Johnny Truant's blog

Game, game, game, and again game engendered several reactions in me. When analyzing the game as a narrative, one might question what exactly is the narrative? Jason Nelson is espousing an irreverence for many standard conventions of society. This is stated in the about at the top of each page( oh, and on a side-note, he misspelled consumerism), however the player of the game would be able to determine this from the narrative without the help of the about due to the layout of the game.
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Photopia explored an interesting dynamic with discourse time versus story time. The actual end of the narrative as far as story time is concerned, occurs when Wendy's father is told of Alley's death. No point in the narrative occurs chronologically after this point, as the character around which the events and characters is apparently dead. However, the actual last point in the discourse sees Alley as an infant in her crib, looking up at an LED screen displaying colors which categorize the separate elements of the story.
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I have recently attempted the Colossal Cave Adventure and found it's text based adventuring actually quite engrossing. I noticed in another individuals blog, they voiced the opinion that due to the lack of visual accompaniment Colossal Cave Adventure was unable to make much sense. However, More often then not, textual Narratives, or at least the more well known or lauded cases, are unaccompanied by visuals, and they are considered to make sense.
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In Ch 3 of Avatars of Story, Marie Laure Ryan writes at length in regards to the narrative medium of TV, and in particular, the form of reality tv. One of the points of particular interest was her continual analysis of reality tv and the movie, The Truman show, through the means of religion. For example, she compares the events that transpire in survivor to tribal ritual, which is perhaps an easily drawn connection due to the nature of the show. Ryan equates voting of the show to a ritual condemnation to death.
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In the last class Dr. Patrick Murray-John discussed narrative context of Medieval times and the narrative context of the technologically advanced age we are in currently. The medieval context gave rise to interesting questions about the intentions of the author or the implied author. It also demonstrated something of an early form of mashup. This is in reference to the monks who were copying a text, stopping midway and then finishing with a different version of the narrative contained within that text.
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At the end of the last lecture, the Dr. Rao posed to us a question about the appropriateness of mash-ups. How is new media permitted to get away with more then the political candidates themselves when attempting to sway individuals to their way of thinking? He also posed a question to the class, if whether or not we thought this unrestrained method of expression is appropriate.
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In Avatars of Story, Marie Laure Ryan provides the reader with tools by which to analyze the elements of any specific narrative. She speaks about the dimensions of a narrative as well as the "narrative modes". She also discusses what she feels specific media can and cannot due. This particular segment contained a couple of points with which I did not agree, and I am sure is the source of contention with many readers as it is imposing limitations upon the scope of narrative certain media's can achieve.
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Mr. Griffith, Meet Windsor McCay discusses similarities in perspective techniques used by Film and Comics. While the pressing question seems to be which came first, i.e., who influenced whom?, as John L. Fell says " The point is not that an artist is copying another medium, but that he has found a like solution to a similar problem." So this is showing a major similarity between the arts of cinema and comics. Which are both, also, forms of narrative.
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Metalepsis, as defined by Gerard Genette, is any breach "by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse (as in Cortazar)." While not an entirely illuminating revelation, it is interesting to note that this means the breach can come from any of several angles. If, as in Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, the narrator chooses to address the reader of the text, this is an example of metalpsis.
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It's really too bad Winsor McCay's creation Little Nemo was expressed as a newspaper comic. I can only imagine how wonderfully drawn, surreal, and potentially more successful Little Nemo would be had Winsor McCay lived today and been written his masterpiece as a graphic novel. This would have provided him with substantially more creative freedom and more room to develop his story. However when considering Little Nemo as a sunday newspaper comic it's not suprising to see that it was lost on the average reader.
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In class today serious emphasis was placed upon Scott McCloud's differentiation between comics and cartoons. His analysis was limited by his perception of juxtaposition. However, I am curious as to why it is necessary to contain single panel illustration and text combinations within the definition of comics. Can't they exist as separate narrative devices?

In "Setting the Record Straight", one of the key concepts which I thought intriguing was the author's discussion of time and space. He stated that animation is sequential images, however due to the separating medium being time where animation is concerned and space where comics are considered, there is a differentiation. This is important. Comics give the reader control over the pace at which they move from panel to panel. A reader may pause at a particularly busy panel and assess the situation. In contrast, animation rolls along at a speed chosen by the creator.
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oh, and the fading memories and the way being in a relationship altered the choices you were able to make was a nice touch.

I thought passage was intriguing. Its not something you can judge by graphics so much as the intent of the games designer. I've never encountered a video game being used for a narrative quite like this. He essentially presents you with an experience and you are left to interpret it as you will. The interesting thing about using a video game as a narrative tool is that it can convey meaning in a very different method then other forms. You have to think, "Why can I not do this?" or "Why did my character behave this way?"