timarach's blog

One of the subjects that Ryan touches upon is the fact that films is make belief rather than belief because we all know that the drama is being staged and usually captures something be it a tradition or event that exists independently of the movie. I watched the movie I Am Legend yesterday, horribly depressing by the way, and found myself agreeing with this concept. Although the movie took place in a future world that seems to come out of our worst nightmares (we found the cure to cancer but that cure mutated into a horrible disease that killed 90% of the population, 1% were immune to and 9% were turned into monsters by) I don't think anyone left the movie theater thinking that the movie was real. The actors were amazing and in the course of the movie one forgot that they were acting and starting cheering when they survived and tearing up when they died but at the end of the movie everyone knew that no even though they died in the movie the actors hadn't died in real life and they weren't even accurate because it was set in a future that hadn't happened.  read more »

I am so depressed right now. I truly did not see the ending, or should I say the beginning coming. So, I was right, it was a narrative being told in video game format. I really don't want to spoil it for other people because half the fun is not knowing what is come. Though by the time you do, a little bit after midway through the game for me, you really want to do anything possible to change the outcome. However, this is impossible. I replayed the game because I wasn't sure if I was really getting it and it struck me that it truly is a narrative, when you know what to do you finish the game in about 15 minutes. The thing that some people might not like about it is that it is not truly interactive, it is more a story that you are reading. However, I greatly enjoyed it, especially when I realized that everything was about Alley. It took me the second run through to realize that the whole story was about someone else's point of view on her. A truly fascinating piece of work, I loved how the beginning was really the end and I really loved her dreams.  read more »

I've already been playing Photopia for about 35 minutes, when we were told that the game in its entirety would take about half an hour. I don't know, maybe I'm a particularly slow gamer. But I've only just gotten to the stage where everything is aqua. I kind of wanted to do a before and after reflections since it seemed in class that everything would become clear at the end. What it seems to be right now is a collection of stories all being woven together. Interestingly enough, although they're all set in wildly different places they seem to be weaving together almost as if one were reading a book. I find this style of game fascinating and I'm really enjoying the playing experience. In comparison to games like adventure I am much less frustrated, the parser is much smarter in a thoroughly enjoyable way. I also like the fact that I'm learning so many different things, the main characters are very obviously not you but that makes it more interesting because it's like watching a story unfold and just observing along the way.  read more »

When talking about artificial intelligence to my friends it is very clear from our conversations that movies like the Matrix or terminator have influence our thinking. We tend to think of AI's as terrifying possibilities of what happens when machines become smarter than their creators. Eliza... Well let's just say that I don't feel that machines are going to take over the world anytime soon. Eliza was frustrating to talk to. The way that she was created seems very primitive and as I was trying to tell her my problems she managed to make me take my mind of my problems and get angry at her. She is frustrating to play and quite useless as a psychologist, truly I can't see how anyone could have been fooled into thinking that she was a real person. She seems to be existing in a different time than us. As I was reading her for some strange reason I started thinking about Chapman and thought that it was like I was in discourse time, telling the story and at the same time in story time being inside the story while Eliza was just in story time.  read more »

After watching the documentary on video games and listening to the commentary in class I was very interested in cross cultural comparisons of females and their roles in creating video games and how the roles differed in Japan vs. America, I'm also going to talk a little bit about comic books and manga because that is a topic that I know more about than video games. Looking at video games in a narrotological fashion it becomes clear that while the original video games had a semblance of gender neutrality the latter generation of video games, our generation, has made the video game industry one made by males for males. We talked a little bit in class about Grand theft auto, a classic example of a popular video game. The dangerous explosions, callous disregard for lives and vulgar humor seemed to be aimed at the adolescent male, the one who thinks that the epitome of high class humor are toilet jokes. Comic books are pretty much the same. Simply by looking at the costumes that females wear make it very obvious that the writer is a male writing to a male audience.  read more »

I left class Wednesday in a surprised frame of mind. It seemed as if everyone had gotten together to praised handwritten books and curse the fact that we now have computers that can type and make the process boring, impersonal and.... legible? I'm sorry to say it but I think that the only reason most people are shouting the virtues of handwritten books is that they have never really seen anything that is not an excerpt or pictures. I mean, lets be serious here, it's the 21st century, who writes by hand? A lot of people were saying that handwriting leaves an imprint on the work, the authors thought process, etc... They seem to think that something that is written electronically is immaterial and easily disappears. Well, to that I can only say, print it out or even, gasp! save it! Yes! Can you believe it? With the nifty thing called the computer, came the nifty program called Word which came with cool little applications that allow you to... save your work. Not only that but with the advent of the electronic networks came the possibility of sharing your work with millions of other people. You think books are tangible while a word saved document fades away?  read more »

I watched the most awful movie last night. It was supposed to be a retelling of passion, adventure and danger. A remake of a piece of literature that has survived the centuries. This movie, it was called.... Beowulf. And lord was it awful. The reason I bring this movie up is because of the title of the protagonist; Beowulf. In Chapter three of "Story and Discourse" Chapman talks about the importance of giving names that reflect the character. This is very much in common with the literary trope of effictio, a common device in medieval times where a person's physical characteristics matched their insides, for example a person with red hair would have a fiery temper. In this regard Beowulf can be taken apart to be o wulf or be a wolf. This name gives the reader an immediate description of how the character should be, ferocious and unrelenting like a wolf which makes us feel a certain awe for him, or at least it's supposed to.  read more »

I am so confused right now. I just finished Game, game, game and again game and I really don't see the point of it. I think that I have the average english major's ability to see beneath the surface of an issue, for instance I found passage fun and interesting, but I found this game quite.... confusing/boring. I think the reason for this was simply that the story was not well organized. If we talk in Chapman terms the narrative was completely out of order which made it difficult for the player to understand. I slogged through to the end because I felt obligated to but did not understand anything. The game was completely random, getting to the next level was extremely easy but I found no point in any level. I read all the passages and they were strange to say the least, most of them were disjointed, it almost seemed as if the sentences had all been put together quite randomly. Unlike passage where the animation deepened the story the animation in this game was simply annoying.  read more »

I haven't seen a lot of people do their blog entries on Krazy Kat so that's what I'm going to tackle. In particular I think I'll focus on a common interpretation that I disagree with; viewing Krazy Kat as a female. It is true that Krazy is madly in love with Ignatz but this does not mean that Krazy is female. George Herriman never makes Krazy's gender clear (referring to Krazy as both a she and a he) but as I read the strip I found myself picturing Krazy as a male simply because of the role that Krazy has in the narrative. To put it simply Krazy is the one doing all the chasing.  read more »

Well, although this game is supposed to reflect the passage of life I sure find myself hoping that it doesn't represent how I live my life. The first time I played the game I acquired the wife by pure chance and started rushing till the end. I explored a couple of boxes but after getting no rewards for my troubles I simply continued on. I didn't notice that I was getting older till my wife died and I still didn't know what was going on. I only took a second to look at my wife's tombstone, explore it for treasure and then move on rushing towards the end. I was shocked when I died, I was so utterly sure that something else was going on.  read more »