#have you.. ever actively engaged with any literary text..

[anghraine]

The English class I teach just finished a unit on literary criticism, and one of the things we talked about was the distinction between criticism in the sense of literary criticism/critical thinking and criticism in the more common sense of criticizing things.

I think the distinction is important, and it's important to take the next step, too. Nobody is obliged to like anything or not to recognize its flaws. But pointing out flaws is often the lowest-hanging fruit when it comes to engaging with a text—the quickest, easiest approach to take.

For many, it's quite easy to default to kneejerk critical reactions (in the common sense) without thinking them through or seeing any need to do so. That isn't just different from critical thinking; it's the opposite of it and actively impedes it.

I've often seen this in creative writing workshops. People typically are much readier to point out real or imagined flaws than to think through what the text is aiming for and how the author's choices aid or inhibit it. When workshop students encounter a very good piece, they often don't know how to respond and will resort to comfortable nitpicking or simply "I don't see anything wrong with this," as if finding wrong things is the sole purpose of a workshop.

But the idea that thinking critically about things = criticizing or condemning them seems to loom even larger over literary criticism and reviews and fandom meta and all sorts of things. Identifying and analyzing flaws can be part of critical responses (in the lit-crit sense) and often are. I am personally not at all hesitant about pointing out flaws when I see them or connecting them to more general interpretations. But critical thinking does not begin or end with pointing out flaws and it's entirely possible for critical thinking about a piece to result in an even greater conviction that it's wildly successful in its aims and as a piece of art.

I was partly thinking about this because of the common insistence that it's okay for people to like things (thank you, kindly overlord!) as long as they also think critically about them. But "think critically" here almost always seems to mean "as long as you point out its flaws every time you mention it and your actual overall opinion about it is ambivalent at best." The goal doesn't seem to be for others to ever have a reaction like, "I stopped and thought deeply about how it's crafted and what it's doing, and thanks! Now I have a fuller understanding of how spectacularly well it accomplishes its artistry."

It's fine to be ambivalent about things and point out flaws, as I said before, but a) it doesn't take critical thinking to do that alone, and b) it's not required for someone to feel and do that to be thinking critically about something.

#you need to think critically!!! should not = you need to agree with me without thinking about it #also people don't need to think critically about everything all the time anyway #some things you should always be thinking critically about (generally in line with how important the thing is - like news reports) #but sometimes we've got to turn our brains off so we don't burn out and that is okay actually. #'hdu criticize the thing i turn my brain off with' is inappropriate but so is 'hdu enjoy a thing without analyzing its flaws' #anghraine babbles #anghraine rants #general fanwank #ivory tower blogging #long post

[eleemosynecdoche]

Here’s something that’s probably not clear to most people who start engaging with mythology- most of the stories you will see presented as mythology are literary forms of myths, but not “myths” themselves, because a myth is not a concrete physical object like a text, a myth is a component of folklore that exists in mostly fluid ways, just like any other component of folklore. It’s made up of a space that sometimes is the overlap between what people’s individual expressions of a relevant narrative or belief are, and sometimes is the union of all these expressions, and sometimes is in between them.

So when you look at, say, the Iliad, you are not looking at the myth (or legend) of the Trojan War, you are looking at a literary presentation of a long-form poem in epic verse that is part of the mythology of the Trojan War, which presumably has lost oral sources, and may have had other contemporaneous textual sources now lost, and incorporates many other fragmentary or known sources, But the myth of the Trojan War could never be presented as a single narrative, because it branches and varies in ways that prevent it from ever being presented in such a fashion (just think about trying to present Aeneas and you’ll hopefully see what I mean).

It is also worth emphasizing that myths are by no means necessarily monocultural- many people have contributed to the Trojan War myth across a variety of cultures, and even if we only limit ourselves to people who believe it was a historical event, that still holds true as a common belief into the 19th century. The Gilgamesh mythology is presumably Sumerian in origin (it is genuinely agreed there was a historical king of Uruk with that name who became mythologized), but the Epic of Gilgamesh is in Akkadian and only appears to begin taking form some 300-400 years after the Sumerian-language Bilgamesh poems, and the mature form you might have read or know about is thought to have been composed at some point in the period from 1300-1000 BCE, possibly as many as 1900 years after the historical Bilgamesh may have lived and reigned, and certainly closer to a thousand years after the first recorded Bilgamesh literature. 

Gilgamesh mythology was still active in the days of Roman and Sassanian rule, which extends things another millennium and a half, perhaps. Quite a long period for the Gilgamesh myths to form under.

[cocopoopee]

OF STUDIES JOURNAL

Ma. Coleen A. Bernabe 

It was on October 3rd, 2022, that I came across this piece for the first time. Considering that we were learning online, it was a rather typical day filled with activities. However, I had no idea that reading a piece written many years ago would lead to a wealth of fresh information. 

Due to the essay's use of complex terms, at first, I didn't grasp it much, but after reading it for the third time, I became more engaged to the point where I even watched some YouTube explanations to fully comprehend and feel the message that the author is trying to convey to his readers. So join me on my journey to properly understand and articulate my insights on this piece as I address several questions that have been circulating through my mind.

To begin with, What is the theme of the text? According to Bacon, learning has three advantages. First off, some people study for their amusement or for personal purposes so they may amuse themselves without forcing their knowledge on others. Second, some people study for ornament, which means that they like discourse. This may lead some detractors to speculate that these people are quite dull or self-absorbed because of human vanity. Lastly, the third benefit of study is ability. That is, to apply what one learns to solve issues realistically and maybe to advance oneself more practically than others who study for show.

What is the particular life lesson I have learned from the literary text? When it comes to studying, it is advisable to try to adopt a productive and balanced approach. Any study has advantages, but the practical application makes it most fruitful. A person with an education will have a more fulfilling life if he/she puts what he/she has learned into practice rather than utilizing it to entertain himself/herself and other people. In conclusion, I discover that utilizing education as a diversion or decoration is a waste of formal education.

I used to study for show since it gives me clout and I enjoy hearing compliments on my accomplishments. But I feel like I'm simply increasing their expectations of me as time goes on. And it's upsetting me because I keep asking myself these questions every night before I go to sleep: What if I fail? What if I didn't live up to their standards? But after reading the essay and making a journal from it, I feel like I can avoid overthinking because of the lesson that this text thought me.

Without a doubt, it is among the greatest essays I've ever read. It gives us several wise quotes and statements that we may use as needed. Some of the lines do, in fact, automatically stick in our minds. Again, this is Ma. Coleen A. Bernabe. Thank you for reading. 

[christophermraerdon]

10 Content Creation Tips That Will Keep Your Readers Coming Back For More

If you’re looking for content creation tips that will keep your readers engaged, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post, we’ll share 10 tips that will help you create content that is not only informative and interesting, but also engaging and interactive. By following these tips, you’ll be able to produce content that literary critics will love – and your readers will keep coming back for more!

How to Create Compelling Content

Creating compelling content can be a challenge, but it’s worth the effort. Here are some tips to help you get started:

1. Keep it focused. When you’re brainstorming ideas for your content, make sure each piece has a specific purpose. Whether you’re trying to educate, entertain, or inspire your audience, every piece of content should have a clear objective. This will help you stay on track and ensure that your finished product is engaging and effective.

2. Make it interesting . This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to remember that not everyone shares your interests . Even if you’re writing about something you’re passionate about , try to find an angle that will resonate with as many people as possible . Be creative and think outside the box – the more unique and intriguing your content is , the more likely people are to read (and share) it . 3 Choose quality over quantity In today’s noisy online world , it’s more important than ever to create quality content . That means taking the time to produce well – researched , thoughtful pieces that offer value to your readers . It also means being selective with what you publish ; don’t flooding your blog or website with low – quality posts just for the sake of keeping things updated . 4 Pay attention to SEO While keywords are no longer everything when it comes ()to ranking in search engines 5 Get social Sharing yourcontent on social media is essential for driving traffic backtoyour site or blog . But simply sharing links isn’t enough ;you needto be active on social media , engaging with other usersand promoting

Tips for Creating Engaging Content

Are you looking for tips on how to create more engaging content? If so, you’re in the right place. In this blog post, we’ll share some top tips for creating content that your audience will love.

Your headline is the first thing people will see when they come across your article or blog post. So, it’s important to make sure it’s attention-grabbing and relevant to the rest of your content. Try to use numbers or power words in your headline to make it even more effective.

People are visual creatures and they respond well to visuals in content. Adding images or videos can help break up text and make your article more visually appealing. This will also help capture people’s attention as they scroll through social media or their email inboxes.

Nobody wants to read a long, drawn-out article – especially online where people have short attention spans! So, try to keep your articles fairly concise while still delivering valuable information that your readers can take away with them . Brevity is key here!

Guidelines for Developing Effective Content

Developing effective content can be a challenge, but there are some guidelines that can help. Here are four tips for creating content that is both informative and engaging:

1. Know your audience. It’s important to know who you’re writing for before you start developing any sort of content. What are their needs and wants? What kind of information will they find useful? Keep these questions in mind as you create your content to ensure that it is tailored to your target audience.

2. Keep it clear and concise. No one likes reading long, drawn-out paragraphs full of fluff or irrelevant information. Get to the point and provide value with each piece of content you develop. Be sure to proofread your work before publishing it to catch any errors or typos that could turn readers off from your message.

3 .Make use of visuals . People are visual creatures, so incorporating images, infographics, videos ,or other types of media into yourcontent can help capture attention and keep people engaged . Just be sure not to overdo it – too many visuals can be overwhelmingand actually detract from the quality of yourcontent .

4 Use different formats . Mix things up a bit by experimenting with different formats foryourcontent . In additionto traditional blog posts , try developing an e-book , whitepaper , podcast , or even video series ifyou think it would resonate well withyourtarget audience

Tricks to Make Your Content More Appealing

Most businesses understand the importance of content marketing, but many struggle with creating content that is truly appealing to their target audience. If your content isn’t engaging, it won’t matter how informative or well-written it is – potential customers will simply move on to another source. Luckily, there are a few tricks you can use to make your content more engaging and appeal to a wider range of readers.

One way to engage your reader’s attention is by using strong visuals. People are naturally drawn to images and videos, so incorporating them into your content is an effective way to keep people interested. In addition, break up large chunks of text with headlines and subheadings so that readers can easily skim through and find the information they’re looking for. Finally, make sure your call-to-action (CTA) is clear and easy to follow; if people have trouble understanding what you want them to do next, they’re likely to just give up entirely.

By following these simple tips, you can create content that is both appealing and useful for your audience. remember that not every piece ofcontent needs tobe incredibly in-depth or groundbreaking – sometimes a friendly reminder about a product or serviceis all it takes toget someone’s attentionand turn them intoa paying customer

Writing Better Web Copy: Tips and Tactics

Your website’s copy is one of the most important elements in your overall marketing strategy – it’s what sells your products and services, tells visitors who you are and what you stand for, and drives conversions. In other words: great web copy can make or break your business.

With that in mind, here are some tips and tactics to help you write better web copy:

Visitors to your website have short attention spans, so it’s important to keep yourcopy concise and to the point. Get straight to the point, use clear language,and avoid unnecessary words or phrases. Every word should serve a purpose.

2. Write for your audience Web copy that resonates with its intended audience is more likelyto convert thanCopy that doesn’t speak directly to themobile phone users ,for instance will not be as effective as writingFor those shopping around Mobile phones . When craftingyour web copy, always keep your target reader in mind., And make sure every sentence speaks directly toyour ideal customer persona mobile phone users . 3. Use active voice Passive voice sounds wishy-washy Shop at our store because we offer discounts , while activevoice is asserting Shop at our store for discounts up tomobiles . Usingactive voice makes your writing stronger 4 5Formatting tips 6Make headlines work harder A good headline should be catchybut also informative; itshould tell readers what they can expect from readingthe article without giving too much away., For example “How towrite

How To Write Irresistible Headlines & Subheads That Sell Like Crazy!

When it comes to content creation, one of the most important aspects is creating headlines and subheads that accurately reflect the topic at hand and entice readers to want to learn more. After all, no matter how great your article or blog post may be, if nobody clicks on it then you’re not going to get any traffic!

Here are some tips for writing irresistible headlines and subheads:

1. Keep It Short & Sweet – The headline should be brief and to the point; try to use around 6-8 words maximum. People have short attention spans nowadays so you need to make sure they know what they’re going to get by reading your article straight away. Likewise, subheads should also be fairly short (around 4-6 words each) whilst still being packed with information.

2. Use Keywords Wisely – Try incorporating relevant keywords into your headlines and subheads as this will help boost your SEO ranking and ensure that your article appears in search engine results pages when people are searching for related topics. However, don’t stuff keywords in there just for the sake of it as this will make your headline look spammy; only use them if they fit naturally within the sentence.

Great Ways to Instantly Improve Your Next Blog Post

If you’re looking to improve your blog posts and make them more effective, there are a few key things you can do. By following these simple tips, you’ll be able to take your writing to the next level and better engage your readers.

Your headline is the first thing people will see when they come across your article, so it’s important that it’s catchy and compelling. A great headline will pique someone’s interest and make them want to read on. Try to avoid headlines that are vague or overly long – instead, focus on something punchy and attention-grabbing.

2. Make sure your content is relevant and interesting.

No one wants to read an article that doesn’t offer anything new or interesting, so it’s important that your content is engaging from start to finish. Write about topics that people actually care about, and provide insights or perspectives that haven’t been covered before. If you can keep people hooked throughout the entire piece, then you’ve done your job well!

3 Tie everything back to a central theme or point . As much as we all love rambling tangents, when it comes to blog posts (and really any type of writing), it’s important to stay focused on a central topic or main idea tying everything together nicely in the end helps solidify what somebody has just read 4 Use active voice whenever possible This tip might seem small but making a concerted effort use active constructions as opposed Britishisms can go huge way In other words rather than saying ‘The experiment was conducted by

Conclusion

If you’re looking for content creation tips that will help keep your readers coming back for more, then look no further. Here are 10 content creation tips that will ensure your readers keep coming back for more:

1. Write headlines that pack a punch – Your headline is the first thing your reader will see, so make sure it’s catchy and packs a punch.

2. Keep your paragraphs short and sweet – No one likes to read huge blocks of text, so keep your paragraphs short and sweet.

3. Use imagery to break up your text – A picture is worth a thousand words, so use images throughout your post to break up the text and add visual interest.

4. Highlight key points with bullet points or numbering – Breaking down key points into bite-sized pieces makes them easier to digest and remember.

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#computer scientist #experimental roboticist #university of denver #assistant professor #computer sci

[borispav]

#i wasn't going to say anything but #i figured i'd put this headassery on display #cuz i honestly can't believe i just read that with my own two eyes lmao #have you.. ever actively engaged with any literary text.. #or have you even oh idk gone to school once in your life?? #cuz if you did you'd know that no aspect of a story/character should be undervalued #and to suggest that just bc his sexuality isn't the focus of the story means that it doesn't deserve attention or exploration is asinine #plain and simple #like.. did you type this out actually thinking ppl were gonna agree with you cuz uh #you have another thing coming #kindly fuck off my post and page thanks ✌🏻 #y'all are really on some next shit today

[addictedtostorytelling]

I’m so not ready to say goodbye 🥺 I didn’t realise how much I needed those two geeks in my life. It may be pathetic but they are literally what I think of when I hear the world ‘love’ and I know it’s not real but sometimes I really need to believe that it is goddammit

hi, anon!

with the reboot's renewal status still up in the air, we can't say for certain if we'll get to see a continuation of grissom and sara's (canonical) story play out on our screens in the future.

even so, what we can say with certainty is that regardless of what happens with the show, you don't have to say goodbye to these characters, to this ship, or to their love story.

the beautiful thing about fiction is that it is eternal.

i've been a fangirl for 25+ years now and have been in a lot of fandoms, including for some shows that have been off of the air for years, and i can tell you with surety that there will always be at least a handful of people making fanworks for the thing you love, even sometimes decades after the fact.

while the fandom will inevitably shrink after the series finale, and while there may be fewer people out there actively engaging with the source material and producing content, particularly as time goes on, characters and stories once loved are loved forever.

there will always be someone writing fanfiction. there will always be someone making gifs. there will always be someone producing meta. there will always be someone reliving what they've loved about the show or the pairing. there will always be someone discovering the story for the very first time and falling in love, just like you did.

there will also always be repositories, archives, and fossilized works left in the amber of the internet, particularly for a show like csi and a ship like gsr, where over twenty years of fanworks exist and are out there, just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.

though of course getting new episodes and source material every week is what fans live for, there's also something to be said for the wonderful experience of engaging with characters and pairings from a "closed canon."

you know that concept "the death of the author"?

i like to think more about the (second) life of the text.

once a show goes off of the air, it takes on this whole kind of renewed existence, becoming something that belongs solely to the fans. we get to take it lovingly into our hands, fill in the gaps between the lines, edit the rough bits as we will, and dog-ear the best parts, building onto them as we wish.

each fan gets to decide what the story means to them and how they engage with it, and while some will eventually walk away, moving on to other stories and more active fandoms, those of us who remain will continue to find new ways to immerse ourselves in what's there, sometimes decades and decades after the last episode has aired.

if gsr is love to you, it doesn't stop being love just because the show ends.

i'm an english professor in my outside-of-the-internet life, and in english, when one is writing about literature (or paintings or film or television or any other kind of creative works), one uses what's called "the literary present tense," which means that when talking about things that take place within the work, one discusses them as if they are ever in a state of happening.

it's not "in homer, it took odysseus twenty years to return home to ithaka," even though the story is millennia old; rather, it's "in homer, it takes odysseus twenty years to return home to ithaka," with odysseus actively doing, perpetually returning home, as he has since before his song was ever written on a page.

stories are forever, anon.

grissom is always in love with sara.

sara is always in love with grissom.

they're always meeting at the forensic conference, falling for each other at first sight.

he's always noticing that she has a ponytail.

she's always stalling to ask him out to dinner.

he's always inviting her to join his team as his first official act as night shift supervisor.

she's always saying yes and packing up her whole life and moving to vegas on only two weeks' notice.

they're always learning how to navigate their love through their fear.

they’re always having near misses and close calls and hundreds of private little intimate moments.

they're always sitting at the ice rink, talking baseball and how he only started caring about beauty after he met her.

they're always in her apartment, with her confessing to him her secrets as she's never done with anyone else before and him just being there for her.

they're always getting engaged in beekeeper suits.

they're always getting married after a tearstained reunion in the jungle.

they're always finding each other again on a pier.

they're always sailing off into the sunset together.

he's always calling her "darlin'."

she's always promising she'll never leave him alone.

they’re always kissing on roller coasters.

they're always in love, anon.

always, always, always.

that's how the story goes, and it doesn't change, no matter what the powers that be at cbs decide.

you can keep enjoying grissom and sara's story for as long as you want. both it and the beautiful, transformative fanworks it inspires will always be there for you.

geek love is forever love.

#answered #anon #asks: csi #let's talk shop #on storytelling #csi #gsr #csiverse

[niniane17]

I've just stumbled across yet another essay stating that "Harry Potter was never good".

I dislike Rowling intensively these days, but I find this kind of purity-driven "literary criticism" deeply dangerous.

My position on this has always been that it doesn't really matter whether Rowling's books are good or not or whether her fame and money is deserved; what matters is that she uses her wealth and fame to hurt trans people. Whatever grievance people might have with her writings (and trust me, I have many of them myself) is completely irrelevant to her political ideas.

If, indeed, her books were every bit as good as they are regarded, would that make her hatred towards trans people justified? Of course not. What is the point of harshly critiquing the books if you want to show that they were written by a bad person? A bad person can produce good art, and vice versa.

For example, Snyder's works are certainly not feminist masterpieces, yet the actresses he worked with have nothing but nice things to say about him. On the contrary, Joss Whedon's works strive to include many feminist themes, yet we all know how he treated the real women in his life. Is anybody out there trying to argue that Roman Polanski or Woody Allen are bad directors, and none of the movies they made were ever any good, and that we all collectively deluded ourselves into thinking they were? No, there isn't, because that would be stupid. But it doesn't erase what they did, nor it should.

(And no, my use of male examples is NOT accidental. We all know that women are subject to a deeper level of scrutiny than men)

Besides, I've noticed that a lot of this criticism heavily relies on subjective feelings about the text. A shining example of this is the attitude towards Snape: I lost a lot of faith in Twitter activists the day I saw BOTH pro-trans people and TERFS discussing how stanning Snape meant being a terrible person, even if for wildly different reasons.

That doesn't mean that none of Rowling's bad ideas are reflected in the text; art, as we all know, is not created in a vacuum. But it's not as obvious as somebody might think and, crucially, it's not the same for everyone. As I showed above, people of opposite sides of the political spectrum might agree that something is problematic, while two people on the same side might not.

This is what I mean when I say that shipping or fandom in general is not activism. Arguing that, say, Voldemort's death was inconsistent with the books' previously established rules is many things, but activism is not one of them. Neither is hating Snape, or whatever character you happen not to like.

And, not to brag or anything, but I did notice the books' deep British parochial approach all the way back in 2001, while reading The Goblet of Fire for the first time. While I was reading, I realized that there was no Italian School of Magic mentioned and I was sad for weeks about it. Where was a little girl like me supposed to go, then? By the time the Deathly Hallows came out, a few years later, I was downright laughing at the books' poorly thought-out International Wizarding community, and not in a good way.

(Like. What language do they even speak at Durmstrang? German? Bulgarian?)

Does that mean I was engaging in deep political activism? Nope. It just meant I thought the books had bad world building and the author was not willing to explore it more. It sucks and it's a pity, but she had other things going for her.

TL; DR: Stop conflating criticizing the books and criticizing her political ideas. These two things may overlap, sometimes, but often they don't, or not in a way we would expect.

#harry potter #anti jk rowling

[bioerin]

1, 2.3, 2.3a? Also I hope you have a nice and relaxing day today❤️

1.  Something I can do without any difficulty?

idk what YOU can do without difficulty, probably just being the nicest person comes easy to you <3 

anyway what CAN I do without difficulty? I don’t even know. I guess I can easily comprehend most literary texts and explain the meaning of them and so on? I always found tasks “explain the meaning of this section/ paraphrase” as completely useless until I understood people don’t understand things sometimes. But that I can only do if the text is meant for general public, and during recent years I have upgraded that skill with comprehending scientific texts about biology. However I don’t know if I ever will understand texts explaining math problems or algorithms it is always a struggle oof. Also not to brag but I am pretty good at piano tiles (the game).

2.3  What do you respect most about others?

I had to google words for this and what I came up with was integrity. Being honest? Yeah I respect that, but in a sense that you are honest to your principles. Like if your friend group does something very illegal but something morally correct and if you all lie to the police then I have the highest respect. Also strong moral principles go under the integrity so that also.

2.3.a  What do you respect about yourself?

This one is a hard one to answer, because I don’t really know. I do respect my body, I am trying to eat properly and engage in physical activities. I respect myself for being open to changes and new ideas and I respect myself for trying to get rid of all the bias I have. I also respect myself for just existing, having gone through all that has happened to me. 

AND THANK YOU <3<3<3

#ask game #its there on my blog im lazy #bot wrote asks :(

[blind-rats]

The ability of fans to shape and change the art they enjoy is nothing new. In 1893, the reaction to Arthur Conan Doyle killing off Sherlock Holmes was so intense that he eventually resurrected him ten years later. Historian Greg Jenner, the author of the forthcoming book Dead Famous (a study of the history of fame), has even tracked the characteristics of modern fandom back to the 1700s when rival supporters of English theatre actresses would compete for dominance like Team Aniston or Team Jolie.  

And to the 1920s, where fan groups would write thousands of letters to movie studios demanding their favorite actor be given better roles. “It was the same thing,” he says, “as Sonic the Hedgehog having weird teeth and people going, ‘No, that’s not the game I played as a kid, you need to fix it or I am not giving you any money.’” 

The last decade or so has witnessed huge changes in the awareness, perception, and tools of fandom. In terms of television and film, the enormous successes of Game of Thrones and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have introduced geek culture – and its brand of participatory fandom – to the mainstream. At the same time, the internet – and more specifically social media – has amplified fans’ voices, while also breaking down the boundaries between them and the artists they love/hate.

Yet the extent to which the internet has changed the very nature of fandom is debatable. According to leading media scholar Henry Jenkins, whose 1992 book Textual Poachers is considered the founding text of fan studies, it has merely “increased the scope and scale of the fan community, allowed for ongoing interactions amongst fans, and made the entertainment industry more aware of the kind of fan responses which have been occurring all along”.

Case in point: in 1968, Star Trek fans – a group who essentially invented the framework of modern fandom – orchestrated a huge and successful letter-writing campaign to save the show from cancellation. Then, in subsequent years, they also popularised fan fiction as we now know it, publishing stories for each other in zines, and pioneering the homoerotic literary sub-genre of slash fiction (the term ‘slash’ literally derives from the punctuation between Kirk / Spock).

Now fans weaponize hashtags and online petitions to revive shows like The Expanse and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or to take showrunners to task with criticisms of their blind spots and choices. One notable example is the teen show The 100, which sparked ire in 2016 after killing off one of the show’s prominent gay characters; an act that was seen by many to perpetuate the ‘bury your gays’ trope that has been prevalent in TV and film. And as for fan fiction? There is, most famously, E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey series, which was inspired by Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight and originally posted on a fan website. But, beyond that, there is also the platform Archive of Our Own, which in 2019 won a Hugo award for its archive of more than 4.7 million fan-written stories.

“Fans engaging actively with the materials of their culture has improved our world in countless ways,” says Jenkins. “Television, as it exists today, is largely a response to modes of engagement that fans have modeled over the past several decades – [a form] where more attention is paid to backstories and secondary characters, where there is a greater degree of serialization and the core mythology is sustained across multiple media platforms, and which builds in space for exploration and speculation. And now, which seeks to be more diverse and inclusive in whose stories get told… Many of today’s critical darlings are following practices that were modeled first in fan fiction.”

Perhaps one of the most profound changes of the last 10 years is the extent to which the entertainment industry has begun to exploit the passion of fanbases for their own commercial ends. “The industry needs fans more than ever before,” explains academic Suzanne Scott, author of Fake Geek Girls, a study of the gender politics of fandom. “They need fans to ensure big opening weekends at the box office, they need them as promotional labor to create more ‘authentic’ excitement around a media object, or to distinguish one text from the glut of content that we are constantly choosing between as consumers.” Just take the techniques employed by Netflix, who have become masters of facilitating ‘organic’ conversation around their output.

On the more extreme end of the spectrum, they even rely on them as investors. A famous example being the 2014 big-screen revival of cult TV detective drama Veronica Mars, a sequel made possible only by the crowdfunding efforts of fans, and which subsequently led to a 2019 TV return on streaming service Hulu. 

With the latter series, this equal partnership dynamic started to become complicated, however, with fans recoiling in horror when creator Rob Thomas killed off love interest Logan. 

To quote journalist Constance Grady, writing for Vox: “Thomas, they said, had taken advantage of their desire to see Veronica and Logan together, using their investment as shippers to leverage not just their time and attention, but the literal dollars out of their pockets. In that case, didn’t he owe them something?”

Jenkins thinks it’s a fair question. “The sense of ownership reflects the way humans have always engaged with stories,” he says. “We use stories to make sense of who we are. We use stories to debate our values, fears, and aspirations. We display our attachment to stories in various ways and we define ourselves through which stories mean the most to us. There’s nothing odd about this. What is odd is the idea that corporations want to claim a monopoly over the storytelling process, resist input from their audience, and lockdown stories from further circulation and elaboration.”

CLICK THE LINK FOR THE FULL ARTICLE

#Veronica Mars #Fandom #Fanbase #Sonic The Hedgehog #Star Trek

[clouds-of-wings]

How to have an argument without offending a Swede

Italians get worked up when discussing pasta sauces. The Brits and French have arguments for fun. But in Sweden, even raising your voice is like taking a glass and smashing it on the floor. Here is The Local's guide to the delicate art of having a discussion with a Swede.

This is interesting, I fully approve of point 4-6 actually, I could deal with 2 and 3, but 1..? That would be difficult for me.

Full text under the KR because Paywall…

How to have an argument without offending a Swede

Italians get worked up when discussing pasta sauces. The Brits and French have arguments for fun. But in Sweden, even raising your voice is like taking a glass and smashing it on the floor. Here is The Local's guide to the delicate art of having a discussion with a Swede.

If you're British or French, debate is almost a national sport. People play 'Devil's advocate' (or l'avocat du diable) just to stoke up the passion in the room. If someone loses self control and raises their voice a bit, that's OK, at least between friends. It's a sign of engagement, a sign that they care.  

In reserved, conflict-shy Sweden, however, things are very different.

You only have to compare the angry jeering in the UK's Houses of Parliament to the staid Swedish party leader debates on TV,  or seminars at Swedish universities with the way UK students are trained to to argue for positions they disagree with. You could also study Sweden's softly spoken court lawyers with their bombastic, adversarial UK and US equivalents.

Swedes hate to express disagreement and after eight years living here, I feel that they don't, or perhaps can't, separate intellectual disagreements from actual personal conflict (as I instinctively would as a Brit). For a Swede a disagreement is a disagreement, and therefore unpleasant, no matter what it is about.

There's also less of a tradition of argument as competitive sport. There are no winners once a debate gets heated. People just feel upset. The Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård describes going to bed after a boozy supper with literary Swedes thinking he'd had a great evening, only to wake to find his hosts feared relations had been irreparably broken.

The positive aspects of all this can be seen in the lower levels of hypocrisy in Swedish national life. A figure like UK PM Boris Johnson is so steeped in Oxbridge debating culture that he can breezily dash off articles both for and against leaving the European Union. In Sweden, this would be almost unfeasible.

So how should you approach holding discussions with a Swede?

1. Know the consensus

Swedes hate people talking about it, but as a foreigner in Sweden it's fairly clear that the fabled 'opinion corridor', or åsiktskorridoren, is no myth. There is a span of acceptable opinions and people start to feel uncomfortable if you move outside them.

For big topics, it's quite easy to learn where the boundaries lie.

For the vast majority of Swedes, whether on the left or right, you probably can't get away with, for example, expressing your admiration of US President Donald Trump, arguing that it's bad for children to go to daycare before they're three, arguing that children don't need bicycle helmets, or that it's OK to drink moderate amounts of alcohol when pregnant. For reasons I don't fully understand, it's also appears unacceptable to argue that the state alcohol monopoly Systembolaget has a woefully poor selection of wine. At least, no one will agree with you if you do.

Once you know where the boundaries lie, don't cross them. People won't think you're controversial or interesting, they'll think you're an ass.  

As it happens, the corridor can shift. Eight years ago, it was absolutely not OK to discuss setting concrete limits for immigration or the ethnicity of criminals. In 2015, that dramatically changed, with politicians of both left and right suddenly competing to tighten up border controls, and the media pumping out stories of sexual harassment by asylum seekers.  

2. Let the Swede lead

The demand for consensus is not limited to the big political issues, but runs deep into things like house decoration, music taste, food and films. Swedes have a natural instinct for knowing what any group thinks about any topic, and assessing what the bounds of opinion are likely to be. This is tricky for a newcomer to grasp, so the best advice is to let the Swede lead. Wait until you have a good idea about what the people you're with think before storming in with your own opinions.

3. Expand and reinforce, don't contradict

Say the discussion gets into what a horrific let-down the last series of Game of Thrones was, and you thought it was well-written, with imaginative plot twists and a satisfying end. Don't contradict your companions head-on. Instead think of something you also felt was a weakness, or add details and new observations to the discussion of the shortcomings advanced by others in your group.

Conversation in Sweden is about arriving at a richer, more nuanced picture of what it is assumed everyone present agrees to be the case, not deciding who or what is right and wrong.

Swedes pride themselves on their ability to ask searching questions, and you can see why, as it is one of the best ways to safely engage in discussions when you disagree with the majority position. Ask your friends what they thought was the worst let-down, or why it is that this or that plot decision was so wrong-headed.

4. Don't interrupt (or do so very sparingly)

Conversation in Sweden doesn't have the same cut and thrust as it does in the UK and some other countries, where it is more common to interrupt, talk over others, or slip in quick details or additional facts that support or contradict what the speaker is saying.

In Sweden, interrupting others is seen as rude, and talking over them ruder still, particularly if you raise your voice to do so. If you've ever been to a Swedish work leaving do, or wedding, you'll have seen how everyone in turn stands up to make a short speech. Imagine group conversation as a less formal version of the same thing.

When someone is speaking, let them finish. The group will then naturally look around for the next speaker, which is your time to make your contribution.

This means of course that when you do speak, you shouldn't go on too long, as there's no way for your companions to shut you up without being rude. Swedes have a natural sense of how much social space each member of a group is getting and will try to make sure it's as evenly shared as possible.

5. Don't raise your voice

It's perhaps telling that the word 'skrika' in Swedish doesn't distinguish between 'shouting', 'screaming' and 'shrieking'. There's a level of raised voice which Swedes experience as aggressive which some other cultures would see as only a sign of mild agitation. If you raise your voice during a discussion, it's almost as if you are banging your hands on the table, so if you can possibly keep yourself under control, don't do it.

If you actually are angry and want to actively offend or put down another person, it's still wrong to raise your voice. It is socially acceptable in Sweden to be quite direct and even rather unpleasant (more so indeed, than in the UK, where it is bad form to drop the pretence of bonhomie and having a 'sense of humour').

If you raise your voice, you lose. A Brit or American might secretly congratulate someone who stands up and loudly but brilliantly tears strips off someone whose behaviour has been out of order. A Swede would be crippled with embarrassment. Swedes have a reputation for passive aggressiveness for a reason.

6. Don't fall back on lazy stereotypes

Perhaps the best way to annoy a Swede as a foreigner is to bang on incessantly about the "opinion corridor" and "Swedish passive aggressiveness". Don't do it.

Some of the least reserved people I know are Swedish. I know Swedes who revel in controversy, compulsively interrupt others, and get overly heated and shouty at the drop of a hat. I do feel though, that Sweden isn't perhaps the easiest country for them to live in.

Ironically, in the parts of Malmö I live in, where nearly half the population voted for the Left parties in the last election, talking about the opinion corridor is itself outside the opinion corridor.

So if you don't want people to think you're a closet Nazi, pretend it doesn't exist. Everybody else does.

https://www.thelocal.se/20190821/how-to-have-a-discussion-without-offending-a-swede

#sweden #swedish #svensk #swedish culture

[tessatechaitea]

New Titans #112

Don't you worry your pretty little head about Red Star's right leg.

I keep trying to organize my life so that I can read more actual books (as opposed to comic books which I'm not judging. I'm just differentiating) without having to sacrifice any of the other things I enjoy doing. What that generally means is that I wind up reading about ten pages every morning before going to bed (I work nights!). Which realistically means I need to do improve my time management if I'm going to be serious about reading. I have managed to read the first "book" of Alan Moore's Jerusalem but it's taken me a fucking long time to do it. I thought it would take me a long time because I was expecting a difficult read but I'm finding it enjoyable. Plus by the time I've finished, I'm fairly certain I'll be able to navigate Northampton with ease. I'm also wondering if all the descriptions of the characters' movements through the city are an encoded treasure map! Or, being that Alan Moore wrote it, it's more likely a spell to summon some sex demons. While organizing (and by organizing, I mean the main definition of organizing: moving shit around in a way that makes you feel like you're accomplishing something but really you're just engaging in an activity to forget about your mortality for awhile. Plus you can generally get some really fucking good dusting done), I managed to place all of the books from various book shelves that I have yet to finish reading (or that I simply want to reread) on the top shelf of the row of bookcases in my office. Jerusalem is first on that list followed by some books by high school friends (Rogue's Curse by Jason Beymer and Soy Rakelson's children's books that I'm willing to bet everything I own as well as my life and my mother's life on that they're black and white morality tales with a super conservative and possibly Ayn Randian view of the world). After that is There Is No Year which Doom Bunny gave me because it's supposedly a terrible book that I'm not sure he even finished and which I wanted to make fun of (but, hey, maybe I'll love it!) and the rest: Inside the Yellow Submarine, Trixie Belden Mystery-Quiz Book #1, Don Quixote, Gravity's Rainbow, Lost in the Funhouse (reread!), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, And the Ass Saw the Angel (by Nick Cave!), King's The Wind Through the Keyhole (A Dark Tower book!), Crime and Punishment, Hey Nostradamus!, The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, The Boomer Bible (re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read), Six Volumes of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (finished with one and a half volumes after owning this set for twenty five years!), The Holy Bible (currently reading for my Patreon), The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (Second Edition) (because I need poetic context for the 20th century!), Only Revolutions, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, and The Familiar (currently just book one but there's going to be like nine hundred of them, so maybe I won't even bother!). Oh, and I just added We Learn Nothing (reread) and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You, both by Tim Kreider. I'll probably start with those because funny essays are easier to get through than anything by Dostoevsky, Danielewski, Pynchon, Cervantes, Barth, Joyce, or Sakelson! I mean Rakelson! Oh man. Rakelson would have a stroke if he knew I listed his name with all those postmodern authors! Not that they're all postmodern. You can figure out which ones are and aren't on your own. I'm busy reading New Titans #112 which must be good since Starfire is naked on the cover. Okay, almost naked. She is wearing a dickie and a belt. I know a lot of you just skipped that big paragraph while thinking, "Oh, la dee da! What a fancy book reader you are! Fucking virtue signaler! Or whatever the term for listing or showing off your reading list full of classic literary texts is! Seems like virtue signaler works well enough! Better even than what idiotic fuck nuggets use it for on Twitter anyway!" But maybe you missed the part about how those are books I haven't been able to get through yet! I've owned some of these books for over a decade! And I didn't even put The Collected Works of Gertrude Stein on this shelf because do I need to be reminded that I used that book more as an address book than something to read? Although I carried it with me everywhere I went for a year or two (which is why it's full of phone numbers and addresses!). And I really did want to read it. I didn't carry it around so people could think, "Look at him with that book! Who the fuck is Gertrude Stein? What a ponce!" Although to be fair, I did leave off a few books on my "to-read" shelf! But it wasn't because they weren't smart enough sounding! It's because they were comic books and also pornography and also also fucking hilarious.

One of my friends in the state department who learns a brand new language every four years or so bonded with me over Oglaf last time he visited. He was all, "I'm glad I know somebody I can share my love of Oglaf with and not be looked at like a completely demented perv!" Although I do look at him like he's a completely demented perv, I didn't need to admit it to his face!

I embrace my delusion that readers merely skipped "one" paragraph of my comic book "reviews"! This issue is called "A New Home" and my brain continued to add to that title with "o-erotic Journey." Mostly because of this panel:

Fairly certain "bamming" a baby is illegal, even in space.

The Titans (and I use that term loosely since the characters encompassed by that shorthand are Changeling, Red Star, Pantha, Baby, and Starfire) have been stranded on The Terraist's space station. That name probably could use a hyphen so you don't first read it as terRAIST twelve times thinking "What the fuck does that mean?" before your brain finally sees the God-awful pun and you give up, finally letting go of that last gossamer thread that's been connecting you to the reality you just discovered doesn't fucking matter. How can there be any meaning to existence when an editor greenlights the name "Terraist"? I'm sure Wolfman's pitch contained at least two dozen "Get it?!"s. Anyway, maybe most readers never even noticed, shrugging their shoulders at every single moment in which a comic book doesn't make sense because at least Starfire is practically naked throughout the last few issues! I have a theory that most people don't really absorb much of what they're reading in comic books. They tend to just love a character for some magic reason and stick with loving that character no matter what terrible writer winds up writing them. And at that point, they just ignore plot holes and inconsistencies and terrible dialogue and whatever the fuck Ann Nocenti does with her typewriter. They simply go star-eyed and gape lovingly at the drawn images of Dick Grayson's throbbing buttocks. That was a hypothetical sentence and not a memoir. Here's a panel with evidence that might lead to proof of my theory if I could actually interview anybody who read this comic book in 1994 and ask them, "Did you even notice this panel?" To which they would all probably respond, "No, I was distracted by the opposite page where you can see tons of Starfire's side-boob and I think one of her outer labia." Um, anyway, the panel I mentioned:

Damn, Marv. Beyond the Forest was nearly fifty years old at the time this comic came out.

To be fair to Wolfman and Changeling, I did an Internet search on "Whatta dump" (and, yes, I spelled it differently than Marv did) and the first hit was video of the scene where Bette Davis says the line. What's odd is that she delivers it flatter and straighter than anything I would have expected out of Bette Davis's eyes...I mean mouth. Gar's rendition of it is terrible! The way Bette says it, I would never think to spell it any way but "What a dump." But that's not the point! The point is how is "What a dump!" a immortal words?! Granted, you're probably now thinking to yourself, "Well, how did X and Y and Z become oft-quoted movie lines?!" (where X and Y and Z are actual phrases from movies and not just letters. But I'm not psychic so how should I know what terrible oft-quoted movie lines you were thinking of? Mine would have been "Seven schools in seven states and the only different is my locker combination" or "William H. Bonny. You are not a god?" "Why don't you pull the trigger and find out?" or "Ziggy Piggy! Ziggy Piggy! Ziggy Piggy! Ziggy Piggy!") I suppose one can't help what phrases the zeitgeist picks up on. According to the YouTube video of Bette Davis, "What a dump" is Bette's famous bitchy line from that movie I'd never heard of. I guess I just haven't traveled in the right circles! Although I have heard the phrase "What a dump!" Has everybody in the world been quoting Bette Davis all this time and I just didn't know it?! Was this movie the first time that phrase was ever uttered?! To think I could have known all of this if I hadn't been distracted by Starfire's side-boob and — I'm fairly certain — one of her outer labia. To shut Gar up, Starfire admits that she doesn't remember any of them and then she punches Pantha in her vagina.

Starfire punching Pantha in the vagina is funnier than anything that Pantha has said in the last forty issues.

After punching Pantha in the vagina, Starfire knees Red Star in the balls for no reason. Unless the reason is that she's been wanting to do that for a long time and her pretend amnesia allows her this moment! I suppose I'd fake amnesia too to get away from being a Titan. I've been joking about seeing Starfire's outer labia but is this it? Is that one of those things?

Is my boner proof that it's her labia or is my boner proof that I'm a comic book reading virgin nerd?

I can't wait for everybody to message me telling me how that can't be her outer labia because that's not where it would be and anyway this photographic proof I'm sending you is what one looks like! Then I can actually them and say, "Well, you can't know that for sure! She's an alien and maybe her outer labia is fully engorged due to Pantha back-fucking her!" Also I'd really enjoy some of that photographic evidence!

This is not what I would do with those photographs.

Garfield turns into another monster because he can't do birds and rhinos anymore. He lies on top of Starfire and then reveals something that destroys every moment in DC canon where Garfield turned into a rhino to knock some hugely muscled bad guy on their ass. He tells Red Star, "Hey, I may be big and ugly but my mass doesn't change! I'm not as strong as she is!" Well fuck me! The whole concept of Beast Boy has been based on a huge lie! Or at least scientific principles that make the character utterly worthless. Why the fuck would he ever change into a huge beast if his mass doesn't change? Wouldn't he always change into something small and fast to be most effective?! This revelation is one of those moments where DC tries to make their universe more logical but only winds up fucking up the entire multiverse. Red Star and Changeling knock Starfire unconscious and then tie her up which probably isn't totally rapey at all, even if the artist draws it that way.

Yep. Everything is just fine here! Move along.

Meanwhile on Earth, Arsenal, Aqualad, and Flash consider a proposal from the United States government to get the Titans to work for them. They consider it over a couple waters at a local strip club named Ding Dong Daddy's." I mean, the comic book calls it a "retro club" but everybody either gets a private lap dance or laid. It's hard to tell what Marv Wolfman was going for with this scene. Proof that the young cool Titan men fuck? Proof that women are only to provide relief for men's sexual desires? Proof that Aqualad should maybe think twice before saying "Hey guys! We came together!" when women are throwing their vaginas at them?

How long does Aqualad think a lap dance takes?

Back in space while the reader was away, Red Star and Changeling have managed to put a gag on Starfire and tie her legs together. That makes things less rapey, right? If not, I'm sure Marv will improve the situation in a sensitive and professional manner!

Oh come on!

Starfire remembers everything while Changeling whines about how he didn't get to kiss Starfire while she was tied up and scared and beaten and suffering from amnesia. Poor kid! Maybe next time! After regaining her memory, Starfire says, "X'hal! That was dick I saw in South America!" and I snicker like a twelve year old. The first decision Starfire makes after regaining her memory is that she and Dick should get their marriage annulled, if it even took which I'm pretty sure it didn't. If you were a fan of reading the letters pages, whoever the letter answer person was constantly kept pointing out that they couldn't be married because the priest blew up before he could say they were man and wife. But now Wolfman provides more evidence like how no paper work was filed and nobody signed anything (although don't you sign the papers before the ceremony?) Anyway, they're not married and probably never will be if the last twenty five years of reading comic books has taught me anything!

Snicker!

Baby has an idea to use The Terraist's satellite as their new headquarters and the government is all, "Okay! But you have to work with us on a minimum number of yearly missions!" And Roy Harper is all, "That number is zero!" And the government is all, "Yes sir! What a deal! We will pay you a salary, give you the satellite, and get nothing in return! Let's shake on it!"

Who the fuck is wearing The Flash's costume?! First appearance of New 52 Wally West?

The epilogue reveals Raven needs to rape the Titans so that they'll all give birth to Trigon's children. So it should be a fun few final issues before either this comic book was cancelled or I finally recovered my sanity and simply stopped buying it. New Titans #112 Rating: B. It was all kinds of stupid but I enjoyed making fun of it!

#Teen Titans #New Titans #DC Comics #DC #Comic Book Review

[mantis-lizbian]

An aggressive reading of Warcraft

So I fell in love with the world of Warcraft thanks to Warcraft III. And perhaps one of the biggest parts of why I loved it so much was because, even then, it was a world. Arthas, and Jaina, and Thrall, and Tyrande were cool and all, sure, but I didn’t really connect to Warcraft through them. It wasn’t thanks to them that I won my battles. I connected to Warcraft through its people They may not have had names, but I still had fondness for my huntresses, and mortar teams, and grunts. No, not individually, that would just be insane. But collectively. As a group. These were Warcraft to me, not Illidan, or the Lich King, or Sylvanas. They were a part of it, and they certainly add to it, and I had affection for them, but largely as a part of this fantastical world, not in and of themselves. It’s because of how they relate to this world that I love them, not so much because of who they are in and of themselves.

When WoW came out, it was wonderful, because I got to step into this world myself, and become a part of it. I got to be one of those knights or raiders or mages or druids. I may have done great things, but never on my own. I was one of dozens fighting back the Redridge Gnolls. I was one of five who freed Silverpine from Arugal’s influence. I was one of forty who defeated Ragnaros. Intentional or not, the structure of the Warcraft games have always emphasized community effort and spat in the face of Great Man History. And on top of that, Azeroth’s Great Men constantly end up becoming its villains, reinforcing that message. Arthas wants to be the One to save Lordaeron and ends up destroying it. Illidan wants be the One to defeat the Legion, but becomes corrupted by it. Any time he actually manages to fight for good, it is when he relies on allies. Kael’thas wants to be the One to lead the high elves to salvation, but nearly turns them into ravenous slaves of the Legion. Garrosh wants to be the One to lead the Horde to glory, but leads to its implosion.

Great Men don’t exist in Azeroth.

Now, let me take a step back and explain that this is what we, in the literary criticism business, call an “aggressive reading”. I will bet money on the fact that no one at Blizzard intentionally set out to make this the theme of the Warcraft series. In fact, if may be permitted a touch of wild speculation, I suspect Metzen himself is likely to believe in Great Man Theory. Apologies if I’m mistaken on that, Chris. But authorial intent does not matter here. All that matters is what the text, itself, says.

Of course, some of you may already be trying to think of some counter-examples. Perhaps Thrall springs to mind. Fair enough, Thrall was a great man (orc). He led the orcs to the safety of Kalimdor, and founded Durotar, but the thing is that, first off, Thrall never really had much ambition. Founding Durotar is probably the most ambitious he gets, but that’s also just kind of the natural next step. I mean, what was he supposed to do? People can do great things, but great things are never done alone. In founding Durotar, Thrall has the help of the tauren, trolls, and even Jaina. Not to mention that it’s really the people who found the nation, and really Thrall just gets credit because they looked to him as their leader. It’s much easier to credit a single person for doing something than it is thousands. Still, it’s more accurate to say “the orcs founded Durotar” than to say “Thrall founded Durotar”. Now, I’d also like to point to the one time when Thrall actually does get closest to being the One person to do something: Cataclysm. But in doing so, I’d also like to point to the community’s feelings about this at the time. Thrall was not a popular character while he was hogging the limelight and getting all the credit.

You may also be tempted to point to your player character. They do a bunch of great stuff. But… most of what you do is quests and instances. Instances are, obviously, inherently a team effort. No one person gets any more credit than anyone else for slaying VanCleef or Yogg-Saron. Even canonically, every instance boss is credited as having been slain by “a group of adventurers”. And as for quests, the majority of quests are things that many people could canonically do concurrently without a need for further explanation, like clearing troggs out of a mine, or gathering materials for a team of engineers. Those quests which are an exception typically get credited canonically as having been performed by a group, like with dungeons, even if they aren’t actually group quests (though, notably, many once were before Cataclysm). Even in the more modern successors to these quests, the completion of the quest is usually thanks to the quest giver just as much as to the player. Even if they aren’t participating in the activity themselves, the quest giver tells you what needs to be done, how to do it, and sometimes gives you the tools needed to get it done. Without the quest giver, your character wouldn’t be able to complete the quest any more than the quest giver could without you (ignoring the restrictions and side effects of this being a game, of course; we’re talking in-universe).

Even when the player character gets more singular attention like in WoD and Legion, the Garrison and Class Hall have many people going about working on things that are needed to keep things running, even if they’re less exciting than adventures. You may be a catalyst, but you aren’t the sole driving force behind anything.

But then comes BfA. And suddenly… Great Man History everywhere! Sylvanas wants to execute a nonsensical attack on Teldrassil. So of course no one questions her, because Great Man History. It’s not like we’ve ever had other leaders push back against decisions they disagree with. Rank-and-file soldiers showing doubt? That’s not a thing that happens! In Northrend. During the Third War. Perhaps in a mission named after that very act. Sylvanas is the Warchief, so of course everyone’s going to follow her blindly. Even if the last Warchief had a completely different outlook. And the one before that was overthrown for pretty much doing this exact same thing. Even though he was more widely trusted by the members of the Horde than the current one.

I mean, I could also talk about how what is probably Blizzard’s most nuanced character ever (which admittedly isn’t a terribly high bar…) is getting every scrap of that nuance just thrown out the window, but plenty have people have already said so much on that topic… What really frustrates me - and what’s risking me losing all interest from here on out, not just until things blow over - is that… it’s the themes of the entire world. Not just the planet, but the setting. That are at risk, here. And that’s not something that’s as easy to recover from.

At the very least, ever since Warcraft III, contrary to its name, the Warcraft series has been almost anvilicious with its themes of cooperation and reconciliation. Archimonde could only be defeated because the orcs, humans, and night elves set aside their differences and worked together. The Horde and Alliance worked together against the qiraji as the Might of Kalimdor. The Scryers and Aldor unite as the Shattered Sun Offensive against Kael’thas. The Ashen Verdict. The Avengers of Hyjal and the Earthen Ring. The Siege of Orgrimmar. In addition to the customary-at-this-point Horde/Alliance… alliance, even Garrosh and Yrel fought side by side against Archimonde. And everyone hops on the Vindicaar together to take the fight to Argus.

So after all this, when the world itself has been smacking the Horde’s and Alliance’s heads together like unruly school children, why in fel should I be expected to take such a nonsensical status quo reset lying down? What am I supposed to make of the fact that Vol’jin, the Horde’s Warchief most dedicated to peace, second only to Thrall, chose Sylvanas? Stepping outside the narrative, why should I be content when we’ve been here before and the story offers literally nothing new? Why should I continue to have faith that engaging writing will be on its way when every actually interesting plot hook got unceremoniously dropped in favour of such a ridiculous war?

I ask because I love Warcraft. I truly, deeply love it. You don’t put this much thought and critical analysis into something you don’t love to perhaps a slightly unreasonable degree. And I don’t want to lose it.

#warcraft #long post #literary analysis

[aion-rsa]

Please Don’t Skip the Therapy Scenes on The Sopranos

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains some spoilers for the six-season run of The Sopranos.

Classic HBO series The Sopranos is now old enough to find new fans who weren’t even alive when it originally aired. Zoomers, or kids born in the late 1990s and early 2000s are increasingly intrigued with the iconic drama for many of the same reasons folks were wrapped up in it back when it premiered in 1999. The show depicts violence in a very raw and realistic manner and shows a faction of organized crime that feels like a time capsule of a period that is now well in the past, while also touching upon a general sense of nihilism that modern viewers can appreciate.

Not coincidentally, The Sopranos also was one of the first programs to dig into human psychology via therapy on a level that wasn’t corny or cartoonish (nobody is lying on a couch in an office with a doctor taking notes in a pamphlet during the session here). The subjects of mental health and the mafia don’t exactly go hand-in-hand, and the shorter attention spans of the modern TV viewer have led to a lack of appreciation for the former topic. 

Caught up in the excitement of the dark, violent New Jersey underbelly, some newer fans report getting bored by Tony Soprano’s (James Gandolfini) psychotherapy appointments with Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). Reddit threads are littered with discussions on the odd habit of completely skipping over these scenes throughout the series:

I’m watching for the first time and am on season 2 atm. I just find the scenes with Jennifer Melfi the psychiatrist totally irrelevant and annoying, to the point where I have skipped every scene with her in it. The scenes just feel like a recap, where she explains obvious things that just happened, as if the audience is so dumb we cannot keep up with what is going on in the show.

Other viewers completely understood what the objective of the sessions was, but found it redundant after the first few seasons:

For the first 2 or 3 seasons, I enjoyed the psychiatrist scenes. But after a while I feel they are more of a nuisance and not worth watching. I know it’s a way for the audience to peek into what Tony is thinking, but I don’t find it being worth it.

This is where the show runs the risk of losing an audience that is used to watching media that moves at lightning speed. TikToks, YouTube videos, and cliffhanger culture has zapped the brains of the younger generation to the point that it can be hard to revel in the minutiae of a character’s psychology. They know Tony Soprano is interesting, but they don’t want to figure out why they find him as such. 

The Sopranos proved that it was viable to put a murderous criminal in the protagonist role, show him execute his victims, and then go home to his wife and kids like any other American man of the 2000s would. Tony Soprano added obsessive infidelity, mommy issues, sexism, homophobia, and toxic masculinity to his list of deplorable traits, yet the audience still sympathized with him and wanted to understand where he was coming from. 

A lot of the audience’s sympathy for Tony can be attributed to his therapy sessions with Dr. Melfi. As has been famously discussed for the last two decades, the show was one of the first to depict a patriarchal man in a position vulnerable enough to seek out professional mental health advice. And those who skip these scenes are skipping one of TV’s best ever storytelling devices.

Tony starts visiting Dr. Melfi in the pilot after experiencing a panic attack while watching a family of ducks flying away from his backyard pool. He continues to visit Dr. Melfi throughout the series as the panic attacks recur and he looks for answers to all of the other predicaments and depressions that overwhelm his inner psyche. He also spills his guts on many matters that painted him in a bad light, but occasionally we get to see his explanations for those inadequacies.

One of the show’s big goals is to demystify and demythologize these mobsters, specifically Tony, depicting them as real people who have personality quirks, idiosyncrasies, and who endure emotional hardships. The whole thing can get very dense because there are multiple layers and subtexts exposed to the audience within a short period of time. Seeing Tony talk about what it all means to him makes it so much easier to contemplate what it means to us. 

There is a larger literary debate that extends out much further than just this show: if an author puts something in a text with a specific intent, but the reader gleans something in juxtaposition to that original conversation, is our understanding of the work valid? Is there room for analysis that contrasts with what the artist put out into the world? Without Dr. Melfi, creator David Chase’s work is rife with confusion and laden with concepts that can go awry if absorbed by the less thoughtful TV viewer. She is our Tony Soprano for Dummies handbook; she is the mediator between us and the complex anti-hero on the screen. Tony is relatively the same person at the beginning and end of his therapy, but the treatment is required viewing for us to understand why he performs the actions he does outside of the doctor’s office. 

Jennifer Melfi is her own fully formed character herself though, with thoughts, emotions, and opinions on the psychoanalytical treatment she is giving; this is a huge reason why we are able to live vicariously through her. She seeks guidance from her own therapist, Elliot (Peter Bogdanovich) about this criminal client, and in a way is asking the follow-up questions that we still want to know after listening to Tony. 

Through it all Melfi is capable of maintaining her own moral compass, passing up the opportunity to use Tony’s violent proclivities to her advantage when she is sexually assaulted in the third season and avoiding the temptation of sexual advances from him in the fifth season. Because she is so grounded, she serves as an effective conduit between us and Tony. If she were compromised in any way, she would run the risk of influencing or enabling Tony’s despicable behaviors more. 

If you skip over the therapy scenes, you are missing out on what Tony claims he feels about a lot of the issues that happen in his personal and professional life (his emotions can often cloud the reality of his situation, though.) He wears his emotions on his sleeve a lot more when in the chair than he does in the Bada Bing or sitting with Carmela, Meadow, and A.J. at the dinner table. The main reason for this is because those three people shape his outlook on life a tremendous amount, along with his mother, Livia, and Uncle Junior. His relationship with those five delves into a deeper discussion on how traditional masculinity connects with his Italian heritage and Catholic values. 

Melfi helps Tony realize that his mother’s cold child-rearing methods led to confidence issues and doubt over what it means to “be a man” (this is one of the only signs of progress he ever makes in the show). This epiphany becomes a crutch that Tony leans on heavily when compartmentalizing the differences between how his life turned out and the heavy contrast to his own son’s future. 

His narcissism creates a void for A.J., who struggles with suicidal thoughts and severe depression when he can’t live up to the depiction of masculinity that Tony exudes. Tony tells Melfi that A.J. is weak and shameful, an admittance that would never come from his mouth when around his family. With Dr. Melfi, we get these fascinating diatribes on the outdated tropes that shape Tony’s own view of himself as a Gary Cooper-esque man in American society. Fast-forwarding is literally skipping past Tony’s characterization. 

Additionally, a social issue comes into relevance in the first half of season 6 when one of Tony’s main capos is outed as gay. The majority of the mafia is made up of toxic men with incredibly fragile makeups of masculinity and they immediately want him whacked, or at least eliminated from the group in some way. Tony reveals to Melfi that he doesn’t share all of his associates’ homophobic tendencies, instead putting credence into what a valuable earner his capo is for the DiMeo family. While he’s still not capable of harboring evolved social values outside of the context of the business, he’s revealed as someone who has put thought into what is right and wrong. He’s a bad person, but he’s three-dimensional. Not every layer is evil. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

That is why you are truly missing out on who Tony Soprano is if you skip his sessions in therapy. You will only get to see the violence, the hateful rhetoric, the devolved sexism, and the illegal day-to-day activities that make up a typical mobster. With psychiatry, you get to engage in the vibrant cesspool of personalities that create Tony Soprano, the legendary anti-hero archetype of TV lore.

The post Please Don’t Skip the Therapy Scenes on The Sopranos appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3Avi4aV

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[libraryresources]

Wikispaces: Youth Services Librarianship - Booktalking

[Wikispaces is closing down over the course of 2018. It’s not clear if the information collected there will be archived in any way, so I’m copying pages here for safekeeping! Hopefully I can make the copies interlinked the way the originals are, but it will take time. c: Be advised: Some links may lead to deleted or inactive webpages.]

Booktalking

(Last revision: Nov 26, 2013)

According to The Institute of Museum and Library Services "A booktalk is a commercial designed to get someone to read a book. It is a way of 'selling' your merchandise, a performance to get the audience excited about your book." Booktalks are incredibly valuable for both patrons and librarians. They motivate readers to engage in material they may not have originally been interested in. Booktalks may be given by librarians, teachers, and fellow readers to get a reader motivated to read material.

Booktalks:

increase circulation

increase communication between patrons and library staff

promotes the collection

increase audiences awareness of library

expose children to new vocabulary

builds relationships among stakeholders

provide outreach for community groups

Evidence-based Booktalking

In his 1992 dissertation, David Terrence Nollen researched the effects of booktalks on the attitudes and behaviors of 53 fourth grade students over and eighteen-week period. In his research Nollen found that there was no significant impact of booktalks on the perceptions students hold about reading, however he does report a large jump in book circulation following the talks. Circulation after the booktalk study was a total of 79 titles checked out, compared to the 20 titles in the same time period before. There was no gender difference in either attitude or behavior, with neither holding a changed attitude but both increasing the number of books checked out post-booktalk. This increase was temporary. There appears to be a rather lengthy gap between this dissertation and other studies about booktalking that involves quantitative methods alongside qualitative.

Studies that have been published in the past decade show clear correlations between increased reading activity in classrooms and libraries and booktalks. A more recent thesis, submitted by Natalie E. Clower in 2010, focuses on the effects of booktalks given to second graders on the circulation of award winning titles. Titles were chosen using two criteria; the first was that it be an award winning book and the second being that it had low circulation. Clower found that sixty-eight percent of the students who heard booktalks immediately sought copies of one or more of the titles featured. Circulation records were collected during the three weeks after the booktalks, and found a statistically significant increase in circulation for all of the titles from the talk.

In 2011 Dr. Cheryl Wozniak, a teacher and reading specialist, conducted a brief six-week qualitative program in hopes of rehabilitating some dated techniques she was witnessing in reading intervention classrooms. Wozniak created syllabi for two classrooms to implement during their language arts block, with a special focus on booktalks and interactive learning. While she did not collect quantitative data, Dr. Wozniak observed a noticeable increase in student participation during lessons that began with booktalks, as well as better attitude overall about reading.

The vast majority of literature about booktalking use anecdotal evidence much like the 2006 article by J. Marin Younker from the Seattle Public Library. Younker claimed that he has seen circulation statistics up 600 percent for adolescents after booktalks were presented in local classrooms. Wealth of material similar to this article about the effectiveness of booktalks exists among both librarians and teachers.

Planning Your Book talk

It is important to plan your booktalk. Booktalks can be rooted within many topics, including theme, developmentally appropriate material, genre, author and calendar year. It is vital that as the "book talker" you are enthusiastic. In addition to planning your talk around an idea, it is good to consider the following when planning.

Know your audience. Understanding your audience's reading interests, personal interests, and attention spans, and curricular goals is imperative when planning your presentation.

Like the books you are booktalking. Your audience can tell authenticity- enjoy what you are selling!

Think accessibility. Select books for your talk that are available in multiple copies in possible or provide children additional avenues to access the presented book. If you do not have many copies of a particular title, provide books by the same author or books similar in theme, literary style, etc. You may want to create a display in the library so that the audience finds the booktalking selection when they visit.

Always prepare more than you will need. Have a script available- but do not memorize it. Booktalks are best when candid and interactive.

Don't try to "elevate" their tastes. Include some titles that you know are super popular (e.g. Captain Underpants for young kids; Steven King for young adults). This will give you credibility, thus making the group more likely to pay attention.

Start strong and end strong. You may find it best to begin with a known author.

Accept that a booktalk program is a performance and learn how best to influence the audience.

Variety is key. Since you may be covering over 15 books in one shot, vary the types of books you present as well as the lengths and styles of the booktalks. If you present a "dark" title, follow it up with a light or funny one. Be sure to include nonfiction as well as fiction. Some people like to use themes, but if you do that, make sure it is very broad (e.g. "survival" and then use wilderness, growing up, dysfunctional families, etc. or "food", and have that be the entrée into a number of stories)

Remember to repeat the title. Your audience will forget the name of the book unless you repeat it and hand out a booklist or bookmark.

Remember why you're there. Don't just sell books, sell reading and sell the library too. Talk about new resources, upcoming programs, etc.

Have a system ready so listeners can check out books on the spot.

Keep records of the books used and make notes about what worked and what did not.

Booktalking with Technology

Using technological tools can be an engaging way for patrons to access your book talks. Technology based book talks are easy to make and easy to access. You can create the booktalk or request your patrons submit booktalks as well. Digital booktalks reach many different kinds of learners and are relevant to children who interact with technology every day. Once you have created a booktalk using Web 2.0 tools, anyone can access your post via the Web.

Listed are free softwares and online tools to use when creating book talks.

iMovie- easy to use software available on Macs

Windows Movie Maker- easy to use software on PCs

PowerPoint- Office slideshow

Prezi - cloudbased presentation software

Animoto - online video maker using photos, video clips, and audio

GoAnimate - animated videos

Digital Booktalks vs. Digital Book Trailers

Digital Booktalks use multimedia to review and "sell" a book. They are accessible online and allow patrons access any time. Digital booktalks are also an excellent way to reach patrons with many different learning styles and reluctant readers.

Digital booktalks tend to be a discussion or analysis of what worked or was engaging in the text. They may incorporate supplemental visual and audio to enhance the talk, or could simply be taped presentation of an actual booktalk. Booktalks will often discuss the "highs" and "lows" of the book, examine literary elements (plot review, character analysis, setting, etc.) providing a review, read alikes, and " if you like this..." statements. These ideas examined in digital booktalks are similar to what would be presented in a traditional booktalk. According to Dr. Robert Kenny, Florida Gulf Coast University and digitalbooktalk.com, "Digital Booktalk expands {the} literary booktalk model by providing children with interactive visuals of the books that they used to only read. Many children are reluctant to read and would rather watch a movie made from books. It is our belief that you can use that reality as an educational advantage."

Booktalk "One and Only Ivan"

Digital Book Trailers are similar to Booktalks in that they are used to entice readers. Book Trailers will "show" the audience exciting points of a text, similar to a movie trailer. Book trailers will often preview the most exciting sections of the book. More and more often, book trailers are created by publishing houses in hopes of engaging readers. Kenny states, "While these trailers may serve well their commercial purpose, they often do not always accomplish the educational goal of creating avid readers...Drs. Kenny and Gunter hypothesize that, if a student experiences a 2-minute book trailer done in the style of a motion picture, they will be better able to find a book that matches their interests, and will expand their reading to an ever-widening range. Furthermore, they believe that the book trailer production process is a fun and effective literacy pedagogy for today’s technologically advanced youth."

Book Trailer "One and Only Ivan"

Booktalking for the 'eens

While booktalks can prove effective for inspiring reading in people of all ages, this section will focus on booktalking to young persons at the middle school through high school levels ("'tweens" and "teens," respectively). With increased social and school schedules alongside pressure to look "cool" so as to impress their peers, young adults in particular stand to benefit from an engaging approach to reading promotion.

Talking the Talk

"As a booktalker, your mission is nothing less than to set teen brains on fire for books" (Mahood, 2006, 171).

Booktalking, when done well, is an performance art that offers tantalizing glimpses into selected stories, giving the audience just enough information that they want to know what happens-- and will read the books to find out. It reaches out to bookworms and reluctant readers alike, demonstrating all that reading can offer: "excitement, wonder, heartbreak, hilarity, and insight" (Mahood, 2006, 172).

So how do you create and execute an effective booktalk? This multi-step process can seem intimidating, but it can also be a lot of fun. Creating a booktalk calls for creative thinking, a passion for connecting young people with books, and active engagement with YA literature (a professional way of saying you get to read a lot of YA novels). Here are some tips to get you started.

Meet Your Material

Pick a Genre, Any Genre - Books can be of any genre, whether mystery or romance, science fiction or non-fiction, horror or humor. Selected books should feature themes relatable to young adults that you can describe with excitement and conviction.

Know Thyself - It's best to booktalk titles you have read and enjoyed. Teens have an amazing ability to spot phoniness, so don't fake it-- either the reading or the enjoyment. If you didn't enjoy a particular book but know that it has merits worth sharing, be honest and explain why you didn't like it yet you think your audience might.

Know Thy Audience - Maybe your bookish, brooding cousin Sasha loved Crime and Punishment, but unless you're speaking to a room of aspiring Russian Literature scholars or future theologians, you might want to stick to titles with broader appeal. Think Alice in Zombieland or 12 Things To Do Before You Crash and Burn. 

Represent - make sure the titles you're talking represent people within your audience. "Guy" books and "girl" books should both be featured, as should stories with multicultural characters and varied groups of protagonists to whom teens might recognize and relate: musicians and meatheads, news-makers and newspaper editors, geeks and gleeks. [Transcriber note: Books that blur these boundaries and appeal to multiple “types” are always a plus! In general, you’re likely to reach more readers when you don’t describe a book as “for” a certain person or gender.]

What's New, What's Hot - Stay tuned in to the latest YA titles. Trade publications (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, School Library Journal, etc.) as well as broader media, such as the New York Times Bestseller List offer looks at what's popular. When in doubt, plug "latest teen books" into your search engine of choice.

Cheers and Jeers - Journals and websites devoted to librarianship and/or children's and young adult literature contain reviews that can help guide your selection. Keep in mind, though, that such reviews are generally written by adults for adults. Try exploring Amazon.com and/or websites dedicated to YA literature, as teens may have posted their own opinions on books you are considering. 

Put the Pieces Together

Leave a Note - Scribble down thoughts as you read through your selected titles. What scenes, characters, or ideas grab you? Be sure to flag or write down specific pages that will shape your talk.

Tone Up - Know that the how of your talk is just as important as the what: "It is so important not to allow your talk to sound like a list of books to read; instead it should sound like a conversation or announcements of what is going on in the news world of teenagers, like gossip, music videos, or movie trailers" (Bromann, 2001, 54).

Work on your Hook Shot - As you read and for days, weeks, or even a year after, pay attention to your thought process on the material. Sometimes an idea for a hook -- a grab-their-attention move -- comes easily, and other times it takes a while to make the connections necessary for a compelling way into a book. Be patient with yourself and the material if you can. If you absolutely must come up with something right away, consider discussing the book with a friend or colleague or reading reviews (particularly by teens) to discover what caught the attention of other readers.

Practice Makes Perfect - Write down your talk, either in detail or in outline or bullet form, then practice. And practice some more. Stop shy of sounding rehearsed, but feel confident that you know the major points of what you're going to say and the way in which you'll say it. You're essentially telling a story about a story; what are some qualities of stories you enjoy hearing?

Mix Your Methods

In Booktalking That Works, YA librarian and seasoned booktalker Jennifer Bromann advises varying your approaches when discussing different books in a booktalk session. By mixing the methods she has identified as particularly successful (below, from Bromann, 2001, 63-69), "your talks will be more interesting and you will reach more members of the audience" (Bromann, 2001, 63).

Setting a Scene - In this approach, you describe a particular moment (or series of moments) from a selected book. The chosen scene should grab the audience's attention and get them thinking. You want to use these plot elements to intrigue teens, so don't offer closure.

Asking a Question - This method is useful for getting teens thinking and participating. Opinion and casually asked rhetorical questions are good-- the point is for teens to feel involved without being put on the spot or quizzed.

Drawing Connections - Here, Bromann suggests, you might hook teens by correlating current issues or trends or common elements of teenage existence (whether news or pop culture or curfew) with the plot of a book.

Focusing on a Character - Pick a remarkable individual (or a character so unremarkable he's remarkable) from the book at hand, using action statements to convey that person's uniqueness. Bromann also recommends comparing such a character to someone the audience may recognize or relate to.

Setting the Mood - Use your vocal and physical presence to convey the feel of a story. Adjust tone, pacing, and volume to both engage your audience and underscore the strengths of a book.

Hinting at the Plot - While your booktalk should not simply summarize a story's plot, with this approach you

Read Aloud - Bromann advises that this method should be used sparingly, and only when the author's message and talents cannot come across successfully any other way.

Above All... - Booktalks can employ a range of styles, from performance-driven to highly conversational-- a highly effective booktalk might use both ends of the spectrum during the discussion of multiple books. 'Tweens may be more open to theatricality, but don't over do it, lest they "think they are being treated like little kids" (Mahood, 2006, 122). With teens it is important to not appear too earnest or instructive; follow their lead and even seem dismissive of reading if necessary, for, as Bromann repeatedly notes, "teens are often likely to do what they are told not to do" (Bromann, 2001, 55). [Transcriber note: If you’re flat-out dismissive of reading, many teens will assume they don’t have to bother. Go for “encouraging/supportive, but hands-off.”]

Give Them a Place to Go

Once you've talked and tantalized, you have to let your audience know where they can find the books you discussed. This is an ideal time to talk about the library and what it can offer teens in the way of books and other media as well as programming. Librarian Kristine Mahood intersperses information about the library, including how to obtain a library card and an overview of teen programming, with her discussions of different books (Anderson, 124). This approach provides young audiences with factual information while they are still on the emotional journey of the booktalk-- that is, while they are still with you in the moment and curious how these books end.

Booktalking Resources

General Booktalk websites

Peggy Sharpe- An educator's website about books

Nancy Keane Booktalks

Children's Literature Comprehensive Database

Vermont Department of Libraries How to Booktalk

Teen focused

Teenreads

Goodreads

YALSA's Top Ten

Abby the Librarian

Booktalking Colorado

Booktalking Wisdom from Vermont

Booktalks-- Quick and Simple

Technology sites

BookWink

Digital Booktalk

Storytube

Read up

Recommend Resources from ALA

Serving Young Teens and 'Tweens

Booktalking that Works

A Passion for Print

Booktalking with Teens

Teen Talkback with Interactive Booktalks!

Listen In

Be a Better Booktalker Podcast

Just One More Book!!

Guardian children's books podcast

References

Bromann, Jennifer. Booktalking that works. Chicago: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2001.

Clower, N. E. (2010). Using booktalks to increase the circulation of award-winning literature. (Order No. 1485871, University of Central Missouri). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, , 53. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/750959296?accountid=14553. (750959296).

Crowther, Eleanor. "BookTalks/Read Alouds, Special Programs, and Service Projects To Encourage Middle School Student Participation in the Library." (1993).

Gunter, Glenda A. "Digital Booktalk: Creating A Community Of Avid Readers, One Video At A Time." Computers In The Schools 29.1-2 (2012): 135-156.

Mahood, Kristine. I want to read that book!: Booktalking to tweens and younger teens. In Sheila B. Anderson (Ed.),

Serving Young Teens and 'Tweens (pp. 111-145). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

Mahood, Kristine. A passion for print. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

Nollen, Terrence David. The effect of booktalks on the development of reading attitudes and the promotion of individual reading choices. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Nebraska - Lincoln, United States – Nebraska, 1992. Retrieved from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text database. (Publication No. AAT 9225488).

Wozniak, Cheryl L. "Reading and Talking about Books: A Critical Foundation for Intervention." Voices from the Middle 19.2 (2011): 17-21.

Valenza, Joyce. (2007, August. Booktalking 2.0 (2.0). School Library Journal. Web.

[Transcriber: Camilla Y-B]

#Professional Development #booktalk #wikispaces #library

[msbrittonsblog]

Helpful Resources: Teacher Edition

They always tell you never to start anything with a quote, so instead, I’ll start with the idea that every single day, you always learn something new, even when something doesn't match exactly what you wanted, you can actually learn quite a bit from it. Or, if you don’t receive as much as you were looking for, sometimes less is better. 

After receiving two out of three emails back from my old high school teachers, I was able to look into some of the resources that they gave to me in preparation for becoming a teacher. Some I already was very familiar with such as Kahoot and Quizlet, but I challenged myself to find something new about them that I never once knew before. Some resources were Latin oriented because my old Latin teachers still want me to pursue a career involving Latin as I took it for four years in high school, and I was also a Teacher's Aide for my last two years. Even though they were Latin specific, I tried to see if I could spin it for my concentration, which I will later discuss. I also wanted to look into a book called “Boy’s Life” by Robert R. McCammon, which was recommended to me by my practicum mentor teacher, Mr. Smith. He swears by this book and thinks it is the best book to teach your students, and that it is definitely underappreciated as a resource to use in the classroom as it is his favorite book. Mr. Smith shared with me his story about encountering this book, and I thought it was only fair to dedicate some of my time in order to look into it so maybe one day I can teach it to my students. 

The first resource I started looking into was one given to me by D-Whit, also known as Ms. Whitmore, my old advisor, who was also a Latin teacher. This was a website called “Maine Classics,” where a group of Latin teachers and classics professors run a site dedicated to “spreading the teaching of the classics in Maine.” At first, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to use a lot of the resources found on this site, but I then came across a newsletter called “Clamor.” Each newsletter discusses upcoming events, paraphrases what happened at recent conferences, and also in the March 2018 issue, they stated the top essays that won the recent competition based on a given prompt. The prompt stated was, “to compose a writing based on a quote from Lucretius and how he might respond to a recent report from NASA about three planets 39 light years away that may contain life.” This is where my interest was sparked. Yes, I wasn’t going to be a Latin teacher any time soon, but Latin and English have a wonderful relationship, and the prompt stated in this newsletter was quite engaging and innovative. I think Latin interests a lot of students in school, whether they want to take it or not because the culture is so interesting, and the fact that Latin is referred to as the “dead language,” really peaks people's interests. This site, because it is created by professionals in Latin and the classics, the information provided is very relevant to the subject. I think that as an English concentration, I could spin a lot of Latin prompts into one for English, as long as the Latin itself isn’t too complicated, and as long as I have a translation ready. I could also do prompts similar to this based on the characters of the book I plan on teaching, such as “How would Dr. Frankenstein react towards the recent news outbreak about the Corona Virus?” The prompt is relevant to recent events, and the students must really understand the character and their development throughout the story in order to provide their response. I think that I personally am going to keep track of these newsletters because I feel that doing lessons that cross into other subjects may potentially increase engagement and interest in students. 

The other resources I have looked into were Kahoot and Quizlet. I have used both of these resources before and thought they were both very successful in how they were used. Kahoot, a lot of the time has been used as a fun way to refresh students’ minds on a certain topic being taught. The winner can also be given a prize i.e. the satisfaction of winning, some cool stickers, etc. I did learn that Kahoot can be played at home as they have premade vocabulary sets for many different subjects (English, history, math, science, etc.) as well. Another cool thing about Kahoot is that they have accessibility options that allow those who are “text-to-speech technology users, Braille users, and other users with sensory, cognitive, or other disabilities,” to have the opportunity to use Kahoot and have all the options easily available to them. 

Similar to Kahoot, Quizlet also has premade flashcard sets. This site is used “To help students (and their teachers) practice and master whatever they are learning. Quizlet provides engaging, customizable activities with contributions from people everywhere.” I personally have used this site previously, and it is able to be accessed via an app on your phone (iPad, tablet, etc.) and also your laptop/desktop. I think this is a great option for at-home preparation for any type of memorization. It creates flashcards and offers different games/activities as well such as “learn”, where they increase levels with multiple choice and writing definitions; “write”, where you write definitions that fit the word or vice versa; “spell”, where Quizlet speaks the word/definition out loud and you have to type what you hear; “test”, where they create a mock test that you can choose what sections you would like, whether that be multiple-choice, matching, and/or writing definitions; “match”, a game where you match the word/definition to the correct one; and then the final game being “gravity”, a timed game where you have to drag the correct word to fit the correct definition listed below. I think this respects the multiple different learning types that students and even teachers have because they aren’t stuck using the standard flashcards. Quizlet provides options. And, allowing your students that option to find what best learning strategy works best for them, will help them not only in the future but also in your classroom. 

For my final resource, I looked in the book “Boy’s Life” by Robert R. McCammon like discussed at the beginning of my blog post. My mentor teacher swore by this text, and looking into it (really only reading the first chapter, prologue, and summary so far), I definitely agree. Just reading the book description, I was hooked. Being a huge nerd for books about murder and the supernatural, this book has it all as it is about a boy and his father who see something no one should have seen, and now they are haunted by the traumatic sight until they find out the secrets their town has within. Through reading this book you get to investigate the mysterious murder along with the characters of the novel and “learn more about the meaning of both life and death.” Seen in the description, the opportunities for lessons on symbolism alone seem to be endless as a “green feather” is brought up due to it “leading [the boy] deeper into the mystery.” So far, this description has hooked at least one reader, two if you count Mr. Smith. This book’s genre (murder mystery and supernatural fiction) also seems to be popular amongst the age demographic seen in high school. I personally have not seen many books in this genre taught in English classes because I have really only learned from classic literature myself. Even though the supernatural aspects of the novel may not be real, as a reader, you can still learn a lot from the author’s choices. You can connect supernatural themes into something seen in today’s time if you analyze deep enough. And, if I were to teach this novel, I could turn this lesson into one focusing on reading comprehension and literary analysis in order to have students make connections to plots that may not seem relevant to real-life to something that is. Students are creative, and sometimes it takes something outside of the box to lure in students’ interests. This creativity, I think, could shine with the proper outlines and objectives, especially if you use materials that possibly no teacher has ever been willing to teach before because it is outside of the set curriculum/norm. 

The variety of teaching opportunities that this novel provides is quite large. The first chapter itself practically uses a simile or metaphor every paragraph as the main character really likes to describe things through comparison. The time that this book is set in is also 1964, which was around the time of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. This opens up the chance to collaborate with your colleagues in the social studies concentration because you could do a lesson together (time period recaps, research project, connecting common themes from the book to current/past events, etc.). So far, I am really hooked by the book and I am very interested in reading the whole thing in order to see what I can do with it in the future. I already have many ideas, and this is just from reading the first chapter! 

Sometimes something that may not seem as useful as another thing, it truly is if you dig a little deeper. This connects to all the resources I have received so far from my old high school teachers and now my current mentor teacher. I am continuously learning from my fellow colleagues and mentors, and I do not think that this will ever stop. To conclude this long discussion of teaching resources, I would like to say that each resource has provided me with a helpful tool/tidbit that I will someday be able to use in my own classroom. Whether that be a Kahoot filled with literay terms or quotes, a Quizlet containing a unit/lesson’s taught vocabulary, a newsletter that gives me an idea for a writing prompt, or a book that can have any type of literary/reading analysis learning objectives I can think of. Anything can have at least one take away. 

All the love, 

Ms. Kellsie Britton 

#kahoot #quizlet #maineclassics #boy'slife #robert mccammon #practicum #threewiseteachers #helpful resources

[everythingsallwrite]

prompts xx

{ATTRIBUTED TO BERNADETTE MAYER}

Bernadette Mayer's List of Journal Ideas:

Journals of: * dreams * food * finances * writing ideas * love * ideas for architects * city design ideas * beautiful and/or ugly sights * a history of one's own writing life, written daily * reading/music/art, etc. encountered each day * rooms * elaborations on weather * people one sees-description * subway, bus, car or other trips (e.g., the same bus trip written about every day) * pleasures and/or pain * life's everyday machinery: phones, stoves, computers, etc. * answering machine messages * round or rectangular things, other shapes * color * light * daily changes, e.g., a journal of one's desk, table, etc. * the body and its parts * clocks/time-keeping * tenant-landlord situations * telephone calls (taped?) * skies * dangers * mail * sounds * coincidences & connections * times of solitude

Other journal ideas: * Write once a day in minute detail about one thing * Write every day at the same time, e.g. lunch poems, waking ideas, etc. * Write minimally: one line or sentence per day * Create a collaborative journal: musical notation and poetry; two writers alternating days; two writing about the same subject each day, etc. * Instead of using a book, write on paper and put it up on the wall (public journal). * and so on ...

Bernadette Mayer's Writing Experiments * Pick a word or phrase at random, let mind play freely around it until a few ideas have come up, then seize on one and begin to write. Try this with a non- connotative word, like "so" etc. * Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a piece of writing: eliminate all adjectives from a poem of your own, or take out all words beginning with 's' in Shakespeare's sonnets. * Rewrite someone else's writing. Experiment with theft and plagiarism. * Systematically derange the language: write a work consisting only of prepositional phrases, or, add a gerund to every line of an already existing work. * Get a group of words, either randomly selected or thought up, then form these words (only) into a piece of writing-whatever the words allow. Let them demand their own form, or, use some words in a predetermined way. Design words. * Eliminate material systematically from a piece of your own writing until it is "ultimately" reduced, or, read or write it backwards, line by line or word by word. Read a novel backwards. * Using phrases relating to one subject or idea, write about another, pushing metaphor and simile as far as you can. For example, use science terms to write about childhood or philosophic language to describe a shirt. * Take an idea, anything that interests you, or an object, then spend a few days looking and noticing, perhaps making notes on what comes up about that idea, or, try to create a situation or surrounding where everything that happens is in relation. * Construct a poem as if the words were three-dimensional objects to be handled in space. Print them on large cards or bricks if necessary. * Write as you think, as close as you can come to this, that is, put pen to paper and don't stop. Experiment writing fast and writing slow. * Attempt tape recorder work, that is, recording without a text, perhaps at specific times. * Make notes on what happens or occurs to you for a limited amount of time, then make something of it in writing. * Get someone to write for you, pretending they are you. * Write in a strict form, or, transform prose into a poetic form. * Write a poem that reflects another poem, as in a mirror. * Read or write a story or myth, then put it aside and, trying to remember it, write it five or ten times at intervals from memory. Or, make a work out of continuously saying, in a column or list, one sentence or line, over and over in different ways, until you get it "right." * Make a pattern of repetitions. * Take an already written work of your own and insert, at random or by choice, a paragraph or section from, for example, a psychology book or a seed catalogue. Then study the possibilities of rearranging this work or rewriting the "source." * Experiment with writing in every person and tense every day. * Explore the possibilities of lists, puzzles, riddles, dictionaries, almanacs, etc. Consult the thesaurus where categories for the word "word" include: word as news, word as message, word as information, word as story, word as order or command, word as vocable, word as instruction, promise, vow, contract. * Write what cannot be written; for example, compose an index. * The possibilities of synesthesia in relation to language and words: the word and the letter as sensations, colors evoked by letters, sensations caused by the sound of a word as apart from its meaning, etc. And the effect of this phenomenon on you; for example, write in the water, on a moving vehicle. * Attempt writing in a state of mind that seems least congenial. * Consider word and letter as forms-the concretistic distortion of a text, a mutiplicity of o's or ea's, or a pleasing visual arrangement: "the mill pond of chill doubt." * Do experiments with sensory memory: record all sense images that remain from breakfast, study which senses engage you, escape you. * Write, taking off from visual projections, whether mental or mechanical, without thought to the word in the ordinary sense, no craft. * Make writing experiments over a long period of time. For example, plan how much you will write for a particular work each day, perhaps one word or one page. * Write on a piece of paper where something is already printed or written. * Attempt to eliminate all connotation from a piece of writing and vice versa. * Experiment with writing in a group, collaborative work: a group writing individually off of each other's work over a long period of time in the same room; a group contributing to the same work, sentence by sentence or line by line; one writer being fed information and ideas while the other writes; writing, leaving instructions for another writer to fill in what you can't describe; compiling a book or work structured by your own language around the writings of others; or a group working and writing off of each other's dream writing. * Dream work: record dreams daily, experiment with translation or transcription of dream thought, attempt to approach the tense and incongruity appropriate to the dream, work with the dream until a poem or song emerges from it, use the dream as an alert form of the mind's activity or consciousness, consider the dream a problem-solving device, change dream characters into fictional characters, accept dream's language as a gift. * Structure a poem or prose writing according to city streets, miles, walks, drives. For example: Take a fourteen-block walk, writing one line per block to create a sonnet; choose a city street familiar to you, walk it, make notes and use them to create a work; take a long walk with a group of writers, observe, make notes and create works, then compare them; take a long walk or drive-write one line or sentence per mile. Variations on this. * The uses of journals. Keep a journal that is restricted to one set of ideas, for instance, a food or dream journal, a journal that is only written in when it is raining, a journal of ideas about writing, a weather journal. Remember that journals do not have to involve "good" writing-they are to be made use of. Simple one-line entries like "No snow today" can be inspiring later. Have 3 or 4 journals going at once, each with a different purpose. Create a journal that is meant to be shared and commented on by another writer--leave half of each page blank for the comments of the other. * Type out a Shakespeare sonnet or other poem you would like to learn about/imitate double-spaced on a page. Rewrite it in between the lines. * Find the poems you think are the worst poems ever written, either by your own self or other poets. Study them, then write a bad poem. * Choose a subject you would like to write "about." Then attempt to write a piece that absolutely avoids any relationship to that subject. Get someone to grade you. * Write a series of titles for as yet unwritten poems or proses. * Work with a number of objects, moving them around on a field or surface-describe their shifting relationships, resonances, associations. Or, write a series of poems that have only to do with what you see in the place where you most often write. Or, write a poem in each room of your house or apartment. Experiment with doing this in the home you grew up in, if possible. * Write a bestiary (a poem about real and mythical animals). * Write five short expressions of the most adamant anger; make a work out of them. * Write a work gazing into a mirror without using the pronoun I. * A shocking experiment: Rip pages out of books at random (I guess you could xerox them) and study them as if they were a collection of poetic/literary material. Use this method on your old high school or college notebooks, if possible, then create an epistemological work based on the randomly chosen notebook pages. * Meditate on a word, sound or list of ideas before beginning to write. * Take a book of poetry you love and make a list, going through it poem by poem, of the experiments, innovations, methods, intentions, etc. involved in the creation of the works in the book. * Write what is secret. Then write what is shared. Experiment with writing each in two different ways: veiled language, direct language. * Write a soothing novel in twelve short paragraphs. * Write a work that attempts to include the names of all the physical contents of the terrestrial world that you know. * Take a piece of prose writing and turn it into poetic lines. Then, without remembering that you were planning to do this, make a poem of the first and last words of each line to see what happens. For instance, the lines (from Einstein) * When at the reception * Of sense-impressions, memory pictures * Emerge this is not yet thinking * And when. . . * Would become: * When reception * Of pictures * Emerge thinking * And when * And so on. Form the original prose, poetic lines, and first-and-last word poem into three columns on a page. Study their relationships. * If you have an answering machine, record all messages received for one month, then turn them into a best-selling novella. * Write a macaronic poem (making use of as many languages as you are conversant with). * Attempt to speak for a day only in questions; write only in questions. * Attempt to become in a state where the mind is flooded with ideas; attempt to keep as many thoughts in mind simultaneously as possible. Then write without looking at the page, typescript or computer screen (This is "called" invisible writing). * Choose a period of time, perhaps five or nine months. Every day, write a letter that will never be sent to a person who does or does not exist, or to a number of people who do or do not exist. Create a title for each letter and don't send them. Pile them up as a book. * Etymological work. Experiment with investigating the etymologies of all words that interest you, including your own name(s). Approaches to etymologies: Take a work you've already written, preferably something short, look up the etymological meanings of every word in that work including words like "the" and "a". Study the histories of the words used, then rewrite the work on the basis of the etymological information found out. Another approach: Build poems and writings form the etymological families based on the Indo-European language constructs, for instance, the BHEL family: bulge, bowl, belly, boulder, billow, ball, balloon; or the OINO family: one, alone, lonely, unique, unite, unison, union; not to speak of one of the GEN families: kin, king, kindergarten, genteel, gender, generous, genius, genital, gingerly, pregnant, cognate, renaissance, and innate! * Write a brief bibliography of the science and philosophy texts that interest you. Create a file of newspaper articles that seem to relate to the chances of writing poetry. * Write the poem: Ways of Making Love. List them. * Diagram a sentence in the old-fashioned way. If you don't know how, I'll be happy to show you; if you do know how, try a really long sentence, for instance from Melville. * Turn a list of the objects that have something to do with a person who has died into a poem or poem form, in homage to that person. * Write the same poem over and over again, in different forms, until you are weary. Another experiment: Set yourself the task of writing for four hours at a time, perhaps once, twice or seven times a week. Don't stop until hunger and/or fatigue take over. At the very least, always set aside a four-hour period once a month in which to write. This is always possible and will result in one book of poems or prose writing for each year. Then we begin to know something. * Attempt as a writer to win the Nobel Prize in Science by finding out how thought becomes language, or does not. * Take a traditional text like the pledge of allegiance to the flag. For every noun, replace it with one that is seventh or ninth down from the original one in the dictionary. For instance, the word "honesty" would be replaced by "honey dew melon." Investigate what happens; different dictionaries will produce different results. * Attempt to write a poem or series of poems that will change the world. Does everything written or dreamed of do this? * Write occasional poems for weddings, for rivers, for birthdays, for other poets' beauty, for movie stars maybe, for the anniversaries of all kinds of loving meetings, for births, for moments of knowledge, for deaths. Writing for the "occasion" is part of our purpose as poets in being-this is our work in the community wherein we belong and work as speakers for others. * Experiment with every traditional form, so as to know it. * Write poems and proses in which you set yourself the task of using particular words, chosen at random like the spelling exercises of children: intelligence, amazing, weigh, weight, camel, camel's, foresight, through, threw, never, now, snow, rein, rain. Make a story of that! * Plan, structure, and write a long work. Consider what is the work now needed by the culture to cure and exact even if by accident the great exorcism of its 1998 sort-of- seeming-not-being. What do we need? What is the poem of the future? * What is communicable now? What more is communicable? * Compose a list of familiar phrases, or phrases that have stayed in your mind for a long time--from songs, from poems, from conversation: * What's in a name? That which we call a rose * By any other name would smell as sweet * (Romeo and Juliet) * A rose is a rose is a rose * (Gertrude Stein) * A raisin in the sun * (Langston Hughes) * The king was in the counting house * Counting out his money. . . * (Nursery rhyme) * I sing the body electric. . . * These United States. . . * (Walt Whitman) * A thing of beauty is a joy forever * (Keats) * (I summon up) remembrance of things past * (WS) * Ask not for whom the bell tolls * It tolls for thee * (Donne) * Look homeward, Angel * (Milton) * For fools rush in where angels fear to tread * (Pope) * All's well that ends well * (WS) * I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness * (Allen Ginsberg) * I think therefore I am * (Descartes) * It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,. . . * (Dickens) * brave new world has such people in it * (Shakespeare, The Tempest, later Huxley) * Odi et amo (I hate and I love) * (Catullus) * Water water everywhere * Nor any drop to drink * (Coleridge) * Curiouser and curiouser * (Alice in Wonderland) * Don't worry be happy. Here's a little song I wrote. . . * Write the longest most beautiful sentence you can imagine-make it be a whole page. * Set yourself the task of writing in a way you've never written before, no matter who you are. * What is the value of autobiography? * Attempt to write in a way that's never been written before. * Invent a new form. * Write a perfect poem. * Write a work that intersperses love with landlords. * In a poem, list what you know. * Address the poem to the reader. * Write household poems-about cooking, shopping, eating and sleeping. * Write dream collaborations in the lune form. * Write poems that only make use of the words included in Basic English. * Attempt to write about jobs and how they affect the writing of poetry. * Write while being read to from science texts, or, write while being read to by one's lover from any text. * Trade poems with others and do not consider them your own. * Exercises in style: Write twenty-five or more different versions of one event. * Review the statement: "What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems."

SOURCE: www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html/

#prompts #writers #writer #writing #write #journal prompts #diary prompts #prompt #journal #journaling #writers block