Archive for November, 2008

A Tutorial on Optimizing Your Reading?

By lelangir on 26 November 2008 | Internet | 6 Comments

This is the only time I will ever whore post across many blogs. Forgive me. It’s justified because it’s for you!

This “discovery” is the product of a long line of meta posts that went around the past few days. I won’t bore you with the posts themselves. Usagijen and RyanA had an awesome thought, and to quote RyanA:

What would be really awesome, you may already be thinking this, is to have an aggregator of various reader/blogger’s lensing/noting (Shared Items in Google Reader). Unfortunately, this is more work for authors and asking readers to do such a thing is sort of fishy. If there were a sub-group of producers, not authors, that did this and that is all they did, it could be highly effective…. I wonder if any team-blogs have thought of designating that position to members.

This is a short guide on how to “optimize” your google reader experience. Of course, only those will gmail accounts will benefit from this, but if you didn’t use gmail, you don’t deserve to read this anyway.

On Blogging Part 4: nexistence and z-axis orientation

By lelangir on 26 November 2008 | Internet | 5 Comments

←[85] (part 1, 2, 3) (collective train of thought: RyanA 1, 2 – Intro 1, 2)

RyanA: What would be really awesome, you may already be thinking this, is to have an aggregator of various reader/blogger’s lensing/noting (Shared Items in Google Reader). Unfortunately, this is more work for authors and asking readers to do such a thing is sort of fishy. If there were a sub-group of producers, not authors, that did this and that is all they did, it could be highly effective…. I wonder if any team-blogs have thought of designating that position to members.

Wow, that’s a really nifty idea. I hadn’t been thinking of that specifically, but I had been conjuring up some group google documents thing. The problem is that I think using platforms besides blogs enters into the “private sphere”, effectively damming communication. Twitter is for bloggers by bloggers just as these posts kind of are, but that’s a totally content related matter as opposed to form-oriented.

You could approach the following paragraph in two or three ways, I think:

Georges Poulet and a terrible visual pun

By Cuchlann on 20 November 2008 | Art and Culture, Video Games | 9 Comments

 

I keep forgetting Agrias is a dude.

I keep forgetting Agrias is a dude.

 

I know it’s been a while since I posted — and even longer since I posted anything worth a damn.  Sorry about that.  I finished the draft of my project for History of the English Language, and and about to get going on my paper for Gothic novel.  Why should this excite you?  My paper is on the use of the Gothic in survival horror games.  I found a few articles about Silent Hill, and I’m playing SH2 specifically for the paper.  But I’m not going to talk about that specifically right now.  Instead, I mean to work out a little of the theory on video games I’ll be using — I’m applying phenomenology to video games.  

Nekocon 11: commercialization and citizen criticism

By Pontifus on 13 November 2008 | Conventions | 11 Comments

I guess my first name is Juan now.

I’m not much of a con-goer; conventions are expensive, and, having committed myself to the path of the college-dweller, I shall surely be forever poor. But in my infinite kindness, I saw fit to ferry my brother (better known around here as Otouto-kun) and his friend to and from Nekocon, the convention of our eastern Virginia homeland. In my infinite insanity wisdom, I began to compare my designated driver position to that of an Aquan gondolier — I would serve as an existential messenger, ferrying the hopes and dreams of my passengers into unexplored waters.

It, um, didn’t quite work out that way. All I really did was spend too much money (and anyway, my canzone needs a little work). But the conventional goings-on did, at least, prompt me to give thought to a few subjects that might be relevant to your interests.

Desperate times call for filler posts

By Pontifus on 10 November 2008 | SFCentral | 4 Comments

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do...

I have some (arguably) substantial posts in the works, really — in particular, I intend to relate some thoughts on my local convention in the very near future, and I can (and will) probably churn out another half dozen ruminations on Aria before I run out of things to say about it for the time being. My hard drive having been devoured by viruses has set me back a bit, though, so I’ve decided to follow in Cuchlann’s footsteps and run my posts (excepting the Otouto dialogue, for which I’m not fully responsible) through Wordle. The results are as pictured above.

It’s appropriate, I think, that one of my most commonly-used words is “one,” whatever the context may be. After all, it’s my goal — nay, my holy quest to demonstrate that, in the right hands (i.e. all of ours), art criticism can become a great unifier and therefore a more effective means by which to understand ourselves. If this requires the forcible divorce of criticism from clandestine academic circles, then so be it — but let’s not jump to that conclusion and charge in with guns blazing just yet. Also interesting is that I use “hell” more often than weighty terms such as “existence,” “concerns,” and “Socrates.” Clearly, I am the devil.

Speaking of criticism, I recently received my academic adviser’s comments on the essay I’ll be using as a writing sample in my grad school applications, upon which she wrote what is clearly the best comment ever. And I quote: “Derrida is turning in his grave :(” For the record, it was a misunderstanding — in the following paragraph, I proceed to explain why the statement she didn’t like is flawed — but that comment, complete with frowning face, made me lol.

Dammit, this post has nothing to do with anime, manga, or games. I’m done here. Pontifus out!

Linguistic Quandry on Fansubs

By lelangir on 10 November 2008 | Internet | 12 Comments

←[76]

Just some questions on the recent fansub debate, apart from the lighthearted mocking.

What I talk about [apparently] when I talk about. . . stuff.

By Cuchlann on 8 November 2008 | SFCentral | 3 Comments

I got bored last night.  So I made a wordle image from all my posts here at Superfani so far.  I’m not sure how useful it is, but I thought it would be fun, so there.

I notice the biggest word is “like.”  That’s probably me prevaricating when I make statements, alongside my tendency to use similies a lot.  I’ll try to cut down the first, as it’s not good practice in essays.

After that is “people,” which strikes me as appropriate for a self-described populist literary critic.

“Criticism” and “text” aren’t surprising to anyone, I’m sure, not after this post.

Really I guess I’m just here to let you know I’m still alive.  I’m behind on most of the anime I’m watching, except Toradora! And I haven’t thought of much in the nature of critical essaying to say about that one.  I did catch the new Zetsubou-Sensei OVA, but again, not much of superfani-quality to say about it.  I hope to either write that Soul Eater post I keep promising, or some initial thoughts about my video game paper, by the end of today, but I dunno how that’s going to work.  Damn school.  Never mind the application stuff I should be doing.  Sigh.

Wow, this post is incredibly self-indulgent.

The hand-made planet

By Pontifus on 4 November 2008 | Anime | 7 Comments

Wow, the old guy to the right does not look pleased.

I mentioned last time, after extended namedropping of Joyce and Aquinas, that Aqua is a powerful setting. We can assume as much from the first episode of Aria (that’s the Animation, you’ll recall), and from speculative and animated settings wielding the de facto thought-provocation that they do (more on this later), but the fourth episode doesn’t let us forget it (never mind that the above screen capture is from episode twelve). The mysterious girl in the alley, the too-late video message and its contents — all elements seem bent toward drawing our attention to Aqua’s owing its existence and nature to human beings. Here, Aria provides another way of looking at both itself and the ever-ridiculous species that produced it, albeit one more obvious than the “shut your eyes and see” business of the first episode. But to what end?