SO MANY FEELS – Assignment Bank

“Who is the star-bearer, and what will he loose that was bound?”

View Assignment Details

Although I didn’t quite complete the Iconic You assignment in the more minimalist spirit it was perhaps supposed to reflect, I am still SO. DARN. PROUD. of the work I did here. This might actually be my favorite project from the whole semester. I’m SO HAPPY with the balance here, the way I was able to add a little texture to the piece, and how nicely the emboss effect emphasized the design of the stars.

Throughout the Riddle-Master Trilogy, the main protagonist, Morgon of Hed, is describe as having three blood-red stars across his brow. He was born with them, and they are the catalyst to his destiny.

And I swear to God, if anybody even MENTIONS Harry Potter I will flip tables, SO HELP ME.

I’ve actually put a LOT of thought into the way I visualize these stars. The idea of a “star” is pretty deeply encoded into our visual lexicon; most often, when someone writes the word “star,” the visual looks like some iteration of this:

The thing is, these stars are literally part of Morgon’s face. They’re not images or symbols, not really, they’re organic flesh and blood. I always thought they would be closer to scars or birthmarks than the perfect five-pointed design our culture has chosen to represent the concept of “star.” I started thinking about how scars look, how the skin pulls and stretches and puckers around them, and came up with the basic shape I used in the design above. They’re imperfect, and I always envisioned them as sort of recessed in his skin, as if the upper layer of his epidermis had been torn off somehow, exposing a thinner layer of skin beneath that clearly shows the color of his blood.

Yeah, so when I said “I put a lot of thought into this,” maybe I meant “I am mildly obsessed.”

The background color is also significant, though for a different reason. The first time I read through the Riddle-Master Trilogy I was pretty young, and didn’t have much knowledge about diversity in fantasy and scifi except the nagging suspicion that there was a rather marked dearth of brown people in all the books I was reading. A lot of really prominent fantasy, especially, written up until the mid to late 90′s doesn’t really address that, and just posits that since things are vaguely medieval in terms of setting, everybody is basically white. Sadly, McKillip’s work is no exception; although I don’t think any of those writers were consciously excluding people from their writing, it just wasn’t something anybody was trying to address. Either way, it’s buckets of problematic, and while re-reading this series again I decided I wanted to change that up a little bit.

Early in the books, Morgon’s little sister Tristan is described as a “thin, brown reed of a girl,” and from there I decided that in my head-canon, she and her siblings, as well as the rest of the people from their land, all have brown to light brown skin. This is borne out by various descriptions of Morgon and other people of Hed throughout the books. As a reflection of that, I made the background to the stars an approximation of Morgon’s skin color, though lightened a bit so the stars would stand out (the scuffed-up details in the background are just to add a bit of texture). In contrast to my minimalist poster, Morgon’s lover Raederle is what we’d consider white; again, that’s borne out by descriptions throughout the book, so I figure that most people in the Three Portions, where Raederle and her family are from, have pale skin.

Did I say “mildly obsessed”? Let’s just go with “I have basically been living this story for a month and I can taste it when I breathe,” and leave it at that.

View Assignment Details

“Let your heart kindle my heart”

View Assignment Details

Embarrassing confession: I spent a full five minutes crying into my keyboard while attempting to complete the Movie Scenes that Changed Our Lives assignment, all because of ONE CLIP from “A Little Princess.”

Just FYI, if you were not a little girl who grew up in the late 90′s you might not quite get what this movie does to me, but… oh man. Does it ever. In my commentary about the scenes I chose I wanted to let it play out without me babbling over the gorgeous music, so I’ll go into that later. Meanwhile, here’s me rambling about some of my most-loved film and TV moments:

I honestly wish I had more time to spend making this assignment A+ worthy. There’s so much possibility here to really tell a story, to talk about who you are as a person and how your favorite media has shaped your life, the way you think about the world, or even just the other media you see… but it’s Sunday night and it’s late and I’m tired, and frankly I’m pretty happy I found that awesome Sailor Moon clip at all. I must have spent half an hour going through every transformation sequence compilation I could find until I got to the one I wanted to use.

This was by far the easiest assignment from video week. At this point I’m quite familiar with Movie Maker, and can more or less wrestle it into doing what I want. This time around, all I had to do was find three awesome clips that I wanted to talk about (from the Lord of the Rings, Sailor Moon and A Little Princess, respectively—though I can’t seem to find the Sailor Moon video I used), convert them, upload them into Movie Maker, slap some titles and then use the Narration tool to add my commentary.

I’m not particularly pleased with the quality of the narration, and I feel like this video is kind of long and rambly and boring overall, but I am pretty darn fond of the way Movie Maker automatically adjusts the sound level of clips if there’s narration going on. I feel like I would have had to wrestle with that for hours if it wasn’t built into the program.

I also wish I’d had a bit more time, or a bit more eloquence, to describe why these scenes are so important to me. It’s difficult to convey how much I lost myself in Middle Earth as a teenager, and how passionately I still love the world Tolkien created. The way Sailor Moon introduced me to a whole genre of storytelling that would bring me some of my best memories, most beloved stories, most exciting conversations and closest friendships. I actually talked about that in an earlier post from Design Week, and with a lot more coherence than I used in my video. Then there’s “A Little Princess.” This isn’t Tumblr, so it’d be out of context for me to mash my face against the keyboard and insert a few gifs to express myself, but I will say this: as a little girl who relied on her imagination to get through some terrible, terrible years in grade school, who spent a couple of years with more fictional friends than real ones, who looks up to her dad as a hero and who will never ever lose her sense of wonder at storytelling, this is probably my all-time favorite film. Not to mention the fact that the movie’s lush visuals and gorgeous cinematography influenced my sense of aesthetics for the rest of my life.

Like I mentioned earlier, I felt like this assignment had a lot of storytelling potential that I wasn’t really tapping into, and I was curious to see if students who’d completed it before me managed to do so. In the original example, Rosanna Marie does a great job of presenting high-quality clips and narration while giving us a great sense of who she is and what matters to her. She could have used more footage from “The Social Network” to make it clear why she loved the movie so much, but other than that I really enjoyed her video.

The second video I watched was from one of my classmates this semester, and the Indie Librarian really delivered with her video! By contextualizing her clips with an excellent writeup and writing her narration beforehand (NOTE TO FREAKIN’ SELF), she was able to tell a wonderful story about how she grew up in a funny, witty manner. That’s what I wish I could have done with my own video, so hats off to her!

Moral of the story: DON’T JUST RAMBLE. Good writing always always ALWAYS pays off.

One of these days that lesson is going to stick.

View Assignment Details

“The teams with names always die first.”

View Assignment Details

You know, if all group projects came together this beautifully, I might not hate them so much.

Our radio group consisted of me, Daniel, Crystal, Paul, and Rob (who was ~~thrown to the wolves~~ into our group at the last minute), and from the moment that Daniel asked if I’d be interested in doing the show with him and Paul, I knew we had a winning team on our hands. I pulled Crystal into the mix as a fourth member, and while Rob was added to our group after we’d already decided on a theme and basic plot, he proved more than willing to commit to our crazy.

I think that’s what set our team apart from other project groups I’ve been part of: from the beginning, we were all incredibly enthusiastic about putting together an awesome show. Initially we’d all gotten to know each other through active participation on the ds106 Twitter hashtag, and when Prof. Levine said we could choose our own groups it took us less than 24 hours to figure out that we all wanted to work together.

From our first meeting it was clear that although each team member had different strengths, our group was able to let each person do whatever they were best at. As we progressed through writing, recording, and editing the show, that proved to be one of our greatest assets, right along with our willingness to fully invest in the project as a whole. As it turned out, I ended up writing most of the script, Daniel did the majority of the audio editing and everybody else contributed at least two finished bits of audio that were incorporated into the show in the form of fake commercials or radio bumpers. When it turned out that I was way better at commercials than bumpers, for example, Crystal was willing to create an extra bumper to fill my spot.

Getting down to recording the audio was a blast, though it did come with a few challenges. Because our show had a very off-the-cuff feel to it in terms of dialogue, much of what we recorded was initially unscripted. We spent much of our first recording session knocking around in the recording studio in Dupont to simulate the sound of a bunch of people exploring a new environment. However, in reviewing the audio we recorded during our first run-through, Daniel realized that although our recording was good, it wasn’t telling enough of a story. During our second meeting, which Paula and Daniel generously hosted in their basement, I re-wrote parts of the script and made the show more structured overall. We decided to try and reveal aspects of the world and especially of our characters slowly, and then gradually show the breakdown of the radio station and the team as the show progressed, which also alluded to the way the world outside was falling apart. Thanks to our recording location, we were also able to employ Daniel and Paul’s housemate Matt, who acted as our DJ, for a second cameo as the hysterical Hemp Guy. We ended up re-recording all of our audio that night and left at about 1 AM, which just goes to show how dedicated our entire team was to this project.

Even though much of the technical editing work fell to Daniel and the writing was my biggest contribution to the show, I got the sense that nobody felt singled out or overworked. The two of us fell into our roles naturally based on what we enjoy doing and what we’re good at, and at every turn the rest of the team was there to offer advice, suggestions and moral support. I wrote nearly all of the script during our group meetings, and would often ask a team member what they would say in a given situation, or if the room at large thought a scene was funny. In the same way, when Daniel was up till all hours editing our audio we’d all pile into a Google hangout together. Even though he was doing most of the editing we were all there to give him feedback and support, and I’ve never been part of a group project that was willing to just sit around while one member of the team worked on the final product. Sticking around to watch him edit, even remotely, was also a great learning experience; Daniel was by far the most skilled audio editor on our team, and seeing the way he worked taught me a lot about using Audacity effectively.

Everybody say ZOMBIES!

By the time we wrapped up the final edits at 1 AM this morning, the whole team wasn’t just elated to be finished, we were all psyched that we’d been part of such a great experience. You know a group project was successful when you’ve established in-jokes, plan t-shirts for the team and have spent the majority of your time laughing rather than feeling hassled. I feel like that’s an experience unique to a class like ds106, mainly because it was clear from the beginning that we were free to create, explore and experiment however we saw fit. Possessing that kind of freedom made it easy to take a project that could have easily been bogged down by excessive requirements and turn it into something that nobody else could have produced.

View Assignment Details

Ami Mizuno presents: Sailor Moon and the Gender of Power

View Assignment Details

I watched the most incredible TED talk last night. It was led by this super-intelligent Japanese high school student named Ami Mizuno. She was talking about the superheroine group the Sailor Senshi and how they reflect a more feminist, egalitarian and shame-free view of femininity, especially in the ways that femininity relates to literal power and personal agency.

Needless to say I was floored.

Crafting my Fantasy TED Talk ended up being really fun. : D I’ll take any excuse I can get to return to a favorite story.

To say that Sailor Moon was a formative show for me is kind of an understatement. I idolized those characters as a kid, I drew them constantly, tried to figure out which of the girls I’d get along with the best. It was my gateway anime, and from there I devoured every other anime and manga I could get my hands on. As I’ve grown older Sailor Moon has only become more fascinating and important to me (although I can no longer listen to the English dubs without crying). There’s the fact that Sailor Moon teaches girls that there’s no “right” way to be a woman, that all kinds of girls can be friends with each other. It teaches girls that love, supportive relationships and dogged determination in the face of challenges are essential to a successful life. There’s the fact that the princess rescues her prince nine times out of ten and everyone treats it as perfectly acceptable because duh, Sailor Moon is the moon princess, of course she’s more powerful than Tuxedo Mask. That’s a pretty major reversal from… oh, every other story ever. There’s the fact that Sailor Moon includes fully-developed queer characters and constantly plays with the idea of gender (to the point of having characters who can change their physical sex in the anime).

And then there’s the final, ultimate awesome thing about this show: it clearly broadcasts the message that girls’ feelings, their relationships, and everything that makes them girls is powerful. Powerful enough to save the entire galaxy, and without ever taking on an affect that is ascribed to “masculinity.” The Senshi fight painful, bloody battles and die for the people they love, they face impossible odds again and again, and they do it in heels and miniskirts (which none of them are ever shamed for wearing). In a culture that frequently tells women that the only way for them to be “powerful warriors” is by developing a sudden aversion to anything feminine, that anything a woman feels should be monitored in case she’s being “hysterical” or a “crazy bitch,” that viciously criticizes what they wear or how they look no matter WHAT they look like, Sailor Moon stands up and says, “You’re a girl and you are AWESOME.”

Obviously, I have a LOT of feelings about this show. My dream TED talk would have to be someone going into detail about all the points I made earlier, as well as Sailor Moon’s shortcomings (body image, anyone?), and ends by discussing what it can teach us about how we write stories for and about women and girls.

When I had to choose a fictional character to lead the panel, I of course went with Ami, the brains of the Sailor Senshi. While computers and mathematics are her strong suit, I’ve no doubt she would be amazing giving a talk on anything, including feminism in pop culture–and of course, nobody would ever guess that she’s really talking about her best friends and fellow warriors.