I LOVE this stuff. ^_^
Unfortunately, I really don't have the time for it.
This is the kind of thing that can get addictive very quickly. 9:05 was great. It was, in all honestly, hysterical. I love games with twisty and surprise endings. My favorite movie in the world is "Kiss The Girls", which is full of twisty and surprising stuff. I also love suspense stuff. So you would think that I would like the other game (which for the life of me, I can NOT remember), that we got to play during class.
But you would be wrong. Why? Because I absolutely HATE games where you have no freakin clue what you're doing or why. That's why Myst is evil. EEEVIIIL. I like games where you know what you're doing, or at least you think you know what you're doing, but games like Myst and the Other Game make me want to tear my hair out. The Other Game was interesting in that you had to figure out what the hell the game was telling you. I mean, a RESTING? Why can't they just say BED. Be CONSCISE. I like conscise. I like word puzzles too, but I also like to know what the HECK I'm doing.
The one thing I have to give to these game writers is they know how to make you THINK you want something. Putting the cup in the cube makes you WANT it. For no other reason. There is absolutely NO REASON to take that cup. You don't even know if you need it. But the fact that it's in the Cube with no way in, you just WANT to get it.
That's why I can never play these games again. I'll become that pasty-faced computer gamer that my parents allways warn me about. The kind that doesn't leave their room unless its absolutely necessary and all they can talk about is... their games... um... nevermind. ^_^;;
To GAMES! MWAHAHAHA!
ahem.
Anyway.
Vladimir Propp's Morphology of folklore originally traced elements common to all Russian Fariy Tales. Propp argued that a cohesive fairy tale could be compiled from these elements, which he called functions. Any of these functions could be compiled into any order to create a Proppian Fairy Tale.
Propp also tried to establish the rules by which these functions, or morphemes as Murray calls them, are combined. He found that the morphemes came in related pairs. From Murray, we see some examples, such as the establishment of a misfortune/lack and its liquidation, the pursuit of the hero and his rescue, the introduction of a false hero and his exposure. The order of the elements in a story also seem to be constant, even if a particular version of a story might lack some of the elements. For instance, the hero's test always occurs after he leaves home, but before he acquires the magical agent.
Propp's analysis allows storytellers to weave complicated story sequences without becoming confused. Modern storytellers can use the same analysis and combinations to create multiform narratives or story based Role Playing Games.
One example is the Super Mario Brothers games. These games are all based on the kidnap function of Propp's morphology. We all know that Princess Toadstool (or peach, as she is later called) has been kidnapped by Bowser and must be rescued by Mario and Luigi. Mario and Luigi then go through trials and battles to find her and rescue her. While this is a great example of the use of Propp's Morphology in a game, the agency in this game isn't high, because it has a fixed ending. Either the player rescues Princess Toadstool, or he dies. That's it. There isn't much you can to change the outcome.
In text based, multiform story games, such as the much beloved ZORK, the Propp morphology is applied in what happens to the character. This exemplifies the rules of how the story progresses, more than the actual elements. In ZORK we don't know WHY we are solving puzzles and battling trolls and what ever else the poor character is put through, but we do know that it follows the rules Propp outlined. For instance, if we remember the infamous button room, there is a tool there that can be used to solve a puzzle. Here, agency is high, since there is a chance of losing the tool if you, say, pushed the blue button and flooded the room.
The best example of the application of Propp's Morphology is player based RPGs. In player based RPGs, such as D&D games or LARPing, both the application of Propp's Morphology and Functions. In these games, the DM or GM, depending on the platform, create an independent world and reason for the players to solve a problem, go on a quest, get in a battle, or just make plain fools of themselves. The product of these games is often a narrative story that, while somewhat erratic, is entertaining to both participate in and read.
By applying Propp's morphology, game writers can create complex and entertaining interactive narratives that involve the player because the player not only plays in the world, but affects it.
Yes, yes. I did do a short stint as a LARPer (Live Action Role Play) for a bit. I noticed that LARPing was discussed in Hamlet on the Holodeck in the Imersion section and it got me to thinking.
I remember being invited by a friend to my very first LARP, which was a game of Vampire: The Masquerade being run down in Pittsburgh. I played for about a night before I decided it really wasn't for me. (Translation: I was eighteen, and scared out of my mind by the idea that my mother would find out I had been in an occult game.) Some of my friends continued to role play, but I stuck to my text-base game. And I think the main reason is immersion.
Now, I have the ability to discern between reality and fantasy. That's why I can act and why I was actually comfortable doing the LARP. However, what made me uncomfortable was other people's reactions. "~gasp~ You did what? You pretended to be a VAMPIRE?!?" Why the reaction? As my mother once said, "I'm worried that you're escaping into a world that doesn't exist and that one day you won't come out." (NOTE: this is a rough paraphrase of her argument against my reading fantasy books, but it is true to the message and still applicable.)
The idea that gamers don't know the line between fiction and reality is not only irrational, but rather insulting. Most (there is a minority that go a little... um... strange) of the LARPers I know keep their IC and their OOC lives very separate. Translation: What's in game, stays in the game and has no use outside of game except as an interesting story to tell. A common joke among the V:TM group is "Read your left hand, which says, 'I am not a vampire'."
The interesting thing to note is that the people who are worried about immersion are the people who don't participate in the actual event. It can be applied to people who are afraid of e-books taking the place of actual books. They are afraid of something that challenges their traditional understanding of what should be. What's more frightening is that these people are in the so-called "majority". Which is why gamers and geeks often get abused.
What has this got to do with Aesthetics? A mark of how aesthetically powerful a medium can be is its ability to immerse the participant (reader, gamer, etc.) in the world it's creating.
If you think about it like that, books are very dangerous, ne?
Ok. I just re-read Rachel Howard's entry, "Whatever happened to Princess Toadstool" and I made a reference to the flash cartoon, "Mario Twins". You need Flash and a speaker, but it doesn't take to long to load.
Ta!
Attacked by crazed four year old. >.> Yeah, that happens a lot.
I did the Piaget Line Test today with Pod. The basic idea is that in the Pre-Operational stage (before the age of 6 or 7), children don't grasp certain concepts. In this instance, I took two blocks of equal length and put them on the table, one in front of me and one in front of Pod. They were both centered on the same point, so they looked of equal length. I asked Pod if one was bigger than the other or if they were the same size. He answered that they were the same length.
Then I tricked him. Seriously! I nudged the block closest to me about an inch to the left and asked him the same question. He answered that the block closest to him was longer, pointed at the right side where his block stuck out.
Yep. Pod's normal.
I got to read to two little girls today, along with eating snack with the kids. They play with their teddy grahams. It's frightening. The water table has now evolved into the sand table, which Pod apparantly loves to play in. I think it has to do a lot with the tactile feedback he gets from burying his hands in the sand.
I don't often get to watch Pod eat his snack, since he eats in the other room, but I understand that his tree nuts allergy keeps him from eating something unless Mrs. Gorely has cleared it with his parents. If a snack hasn't been cleared, they send it home with him. I wonder if it makes him feel any different from the other children.
Allright. There were definitely people who had no idea what was so funny about some of the stuff that's been going on in ASL. SO...
Why the post it art was so funny. (this may take a minute to load and you will need speakers to get the full affect.) ^_^
Why we cracked up about "North, South, East and Dennis". (this will also take a minute to load and will also need speakers.)
But I digress...
While I was reading "Hamlet on the Holodeck", I began thinking of a fanfiction I read. (Sorry, I don't have the link at the moment...). This was a Star Wars fanfic, but reading HOTH made me remember a scene where a character has the option of using a datapad (think palmpilot of the future) to read a text, or to actually read from a book. She chooses to read the book because (rough quote here) "It felt better to have the weight of a book in your hands."
One of the reasons I think books will survive the mounting technology is because of the weight they have. Not just physically. There is something about holding a book and touching a book and reading from a book that makes it more... there than looking at a screen. In some ways, there is something ultimately more satisfying in having a book than in reading from a screen.
That doesn't mean, however, that we should resist technological advancement. Sometimes, it's simply more practical to use a computer or the internet than to actually write a book. For instance... in fanfiction, if authors tried to write a book, they'd get sued. It's easier and ultimately less illegal to write fanfiction and put it on a site where no money is made and a neat little disclaimer can be stuck on the top.
Today was interesting, as usual. Pod brought in a toy shark to show and tell. He was very animated today. After the small group had finished show and tell, I told them we would pick out a book and read until the other groups had finished. Everyone picked out a book, but we only had time to read one of them. Pod, however, wanted to read his story to me. Though he didn't actually read the words on the book, he did make up a story about the pictures he recognized on the page. While it was a bit confusing, the story made some sense.
During play, he was very animated and very... excited.
Thank god I'm doing High School.
Allright. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't orignally think of the movie I'm going to be talking about in correlation to Dorian Gray. The first movie that came to mind was Velvet Goldmine, but they only really quote the book a lot. Instead, I went for a musical written by Stephen Sondheim called Into the Woods, which has a HUGE number of similarities to The Portrait of Dorian Gray, however, I'm only going to focus on three: Beauty and Morality, Nice is Different than Good, and The Hypocracy of the Aristocracy.
Beauty and Morality
Dorian Gray wanted to remain young and beautiful forever, so he prays that his portrait will age and grow ugly. I think it's the last word that gets him into trouble. "For every sin that he committed, a stain woulf fleck and wreck its (the portrait's) fariness" (111). So there would be no aesthetic differences in Dorian's face if he sinned.
The first correlation is between Dorian and the Witch in Into the Woods. The Witch is old and ugly, but she pursues her beauty and youth through the entire first act. You see, she had been punished with age and ugliness by her mother for losing magic beans from her garden. A special potion had to be made, and the other characters had to collect the items. However, when she regains her youth and beauty, she loses her magical powers.
The same thing happens to Dorian. When he gains his youth and beauty, he loses that which made him truly beautiful before: his goodness. He becomes an awful person, just as the Witch becomes an ordinary person (which, for her, is awful).
The moral: The pursuit of beauty and whatever cost will utlimately ruin a person. Just look at what happened to Joan Rivers.
Nice is Different than Good
In Into the Woods, Little Red Riding Hood sings a song called "I Know Things Now", where she talks about things she learned when dealing with the Wolf. One of the important lines is "And though scary is exciting, nice is different than good". We can make the jump from Red and the Wolf to Dorian and his Victims. Dorian taught his victims how to seek pleasure, and he was probably very nice about it. But we know that he was not good. The one differece between Red and the Victims is that someone saved her, so she could learn from her mistakes. I do not think many of the Dorian's victims were saved, since many of them are still in the opium dens and whorehouses where he left them.
The Hypocracy of the Aristocracy
In Victorian England, the Upper Classes were supposed to be well mannered, charming and good. Well, according to Wilde, they got two out of three. The Upper Classes were charming and well mannered, they were shunned by their class if they weren't. But we can plainly see thatthey weren't all that good. And being well mannered and charming does not necessarily make you a good person, as we can see with Dorian Gray. Here, Dorian is like the Princes of Into the Woods. In a word where every Fairytale Princess needs a Prince and there are only two, things get very interesting.
When Cinderella confronts her Prince, he tells her, "I was raised to be charming, not cincere." Very simply, the upper classes of Wilde's book are similar. Though there are "good" men and women, the majority of the upper class is... well, bad, though very polite and well mannered, the idea being if their charming, they must be good.
Riiiight....
For Everyone who didn't see the video clip in class, CP is Cinderella's Prince and RP is Rapunzel's Prince in the link "interesting" above.
1. Australians are brilliant. First, there was the australian carpenter on While You Were Out. Now, there's the australian carpenter on In A Fix. Brilliant.
2. In a Mega Junkyard Wars tournement between Jim Henson's Creature Shop (Creators of Kermit and Yoda), Industrial Light and Magic (the people who do effects for Star Wars), and KNB (a new effects crew that does horror), ILAM will always win because the Evil Empire will rule the word one day.
3. In a Mini-Fandom Deathmatch, the two Great Unholy Alliances are The Cigarrete Smoking Man (X-Files), Professor Snape (Harry Potter), and Narsil (LOTR); and Circe (The Odessy), Titania (Misdummer Night's Dream), and the Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes). (If you don't understand, ask me. ^_^)
4. Nerdy-Gras rocks.
5. Okay, so the WYWO carpenter isn't australian, BUT he's still brilliant and rule 1 still applies.
6. When on a roadtrip, going there is usually more fun than coming back.
VAGINA MONOLOGUES ON TUESDAY!
