Writing and taking breaks

I really liked the presentations this last week. I thought it was great to see what everyone else has been working on, and the comments that I received on my ideas were helpful in figuring out my final topic. I decided to focus on one problem and solution rather than trying to do both of the ones that I had planned, so this weekend I have been writing lots about fan-made video games and why a fan game should be legally protected if the original game it is based on is part of an inactive franchise. I’m a little worried that I might be making bold claims without enough backing evidence (it’s so hard to look at my own arguments objectively!), so I am looking forward to the peer review tomorrow, both because of the feedback that I will receive and because I am sure I will be excited by whoever’s paper/project I get to look at and review.

On a related note, I have been watching this video this weekend as short breaks in between writing. I think it’s a beautiful animation, and that the music goes really nicely with the artist’s work. Although they’re not the same types of video at all, it reminds me of “Women’s Work,” the Supernatural fan vid that we watched earlier in the semester, and how it really wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful without the accompanying song selection. To my amusement, one of the first things I thought after watching “Thought of You” was “Does the animator have permission to use this song?” In general, it just boggles my mind that there are artists that see some of the amazing transformative uses of their work and claim copyright infringement rather than feeling honored.

Supernatural Episode

I just finished watching the episode of Supernatural for class tomorrow. I don’t watch the show, so I wasn’t completely sure what was going on, but overall I found the episode pretty absurd and amusing. The self-referential nature of the episode reminded me of the movie Stranger than Fiction, particularly the horrified and guilty reactions of the authors when they realize that their stories are about real people rather than works of fiction.

The first several minutes of the episode are very light-hearted, as the makers of Supernatural clearly comment on the fandom surrounding their own series. The main characters, Dean and Sam, are mistaken for LARPers, or Live Action Role Players, because they are acting like the characters from a book series called Supernatural. While researching these novels, they are freaked out by how sexualized they are in the writing and cover art. They are also disgusted by the slash fiction produced by fans, especially because they are brothers. They also make the observation that, for fans of the series, they sure do complain a lot. Throughout the episode, various books in the Supernatural series are referenced by name, which I am guessing share titles with other episodes in the Supernatural TV series. In this way, the writers of the show apologize for events that happened in certain episodes (when the author of the books apologizes to Sam and Dean) that fans criticized following their airing.

When I first searched for “The Monster at the End of this Book,” I got results for this Sesame Street book mixed in with the Supernatural episode. After watching, I find the reference relevant because Sam and Dean were trying to prevent what the author had written from happening by changing other events in the story (without success, of course). I always find it interesting when works break the fourth wall; often the way in which the audience is addressed feels awkward and forced to me, but I thought that this Supernatural episode did it in a subtle and funny way. I feel like in general fans like to feel acknowledged by the creators of their fandom, so while I don’t know how Supernatural fans responded to this episode, I am guessing that it was well-received.

A Love Medley!

Being aware of transformative works has really changed the way that I look at the world around me. Movies based on books, books based on movies, games based on movies, movies based on games, books based on books, and on and on and on – sometimes it seems everything created is transformative!

I posted one definition of transformative works a few weeks ago, and I will repeat some of it here now: “Transformative works are creative works about characters or settings created by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creators.” I think that the part of this definition that I still struggle with the most is “created by fans.” When watching YouTube videos of song covers or reading stories on fan fiction sites, it is clear that fans are creating tributes to other artists. But there are many commercial examples of transformative works, and I am not always sure when they are created by fans and when they are created as part of a franchise. For example, companies sometimes release a video game based on a movie around when that movie is released. To me, this change in medium is transformative, but I don’t think that it qualifies as a transformative work because it is not fan-made. Does this make any sense, or am I just confused? Does anyone else feel like they might be labeling too many things as transformative works?

Following is a video of a song from one of my favorite movies of all time, Moulin Rouge. The song is a mash-up of many different well-known songs. When I first watched Moulin Rouge when I was much younger, I remember my initial confusion when the main male character “invented” the lyrics to “The Sound of Music” on the spot. Except for I think one or two songs, Moulin Rouge is a musical based on already existing popular songs.

Just for the fun of it, and because I find chaining transformative works fascinating, I am also going to include an anime music video of the same song. I don’t recognize any of the clips used in the AMV, but I personally think that it is a really well-done video. If interested, you can watch it here.

Comical Argument Fallacies

Although at the time of reading I thought that EA Ch. 16 was full of basic and common sense information, when the same idea of making a strong argument was put into the negative terms of all the ways one can mess up in EA Ch. 17, I felt a lot more nervous about our second project coming up. I actually find it a lot easier to summarize and analyze other articles than to insert my own opinion, so I think that I will find the next paper harder than the first. I generally have trouble choosing a side in a debate because I can see both positions and agree with parts of each of them, and even when I have formed an opinion and made an argument for my case, I have trouble looking at my own argument objectively and finding the flaws in it. Also the rough drafts of our final projects are due in only four weeks! As an absolute time value, this still seems rather far away, but writing is a time-consuming process for me and I know that my other classes are going to be busy until the end of the semester too.

I had mainly only heard of logical fallacies before, so this chapter was pretty new and interesting material for me. I thought that the visual examples were very helpful and usually funny, so I have found and included a few comics that represent some of the fallacies covered in the chapter that did not have accompanying images.

Scare Tactics

Ad Hominem Argument

Straw Man

Non Sequitur

Radiohead Business Model

One of the things that I took away from watching RIP was Radiohead is an awesome, revolutionary band that gives power to fans by releasing content for free online. So I was confused in class when Radiohead was used as the money-making corporate example to contrast with Odd Future’s free distribution style.

Since I am not overly familiar with Radiohead or their music, I decided to research this apparent discrepancy. This article talks about the pay-what-you-want strategy in a much more negative way; it points out that the quality of the downloadable mp3s was very low, and that the wide availability of the album online was just a lead-in to the band’s marketing strategy for a later physical CD release.

Additionally, Radiohead’s newest album was not released for free. Fans discuss here what the possible reasons for this change could be. Many claim that Radiohead did not make that much money off their last album release, and that it was an experimental idea that did not succeed so they are retreating to a more traditional marketing strategy for this album. Several users also feel strongly that letting people download Radiohead’s music for free actually devalued their work and so it is good that this is not being repeated.

Overall, from a brief look, it seems that Radiohead is playing with the business model of releasing music as RIP suggested; however, I also feel like RIP glorified the band’s motives, actions, and impact to serve their agenda in making the movie.

Jane Eyre Movie

Although I have never read Jane Eyre, I knew it was a popular novel because 1) I’ve heard about it before, especially in high school when my class read Wuthering Heights, and 2) I saw this preview recently:

I am interested to see how this beloved classic is adapted into a modern movie and what kind of reception it gets from fans.

Smell Like a Monster!

As a fan of the Old Spice commercials, I found the following video rather funny:

I still have a hard time grasping the idea of a transformative work (is it or isn’t it?), probably because it’s such a relatively new term, both in general and to me. The Organization for Transformative Works defines it as follows:

“Transformative works are creative works about characters or settings created by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creators. Transformative works include but are not limited to fanfiction, real person fiction, fan vids, and graphics. A transformative use is one that, in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, ‘adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the source with new expression, meaning, or message.’ A story from Voldemort’s perspective is transformative, so is a story about a pop star that illustrates something about current attitudes toward celebrity or sexuality.”

I am really looking forward to going over more examples of transformative works as the semester progresses. The mention of Mass Effect has my interest particularly piqued, as well as the topic of musicals.

Fan Computer Games

I ended up doing my first research summary over an article about classic adventure games and the modern remakes created by fans. Most of the examples that the author used were about the King’s Quest series, which I have never played but seems similar to the Quest for Glory games that I did play when I was a kid. Since these games were made for older computer systems, it’s pretty hard to play them these days (my laptop runs Windows 7 and definitely does not have a floppy disk drive), so I was pretty excited to find out that fans have remade many of these original games in versions that are compatible with modern computers. Of course there are legal issues surrounding this fan work, and we’ll see if I end up picking this as my topic for my research papers. Even if not, I imagine that I will be playing one or two of these fan games over the summer.

After I read the article, I did some more research and thought the improvements between the versions of King’s Quest I were fascinating. Following are three images of the same scene across different game versions:

The above is the original 1980s version that was released by Sierra. The player controlled the game using text commands.

The above is the 1990 remake by Sierra, the company owning the original. It used a different game engine and expanded the storyline.

The above is the 2001 remake by a fan group called AGD Interactive. They added dialogue audio (including the voice actor of the main character in the original King’s Quest IV and King’s Quest V) and better graphics, as well as compatibility with modern operating systems.

Fan Fiction

I really liked the readings for today. I had heard about fan fiction before, but never read any. “Harry Potter and the Eagle of Truthiness” made me laugh a lot, even though I did not understand all of the Colbert references because I do no watch his show. However, judging from the fan fiction policies of the authors that we read and from the discussion in class, I am guessing that not all fan fiction works are this well-written and enjoyable.

Gabaldon’s stance against fan fiction surprised me in its harshness. In her second post out of three on the subject, she thanked someone by name for pointing out that many fan fiction writers are motivated by love. It seemed really strange to me that this had not occurred to her, since in her previous post, she had listed loving the characters as a common and insufficient (and definitely not flattering) reason for writing. In addition, she made the distinction between imagining further plot with existing characters and writing that plot down, saying the former was natural and the latter was inexcusable. Yet when I envision potential storylines, I clearly do so out of love for the work; I don’t spend time reflecting on books or movies that are poorly done. To me, taking the time to write these storylines down and share them with others for seemingly no gain other than to mutually appreciate some continuation of the original work, is obviously an act of love.

Then again, I do not have much experience with fan fiction, so I looked at some Harry Potter ones at the website suggested in discussion. I skimmed through a few, and the plots seemed to range from filling in gaps in the novels to new plots with side characters to new plots with new characters – certainly nothing offensive. However, my viewpoint might be different if I was an author and I read a pornographic story about my characters.

While searching, I happened upon a forum thread with the above picture where fan fiction writers and readers were introducing themselves, and all of them seemed really excited about fan fiction but most of them also made fun of themselves in some way for reading it because it was dorky, silly, etc., so it was clear that they were aware of fan fiction’s bad reputation.

Lastly, I looked up Joss Whedon’s stance on fan fiction out of curiosity and was relieved that he did not seem as critical/hypocritical as the ones we read for class: “I love it. I absolutely love it. I wish I had grown up in the era of fan fiction, because I was living those shows and those movies that I loved and I would put on the score to Superman and just relive the movie over and over.”

 

I really liked the readings for today. I had heard about fan-fiction before, but never read any. Harry Potter and the Eagle of Truthiness made me laugh a lot, even though I did not understand all of the Colbert references because I do no watch his show. However, judging from the fan fiction policies of the authors that we read and from the discussion in class, I am guessing that not all fan fiction works are this well-written and enjoyable.

 

Gabaldon’s stance against fan fiction surprised me in its harshness. In her second post out of three on the subject, she thanked someone by name for pointing out that many fan fiction writers are motivated by love. It seemed really strange to me that this had not occurred to her, since in her previous post, she had listed loving the characters as a common and insufficient (and definitely not flattering) reason for writing. In addition, she made the distinction between imagining further plot with existing characters and writing that plot down, saying the former was natural and the latter was inexcusable. Yet when I envision potential storylines, I clearly do so out of love for the work; I don’t spend time reflecting on books or movies that are poorly done. To me, taking the time to write these storylines down and share them with others for seemingly no gain other than to mutually appreciate some continuation of the original work, is obviously an act of love.

 

Then again, I do not have much experience with fan fiction, so I looked at some Harry Potter ones on http://www.fanfiction.net/ (since this was suggested in class). The first few were not even in English, but skimming through the ones that were, the plots seemed to range from filling in gaps in the novels to new plots with side characters to new plots with new characters – certainly nothing offensive. However, my viewpoint might be different if I was an author and I read a pornographic story about my characters.

 

While searching, I happened upon a forum thread where fan fiction writers and readers were introducing themselves, and all of them seemed really excited about fan fiction but most of them also made fun of themselves in some way for reading it because it was dorky, silly, etc., so it was clear that they were aware of fan fiction’s bad reputation.

 

Lastly, I looked up Joss Whedon’s stance on fan fiction out of curiosity and was relieved that he did not seem as critical/hypocritical as the ones assigned for class: “I love it. I absolutely love it. I wish I had grown up in the era of fan fiction, because I was living those shows and those movies that I loved and I would put on the score to Superman and just relive the movie over and over.”

Nice to meet you!

Hello, my name is Sarah, and welcome to my blog! I am double-majoring in Computer Science and Math so this class will be a little different for me. I’m nervous but also excited about learning such unfamiliar material.

So far I like our textbook, Everything’s an Argument. It seems to be very readable and understandable, as well as filled with colored pictures, which is generally a plus in my opinion. When I first saw the title of the book, I felt stubbornly contrary; everything is certainly not an argument. But after reading the first chapter, I realized that my definition of argument was more like the authors’ definition of persuasion. I have always thought of arguments as trying to prove that you are correct, or in some sense win out over your opponents, but the authors described this as only one type of argument among many. This distinction between argument and persuasion initially struck me as somewhat backward because argument usually carries a negative connotation to me, but given these definitions, I am now much more amenable to the book’s title.

My confusion over what constitutes an argument also explains my bemusement/amusement when Tekla showed us a lolcat during our first class. The term lolcat itself was new to me, although seems apt. The image reminded me of a similar one that I really liked (a loldog?):

Thinking about these two images more now, I would classify them as arguments to convince because without the text, I would probably just think of them as generic cute pictures; with the text, however, I see the argued scenario and the pictures become especially adorable and funny.

However, I have some trouble differentiating the argument types, even ones as seemingly basic as lolcat images. My mind is very logical and methodological; I see in terms of this formula or that, these lines of code or those, so I have always felt a little uncomfortable when things get more subjective. I would be very interested to hear how someone else would classify the argument of the image above and why.

The book even acknowledges that “all classifications overlap with others to a certain extent” on page 15 when talking about Aristotle’s scheme for classifying arguments by time, which made me feel a little better about my difficulty seeing black-and-white groupings. Overall, though, I think that I can see the framework for this textbook and this class, and I hope that my knowledge gaps will lessen as the class progresses and I gain more experience with the subject matter. For instance, the stasis theory outlined in this first chapter appears like it could be very helpful later when trying to come up with my topic for the semester and then writing my papers about this topic.