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what-even-is-thiss · 5 years

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What do you do as an english major? I might major in english so I want to know what's kinda gonna happen, I think I have a good view but I'm still learning new things from friends who majored in english (if you dont have time I understand)

That depends on whether you wanna be a standard English major or an English Education major. English Education majors are going on to be middle school or high school teachers. That’s it. They probably go on to a one or two year teaching credential program and a student teacher assistantship after they get their bachelor’s.

Plain old English majors are there for a variety of reasons. To have a college degree and make it easier to get a job later, to become college level professors, to go into publishing, because they wanna become writers and their school doesn’t have a creative writing major, to become archivists at libraries and museums, because they wanna be librarians, or because they want to go to law school afterwards. More pre-law students are English majors or minors than Political Science these days.

Regular English majors (that’s what I am) have to take literature courses. A lot of people seem to assume we take classes in grammar. That’s not the case. This is an English Literature degree. Not an English Language degree. Every school has different requirements but basically there will be categories and you need to take a certain number of classes in that category to graduate. Except for a few main core classes you can pick and choose which classes you want to take.

My school requires an intro to American literature class, an intro to British literature class (Brit Lit), a Shakespeare course, and a literary analysis training course (introduction to literary criticism).

In intro to lit crit students learn about the major schools of literary criticism (psychological, marxist, queer, etc.) and usually find themselves a focus, although you should be expected to know how to use any form of criticism if it is asked of you. This class is generally more activity heavy then any other class and involves a lot of hands on stuff. Or about as hands on as English can get. (its not that exciting in my opinion) You go through poetry analysis, book analysis, play analysis, history of lit crit, and short story analysis and are taught how to write a professional level academic paper that could potentially be published in a journal. (some undergrads even get published. It’s true!)

Most of the other classes will be about the same. You will be assigned readings relevant to the class and be expected to have notes on them when you come in. Classes usually consist of a combination of group discussion and lecture. Lectures are normally part common analysis of the text and part history lesson. Lectures are where you usually get most of your literary history info, so pay attention and take a lot of notes. Grading usually involves a series of tests and essays. The professor will assign an essay or two (or four if they’re pure evil) and you will follow their instructions. Tests are usually about the history lectures and the contents of the readings. Sometimes you will be expected to write a short timed essay during a final exam but not usually. Often times there will be class discussions or small group discussions and the teacher will ask you to come up with some kind of analysis together. Lectures can be very interactive as well. Professors will often ask for questions and opinions from the class and students regularly ask questions and are encouraged to do so. English classes are usually pretty small too (30 students or less. Sometimes as little as 12 students) so the professor generally knows everyone and will know when someone isn’t engaging with the material. Class participation is usually a part of the final grade.

Normal categories of classes you have to take are world lit, American lit, Brit lit, ancient lit, and lit of diversity. These can have a lot of different classes in them. Mythology, British Medieval, Chaucer, Ancient World lit, Chicano, African American, Women Authors, Asian American, pop fiction, the list goes on.

English Education majors have to do all of this too, but they have to take less classes in the different literature categories. While I have to take two Brit lit classes, an English Ed major only has to take one. In addition to these they have to branch out, taking public speaking classes, drama classes, linguistics classes, etc. To make them a more well rounded teacher, you know.

English Ed majors at my university also have to put together a portfolio of work that they’ve done. I don’t have to do that, but I do have to take a senior seminar class, which is a small intensive class with a really narrow focus and a lot of paper writing. I’m probably gonna have to do that next semester. Ugh.

Oh, and both have a foreign language requirement. You have to do it for two semesters in a row usually.

In addition to all this you have to take general education courses. Those are all really different though so I can’t tell you about them.

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Marissa Meyer Reflects on Her Iconic Lunar Chronicles Series

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New editions of The Lunar Chronicles has author Marissa Meyer looking back on inventive cosplay and forward to new fairy tale retellings.

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Upon glimpsing the dynamic covers for the new paperback editions of Marissa Meyer’s reimagined fairy tale series The Lunar Chronicles, one can’t help but notice there’s something familiar about them—especially the gorgeous stepbacks that feature Cinder in a ballgown and Cress staring wistfully in the opposite direction of the strapping Thorne, silhouetted by moonlight. They bring to mind… Sailor Moon.

Meyer laughs when this comparison is brought up, considering her background as a Sailor Moon fanfiction writer, but says that it was not intentional: “I think that’s just Tomer [Hanuka]’s style.” However, when her publisher Macmillan sent along the artist’s portfolio, she was certainly struck by Hanuka’s work.

“I think that’s one of the reasons why I was so drawn to him," says Meyer. "Because it does have a little bit of that Japanese/manga vibe to it, which I love. And coming from that fandom and that background, there’s definitely a lot of influence in the books. So, I think that it plays really well; the artwork very much complements the series in a great way.”

While The Lunar Chronicles concluded with its fourth and final novel, Winter, in 2015, fans have been able to spend more time in Meyer’s science fiction fairy tale universe with subsequent releases including the short fiction collection Stars Above and the graphic novel Wires and Nerve.

Now, a re-release of the original quartet with brand-new covers showcasing each of the key characters proves that the series is still relevant to readers today. To wit, part of the new covers process involved crowdsourcing favorite scenes from the active and enthusiastic fandom via Instagram. Meyer describes seeing the same scenes suggested over and over, which made their way into the new designs: Wolf spiriting Scarlet away from danger. Winter and Jacin in a romantic clinch in her menagerie.

read more: Marissa Meyer's Renegades Trilogy is Riveting Superhero Fiction

It’s quite the departure from the original covers, each of which featured one key element from its respective book: Cinder’s mechanical leg (in place of Cinderella’s glass slipper); Scarlet’s (or Little Red Riding Hood’s) cape; Cress’ Rapunzel-esque hair; and Winter’s plague-laced apple. While the series has long been celebrated for centering the stories of princesses of color—Cinder is Asian/Caucasian, while Winter is black—and for its representation of mental illness, now those women are actually on the covers in the (human and cyborg) flesh.

“They’re so beautiful and so vibrant,” Meyer says. “I love what [Tomer] does with colors, and so when you see all four of them together, it just stands out so much. I couldn’t be any happier with them.”

That said, this is not the first time that the series has been illustrated. In addition to the aforementioned Wires and Nerve, there is also The Lunar Chronicles Coloring Book. While most authors do not experience the opportunity to see their work adapted thusly, let alone three, Meyer says it feels “incredible,” though she hastens to add that there is a fourth lens: fan art!

“It’s unbelievable to think about these characters and this world that lived inside my head for so many years, and then to see other people putting their interpretation behind it,” she says. “And in a way that there’s such wonderful justice to it, and [that] really captures the same sorts of emotions that I was trying to put into my writing. It’s just like one giant compliment. There’s nothing quite like it!”

Recent years have seen more and more science fiction and fantasy authors talking candidly about their fanfiction backgrounds, including N.K. Jemisin (the Broken Earth series), Naomi Novik (Spinning Silver), Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the Ninth), Tochi Onyebuchi (Riot Baby), and Brooke Bolander (The Only Harmless Great Thing). But Meyer has always drawn a line connecting her professional work and her fanfic persona, Alicia Blade, as seen on her old website via the Wayback Machine. It’s no surprise, then, that Lunar Chronicles fan art and fanfiction began cropping up online not long after Cinder was published in 2012.

read more: Den of Geek Book Club Podcast Talks with Marissa Meyer

“That’s the fantasy,” Meyer says, “for there to be fanfic of your own work, because I know what love goes into creating fanfiction, and how fandoms can really rally around it.” And how must that feel for a former fanfiction writer?

“It’s a little weird, honestly! But it’s wonderful, and I’m hugely honored to know there are so many people who have taken the characters and gone off and done their own things with them.”

Early on, Meyer had to decide whether she would actually read the stories on Fanfiction.net and the Archive of Our Own (AO3). Despite her burning curiosity, she considered that “if Naoko Takeuchi, the creator of Sailor Moon, regularly went on and read Sailor Moon fanfiction, I think that that might have changed what I was writing and what I was putting out there. And so early on I decided, ‘No, I want that to be for the fans; I don’t think I should be involved in that side of it.’ But knowing that it exists brings me much, much joy.”

Another way in which The Lunar Chronicles’ heroines have made their way into the world has been through cosplay, which Meyer describes as “one of my greatest pleasures” to see at conventions. One group costume that stands out in her memory is a quartet of women in ballgowns representing the albino wolf, peacock, and other animals in Winter’s menagerie on Luna: “It was this amalgamation of ballgowns and formalwear on Luna, but also the animals of the menagerie, and I just thought it was so clever.”

In addition to fanfiction, Meyer is an alum of another online-centric writing community: National Novel Writing Month. Cinder and four subsequent books began as NaNoWriMo projects, but the life of an author has made it more difficult for Meyer to time drafting to every November. When asked if she might participate this year, she says, “I hope so! I haven’t been able to do it for the last couple of years; it never seems to line up with my deadlines anymore. [...] It’s a tradition for me, and one I would love to continue. I can’t say for sure if I’m doing it this year or not; but if I can make it work, then I definitely will.”

However, Meyer fans who are considering undertaking NaNoWriMo themselves will have to juggle a tempting distraction this November: Instant Karma, her contemporary romance novel with a magical twist, will be published November 3. Meyer describes the story, the first in a planned four-book series, as “about a girl who lives in a sunny, beachside town and one day inexplicably gets the power to exact instant karma on people. And she goes around punishing all of the snobs and the bullies and the people that she can’t stand. There’s one boy that she absolutely despises, but every time she tries to use this power on him, it ends up backfiring on her. It will be a love story and secrets will be revealed, etcetera etcetera.”

On her Alicia Blade website sometime before 2012, Meyer described herself as “beloved Sailor Moon fanfiction author and future romance novelist.” While each of the Lunar Chronicles books featured romance, there is something exciting about seeing her fulfill that description with her first romance novel. “It’s been a big change from my previous works,” she says, pointing out that “this is the first thing I’ve written that doesn’t have huge superpowers or futuristic technology. There are no fight scenes! Which is awesome. [...] It’s been really nice now writing something that still has romance, still has a theme of good versus evil and what is true justice, and all of these same sort of themes I like to play with, but in a much more subtle, quiet, sweet sort of way.”

But while she expands the Instant Karma world with contemporary happily ever afters, she won’t stay away from fairy tales for long. Meyer teased a new fairy tale retelling—and while she couldn’t say which story she’s adapting, she did share that it will be an epic fantasy what-if story...

“It is going to be fantasy—kinda my first ‘quest’ fantasy novel, which I’m super excited about because growing up, Tolkien and epic fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons—all of that was my jam. It was always weird to me that my first published book was science fiction, because I thought for sure I would write an epic quest story. So this is kinda my first [of] going back to my teenage roots a bit.” The book is tentatively scheduled for fall 2021, though that timing may be subject to change.

Even as she explores new genres and stories, Meyer will never forget the idea that first set her on this path. “I have so much love for this series,” she says, “and not just because it was my first series. I think for every author, the first one you get published is always going to feel really special. From the moment that I had this idea about writing about fairy tales in the future, and this cyborg Cinderella character, I was just so smitten with it, and I loved the idea of bringing all these characters together and throwing them on a spaceship and seeing if they could save the universe."

"That spoke to my heart and to my nerdiness on so many levels," she continues, "and I just had so much fun writing it. To see it now in the world, and see how readers have responded to it, and that there’s so much love and interest in the characters, it’s really been incredible. And of course I hope to have many more successful book series throughout my career, but I don’t know that there will ever be anything that’s quite the books-of-my-heart as The Lunar Chronicles have been.”

Close to a decade since Cinder was published, with a dedicated fandom returning to the books over and over, Meyer has one hope for the legacy of the series.

“Gosh, it’s so cheesy—I’m gonna say world peace,” she says. “That’s one of the things that I loved writing, was a world in which Earth and the countries of Earth have obtained world peace, and they have been at peace for over a century. I don’t know if it’s naïve, but I truly like to think that that is a potential future.”

The new, gorgeous paperback editions of The Lunar Chronicles will be available for purchase on February 4th. You can order them now via the official website.

As a former fanfiction writer herself, Natalie Zutter is mightily inspired to finish all of her WIPs. Talk fairy tale retellings with her on Twitter @nataliezutter.

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Feature Natalie Zutter

Feb 3, 2020

from Books https://ift.tt/36ZmNmg

#aion-rsa #Books

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isitkpop · 6 years

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Unexplainable Emotion Game

So, I felt like creating a new kind of game that would spark up my K-Pop writing spirit. ~ Admin Chas

So, the way how this will go is almost the same as my other games. Pick an emotions and let me know what member OR ship you would like for me to write!

I do have limitations for groups that I will do For this game specifically. THis is because some of the groups that I have on my Masterlist, are groups that I still don’t fully know. So, I’m putting a group limit on here. Please choose a member OR ship from the groups below (the emotion list will be below also.)

It’s under the cut since it’s lonnnnnggg

Groups:

A.C.E

BlackPink

BTS

Day6

EXO

GOT7

Infinite

Seventeen

Emotions! (W/Definitions. There’s 40 to choose from xD)

Onism - n. the awareness of how little of the world you’ll experience. Imagine standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die—and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.

Mal de Coucou - n. a phenomenon in which you have an active social life but very few close friends—people who you can trust, who you can be yourself with, who can help flush out the weird psychological toxins that tend to accumulate over time—which is a form of acute social malnutrition in which even if you devour an entire buffet of chitchat, you’ll still feel pangs of hunger.

Sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Hanker Sore - adj. finding a person so attractive it actually kinda pisses you off.

Chrysalism - n. the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, whose muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension you understand perfectly.

Altschmerz - n. weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had—the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago.

Occhiolism - n. the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.

Ambedo - n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—briefly soaking in the experience of being alive, an act that is done purely for its own sake.

Nodus Tollens - n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.

Liberosis - n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.

Vemödalen - n. the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist—the same sunset, the same waterfall, the same curve of a hip, the same closeup of an eye—which can turn a unique subject into something hollow and pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself.

Kairosclerosis - n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.

Vellichor - n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

Rückkehrunruhe - n. the feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness—to the extent you have to keep reminding yourself that it happened at all, even though it felt so vivid just days ago—which makes you wish you could smoothly cross-dissolve back into everyday life, or just hold the shutter open indefinitely and let one scene become superimposed on the next, so all your days would run together and you’d never have to call cut.

Nighthawk - n. a recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night—an overdue task, a nagging guilt, a looming and shapeless future—that circles high overhead during the day, that pecks at the back of your mind while you try to sleep, that you can successfully ignore for weeks, only to feel its presence hovering outside the window, waiting for you to finish your coffee, passing the time by quietly building a nest.

Dead Reckoning - n. to find yourself bothered by someone’s death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.

Pâro - n. the feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow wrong—that any attempt to make your way comfortably through the world will only end up crossing some invisible taboo—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you, each of them leaning back in their chair and calling out helpfully, colder, colder, colder.

Midsummer - n. a feast celebrated on the day of your 26th birthday, which marks the point at which your youth finally expires as a valid excuse—when you must begin harvesting your crops, even if they’ve barely taken root—and the point at which the days will begin to feel shorter as they pass, until even the pollen in the air reminds you of the coming snow.

Adronitis - n. frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone—spending the first few weeks chatting in their psychological entryway, with each subsequent conversation like entering a different anteroom, each a little closer to the center of the house—wishing instead that you could start there and work your way out, exchanging your deepest secrets first, before easing into casualness, until you’ve built up enough mystery over the years to ask them where they’re from, and what they do for a living.

Rigor Samsa - n. a kind of psychological exoskeleton that can protect you from pain and contain your anxieties, but always ends up cracking under pressure or hollowed out by time—and will keep growing back again and again, until you develop a more sophisticated emotional structure, held up by a strong and flexible spine, built less like a fortress than a cluster of tree houses.

Silience - n. the kind of unnoticed excellence that carries on around you every day, unremarkably—the hidden talents of friends and coworkers, the fleeting solos of subway buskers, the slapdash eloquence of anonymous users, the unseen portfolios of aspiring artists—which would be renowned as masterpieces if only they’d been appraised by the cartel of popular taste, who assume that brilliance is a rare and precious quality, accidentally overlooking buried jewels that may not be flawless but are still somehow perfect.

Fitzcarraldo - n. an image that somehow becomes lodged deep in your brain—maybe washed there by a dream, or smuggled inside a book, or planted during a casual conversation—which then grows into a wild and impractical vision that keeps scrambling back and forth in your head like a dog stuck in a car that’s about to arrive home, just itching for a chance to leap headlong into reality.

Keyframe - n. a moment that seemed innocuous at the time but ended up marking a diversion into a strange new era of your life—set in motion not by a series of jolting epiphanies but by tiny imperceptible differences between one ordinary day and the next, until entire years of your memory can be compressed into a handful of indelible images—which prevents you from rewinding the past, but allows you to move forward without endless buffering.

Gnossienne - n. a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you’ve never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.

Anecdoche - n. a conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening, simply overlaying disconnected words like a game of Scrabble, with each player borrowing bits of other anecdotes as a way to increase their own score, until we all run out of things to say.

Catoptric Tristesse - n. the sadness that you’ll never really know what other people think of you, whether good, bad or if at all—that although we reflect on each other with the sharpness of a mirror, the true picture of how we’re coming off somehow reaches us softened and distorted, as if each mirror was preoccupied with twisting around, desperately trying to look itself in the eye.

Anemoia - n. nostalgia for a time you’ve never known. Imagine stepping through the frame into a sepia-tinted haze, where you could sit on the side of the road and watch the locals passing by. Who lived and died before any of us arrived here, who sleep in some of the same houses we do, who look up at the same moon, who breathe the same air, feel the same blood in their veins—and live in a completely different world.

Mimeomia - n. the frustration of knowing how easily you fit into a stereotype, even if you never intended to, even if it’s unfair, even if everyone else feels the same way—each of us trick-or-treating for money and respect and attention, wearing a safe and predictable costume because we’re tired of answering the question, “What are you supposed to be?”

Monachopsis - n. the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach—lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.

Semaphorism - n. a conversational hint that you have something personal to say on the subject but don’t go any further—an emphatic nod, a half-told anecdote, an enigmatic ‘I know the feeling’—which you place into conversations like those little flags that warn diggers of something buried underground: maybe a cable that secretly powers your house, maybe a fiberoptic link to some foreign country.

Énouement - n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world—who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted—which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front.

Daguerreologue - n. an imaginary interview with an old photo of yourself, an enigmatic figure who still lives in the grainy and color-warped house you grew up in, who may well spend a lot of their day wondering where you are and what you’re doing now, like an old grandma whose kids live far away and don’t call much anymore.

Fata Organa - n. a flash of real emotion glimpsed in someone sitting across the room, idly locked in the middle of some group conversation, their eyes glinting with vulnerability or quiet anticipation or cosmic boredom—as if you could see backstage through a gap in the curtains, watching stagehands holding their ropes at the ready, actors in costume mouthing their lines, fragments of bizarre sets waiting for some other production.

Avenoir - n. the desire that memory could flow backward. We take it for granted that life moves forward. But you move as a rower moves, facing backwards: you can see where you’ve been, but not where you’re going. And your boat is steered by a younger version of you. It’s hard not to wonder what life would be like facing the other way…

Kenopsia - n. the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs.

The Tilt Shift - n. a phenomenon in which your lived experience seems oddly inconsequential once you put it down on paper, which turns an epic tragicomedy into a sequence of figures on a model train set, assembled in their tiny classrooms and workplaces, wandering along their own cautious and well-trodden paths—peaceable, generic and out of focus.

Jouska - n. a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head—a crisp analysis, a cathartic dialogue, a devastating comeback—which serves as a kind of psychological batting cage where you can connect more deeply with people than in the small ball of everyday life, which is a frustratingly cautious game of change-up pitches, sacrifice bunts, and intentional walks.

Ecstatic Shock - n. the surge of energy upon catching a glance from someone you like—a thrill that starts in your stomach, arcs up through your lungs and flashes into a spontaneous smile—which scrambles your ungrounded circuits and tempts you to chase that feeling with a kite and a key.

Heartworm - n. a relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

Xeno - n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.

#kpop #ace #bts #blackpink #day6 #exo #got7 #infinite #seventeen #ask game #drabble game #emotion game

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breakingarrows · 5 years

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What makes a game a good game? I’ve been thinking about this, as well as what I have to offer to the greater conversations that are perpetually in motion Online. Taking a break from my usual outlet due to a huge feeling of apathy, I looked back towards my younger days just posting whatever it was on my mind on Tumblr and thought that was a time I was more satisfied. Not with a byline or great recognition but just kinda creating and putting it out there for nobody but myself to look over on a portfolio. So here are some thoughts on game criticism and media and the way they are used and could be used.

There is no such thing as an objective review. A great example of this is Objective Game Reviews that would post “Game reviews that are fact, not opinion.” An example from their “review” of RAGE:

One of the weapons in RAGE is the “wingstick,” a thrown blade weapon that can slice off the limbs of enemies and return to the player. Wingsticks can be steered through the air by moving the crosshair, and if they hit a hard surface or an armored enemy they can break. The player can craft wingsticks and alternative ammunition with parts looted from the world or purchased from vendors. Normal ammunition can be looted from enemies and refilled during a fight, whereas if alternative ammunition runs out the player must pause to craft more.

Another great example is Jim Sterling’s “review” of Final Fantasy XIII. Sterling did not like Final Fantasy XIII, giving it a Below Average, 4/10, for Destructoid on March 16, 2010. Of course reactions ranged from “whoa!” to “you didn’t even play the game.” In response, Sterling wrote up an objective review:

The videogame has graphics and sound. The graphics are seen with your eyes and the sound is heard by your ears. When you start the game the graphics and the sound will occur almost at the same time, letting you know that the game has started. There is also text which players can read.

Gamers who cry out against reviews that are not objective just disagree with what is being said, and don’t actually want an objective review that is just listing the things in the game as factual statements with no opinion on whether those things are good or bad. The same can be said of those who cry that a reviewer is “biased” towards a certain game/company/genre/etc. Most famously this is hurled towards Nintendo reviews for games that are perceived as bad but get good reviews “because Nintendo.” Sometimes it can be hard to not fall into this trap, as my reaction towards Skyward Sword getting hugely praised in 2011 was viewed as coming from people who couldn’t help but worship at the feet of Zelda and Nintendo.

The issue though, of universal praise for nearly every major title every year is something worth discussing. Both Nick Capozzoli, Vincent Kinian, and Tevis Thompson have talked about this before, the latter with a bit more hostility and other issues all his own, but the fact remains that there is a deep hole of variety when it comes to game reviews. This isn’t helped by the fact that more sites are beginning to realize the stupidity of assigning a score to a game, as if a number can accurately sum up a game’s worth and that elevating all games on the scale of numerical weight means games never meant to be compared to each other will be. See the meme of IGN’s review of Party Babyz Wii whose 7.5 was copy+pasted next to “better” games that got a lower review score for years.

Tevis links back the inability for game critics to come out and say Red Dead Redemption 2 sucks to the universally praised Bioshock Infinite of 2013, a game that mainstream media made multiple offerings to in the form of breathless praise, whereas others wrote out their criticisms on the periphery, best exemplified by the recent Critical Compilation on the game.

One critic he mentions is Videogamedunkey, a YouTuber who puts out short videos about whatever game is currently in the discourse. His slant is generally as an entertainment, comedian, wanting to make his viewers laugh, but also he talks about what he liked in the game and what he didn’t like. With Red Dead Redemption 2 Dunkey’s conclusion is the excess bears down on the game and he became as disillusioned as protagonist Arthur Morgan does with his mentor Dutch. It’s a fine video/review, though doesn’t nearly have the bite Tevis appears to want with regards to Red Dead Redemption 2, a bite I personally found in Jess Joho’s review of the game for Mashable which most aligned with my own feelings on the game and one he does list. Listing Dunkey also either shows Tevis’ ignorance or agreement with another Dunkey video: Game Critics, which provoked lots of conversations about people who review games for larger sites. Though, reading through Tevis’ piece, that video might be why he apparently looks up to Dunkey for good criticism. It is not like some of the issues Dunkey lists are wrong.

You’ve got your fanboys, your hobbyists, your escapists. Your ‘objective’ reviewers, your consumer advisers, your spec hounds. Your people pleasers, your twitter cheerleaders, your industry bootlickers. Your never hate a game philosophers, your games are hard to make sympathizers, your but some people like it! tsk-tskers. You’ve got old critics who’ve given up and young critics who’re getting there. You’ve got so many internet professionals and professional apologists. The tired, the self-censored, the players of the game. None mutually exclusive. All guardians of the status quo.

I think the real issue here is that the required work to put into really proving this sort of thing is massive. Reading and sorting the reviews based on site and author, taking into account Twitter posts that extend the conversation into an endless timeline unsearchable by keyword due to the often vague nature of criticizing criticism publicly. There have probably been hundreds of tweets in response to just Tevis’ blog as well as games criticism in general. It seems like the conversation about reviewers, their role, their work, their compensation, their method, is repeated ad nauseum monthly. Games media loves to talk about games media. I mean here I am, someone much lower than those I’ve mentioned, talking about it myself.

This sort of work loses the point, about what is it that makes a game good? Objective reviews are useless, subjective reviews are useful. What makes a subjective opinion worth reading? What makes the work their talking about worth something? These are the sorts of things that have many answers.

Some small things to get out of the way are some more useless things, specifically the belief that a 10/10 means a game is perfect, is a belief that is hard to get around despite how simple it is. A 10/10 just means it is the pinnacle of what games can achieve and others should be more like this one. What constitutes a 10/10 is, as everything is, up to personal taste. For myself, 10/10’s practically don’t exist since no piece of art is without flaw. We are all humans. Remember before when I said assigning numerical value is stupid? Well given the circumstances of Metacritic, assigning a numerical score might not actually be a dumb thing when it's used as a statement, a punctuation at the end of your text. If Tevis used numerical scores in his reviews and got onto Metacritic he would be able to wield them much more usefully as a way to vocalize dissent through metascore than as just a page of text most will pass by without reading.

Phrases such as “Isn’t for everyone” or “not a perfect [x].” are also useless in terms of criticism. Not every game is made for everyone or could even accomplish that if it were the intention. That phrase can be applied to any and every game and is therefore useless. As mentioned before, no piece of art is perfect, so simply stating that as some sort of qualifier that, “I like this but it’s far from perfect,” is such a pathetic qualifier that should never be used.

A review worth reading is one that brings a point, a perspective, an idea that you didn’t have before about a piece of art and put it in your head. It also has to have supporting evidence for its conclusions, the sort of Philosophy 102 cogent argumentative qualities that blew my mind as a college kid. Given that we have already had decades of consumer grade reviews: ones that break a game into categories and tie them together into a qualitative statement at the end, that we would be able to move on from that into something different. This includes the derogatorily described “blog” reviews, ones that are less about whether or not the graphics never stuttered and more about whether or not a personal connection was made to a specific aspect of a game, whether large or incidental. These are the kind of conversations that bring something new than whether or not the guns sounded satisfactory. This is the sort of conversation that differentiates critical YouTubers like Raycevick from Noah Caldwell-Gervais. Both put out videos on the recent Wolfenstein series and both took very different approaches to what they wanted to say about the game. Raycevick was more focused on the mechanics, the variation of the map, the way it linked together its setpieces. Noah was more interested in what the game had to say about America, Nazism, and the ways to resist and cope with a fallen country. The former might make for a good quick recap of what the games are and what they do in a input-output sense (think right-trigger, left-trigger of Call of Duty), but it's the latter that does the digging into what the game is beyond whether the shooting was good or the stealth sections not too frustrating.

When ascertaining whether or not a game is good there are some easy questions to ask. Did I make an emotional connection? Was that emotional connection cheap (say showing a dog dying) or earned? Does the game have something to say about a topic and do I agree with or disagree with its conclusion about said topic? Did I enjoy spending time within the game and why? Was this a worthwhile spending of my time?

Mechanic’s based criticism is also valid, but personally less interesting. Does it matter if Anthem has good shooting and flying if the things surrounding it are bland? This is where subjectivity again comes in. So far, out of all the shlooters released, I’ve found that you can have the most mechanically satisfying circle, but if that is surrounded by mediocrity it doesn’t matter, it’s a bad game. I don’t care whether or not the shooting felt good in a game, I want to know if the things surrounding those mechanics is worth investing time into. Red Dead Redemption 2 had a rote shooting gallery mechanic underlying most all of its missions, and that couldn’t be saved by the characters and world surrounding it which left me feeling like I had wasted my time come the credits. Of course many felt the opposite, and its the ways we craft the arguments and explanations for why we felt that way that make a good criticism. A review is likely not going to and not meant to convince you that a game you hate is good, but it should at least allow you to understand why the author felt that way about it.

Something that has cropped up recently when covering games is the conditions under which they are made. As we, hopefully, work our way towards a labor revolution not only in games but across all aspects of culture, we have become more aware of the way corporations exploit the lower class workforce. AAA development means overwork, let’s not even get started on the lie of the 40 hour workweek, underpaid, and stress that routinely leads to the end of careers. Rockstar management came out and boasted about their 100 hour work weeks in New York Magazine, which was then qualified as just the writing team, and then was further qualified by a Kotaku report (that has been the norm) about the conditions under which Red Dead Redemption 2 was created. The question became whether or not this would affect reception of the game. It didn’t.

I sometimes struggled to enjoy Red Dead Redemption 2’s most impressive elements because I knew how challenging—and damaging—some of them must have been to make. Yet just as often, I found myself appreciating those things even more, knowing that so many talented people had poured their lives into crafting something this incredible.

The game currently has a 97 on Metacritic, there was only one “mixed” scored review, and even those who didn’t give scores offered only a slight hand wringing at the way the game was created in their text. Kotaku’s section ends with a shrug, “yeah the people who made this were exploited but I’ll be damned if that exploited work isn’t impressive.” It’s useless to have in the text as it leads nowhere, and the question of, “was their labor worth it?” should always be answered with a resounding NO. We are attempting to unionize the industry in order to keep exploitation from happening. What a fucking useless gesture to contemplate whether or not someone spending weeks crunching was “worth it.” It’s the sort of thing Tevis called out in his post,

They couch any troublesome truths in acceptable gamerese, outline all possible caveats, neuter any rhetorical force, maybe dress it up for their academic buddies while they’re at it. Suddenly everything is ‘messy’ or ‘complicated’ or ‘full of fascinating contradictions’. Sure, they’re ‘frustrated’, even ‘disappointed’, but they’re still rooting for the game. And always with due deference to their audience. It’s not for me but it’s cool if you and it’s totally just a taste thing now don’t get me wrong now I know what you’re thinking now I’m not saying that, y’all.

Some of this comes from the fact that games media is largely made up of, and rooted in, enthusiasts: people who do it out of a love for the media itself. This may best be exemplified by a recent (now deleted) tweet from Brian Altano, video host/producer at IGN Entertainment:

I've been working in the video game industry since 2007 and I don't think I've ever heard more than three people legitimately call themselves "game journalists" without being sarcastic, ironic, or putting it in air quotes while laughing about it. That's... not an actual thing.

Brian has never been someone you go to for criticism or news, the things journalists do. He exists to make you laugh, to entertain you. Going to Brian to determine whether or not you should buy a game will end with “Yes!” or “Maybe try it out.” Brian exemplifies the type of critic Tevis decries in his opening paragraph. He isn’t a critic, but he does represent a larger audience than critics do. There isn’t a real large audience for the type of work done at Bullet Points Monthly, or else their Patreon would be much higher than it currently is. People go to websites like IGN and GameSpot to have their already convinced minds reinforced that what they like is Important. This is why there are multiple articles whenever a new trailer or piece of information comes out about the next Star Wars or Marvel movie or Game of Thrones. These things are big so we have to talk about them and reinforce their importance, further enriching the pockets of corps like Disney, whose billion dollar company is immoral with its continued existence.

The roots of game criticism comes from the game magazines and websites of the 1990’s. Work that existed to be read and shared not because they did a good job interrogating the things they proclaimed to love but because they were entertaining to read and reinforced your love, whether it be Nintendo, Sega, Sony, or Microsoft. The same sort of circular reinforcement continues in the larger sites today, which is why AAA games will never fall below a favorable average on numerical compilation sites, with exceptions of course. Not that this sort of status quo is unique to just games media. Noam Chomsky, in the book On Western Terrorism, mentions how the media in the West give no time to dissenting opinion,

If you want to say that China is a totalitarian state you can say it, you know. If you want to say something like the U.S. is the biggest terrorist state in the world, they are not going to stop you, but you do sound like you are from Neptune, because you are not given the next five minutes to explain it. So you have two choices, to either repeat propaganda, repeat standard doctrine, or sound like you are a lunatic.

I hope you’ll forgive me for likening the universal love of game critics to the propaganda machine of western news media, as it's comically different in terms of importance, but the similarity is there. People who don’t conform to the generally accepted opinion on a game are labeled contrarians just looking to make a buck off a different opinion. Those who are praising Breath of the Wild are just Nintendo hacks. Those who call into question aspects of God of War are just SJW cucks.

Michael Thomsen touches on this status quo as well in his review of Jason Schreier’s book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels for The New Inquiry,

In these times, the most important task of game journalism isn’t to serve a public interest but to ensure that fans can continue to identify some version of themselves in the games they have played, and ensure future releases will allow them access to even deeper levels of self-expression and understanding. In playing the next game, owning the newest console, having an opinion on the latest patch, we feel like we can become stabler versions of ourselves, all at the cost of clearing out space—both mental and financial—for open-ended consumption of a form without any purpose beyond this increasingly tautological pleasure. This process is necessarily dehumanizing. Games matter because you are here to play them, and you remain here to play them because they matter.

We can do better, as being human is to strive to be more than we are (yeah its a corny Star Trek clip but that episode fucks me up). I think it should be obvious that better games criticism is probably pretty low in terms of importance when you look at other things, but I do think it has influence on creating and leading conversations, the kind that lead towards stronger rights for laborers and are more critical of the output of corporations who seek only to deepen their own pockets.

#Games Media #Game Criticism #Red Dead Redemption 2 #Tevis Thompson #Game Critics #Criticism #writing

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mitchbeck · 5 years

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CANTLON: PACK LAST FULL HOME WEEKEND OF PLAY

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The Hartford Wolf Pack have a pair of weekend games in which they seek to snap a five-game losing streak against the Utica Comets Saturday night and the Binghamton Devils Sunday afternoon. The task got a bit harder on Thursday when defenseman Ryan Lindgren was recalled for a second time likely to play in either one or both of the Rangers last two regular season games against Columbus and Pittsburgh. You can just call them the Hartford Junior Wolf Pack for the final two weekends of play. In addition to Lindgren’s recall, the Rangers announced the signing of two more collegians and recent junior hockey signing to ATO deals and sent two players back to Maine. Pack added collegiate forward in Harvard’s Lewis Zerter-Gossage. A Montreal area native, Gossage completed his four-years at Harvard after playing two years of prep hockey at Kent School. Current New York Rangers head coach David Quinn and player Boo Nieve also attended the western Connecticut private school. Hartford signed a local Springfield college product, Shawn McBride, the captain of American International College (AIC) from the AHA conference. He will likely play this weekend as will Gossage. AIC knocked off St. Cloud State in their first-ever NCAA Division 1 tourney game in one of the biggest upsets in college hockey history. He is the second McBride to play for the Wolf Pack in team history. Brock McBride played eight games in the 2008-09 season but is no relation. He is presently an assistant coach with the Cornwall Colts (CCHL) one of the 10 Junior A leagues in Canada. The junior player is Jake Elmer of the Lethbridge Hurricanes (WHL). He was signed last month and arrives here after Lethbridge dropped a seven-game first round series to the Calgary Hitmen, four games to three. They lost Game 7, 4-2. Elmer had a goal and six points in that first-round matchup. Through 68 regular-season games, Elmer was third in team scoring with 81 points with a team-leading 39 goals. The Hurricanes finished second in the WHL Central Division with a record of 40-18-5-5 and second highest offensive output in the WHL with 268 goals. One of his junior teammates, Jake Lechyshyn, a Las Vegas draftee, is the son of former Hartford Whaler, Curt Lechyshyn, who tallied ten points in the series tops in the WHL. One of his opponents for Calgary the son of Ed Kastelic, another Whaler, in Mark Kastelic. Two players were returned to the Maine Mariners. Ty Ronning had four goals and five points in 23 games, and Terrence Wallin, who was returned for the third time this season, has just one assist in 23 games. The Wolf Pack have an influx of junior and college players. One of them has a Connecticut address, Ryan Dmowski. The East Lyme born forward, a veteran of four games, Dmowski played at UMASS–Lowell, but his hockey GPS has landed in various parts of New England. Dmowski played against UCONN at the XL Center back on November 16th tallying two goals in a 5-2 win over the Huskies. Dmowski garnered the game’s First Star and was on the ice for the opening shift. “I had about 40 friends and family in the stands that night. It was a good game and I liked playing here when I was with UMASS (Lowell). I loved the atmosphere, and so far, the crowd has been awesome to me and I am very happy to be here.” Finding his way to Hartford was something special. “It’s been amazing; a dream come true to go pro, and even more special being here in Hartford. (I'm) just thrilled to get the opportunity. To be honest, I never thought I would be back here to start my career in Connecticut. (It's) kinda crazy how it works.” He talked with Providence and a few other AHL teams, but the best opportunity came from the Rangers. His hockey road map started in Rhode Island at age seven. After school, his grandfather would take him to North Smithfield, Rhode Island. It's an hour away each time to begin his first skate lengths of hockey. “I would get out of school, and my grandfather picked me up or my dad (Dave). All the dedication we both put in was incredible, and all worth it so far,” Dmowski said with a smile. When he finished Bantam-level play, he headed in the opposite direction and played for the Springfield Junior Falcons program when after his freshmen high school year, he put a new address in the GPS for Gunnery prep school in Washington, CT closer to New York state than Connecticut. “To be honest, I had no idea there was a Washington, Connecticut until I went there,” Dmowski said with a laugh, who had a fellow Highlander (Gunnery’s nickname) Terrence Wallin, older by three years, just sent back to Maine on the Wolf Pack roster, “(It's) kinda weird we took about the same hockey path and wound up here.” He went to a few P-Bruins and Wolf Pack games as a kid, but he spent more time honing his craft and schoolwork. His adjustment to the Wolf Pack has been a stretch playing with a new line almost every game. “It's been a bit stressful, but part of being a pro, and I’ve been doing a pretty good job getting to know everybody and a new line this week too.” Pack head coach, Keith McCambridge had Dmowski with Bobby Butler, the vet, and newcomer Shawn McBride. Butler, Dmowski, and McBridge…sounds like a law firm. “It’s so different here. The speed is so much different just getting used to that now. I’m just trying to get the puck in and not rushing myself and taking my time and learning to keep my feet moving and developing that confidence I’m gonna be good to go.” McCambridge likes what he's seen so far. “He carries himself well. He is a big body, has played well with the puck, and he's handled several different situations well.” It's audition time for the 2019-20 Wolf Pack roster for Dmowksi and his GPS will be putting in another address for the summer. ‘My girlfriend is going to graduate school at Sacred Heart University (Bridgeport) so we're looking for a place between Hartford and Bridgeport now.” The pro hockey map Dmowski has just begun. NOTES: A story has been was broken by the Rangers long-time beat writer Larry Brooks of the New York Post on Thursday that Glen Sather’s stepping down as Rangers President. Sather's retirement makes an already complicated offseason going to be a palace of intrigue as to where the deck chairs will fall. With Sather’s departure, expect Jim Schoenfeld, who held the post as Hartford GM for 10 years and was a head coach for one and who has been Sather’s right-hand man, will likely also get a golden parachute by either retirement or might find another new gig. The question now is who will be promoted or hired to take the upper echelon reigns? Jeff Gorton, Sather's hand-picked successor, is the present GM. Will he make the move upstairs or add this role to his portfolio? Chris Drury, the present assistant GM, and Hartford GM, could he be promoted? Will there be an overhaul of the entire Rangers scouting staff, professional North America, Europe, and amateur by a new team President? How will the Wolf Pack be affected? They're on the verge of a potential sub-par, below .500 season. What will happen with its coaching staff? How will a future team President feel about Hartford and the unresolved XL Center business? The Rangers also have serious player-personnel decisions to make in New York and Hartford in relation to next year’s cap space and with a looming potential labor stoppage in two years, and yes, the expansion draft in three years when Seattle enters the NHL family. Many questions to be answered over the next three and half months in preparation for the NHL Draft in Vancouver on the organization direction under a new regime. Read more HERE NEWS & NOTES This next story is without a doubt the best hockey story of the year. Former AHL player and now Pro Scout for the Arizona Coyotes, Craig Cunningham, who nearly died two years before an AHL game in Tucson, and by the true Grace of God is still among us, released a video showing him skating with his prosthetic leg at the San Diego Gulls practice facility. It was simply amazing, spectacular great news for a young man who suffered so much and has triumphed in the most outstanding way. Hope he gets some shifts in a game in a league where there isn’t as much hitting or contact-like in the Asia League Ice Hockey (ALIH) or in Australia (AIHL) and New Zealand (NZIHL) to end his career as a player, not as a heart attack victim. Read more HERE Despite having the same last name, the reporter in that story is of no relation. With the arrival of McBride, and Zerter-Gossage, plus Quinnipiac’s Brandon Fortunato signing with Nashville (NHL), the number of Division I players that have signed is up to 150 and that the total number of college players that have signed over the past month is 168. The first college coach signing as Chris Bergeron after nine season leaves the Bowling Green Falcons (WCHA) to take the reigns of his alma mater Miami (OH) RedHawks (NCHC). Bergeron, graduated in 1993 when the school won its first conference title (CCHA at that time) and made their first NCAA tournament appearance. The NCAA announced the three finalists for the Hobey Baker Award that will be given out in Buffalo next weekend at the site of the NCAA’s Frozen Four. It's a hat trick of finalists for the Hobey Baker Award. All three finalists are defensemen. Senior Jordan Schuldt, St. Cloud State Huskies (NCHC) who just signed an NHL free agent deal with the Vegas Golden Knights. The second is junior Adam Fox of Harvard who is a Carolina Hurricanes draft pick who is weighing whether to sign or wait another year and go the free agent route. Then there's UMASS-Amherst Minutemen sophomore Cale Makar, a Colorado Avalanche draft pick who is likely to go pro after next weekend. A unique college commit right from a CT prep school in Cooper Moore (Cos Cob) Brunswick School (Greenwich) with North Dakota (NCHC). Overseas we see former Whaler great Sami Kapanen retains his franchise owner and Chairman of the Board title with KalPa Kuopio (Finland-FEL) but relinquished his head coaching duties to take the job as head coach with HC Lugano (Switzerland-LNA) in the fall. His son Kasperi skated with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ex-Sound Tiger goalie, C.J. Motte, who has played most of the season with Allen (ECHL) and some games with Iowa signs with HC Innsbruck (Austria-EBEL) for next season. Philippe Hudon, who played prep school hockey at Choate Rosemary Hall (Wallingford) after finishing his Canadian collegiate career with the Concordia Stingers (Montreal) (OUAA0 played 14 games with seven points for Florida (ECHL) was loaned to Laval (AHL). Read the full article

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