When the emo takes over

There’s a lot of representations of Death. I know I’m a little wrapped up in it still from the Book Thief, but between him, Gaiman’s perky gothic Death and Silas, Pratchett’s Death and Death of Rats, and George/Millie and her cohorts in Dead Like Me, I seem to be surrounded by them. It makes me think about how they’re represented in modern fictions. I’m thinking a comparison between the Death of Byron and Tennyson and Poe and so on. Not sure where to take it yet, I’ll get around to fleshing it out though.

Of Cabbages and Kings

The Fabulous Ms L and I went on a grand adventure into Lygon Street to see the premier of Coraline. We were a week early, which is better than a week late, but still not overly conducive to actually viewing the movie. So we went for coffee (or hot chocolate) and profiteroles, which – for some reason - always feels so right on Lygon St. Then started the trek to locate werewolf clubs. Booyah. Not successful. However we did discover a bottle shop that stocked Some Young Punks (with such delightful drops as Passion has Red Lips, and The Squid’s Grip), so I might have stocked up the wine rack a little. Then on the way back to the car, we passed Readings. Seriously, that place is to me as Goldfingers is to a drunken buck’s night. It started off innocently enough, a casual glance through the graphic novels for specific titles, a finger down the spine of the Dictionary of Signs and Symbols, the normal back and forth. But of course as we wander further back, toward philosophy, lit crit, psychology, things got a little steamier. The whispered sweet nothings stopped and instead the pages got sassier, they did this arching, whimpering thing and I ended up writhing against the shelves trying to decide between a Jeffreys, an Irigaray, and a Braudilliard. In the end, however, there was this sweet, purple book. Logic of Alice. She was all “hey baby, you so fine” and I was like, *blushgulp* “hi...” and she’s all “So how you doin’?” and I’m like “I’m...um... fine. So... you fancy a little sumpin’sumpin’?” and she’s like “oh honeychild, I don’t open my pages for just anyone you know. If you like it, put a receipt on it.”

So I did.

Yeah, we’ve been wrapped up in each other ever since. I’m hoping she might be useful beyond the Alice paper. The explanations of logic are applicable to all arguments, so I’m going to use her as a handbook and rework old writing, thesis included, and try to tighten them. I’m just concerned there’s a privileging of certain masculinist thought types, but I haven’t figured out how to phrase that concern properly yet. Soon my pretties, soon

Comic Books and Rock'n'Roll: Coolest PhD Evah!

Ok, well, after much musing, I've come up with a basic structure for the Phd:

The Children of the Fence: Developing an Aesthetic Criteria for Critically evaluating Trans-Media Narratives
~or~
Comic Books and Rock'n'Roll: Coolest PhD Evah!

Intro: The Last Supper
1. The Rebirth of the Author: New roles for writers and readers.
2. Convergence Culture: Developing a pre-modern relationship with text.
3. The Amory Wars: A Post-Modern Epic
4. Neverender: Musical Narrative and Performance
5. Second Stage Turbine Blade: Textual Narrative (including paratext)
6. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: Online Narratives
7: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness: The post-modern hero of autobiography and analogy.
8. No World For Tomorrow: Developing an aesthetic criteria for critical evaluation of trans-media narratives.

Dear lord, and I am spent. I'm planning to use a similar approach with the Alice project, which might be slightly more generalised as there are more books. I'll nut that one out and post later. Meanwhile, must email supervisor.

Once Upon a Time

Well, the plan is to try and keep an online diary of my research. So this will probably make for rather dull reading, but the idea is that if I need to access something, I can get to it. All hail the blogosphere. So prepare to be enthralled by a collection of random quotes from whomever I'm reading at any given time and a poor quality application of those theories onto whatever interwebs fad I happen to be obsessed with at any given time (Secret Life of Dolls, I am looking at you). Consider it an online mindmap. Just don't use it for directions, because my thoughts often ramble off of cliffs on wings made from honey and lost chicken feathers. Yeah, it's very much more Icarus than Pegasus.

So today's theory reading list includes: Convergence Culture by one Henry Jenkins, Illegal Harmonies by Mr Andrew Ford (heh, I win Amazon, my copy was only $9.95 from the Monash Uni Bookshop Sale Table), and Je, Tu, Nous by Luce Irigaray (on loan from the lovely Ms L).

For texts in action (today), I'm looking at Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars series, which utilises novels (The Looking Glass Wars, Seeing Redd, Arch Enemy), graphic novels (Hatter M: The Looking Glass Wars Vol. 1 - with a video trailor), a scrapbook (Princess Alyss of Wonderland - it's nearly my birthday?), a website (including forum community), a movie and an online game. Actually, there's more than one game. There is also music and, yeah, there's a shop.

And you know... Lewis Carroll's texts kind've have to get a look in too.

So Beddor is totally rocking this whole transmedia narrative schtick. I'm going to break for luncheon and meds (can't have me going all hatter), and then we'll see what I can't drag together from this red-hot-mess.