess lowered her head so that only her eyes were above water and glowered at Griselda. She didn’t remember much after jumping off the ledge, just screaming, a lot of pain, and the sensation of being dragged. She only really came to her senses when Griselda started splashing water on her in some dilapidated side room off the aqueduct. They’d been wading shoulders-deep for how long Bianca had no idea.
“Hey, look at it this way,” Griselda said to the tunnels ahead of her, “At least going through all these tunnels washed some of the grime off of your pretty pink party dress.”
“It’s not pink,” the Princess muttered to herself, “It’s salmon.”
A grate lifted off a drain set in the side of a grand memorial. Griselda peered out. The city was eerily quiet – every door and window was shuttered tight, and the distant clatters of battle, muffled, like something happening in a dream, was all that broke the neighborhood’s perfect peace and desolation. Griselda flowed out of the grate, and reached down to help the Princess out.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” she said, “whoever planned this probably pulled all sympathetic forces they had to help take the castle. The city walls are probably all but unguarded now. I know a spot where we could jump from the roof of a warehouse to the woods outside easy. We could get away from all this, nice and quick.”
Princess Bianca looked at the deserted cobblestone streets, the tightly packed buildings. It was getting dark, but it was unlikely that the city would be brightened by torches and lamplight that evening.
“I take it that’s not what we’re going to do, though.” Griselda said. The Princess looked up at the ancient, crumbling face of the war hero whose monument she had just crawled out of the dirt beneath. What was this conflicted feeling boiling up her throat? Fear? Sorrow? Sympathy for the city’s silent, ignored citizens? Some weird, twisted version of hope?
“My family is dead, aren’t they?” she asked quietly. Griselda leaned against the plinth.
“Well, yeah. I didn’t want to say it earlier, but the King and Queen, I’m almost certain they didn’t survive the time it took the guards to drag you to the dungeons. All your siblings and close relatives, too, assuming they weren’t in on it from the start. I think it was basically a fluke that you survived.”
“So.” The Princess said, not looking away from the statue. Her eyes were fixed on the darkening purple sky surrounding his head. “That means I’m the sovereign now.” Griselda laughed sharply.
“You’re the rightful ruler now, sure. But there’s someone else marching towards your throne, if he isn’t already in it. The smart thing to do, the proper thing, would be to give up the throne and flee to some isolated nunnery, hoping the usurper never decides you’re worth killing off.”
The Princess turned to Griselda, locked eyes with her. There was something in her gaze, something difficult to place. It wasn’t hardness, a deadened look Griselda had grown so familiar with. It wasn’t quite determination, though that was a component. It certainly wasn’t that watery, carefully cultivated naiveté – that had been washed away with the grime on her gown. If she had to give it a name, Griselda would have called it…
“Beautiful.” She grinned, her teeth gleaming like the glittery eyes of monsters hiding in the dark. “It looks like we’ve got work to do.”
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Writing Fiction II project
Here's the rough draft of the school project I've been angsting over so much. I'm going to have to edit and print it tonight. I wanted to post my new year's resolution story in the same post, but I've no idea when that'll get done.
I
“You see,” the old man said, leaning over to fill his companion’s glass, “the problem isn’t your direction. The problem, as I see it, is the atmosphere they were raised in. How can young people be expected to take risks nowadays? The problem is that they were raised in a culture, raised to believe, that depression is a virtue, you see?”
His companion laughed a slow, wheezing laugh, the rest of the room joining in, casually proclaiming their assent.
“Depression, you see, you see?” the first man continued, “pessimism. It’s the thing now, to rationalize your failures, deriding those taking the same risks you did. They get called dreamers, and encourage them to be satisfied with smug…with a smug sort of surrender. And thus the industry is left wallowing in its own banality.” He finished, gesturing about with a cigar wedged between his fingers. The other old men nodded and chortled, trading glasses of expensive brandy and half-heard anecdotes.
“It’s not really a bad thing, you know,” another one said, “it just leaves the stage clear for the next generation of real thinkers, the ones who can and speak of the devil!” for the door to the room had just opened, and a tall, thin young man stepped into the frame. His hair was ironclad, his suit impeccable, though colored in cool blues in defiance of the warmer look currently in fashion. The bright lights and flashes of colorful ball gowns filling the rest of the door seemed to shine through his eyes as if the back of his head were transparent. He was wearing some scent, trendy and carefully tailored, so subtle as to be unplacable even if you consciously noticed it, yet which somehow snuck its way over the stratified layers of smoke to make its impression regardless. His only flaw was a scraggly unevenness in his thin moustache, which he carried proudly regardless. An old man got up and hobbled over, taking the young man by the arm.
“There you are, there you are. It’s about time you managed to find us! I do believe you’ve all met my protégé?” he said, leading him deeper into the room. The drone of the party outside cut out as the door closed, leaving the room filled with quieter, raspier conversation, punctuated by the occasional cough. The old man sunk into his seat as the rest of the room, feeling assured by their fellow that the newcomer was not so out of place, let out a delayed chorus of raised glasses and casual welcomes. For his own part, the young man did not sit, instead folding his hands behind him and addressing the collection of old men, greeting by name those few he already knew (he knew all of them by reputation, of course). As he did, he indulgently examined the dim parlor. The walls were all wood paneling, generations of cigar and pipe smoke robbing the varnish of any color and luster it once held, leaving them as dark and receding as the black-painted walls a theatre’s backstage. The next generation of that same smoke snaked through the air, illuminated by a single dim chandelier. The curtains were drawn, their fabric so thick and heavy they may as well have been iron walls. The paintings were all extremely good, and extremely old; the young man realized this was one of the few places in the manor where sentiment could trump trendyness.
“Will you drink?” his mentor asked, holding up an exquisite decanter.
“I confess, sir, that I don’t drink so much anymore,” the young man said, bowing slightly, “but the night grows long, and I suppose a single glass wouldn’t hurt.” As he took the glass, the young man contemplated that statement. It wasn’t false, per se, because drinking to him implied something one did for the fun of it. True, he had been taking drinks for most of the evening, at dozens of small gatherings like this, yet this was always a carefully calculated measure, done through parsed lips and with the effects of each sip carefully monitored and compensated. He had perfected the art of appearing relaxed and congenial without surrendering an ounce of self control to such a degree that he may as well have been a teetotaler.
II
It was late in the evening, very late, as the young man stepped out onto the wide, nearly deserted balcony. Cool, dry air swept in from the desert as he leaned over the rail, looking towards the bar of light slowly swallowing the horizon. The young man had ended up drinking too much despite his careful planning, and though there were still a handful of people he knew he should be seen by, he elected to make a tactical retreat. He watched the sun playing off the distant mesas, something that wasn’t quite the booze playing in the back of his mind.
“Were you thrown out too?” the voice startled him, he looked over the vase-mounted rail post at the woman he hadn’t quite noticed at first. Brown curls framed a face that could be devastatingly elegant if she tried, which she wasn’t. Her gown, rendered mould-green by the distant sunrise, had apparently slipped a seam or clasp somewhere. It hung low on her shoulders. The young man wondered how she could stand looking so slovenly.
“Not that it’s any of my business,” she said, not looking at him, “It just seems to be a theme tonight. You know…coming here was such a fun idea. I told myself, after working so hard, that the chance to spend some time with him, to let my guard down and think of myself as triumphant. And yet, all it took was one careless word, and suddenly he wants nothing…”
The young man looked sideways at the young woman, wondering how intoxicated she was. He couldn’t hear the drink in her voice, not strongly, and yet –
“Do you ever wonder,” she asked the air beyond the balcony, “if perhaps we…people, that is…have our priorities badly skewed? It’s really ludicrous when you think of it. We’re so unwilling to give up our goals that we end up ignoring –“
“My apologies, Miss,” the young man said, straightening and turning for the door, “but you may want to consider leaving now, lest you embarrass yourself.”
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Dr. Steel and the technological singularity.
Hey everyone in Weblogs and Wikis. Musician, mad scientist, visionary, future dictator, and all around cool guy Dr. Phineas Waldorf Steel frequently talks about his beliefs concerning the theory of the technological singularity. I found an interview with him concerning the topic in general, but I vaguely remember reading an article about how the theory applies to social and computer networking. I'll post that out if I ever find it, unless someone else wants to look.
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/2572/
EDIT: I found it. This is mostly tounge-in-cheek stuff, but I think it's worth reading.
http://worlddominationtoys.com/drsteel/clippings_paranoia.html
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/2572/
EDIT: I found it. This is mostly tounge-in-cheek stuff, but I think it's worth reading.
http://worlddominationtoys.com/drsteel/clippings_paranoia.html
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Writings
Been awhile, Reader. School has kept me busy recently, but I figured I'd put up a few things I've written to make use of all this e-space. The first is a short story I just finished for my Fiction Writing class. It's actually the first assignment we've had that involves actually writing fiction, and I like it a bit, so I'm preserving it on the internets. The assignment was to write a story about a breakup, incorporating several of the concepts we've learned in class thus far.
Shortstack #5 (she calls them that, I'm not sure why.)
Shortstack #5 (she calls them that, I'm not sure why.)
LOGIN NAME: Xanadu 22
PASSWORD: **********
A beam of light dropped from the sky, Hale’s character coalescing where it hit the ground. His bulky red wizard’s robe hung razor-stiff at his sides for a moment before the physics rendering kicked in, causing it to billow wildly about before settling in to a subtle, lifelike rhythm. As textures popped one by one onto the blurry trees about him, he opened his magic tray and began idly rearranging his spells. A chime sounded in his ear and the words “Hail From User: Damien Gourdslayer” appeared by his head. He waved his hand underneath the alert, swatting the green “accept” orb.
“Hey, Rob, what’s up?” he said to the air as he shifted Stinging Curse Ray to his active spells.
“Hey dude, going after Tooth Canyon tonight. You want in?”
“Sure,” Hale replied, closing the tray. “Where we meeting?”
“Stony. I have shopping to do first.”
Hale pulled his Wayfarer’s Compass out of a belt pouch and twisted the dial on it until it read “Stone-Shod Citadel – Bazarr,” and pushed the gem in the center. The world around him greyed out and froze as the new area loaded, the billowing lightshow he caused at login repeating a moment later. Roy’s character stood waiting for him, the two jade rapiers at his belt clashing badly with his bright red swashbuckler’s jacket. They walked together through the stalls circling the crumbling citadel, Roy casually shifting through each shop’s menu without slowing down.
“Tooth Canyon has lots of mobs with high damage resistance – crag dragons and the like. I don’t think we can get through on our own.” Hale said.
“Yeah, that’s why I was glad to see you were on your new Wizard toon.” Roy replied, tapping the “Buy” button at the armor stall they passed. New boots shimmered in to place on his feet.
“This isn’t a nuking Wizard, it’s a buffing Wizard. This and a DPS-statted Swashbuckler like you won’t do more than minimum damage on crag dragons.” Hale said.
“Hm…isn’t Shana’s main character a Cavalier? I bet she’d be up for it.”
“But Cavaliers can only tank. They lost all their nuking skills in the last patch.”
“Nah dude, they just need the right equipment.”
“Well, problem is,” Hale said, looking over his shoulder, “She’s been brushing me off for a few days now. I’m getting kind of worried.”
“You’re getting what?” Roy put a hand on his forehead. “Dude, don’t tell me you’re gonna get dewey-eyed again. You don’t even know that girl.”
“I’ve known her for months now, man!”
“I meant offline.” Roy stopped and took Hale by the shoulder, turning towards him. “Look, it’d make sense if you got worried about me not showing up, because we actually know each other. But saying you’re falling in love with someone you’ve only met in a video game will get you funny looks. Especially when she’s probably like twelve.”
“She’s not twelve, man. She said she’s eighteen.”
“She sounds like she’s twelve. I’m sorry to say it, but she sounds like a preteen.”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Hale said, pulling out of his grasp. “Everyone uses voice mods nowadays, anyway.”
“She acts like she’s twelve too.”
“No she doesn’t. She told me she’s eighteen.”
Roy groaned and trailed behind Hale. “Look, even if we assume she’s using a voice mod, that just makes things even more dubious. For all you know, she could be a guy.”
Hale blinked and stared off the side of the terrace. The sun, bigger than an outstretched orange, sunk slowly in to the sea, a slightly pixilated line of birds drifting over its face.
“Wouldn’t be a deal breaker.” He said, turning back to Roy. He rolled his eyes.
“You’re pathetic.”
“I’m in love.”
“You’re in love with a girl who can’t keep up a conversation for more than a few minutes, never pays you back for anything you give her, and constantly goes AFK without telling anyone. Even if she is around your age, you have to admit she still acts like a damn kid.”
Hale opened his mouth to rebut, but was cut off by a familiar notification chime sounding in his ear. He waved his hand, causing his Friends Scroll to appear and unfurl. Roy rolled his eyes. He couldn’t see Hale’s menus, of course, but he could guess who was cutting him off.
Hale’s eyes brightened when he scrolled down to “Shana4545” and saw “Logging In” blinking next to it. He tapped the “Call User” button. The connecting icon spun a bit jerkier than usual. After a moment, the scroll blanked, the menu replaced with the words “User has blocked contact from your account.”
His hand slowly sunk. Roy wandered off to another one of the stalls, pointedly ignoring him. A flag set into the terrace billowed dramatically against the deepening sky, a graphical glitch causing it to clip right through the pole. Hale leaned back in his chair, pushing the VR visor up to his forehead. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, right up between his eye sockets, in that spot that always ached when he played games too long. He stared at the little nubs of plaster in the ceiling.
“Hey dude, I just thought of something,” Roy’s voice buzzed over his headset, “This guy I know from work has a tanking Cavalier. If we had him to soak damage, you could focus on upping my attack and sapping enemy defense. We could get through the canyon with a bit of luck that way.”
“Yeah,” Hale said. “Yeah, that sounds like it would work. Call him, it’s worth a shot at least.” He pushed the visor back over his eyes.
This next thing is a short article I wrote for my own amusement, about something I noticed about this obscure anime franchise. I asked the president of the Otaku Club to post it up on their website, but no one ever reads that so I figured I'd put it here as well.
So, the other day I stumbled upon a collection of the openings to the various entries in a little-known (in the U.S.) franchise called Cutie Honey. What struck me about them, beyond the fanservice and the terrifyingly ingraining theme song, is how the intros to this long-running franchise, when viewed in order, effectively sum up nearly half a century of anime. As a campy, humorous series, the four Cutie Honey shows were shamelessly cliché, and as a result displayed a lot of the style and mechanics that were popular during the time they were made. Thus, like differing layers of rock strata at an excavation site, they also give us a good view at where the industry has been, and perhaps where it’s going. Let me show you what I mean.
So, first, an introduction: Cutie Honey first appeared as a manga in the mid 1970s, with the anime starting later the same month. It was masterminded by a guy you may have heard of named Go Nagai. He is better known for Mazinger Z and Devilman over here, I think. The story of the original series, which is duplicated by all the later entries in the franchise, starts with the vaguely defined villainous organization Panther Claw killing the scientist father of our heroine, Honey Kisaragi. They were looking for a device he had invented, with the vaguely defined power to create and destroy matter. It is ultimately revealed that Honey is actually an android built in the image of her father’s deceased real daughter, and that her body contains the only working model of this device. Effectively, it allows her to change form, giving her a panoply of instant disguises, including the eponymous Cutie Honey, a powerful sword-wielding heroine. With the help of a cast of side characters that tends to fluctuate between series, Honey fights Panther Claw to avenge her father and prevent them from carrying out whatever vaguely diabolical plans they come up with.
Cutie Honey is notable for having pioneered a whole lot of anime tropes: Honey is the founding example of what became known as the Magical Warrior subset of the Magical Girl (as expanded by TV Tropes here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalGirlWarrior). Though originally conceived as a Shojo series, time slot politics made Nagai re-envision it significantly, making it the first Shonen-like show to star a female character. It was one of the first animated television shows to have fanservice as a major draw (to the point that it was ultimately cut over its racy-ish content). It was ALSO the first fanservice-heavy magical girl show to generate a sizable female fanbase despite itself.
Anyways, let’s have a look at the first intro. This one from the original 25-episode 1974-75 show. In case I haven’t emphasized this enough, the fanservice level in most of these videos is over nine thousand. Thou art forewarned.
Catchy, no? So, what stands out here? Swirly psychedelic imagery, stilted animation, and an art style that makes everyone look kinda like Speed Racer. This is pretty much typical of the time period, though again the level of fanservice was somewhat unique. The backgrounds in the actual show were only slightly less stylized, incidentally; there was a vaguely Hanna Barberra feel to them. Indeed, we also see that the character designs and animation style were still heavily influenced by western studios at this early point in anime history. Now that anime is popular, of course, we see western studios borrowing heavily from anime now. There’s probably some sort of moral in that. Oh, and finally, did the Grecian architecture and murky sky towards the end remind anyone else of certain sequences in Sailor Moon? Well, remember that, it’ll be important later.
After the first series ended, Cutie Honey sat around for two decades; it was a pretty big franchise in Japan, but one that wasn’t really going anywhere. Then, in 1994, Toei released an eight-episode re-imagining of the series called New Cutie Honey. Let’s have a look.
We see a few resurgent motifs here, most notably the bubble bath, in which the “target” is changed from supporting characters to the viewers themselves. This speaks of a changing dynamic in sexual interplay and audience identification that I’ll over-analyze later. Beyond the fanservice, premise, and more obvious tropes, however, Honey has now been completely absorbed by the new era of animation, both stylistically and in terms of the animation technology. This show was terribly cyberpunk; you don’t see much of it in the intro, but the series itself had a very dark aesthetic. Obvious cybernetic modifications abound and all the buildings were of that organic Geiger-esque dark blue stone style I associate with Aliens, Chrono Trigger and the tournament arc of Yu Yu Hakusho. There is a rad guitar tune! Shiny foil backgrounds! A totally awesome street bike! TRON GRAPHICS! It’s all terribly 80s-90s, don’t you think?
Now, the next show is where things get more interesting. Cutie Honey Flash was released in 1997 and had 39 episodes. Pay close attention, and ask yourself if it reminds you of anything.
(Is that tune stuck in your head yet?) The Fanservice is gone! Well, not gone so much as toned down to a dull roar. There are lots of flowers! And a guy with long white hair! And everything is very, very pretty! It should come as no surprise that this is the show which filled Sailor Moon’s timeslot after that series ended. It was aimed far more intentionally at young girls than the earlier incarnations, and while you can feel a bit of the campy flavor of the original series (mostly in that awesome big band music), this intro is mostly aping shojo tropes to take advantage of Sailor Moon’s popularity. This is really interesting when you remember that the 1970s Cutie Honey basically pioneered the sub genre Sailor Moon owes her existence to.
But, what does all this say of the modern age of anime? Well, the series was reenvisioned yet again as a three-part OVA in 2004, under the title Re: Cutie Honey (Note how the title of this turn-of-the-millennium series uses a turn of phrase associated with the internet). Let’s have a watch, shall we?
Ah, so that’s why Flash didn’t have nearly as much fanservice; they were saving it all up for next time! You know how people are complaining that Hollywood never does anything but remake old stuff nowadays? Based on this alone, it seems retro is the defining modern feature in anime too. The music in Re: is vaguely disco, and though the massive jump in animation quality may disguise it, the intro (and, presumably, the show itself) is heavily inspired by the original 1974 Cutie Honey. Watch it again, you’ll see what I mean. What’s more interesting, however, is how this series differs from the original. Notice that Honey now has a female foil in the form of a policewoman named Natsuko, who appeared in most of the earlier incarnations with a much, much different role (she was essentially Honey’s uninteresting best friend). What’s most fascinating, however, is how the love interest-guy’s design is clearly referencing his incarnation in the seventies, yet his personality has completely changed. He’s, well, hornier, as is the other non-villain male character we see. Indeed, the mechanics of the intro suggests that the audience is more lewd now as well; notice how the black-and-yellow checkerboard hand is back, but seems to take its job much less seriously now?
Let me try and wrap this up by getting a bit more academic. Though the Cutie Honey franchise always has had a significant periphery demographic, its main target was, and is, heterosexual guys. Thus, the perspective we get, both from the mechanics of the shots (the “male gaze”) and the male characters we’re expected to identify with, is of a man fantasizing over a woman. This honestly isn’t a problem in and of itself, but notice how much the dynamic between Honey and her audience changes over thirty years. The intro to the original show suggests that Honey’s relationship with her generic boyfriend-guy / audience identification figure is vaguely awkward and mutually flirtatious. In Re:, on the other hand, he becomes flat-out randy, and she has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot suggesting her rejecting him because of this. Also, her relationship with the camera becomes subtly less flirtatious through the years while remaining just as fanservice-laiden; in short, she looses much of her initiative and becomes less sexual and more sexualized. The new dynamic feels less gregarious and egalitarian, not that of a willfully sexual heroine playing with the audience so much as that of the audience placing the reluctant heroine on a pedestal of sexualization. I guess what I’m getting at is, do we think maybe Re: Cutie Honey, for all its retro coolness, didn’t borrow from its precursors enough?
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