Marie-Laure Ryan

On Friday, Zach brought up an interesting question to consider, with regards to the narrativity of Cathy's Book extending beyond the limits of cover-to-cover and incorporating peripherals (the evidence pack) and reader (or player?) involvement through a community. Does "open media" extend the breadth of narrative beyond the concrete text? For example, let's consider MMO/MUD communities. I'll use City of Heroes as an example. If any of you are unfamiliar with City of Heroes (CoH), the basic premise is a Massively Multiplayer roleplaying game set in a fictional metropolis (in Rhode Island, of all places) that also happens to be the boiling pot of superhuman activities. Players create a superhero and engage in a predefined, pre-programmed world with previously scripted, coded and incorporated storylines (saving banks from AI-controlled thugs, etc.)  read more »

I know a lot of people expressed some rather negative opinions about Facade because of its inability to understand some user input. Some argue that this shortcoming breaks the immersive quality and leaves users frustrated, making it hard to truly experience the story Facade tries to tell. After reading Marie-Laure Ryan's take on Facade, though, I have to agree with her explanation about how this very shortcoming is explained by the characters and the story itself, perhaps then lending to Facade's immersive quality. As Ryan points out, both Grace and Trip are incredibly self-centered, so if they don't listen to your input, it doesn't exactly break character. It's also evident that the two are quite distracted, so if your user input is answered with something that doesn't make much sense, it can be attributed to the fact that they aren't really listening to you anyway because they have other things on the mind. When they start to argue and the situation escalates, it gets even harder to put a word in. At this point, not getting much of a response goes along with how this situation would play out in the real world.  read more »

I some ways your distinction between those who read for the pure enjoyment and those (majority) who read because they are told so is quite accurate. I always love to hear students ask the professor in class whether a certain idea or subject taught in class "is going to be on the test," as if it wasn't on the test the student wouldn't bother trying to absorb that idea any further. That's the kind of mentally students have these days. I see it all the time and it's pretty sad.  read more »

In Avatars of Story, one of the ideas Ryan presents is that "the fictional speech act creates its world through the very act of describing it, and its statements are automatically true within its refernce world." We talked about this in class and all the cool sci-fi multiverse aspects to this theory. It got me to thinking about a story's canon. For instance, when people write fanfiction, they can be accused of writing the story's characters in a way that's out-of-character, or the entire writing could be said to not fit well with the story's world. This can also apply to published works. For example, when a new writer gets put on a long-standing superhero comic, some fans might not like their treatment/version of the story. This would seem to support the theory that there's a certain standard "truth" to story worlds, and that characters and stories within that world can be written in a way that doesn't allign with this truth.  read more »

When we talked today about Ryan's discussion of belief versus make-believe within Avatars of Story, the concept of the "Megaverse" was brought up, the concept of parallel (perhaps infinite parallel) universes existing alongside our own. I also brought up an anecdotal experience concerning fiction, made by a clairvoyant (a guest speaker in an Honors Magick and Witchcraft course). While her beliefs are a bit difficult to wrap one's head around, I consider them incredibly interesting once deciphered.
This clairvoyant expressed a personal belief in the concept of the Megaverse, and stated a theory that the soul is tied to the consciousness. Basically, when one's consciousness creates something imaginative, whether it be a perception of a scene in a story, the playing-out of a potential outcome of an uncertain situation, or merely a dream, the consciousness has traveled there to experience it. In essence, when "your mind wanders", it LITERALLY wanders.  read more »