Neil Rush CMT Blog- January 26, 2016- Technology Over Anonymity

January 26, 2016

Hello blog readers, it's Neil. With the Gravity Falls series finale still a few weeks away and none of the other things I like really strongly relevant in the media, I've decided to find an article on the internet that could potentially be related to Communications Media Technology and write about it instead. I found an article talking about the well-worn belief that internet anonymity is why people are more inclined to say unkind things, engage in dangerous anti-social behavior, and express a desire to break the law on the internet than in person. An article I recently read on eurekalert.org written by the University of Kent entitled "Social media technology rather than anonymity is the problem" says... well, exactly that.
The article states that a new book written by Dr. Vincent Miller entitled The Crisis of Presence in Contemporary Culture: Ethics, Privacy, and Speech in Mediated Social Life intends to argue this point. Dr. Miller uses this book to examine the desire for freedom of speech on the internet versus the desire for civil discourse. He claims that rather than internet anonymity allowing for the worst elements of human nature to come out on internet social media websites and message boards, it is the structure of these very websites that allows for it. Miller stresses that if these issues are to be stopped, then "social media architecture should be organized the same way as physical architecture". The book questions the authenticity of the moral panics that have derived from internet use and abuse and whether or not ethics, privacy, and free speech can truly coexist in the modern world. Miller also recommends trying to add more humanity to social media software, however that can be done, and possibly making internet identity less anonymous, despite that not exactly being the issue.
This article, despite being pretty short, was still a very interesting read. I don't think it's entirely correct, because some message boards already do try to add more humanity to their commenters (and it almost never works as intended), but at least it's well-intentioned. Maybe one day there can be a balance between order and chaos. However, we should also take into account that they may not be as much of opposites as once believed. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you again next week.

Neil Rush CMT Blog- January 19, 2016- Steven Universe Analysis and Review

January 19, 2016

Hello again, blogosphere, this is Neil Rush. There are many different shows I have liked and have gotten into, but with no new Gravity Falls episodes until the series finale in February, I've decided to talk about one of those other shows, a show that has many shared fans with Gravity Falls- a show on Cartoon Network called Steven Universe.

Created by Rebecca Sugar, a woman known for her work on Cartoon Network's Adventure Time shortly before going off to make her own show in a similar style and make Steven Universe the first Cartoon Network Original Animated Series to be created by a woman (but not the first animated series ever to be created, developed, or creatively controlled by one, as many fine cartoons on Cartoon Network and other channels in the past have had women in all of the important creative positions), Steven Universe has a pretty layered story. It follows its title character Steven Quartz Universe (voiced by Zach Callison), a happy, friendly, and somewhat effeminate thirteen-year-old boy loosely based on Steven Sugar, Rebecca Sugar's younger brother, living in the fictional town of Beach City, Maryland with his single dad Greg Universe (voiced by comedian Tom Scharpling), who is a former traveling rock star, and three millennia-old aliens named the Crystal Gems- Garnet (voiced by R&B artist Estelle), Amethyst (voiced by Michaela Dietz), and Pearl (voiced by Deedee Magno Hall). The three of them are old friends of Rose-Quartz (voiced by Susan Egan, known for voicing Megara in Disney's Hercules from 1997), a Gem that was a general of the Homeworld Gems' armies until she and the other three defected due to disagreeing with the rest of the species' desire to reap the Earth of its resources. She later met Greg, and while she initially saw humans as more of a novelty than as her equals, she later grew to fall in love with Greg, and later sacrificed her form into that of a half-human, half-Gem child, that child being Steven. Steven and the Gems use their Gem powers to fight evil around the universe, and while Steven is still developing his powers, he usually knows how to use them effectively.

The other Crystal Gems manage to have their own distinct personalities, all meant to serve as motherly figures to Steven. Garnet is calm and collected, but also noble and courageous, blending traits from the two other Gems she is made from, Ruby (voiced by Charlene Yi) and Sapphire (voiced by Erica Luttrell). Gems have the ability to fuse with one another as long as they trust each other to form larger Gems featuring characteristics of both and/or all of the Gems that fused to make them yet still identifying as their own Gem. Ruby and Sapphire are two Gems that are madly in love with one another and spend most of their time fused as Garnet as a result. Amethyst is more of a big sister figure than a motherly figure to Steven because despite being a few thousand years old like Garnet and Pearl, she is the youngest of the Gems, and was born in a cave network on Earth referred to as the Kindergarten rather than on the Gem Homeworld. This also explains her more naturally crass personality than Garnet and Pearl, though she also feels insecure about herself at times due to her "messier" upbringing than the other Gems. Pearl is probably the most confusing of the main characters. She is the most motherly of the three Gems, often reprimanding Steven when he acts careless while also trying to show up to almost everything he does around town, protect him from anything she can, and convey that she loves him as a mother does, yet also has a tendency to describe humans as lesser to Gems in nearly every way and act extremely awkward at times and highly self-centered at other times. Much of this is because of how, while this will never be stated outright in the show yet the creators have said as much on social media, Pearl was in love with Rose, but to a somewhat possessive level, and believed that she was inferior to Rose in every way and could only be something useful when Rose was by her side. This may extend from the fact that other members of the Pearl Gem sub-race were designed to be servants to other Gems, and while Rose never treated Pearl like one, it was in Pearl's instincts to act as a servant, even if that meant being an emotional slave. She resented Greg for the longest time for his relationship with Rose, and to an extent resents Steven for being the very reason Rose is no longer alive. Because Rose is gone, Pearl doesn't understand her purpose, which is the crux of her character development arc- outgrowing her crush on Rose and becoming her own Gem-person.

The show has received significant praise for its animation style, largely inspired by anime and 80s/90s video games; its music, with many episodes featuring musical numbers that expand on certain characters' emotions, with the most iconic example being the song sung by Garnet in the episode "Jail Break", the song being called "Stronger Than You" which is what she sings while fighting the Homeworld Gem Jasper as the other Crystal Gems take control of a Homeworld Gem Prison Spaceship; its mature characterization; and its willingness to play with gender roles. Its protagonist is a boy with many traits more commonly associated with female characters, such as strongly showing his emotions and having more defensive abilities than offensive ones, yet is still meant to be a clear boy. Connie Maheswaren (voiced by Grace Rolek), Steven's best human friend and almost-love-interest (despite enjoying snuggling and dancing with one another, the terms they use when talking with each other seem to keep them in the friend-zone), despite being a girl, has a few more masculine traits than Steven, such as being skilled with sword-fighting thanks to Pearl, and is the bigger bookworm than Steven, yet also has her fair share of feminine traits, such as usually wearing dresses. The Gem species is meant to be genderless yet predominantly consist of beings with female characteristics and use female pronouns. Ruby and Sapphire, for example, are a unique way of zigzagging with a chaste depiction of an LGBT relationship in a work meant for a shared audience of kids and adults. Despite both using female pronouns and being voiced by women, the fact that the two of them are technically genderless brings it simply to the realm of "two beings in love", with gender not being a part of it, and Ruby's androgynous appearance also adds another layer to the storytelling. Sometimes, the writing isn't as strong as I would like it to be, often falling into traps of being too hammy and/or sentimental. The general concept and themes discussed keep me from disliking the show, however. Greg and Ruby are probably my two favorite characters, and some of Steven and Connie's interactions fall into guilty pleasure territory. I'm even inspired to write my own fan fiction series called Steven Multiverse, in which Steven, Greg, Connie, and the Gems team up with both versions of them from a gender-bender universe of their own universe (a gender-bender universe, or Rule 63 universe, is a universe in which all characters from one work of fiction are reimagined as the opposite gender of what they are in their main in-canon universe) and versions of them from a partial gender-bender universe, in which some but not all characters have their gender swapped from what it is in the canon universe (basically something resembling what I would do if I had thought of something like Steven Universe) and try to stop a threat to different versions of the Universe family across the multiverse.

The most recent developments in the story occurred in a week of new episodes at the beginning of January, with episodes such as one in which Garnet tells Steven the story of how Ruby and Sapphire met and, by proxy, how she came into being; one in which Steven turns fourteen years old; and a few showing how Peridot (voiced by Shelby Rabara), a former enemy of the Crystal Gems, became a member of them after growing to trust them while in what was supposed to be a temporary alliance. These developments have made the show more interesting than ever before, and I hope that the show finds a positive new direction from here on out. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.  

Neil Rush CMT Blog- January 5, 2016- Settling On An Interest

January 5, 2016

Happy new year, blog readers, this is Neil Rush. I finally managed to sort out that "interest identity crisis" I mentioned in the last post. After adding something I forgot to include in the original list made last summer and another thing to even the list out, I looked through all of the wikis for things on that old list to see which ones people had responded to me on, which ones needed an update, and which ones were on the new version of the pattern I made after adding two more to the old list. After cycling through the new list with my pattern, I managed to choose Lego, the company of building toys I had fondly grown up on. I may try to buy old Lego sets in order to try my hand at stop-motion filmmaking. I think I'll have my films primarily center around the Lego theme from 2007-2008 known as Mars Mission. This was a theme involving astronauts going to Mars to mine for crystals while fighting aliens for the ability to have them. Contrary to what you may expect, the aliens are not Martians, but rather coming from another planet. This may be because the theme is implied to be a sequel theme to a Lego theme from 2001 known as Life On Mars, in which the Martians were not antagonists. My stop-motion film would try to make the story deeper than how it was presented when the sets were in production, yet also make fun of some of the things Lego does when they make themes for kids. I will also try to cross it over with other themes like what was done in the Lego video game Lego Battles. That would also try to mix in other Lego Space themes, such as Space Police, Exo-Force (which isn't exactly a space theme, but the evil robots from it are included on Mars in Lego Battles), Blacktron: Future Generation, Exploriens, and Ice Planet 2002. The films may also joke about why humans are almost always the heroes and aliens are almost always the villains in Lego's Space themes. For humorous purposes, I may also try to have some of my films cross over with Lego Castle and Lego Pirates by having the astronauts and aliens manage to travel through time.
Another big Lego thing I am interested in is the video game Lego Dimensions. It is Lego and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment's attempt at a toys-to-life video game in the same style as Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and Nintendo's Amiibos, but is most likely better than all three due to the involvement of Lego and some of the themes seen in the game. It manages to cross over DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings, The Lego Movie (the movie that uses Legos and a character going through the hero's journey as a metaphor for father-son issues), The Wizard of Oz, The Simpsons, Lego Ninjago (Lego's theme centered around ninjas that can turn into miniature elemental tornadoes, yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds), Doctor Who (the iconic British mostly-family-oriented science fiction adventure comedy-drama TV-series-based franchise about a two-hearted millenium-old alien taking on the form of a well-dressed British man and traveling through time and space with different young women as companions in a time machine that looks like a blue British police box that uses space technology and the fact that it's technically alive as well to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and saving people from various creepy villains), Back to the Future, Portal (a darkly humorous first-person puzzle game set in an empty laboratory and guided by a psychotic artificial intelligence unit named GLaDOS), Ghostbusters, classic arcade games created by Midway Games (because Time Warner bought them out in 2009), Scooby-Doo, Lego Legends of Chima (a Lego franchise involving warring tribes of anthropomorphic animals), and Jurassic Park. More franchises are expected to join in the future. I don't have the game yet because of my decision to wait to get anymore PlayStation 3 games or replace the system with a PlayStation 4 until I know more about the release of the next South Park video game on the PlayStation 4. Until then, I hope to try and cross over some of the themes from the game that already have existing sets and aren't just in the game with the other older themes I wanted to make Lego stop-motion films with.
While these are not my primary interests, I also still have a desire to make original stories based on Rick and Morty, Steven Universe, South Park, Gravity Falls, American Dad, BoJack Horseman, Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Toy Story, How to Train Your Dragon, Okami, and Super Mario Bros. I also want to make my original stories, such as an attempt at a genre crossover between outer-space science fiction and supernatural horror, a musical horror-comedy, various forms of socio-political satire, and of course, Fanz. I actually hope to become a writer and storyboarder on Rick and Morty for a few years before making some of my original projects, so I may try to write Rick and Morty stories that go above mere fan fiction and are actually supposed to be a part of the show. With any luck, I'll be given the time and opportunities necessary to make all of the things that I want to make to the best of my ability. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.