It’s Simple – A Writer Writes

 Posted by on Sun, 11/20 at 10:35pm  ideas, something else  No Responses »
Nov 202016
 

I’ve kinda read all I can read at this point, so I think I’ll talk about writing this week. More specifically, writing as it relates to me recently, and the doors that have opened for me as a result of writing constantly.

Writing has always come easy to me. I can’t recall a single instance in which I’ve had trouble writing a paper. Sure, I’ve had those 15 to 20 minute sessions of staring at a blank page with that damned text cursor mockingly blinking, trying to formulate the right way to open the paper and smoothly transition from a broad statement to a thesis, but who hasn’t? I don’t proclaim to be a writing superstar. To do that would give myself way too much credit, but I do, on occasion, acknowledge the praise others have given my work. I’ve found that even partially believing the things people have said about my writing has helped me immensely in that it has pushed me to do more than just write college papers every couple of weeks.

I mentioned early in the semester that I write for The Superman Homepage. I currently write reviews for the New Super-Man comic book. It’s a book about a kid in China getting Superman-like powers and operating as a member of a government manufactured Justice League of China. Before I landed that gig, I had submitted a book review for 100 Things Superman Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die. After that, I submitted a roughly six to eight page paper discussing Superman’s popularity. It was something that I had wanted to write about for a long time, and at one point, was even the focus of a film that I wanted to make for a documentary filmmaking class I was enrolled in. The film never got made, but I was still interested in the idea. One day, Steve Younis – the owner of The Superman Homepage – posted on Facebook that he was looking for some new submissions for the site. Keeping the positive words of friends and professors in mind, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. I pitched him my essay idea, and he loved it.

I wrote the paper in a week, juggling three other papers for school. Even still, there are areas that I feel could have been stronger or more in-depth, but never being completely satisfied with your work is all part of being a creator. The essay received a lot of praise from users of the site. Around the time the piece was posted, it had received over 2,000 reads, and quite a large number of comments from people I had never met telling me how much they enjoyed my piece.

Skipping forward a semester, I decided to take a journalism class. Even remotely knowing about my interest in Superman, the reason why I signed up for the course is obvious – I wanted to be like my hero. After the first two assignments and several quizzes, my professor pulled me aside one day and asked if I would like to write for the University Press.

I said yes now I write for the student paper. I’ve already got a piece ready to be submitted for publishing, and when it hits, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be framing it. It’s not just about having my name in print, or on a website. To me, it’s much larger – it’s about taking those first steps into the larger world of writing. I have a lot of directions I’d like to go in, but whichever path I take, I know that writing is going to be heavily involved. And I’m okay with that.

IDEAS: In the Air: Strawhats, Models, and Opponents (OG: 10/16; updated 10/23)

 Posted by on Thu, 10/13 at 7:40pm  artifact ideas, ideas, something else  No Responses »
Oct 132016
 

 

  1. Gol D. Roger’s strawhat
  2. Full Crew Cosplay: The idea of forming a crew
  3. Luffy vs. Strongest Other Person

Good old Monkey D. Luffy (MDL, for now on). Although he is as renowned in the manga One Piece (of which he is one of the main protagonists) just as much as his crew is, being that he holds the outstanding position of being the Captain of one of the most wanted pirate crews in the One Piece world currently (and as he might be supposedly destined to obtain the greatest treasure of the seas), he has consequently conjured some phenomena uniquely attributed for him. Notice I said for him and not to him, which I say because I don’t mean to imply it’s as directly and solely caused by him.

Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of people cosplaying, and amidst all the guns, cool-silver plating, go-go boots, pink and green spray painted hair, you may have seen perhaps a rather out place, common, Florida tourist-type looking-fellow with a small straw hat that has a red-band just above the brim. This hat is the hat that means all to the man MDL, and without it, it just wouldn’t be the same One Piece. It was passed down onto him by his hero, the pirate who most inspired him to become one, “Red-Haired” Shanks, who actually had the hat be passed down to him from the late Pirate King, Gol D. Roger. This hat has taken a life of its own, as various vloggers can be seen wearing it or having it in the background of their rooms, not only that, but many vloggers have themselves proposed various theories as to why Luffy received the hat in the first place (beyond just what we’re told in the manga), its function, the symbolism around it, and more. Effectively, it has taken a life of its own, yet inseparable from the idea of Luffy and his destiny to be great, such that many people interested in One Piece recognize it as such and have worked on its image such that it increases its significance.

The hat’s significance in One Piece can’t be overlooked, but, to return to the idea of cosplaying, you rarely see a group of cosplayers solely grouped up wearing a Luffy outfit with the hat. No, usually if you see the hat, it means that you will see a green-haired man with 3 swords, a long-nosed man with a sling, some one possibly dressed as a reindeer, and a few other distinctive folks One Piece fans with recognize. Who are they? None other than the Straw Hat Pirates, of course!! As a work of culture, full One Piece crews of Straw Hat Pirates cosplayers have inspired others to cosplay as rival pirates or allies. What is further interesting though is that these kind of images point to the idea of having a real life “crew” for some folks. Indeed, I have read a few forums that consider what it would taken to put together a crew just as cool and tightly-knit as the crews (more so the Straw Hat Pirates though) we find on One Piece. The “crews” we see people putting together in cosplay groups could be seen as working within the faction of people who would like to have camaraderie we see like that in the manga.

But on talk of elements of cooperation, now we find the work of competition. Luffy is no originator to this trend, indeed Batman, Superman, and others have long ran appearances on these “mediums’, but we that he is now getting a spot in the ever-illustrious renditions and conversation about “who would win in a fight between character 1 and character 2.” (typically it’s the strongest characters of a book, movie, manga, TV series, video game, etc.). Personally, it is so cool to see Luffy versed up against people like Goku and Superman, because I remember when I first saw these A vs. B matches come along for Goke and Superman, so in a way like watching a tradition build. Not only is Luffy pit against old school dudes like the Bats and the Man, but he is also pit against his contemporary, popular manga “rivals”, so to speak, Naruto (of the eponymous popular manga-turned-TV series) and Ichigo (also another popular character from the manga Bleach). Like the Straw Hat and One Piece pirates, these A vs. B matches mark down yet another that Luffy has not only been embraced by people, but has been “radiated out”, so to speak, in the culture by them too, and I bet by the time the series ends (we have been told by the One Piece creator that it won’t be for at least 10 years) there’ll be many more of these to be found around.

Big Time Pictoral Close Reading

 Posted by on Thu, 9/22 at 11:59am  something else  No Responses »
Sep 222016
 

WWF

Pictured here is a plot of trees in the shape of lungs. The trees go along with the set of lungs because trees are what give us oxygen to breathe, as we all know. Keeping this in mind, we can see that part of one of the lungs is being torn down, just like we’ve torn down and destroyed a great deal of all of the forests all over the world. The image relates to the problem because the picture of the lungs stands for our own lungs, and as the forrest is destroyed, our source of fresh air is also being devastated.