Dragon Master 5000

King of Cats: An Origin Story This assignment caused me to think deeply about what it means to identify as an English major. I don’t share a passion for reading that many of my classmates enjoy. I have always been more drawn to the conversations sparked by literature. I love talking about literature much more than actually reading it. When I think about the dissonance between societal depictions and treatment of those that love literature and my own self-image, I don’t see an egregious misunderstanding, rather I see dislocation. For this assignment, rather than reconcile my own misrepresentation in society, I needed to reconcile my own displacement from my English literature community. If I don’t have a lifelong passion for literature, then what about me can be identified as an English major? Shakespeare is synonymous with the idea of English literature, and therefore seemed like an obvious choice as a representative text. Shakespeare exists in two spheres. On ...

Your Favorite Movie Sucks This project was a lot of fun. It presented the most unique challenges and called upon our creativity in ways that previous projects have not. Collecting entries was a fun and interesting part of the process in its own right. Actually organizing those entries was challenging and rewarding.  For our project we knew we wanted to have people submit their favorite movie quotes. We initially left it broad to cast a wide net and get as many entries as possible. We like movies so it was fun to bond with family and friends over movies they enjoy. Furthermore, many people that submitted movies and movie quotes were interested in the progress of the project. Our friends asked us to update them on its progress and let us know when it was complete. In that sense we truly felt like we got the sense of teamwork and collaboration that this project was designed to create.  We learned a lot about the challenges and difficulties of community collaboration from ...

Satan's Triumph Long before there was Walter White or Michael Corleone, there was Satan, the original fallen angel. I chose Satan’s iconic monologue from Paradise Lost to recreate because it is interesting to think about the journey and processes of a man’s fall from grace. I have always loved the aural quality to Milton’s language and I thought that the imagery in his writing would naturally lend itself to experimentation. Milton’s poem contains rich descriptions of the scenery, landscape, and environment of both Heaven and Hell. My first task was to come up with some way to create those descriptions visually so that the visual component could prop up Satan’s simmering language. Not only did I rely on popular illustrations of Paradise Lost and one illustration of Dante’s Paradiso , I also considered their locations spatially in the poem. A common theme in Paradise Lost is the way that Satan organizes Hell as perversion of the pattern of Heaven. I repr...

Ian Bogost is concerned with a critical approach to video games in his aptly titled book How to Talk About Video Games . In forming an answer to his titular question, he draws inspiration from other genres of established criticism like literary or film criticism. However he suggests that, because video games are inseparable from their platform or medium, approaching with a lens that focuses just on narrative content is insufficient. In the introduction he writes, “how to talk about videogames? Like a critic, not a reviewer, for one, but also: like a toaster critic, not just a film critic. To do game criticism is to take this common born subject as toaster and as savior, as milk and as wine, as idiocy and as culture.” Addressing the duality and natural tension in games and gaming platforms is a recurring theme in Bogost’s writing. It is important that Bogost here establishes an apologetic tone, as if he knows that he is going to be asking more of games than they were perhaps intended t...