Fanning the Flames

Well, with some work (and continuing work, of course), Amanda's and my site is live:

FAN-atical
We're presenting the site as a rough today, so if you have lingering questions or suggestions (or if you're not in our Engl 105), please drop them here!

By Fans, For Fans, and Hopefully Not as Expensive as Fanime

Now that I've made my decision to blaze-a-blaze (galang-alang-alang-lan) ahead on the research paper topic for the associative argument website, and have joined up with the illustrious forces of Amanda, I suppose the next idea would be to start brainstorming ideas of layout, and content.

First off, there will be some included content on both our research papers, the gamut running from fanfiction value as a creative tool and teaching tool in the classroom, to the professional value and validity of derivative fan work (fan art, fan fiction, remix/mash-ups).


Love this like its your own child.

Also included will be some fan work, specifically fan fiction from both of us and hopefully other collaborators I know, so maybe starting an "example" gallery of fan work (I know for a fact I'm recruiting my buddy J-MACHine into this hullabaloo.  He doesn't know yet as of posting >D).

I'm also considering the idea of having comments available for discussions.  If not in each section, then maybe in a main discussion page.  My main goal was to incite some talking about fan work.

What technie things I DO want to know how to do (seeing as I've NEVER built a website):
--How to embed a comment box or like code to allow for feedback/discussion/etc

--How to embed music links, both for listening purposes and perhaps downloading (in the case of non-commercial artists).  At the very least, I want a way for people to click on hyperlinks for music and not need to navigate too far from the main page (cutting out the possibility of getting lost on the way to last.fm, for example).

--Making sure I can embed youtube links, like you can in a blog.  I'm fairly certain they shouldn't be a problem.  But I'm covering my bases.

Hopefully, it'll be fun, interactive, and good enough for a good grade. :3

Cosmic, Man, Cosmic

The next assignment for English 105 is an associative argument assignment.  What?  Forget the breaking down of the assignment into totally translatable explanations, I'll just start the free write of what I plan to do right now.

Schmow-wow.

The idea is to generally make a webpage based off of a previous assignment, of which follows for me:

--The Technical Bibilography, wherein we find lil ol' me and ascertain when she got her addiction to the internet, games, and generally messing around and calling myself a writer/artist.  To your left you'll see a Gameboy with Tetris and to your right, you'll find chat rooms and Google Wave.  Thank you for not smoking.

--The aforementioned tech review of Google Wave, with its shiny bells, whistles and intuitive interface.

--And finally, the much stressed over Research Paper, Everything Old is New Again: Sampling and Fan Work, otherwise known as "The Case for Fan Work and a Silly Excuse to Use Pop Culture as Real Culture" (and who's to say that it can't be?).  

An example or two on parataxical "texts"/work:

Not (Necessarily) a Cosmic Convergence

.....I don't know what I'm supposed to call this, but, here it is

(the latter link is all sorts of shades of 99 Rooms and Dionaea House.  Also, don't say I never warned you, but make sure to attempt Dionaea House w/ the lights on.  I'm not responsible for the creeps it may induce 8D)

The easiest transition, after thinking on it (which is to say, not at all, because I'm impulsive like that), to a shiny and nifty, hyperlinked page is the Research Paper.

The case for this:

--SELF-PIMPING 8D.  Because the idea of being able to use my own work paints me 7 ways of giddy. I'm not narssisstic.  HONEST. 8D

--A more dynamic way to present my evidence and examples, like hyperlinking Double K, and There Will Be Brawl, in addition to musical artists' pages.  Its good to give love in the form of pageviews to artists, you know.

--I can easily generate new text I wasn't able to include in the paper.

--In this way, then, I can request more dialogue than a static paper, and present new questions and really get these ideas out there, where more people will talk.

Ideas!

--Perhaps then, in addition to posting hyperlinks, maybe having a comment board and/or image board for people to post points I haven't considered or work that supports or detracts from my research paper's argument.  

--In thinking along these lines, a submittable gallery that runs along the points of interest in my essay would be more approachable for those not of scholarly blood (like meself), and help illustrate the points of evolving fan community and the work they produce.

.....Yeah.  I'm getting far to excited about this, aren't I?

I'm Not Dead Yet

A research paper required of me three things: time, effort and stability.  I had only 1 of the 3, and I'll give you a hint: its effort.  BUT.  That's not my real point.  My real point is the nature of the research process.  My topic for class was on the subject of fan work, mostly because I'm the most familiar with the practices and its something I enjoy doing (if my now neglected DA account is of any indication, though a glut of it is original work).  As an amateur artist with dreams of everything big, shiny, and hopefully merchandisable, I see fan art as being a good outlet that has practical, if not artistic, merit.

Therefore I centered my paper on the nature of fan work, starting from the traditional fan fiction and fan art, all the way up to the professional level of sampling in music, notably DJs (including but not limited to Pogo, Fatboy Slim, and Daft Punk).  I still do have some filling in to do, but overall, I think I got a good foundation for the case for fan work as legitimate work.

The research part was a might difficult, since I was on the prowl for topics that included a fair and wide amount of information on fan fiction (there was little that i could find on fan art as of this week) and a few articles on the subject of sampling for music.  Both searches were a bit frustrating, since it was difficult to locate both credible sources of papers on the subjects (though I did find a few written by a very well read and statistic armed writer whom was lucky enough to discuss her work with the scholar Henry Jenkins, a leading voice on the nature of fan fiction), and to find complete articles.  I did use ILL, but the downside is the fact that one might have to order their materials from another library, which will add time to your researching (time one like me didn't have in luxury).

However, the articles I was able to locate were both interesting (FINALLY, some articles that weren't Sahara dry in content and prose) and extremely helpful in my case.  It also help lead me to other sources of reading for side subjects I didn't get to fully touch on in my essay (namely the divisive nature of fan fiction regarding romance/shipping, the gender divide, etc).  This paper also gave me plenty of privalage in pimping artists like Captainosaka, or Nathan Maurer, and Pogo, and pimping work such as Maurer's Double K, and the show There Will Be Brawl.  Only because I'm a mega-nerd like that. :)

Overall, the research was fruitful, but only through sheer perserverance, which is akin to just straight up effort.  Yay for that.  I just want to polish the paper a bit better so maybe I can use it elsewhere.  I think it'd be a nice article to write somewhere.