#Graduate research

[alexhwriting]

Bloodborne: A Study of Environmental Narratives and Ludonarrative Harmony.

II. Environmental Storytelling

Environmental storytelling refers to the act of using the scenery of the story to communicate additional details about the story being told, typically through details like plants, architecture, items, etc. Alessandro Soriani and Stefano Caselli, build on Michael Nitsche’s conception of the Evocative Narrative Element (ENE)[1] in explaining how an ENE works:

“‘Evocative narrative elements’ (ENEs) are implemented to ‘encourage players to project meaning onto events, objects, and spaces [in videogames]’; they help players to ‘infuse significance’ and therefore to ‘form narratives’ (p. 44). Such ENEs are defined as ‘foundational building blocks’ (p. 37) at the basis of the structuring of players’ comprehension of the game. They ‘can be anything and any situation encountered’ that can structure such a comprehension (p. 37). The aim of ENEs ‘is not to tell a linear story, but to provide evocative means for the interactor to comprehend the virtual space and the events within it and generate context and significance in order to make [it] more meaningful. While the reader of a novel is limited to the given text, the player of a game interacts with these evocative elements, cocreates them, and changes them.’ (p. 45).”[2]

            This means that any object that is presented within a game space as an object of the plot, be that a reward at the end of a puzzle (such as the rewards of notes after solving puzzles in the Resident Evil series) or an item with an in-game description that reveals more about the plot (such as key items in the Dark Souls series), can be described as an ENE. As games have evolved, these ENE’s have become much more plentiful and their nonlinear narratives more convoluted. Previously, a video game followed a structure that could more accurately be described as on rails, meaning that there was only one path forward, like a railroad.[3] As ENE’s have become a larger and larger part of game design over the years, these paths become progressively less defined and less easily followed.

            Soriani and Caselli also establish the term Visual Narrative Elements (VNEs) to refer to the graphical representation of visual elements in the game world, such as objects, rooms, and characters, which are the building blocks of their five types of visual (by which they mean graphical) narratives: evoked[4], enacted[5], enacting[6], embedded[7], and emergent.[8] For the purposes of the rest of the paper, the most important of these to keep in mind is the embedded visual narratives, which “refer to those visual elements intentionally positioned by developers which contain information about the context of the game,” as this is the strategy that FromSoftware takes with the story of Bloodborne.[9] This means that as the player enters a new area and interacts with the items and enemies within that area, they will in turn learn more about the story of the game and the particular role they play in that game. For example, in Dark Souls III (2016), another game developed by FromSoftware, the player can come across a body in a swamp that has a spell book and a set of pyromancer robes. The description of these items, in addition to their location, tells the player the story of a swamp pyromancer who preceded the player in their journey.

Espen Aarseth addresses a similar question, the intersection of game world structure and game mechanics, in his essay, “A Hollow World: World of Warcraft as Spatial Practice”.[10]  World of Warcraft (2004) is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPGs), meaning that it is played by many players interacting with the world and the characters simultaneously and often in cooperation with each other. As a roleplaying game (RPG), the player designs an avatar for themself to embody and move within the game world. The game also does not have a set path to follow like Super Mario Bros (1985), and, as such, allows for a more explorative experience since the avatar can explore without being put on a specific path. This gives the player a large amount of freedom to tell the story of their character rather than just the predetermined story of the game.

Aarseth argues that, as a world made up of a wide variety of landscapes and cultures, spread across multiple in-game continents, that World of Warcraft represents a “hollow” world, where the variation is rich, but it lacks in depth.[11] He says that this hollowness is part of what gives the game its popularity.[12] The game world’s primary goal is to be functional and playable, which distinguishes it from traditional fictional worlds of film and literature, where the primary goal is to offer grounding for the action of the narrative.[13] This means that, rather than designing a world from a directed perspective, one that cannot change after publication, World of Warcraft designs a world where the perspective is guided by the player’s interest and interaction within the game world. It is because of this approach to world design, focusing on the interactivity of the world, that its hollowness shows merit: it allows players to make their own stories and add their own depth.

Tanya Krzywinska, also discussing World of Warcraft, talks about how this hollowness relies on some familiar themes to remain as an evocative environment for player interaction.[14] She attributes familiar themes to the real world’s collection of mythological stories, and the nonlinear symbology that makes up these stories being at play within the game world.[15] Though these symbolic elements are nonlinear, they add to Krzywinska’s conception of worldness: “the world should have a unifying consistency; this applies not only to spatial coordinates, style, and physics but also to the past events that constitute the current state of affairs within the world and to which the player-character is subject.”[16] Symbols, as well as references to the game world’s internal history add this consistency for World of Warcraft.[17] For an example, Krzywinska points to the faction within World of Warcraft called the Night Elves, who are an incredibly long-lived race that has historical ruins throughout one of the game’s regions.[18] To indicate the historical ruins, the game uses forms of ancient Greco-Roman architecture strewn around important locations to indicate to the player that those locations are ruins or built on top of ruins. By utilizing this real-world symbol of the Greco-Roman ruin, and the mythological familiarity with such places, the game world becomes more fleshed out within the player’s mind and they in turn become more immersed in the world that seemingly has a history that exists before their experience of playing takes place. The story is then communicated through the player’s experience of the environment without any dialogue to tell them the written history of the area around them.

[1] Soriani and Caselli, “Visual Narratives in Videogames.” 481.

[2] Soriani and Caselli, 481.

[3] Arcade games such as House of the Dead (1996), and early home console games like Super Mario Bros (1985) are famous examples of on rails games.

[4] “Evoked visual narratives refer to those situations where the fact that some videogames are set in scenery/backdrop already known to gamers may ignite a process of anticipation that allows the game narrative context to exercise a greater sense of involvement by evoking what the player already knows about such contexts.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[5] “Enacted visual narratives can be considered all the cases where game designers stage in-game scenarios where players are called to 'solve' the situation by means of creating or perturbing a graphic element (or a set of them) that immediately becomes an integral part of the game world, thus activating a narrative sequence.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[6] “Enacting visual narratives refer to all those visual elements staged by the designers with the intention to suggest to the players an action with a specific scope.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[7] “Embedded visual narratives refer to those visual elements intentionally positioned by developers which contain information about the context of the game.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[8] Soriani and Caselli, 485; “Emergent visual narrative concerns all those games that allow the creation of graphic assets by the player, such assets assuming that for the person they have meaning within a context of reference absolutely internal to the subject.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[9] Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[10] Aarseth, “A Hollow World: World of Warcraft as Spatial Practice.” 111.

[11] Aarseth, 111-112.

[12] Aarseth, 112.

[13] Aarseth, 118.

[14] Krzywinska, “Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories.” 383-384.

[15] Krzywinska, 385.

[16] Krzywinska, 386.

[17] Krzywinska, 386.

[18] Krzywinska, 388-390.

[the-battle-lesbian]

Hello everyone,

             My name is Megan Foley and I am a PsyD candidate with the University of Hartford looking to recruit participants for my dissertation research. I am interested in exploring different professions' perceptions of and attitudes about congregate care mental health treatment settings for adolescents, specifically focusing on licensed mental health clinicians with experience in those settings and caseworkers with the Department of Children and Families. A large part of my training has been in acute care settings with youth and their families, and I feel passionately about working to identify ways to help the different players in our mental health care system collaborate effectively. For this study, I am specifically looking to speak with professionals licensed and working in the New England region as well as NY and NJ.

Participation in this study would entail a brief questionnaire online through Qualtrics and a 30-45 minute semi-structured interview over Zoom that would be scheduled at your convenience. Further details on eligibility and the participation process can be found in the attached flyers.

I thank you in advance for taking the time to read through my message; also, please feel free to pass on the flyers to anyone you know who you think may be interested and eligible. I have attached the Qualtrics link below as well for convenience.

PLEASE send this along to anyone you know who's in the field and may be interested/may know someone who is interested!

[drsueishaq]

Congratulations to Dr. Tolu Esther Alaba for passing her PhD Defense!

The Ishaq Lab is ecstatic to announce that Dr. Tolu Esther Alaba has successfully defended her PhD dissertation on the antioxidants and anti-inflammatories in broccoli sprout diets and their relation to health, officially completing her PhD!!! You can check out the recording of her talk here, which was attended by >40 people over Zoom. The committee was impressed by her breadth of knowledge,…

[sinist4r]

Hello! I’m conducting research for my master’s thesis (I’m working on a degree in Cyberpsychology!) and am looking for people to participate in my online, anonymous survey about dating apps and websites.

If you’ve ever used a digital dating platform and are interested in participating, please DM me!

Note: your responses are completely anonymous and I will not be able to match them to you.

[grad-premed-suffering]

2024.05.01

Another day of continuing my thesis research!

Today’s goals:

Finish book my supervisor recommended

Complete 5+ study blocks (3/5)

Drink water (2/4)

[aimeelouart]

I love the world and everything in it and I want to know everything, be everything, and experience everything and to be honest this is a very distracting way to exist

[mollyhale]

hi everyone! im almost 2/3 done with my masters (!) and a main part of this semester is prepping for my capstone in the summer semester with a survey.

if you're between the ages of 18 - 35 i ask that you please take this survey - it should take no more than 5 minutes, it's completely anonymous, and it's about scarcity in fashion. i'd also appreciate any reblogs, signal boosts, or even friends/family offline to participate as i need 100 responses by April 23rd, so any and all responses count and it would make a HUGE difference to have you participate!

i thank you in advance for your consideration at all!!

link to survey: https://bit.ly/masters-survey-scarcity-in-fashion

[stuckinapril]

I love getting inspired by my wonderful friends. I’m surrounded by a group of such hardworking people & it enriches my life every day

[jstor]

I would like to say: I'm really going to miss you when I graduate, because while yes I do use you for schoolwork, you make researching weird subjects so much easier when I have questions when I write stuff for pleasure.

Graduating doesn't mean an end to researching weird subjects! First, check to see if your school offers access to alumni, and if not, remember that you can still read up to 100 articles online every month for free.

[hephaestuscrew]

"Minkowski's been talking about Sondheim again…": Minkowski's love of musical theatre and what it reveals about her characterisation and her relationships

TL;DR: Renée Minkowski's love of musicals, while it might seem just like a mundane character detail, is used to give depth to her character because it contrasts with expectations of her from both the listening audience and the other characters. Her willingness or unwillingness to share this interest in different circumstances reveals her relationships with other characters at various points. Since this is a long one, if you'd rather read it as a document, you can view it here: Google Doc version.

"She actually really cares about these talent shows": Episode 8 (Box 953)

In the early episodes of Season 1, Minkowski is presented (largely through Eiffel's unreliable perspective) purely as a strict no-nonsense authority figure without much emotional depth, the kind of person who only likes things that are useful, purposeful, or mandated by Command. In contrast, musical theatre is a creative pursuit that has nothing to do with the mission of the Hephaestus and is viewed by many people as fairly frivolous or silly. The gradual exploration of Minkowski's passion for musicals is one of the many ways that the show expands and challenges our understanding of her as a character. 

The first indication that we get of her interest in musicals is through her entry into the infamous talent show, something that is required as part of the mission. Minkowski really cares about 'crew morale' activities in general, even when they actually have a negative effect on morale and even before she's friends with any of her crew (for example, the Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners in the earlier stage of the mission), perhaps partly because doing things in the "right way" is important to her. 

But Eiffel senses that the talent shows aren't just about rules for her: "it’s bad enough when she makes us do something just because it’s military protocol, but I think that she actually really cares about these talent shows". This might be the first indication that we get of Minkowski caring deeply about anything that isn't inherently part of her role as a Commander. Moments like this are part of the gradual process of giving us insight into her character beyond the Commander archetype that she tries to embody. And yet, she only indulges her theatrical passion because something mandatory gives her permission, or an excuse, to let another part of herself out.

Of course, to satisfy the needs of a talent show, she'd only need to provide a performance of a few minutes. But Eiffel mentions "the second act of the play" - which along with Hera's comment that "Isabel isn't the biggest role in the play" - implies that Minkowski was intending to put on the whole of Pirates of Penzance as her talent show act, rather than a few of the songs or some kind of medley. (I suppose that Eiffel could be exaggerating or Minkowski might have been planning to do extracts from different parts of the play, but I prefer the interpretation in which Minkowski gets to be more ridiculous.) 

Even though no one else would be willing to be in her production of Pirates of Penzance, Minkowski casts Hera as Isabel, a role with two lines and no solo singing. I found some audition notes for this play which said "The traditional staging gives [Isabel] more prominence than the solo opportunities of the part suggest, so she must be a good actress" which does make me sad in relation to Hera's inability to have a more significant role by being physically present on stage. 

It’s sweet that Hera still wants to take part though. She tells Eiffel "Pirates of Penzance is a classic of 19th century comic opera", so either she’s absorbed what Minkowski has told her about the show, or she’s done her own research and formed her own opinions. I enjoy the fact that Hera is the one Hephaestus crew member who shows potential to share Minkowski's musical theatre appreciation; I like to think that this is something they could explore together post-canon.

Anyway, I'm obsessed with the idea that Minkowski was planning to play every character except one in Pirates of Penzance, a show which is designed to have 10 principal characters and a chorus of 14 men. It seems that her contribution to the talent show was supposed to be an entire two-hour two-act musical, with costumes and props, in which she would play almost all of the parts. This is very funny to me as the perhaps predictable consequence of giving an ambitious and frustrated grown-up theatre kid a position of authority and asking them to arrange a talent show. Minkowski knows that the audience will be made up of her subordinates who are theoretically obliged by the chain of command to watch and listen, so she absolutely tries to make the most of that opportunity. There's probably also a degree to which she limits other people's involvement in her musical because - as with her other endeavors - she wants the outcome to be almost entirely within her control (something that is usually pretty much impossible in as collaborative a medium as musical theatre).

Of course, Minkowski's behaviour in most of the talent show episode is affected by her being drugged by Hilbert. This creates an exaggerated situation which is the first real opportunity for Minkowski to be something other than the strict sensible authoritarian Commander and the foil to Eiffel's jokey laid-back attitude. I don't agree with ideas that being intoxicated brings out anyone's true self (especially in the absence of consent for the intoxication), but it seems pretty clear that being under the influence of whatever was in Hilbert's concoction caused Minkowski to fully commit to a level of manic enthusiasm for her musical production that might have otherwise been obscured by her professionalism. It's a particular kind of person who belts showtunes when drunk, and Minkowski is that kind of person, even if that's not how she wants to present herself. (As a sidenote, I seem to remember that they took Emma Sherr-Ziarko's script off her to help her sound more drunk. It's an excellent performance.)

Minkowski wants interval ice cream. She wants "pirate costumes" (and she'll threaten to shoot a man to get them). She wants "swashes and buckles". She wants whatever props she can get her hands on (including a real cannon). This show is important to her, even though only three other people will witness it and two of them actively don't want to be there. It’s important to her for its own sake.

Eiffel says Minkowski wants "a second pair of eyes to tell her if the prop sabre for her Major-General costume was a bit much…"  While I certainly wouldn't put it past Goddard Futuristics to have a prop sabre on the station for no apparent reason, it feels more likely that she might have made it or adapted some existing item. Which suggests that maybe she was that passionate about the props even before Hilbert drugged her. 

Even so, it does feel significant that Minkowski's love of musicals is only revealed in the episode in which she is drugged, exhibiting lowered inhibitions, exaggerated behaviour, and an "impaired euphoric effect". Her love of musical theatre is initially revealed through a professional structure that provides permission, and then further emphasised by a forced intoxication that exaggerates some impulses that perhaps she already had.

"Some hobbies other than making trains run on time": Episode 17 (Bach to the Future)

After Eiffel tells to find Minkowski to find something else to do while her work duties have quietened down, they have the following exchange:

EIFFEL: You must have some hobbies other than making trains run on time. Something to do with friends? Boyfriends? MINKOWSKI: Of course I do, but, well, there aren't really a lot of opportunities for rock climbing or trail hiking in the immediate vicinity. 

Even though this quote doesn't mention musicals, I've included it here for two reasons. Firstly, it's very funny to me that, even after the talent show debacle, Eiffel acts like he's never had any evidence of Minkowski's hobbies. She tried to perform a whole play almost single-handedly and it didn't occur to him that this might indicate an interest of hers outside of work. I think this reflects the fairly two-dimensional view that Eiffel has previously had of Minkowski, which her interest in musical theatre didn't fit into. 

Secondly, it feels notable that Minkowski doesn't mention musical theatre here. She wants to show that she has non-work interests, but without undermining her own authoritative image. Her interest in rock climbing and trail hiking - while it may be genuine - fits with how she wants to be seen as a Commander. These are hobbies which portray her as physically capable, with a high degree of stamina and a willingness to adapt to perhaps less hospitable surroundings. Of course, Minkowski does have these traits and they serve her well on the Hephaestus. But there's not really anything particularly surprising about her expressing these interests. The surprise in this scene comes from the reveal that she has a husband, a character detail which - like her love of musicals - isn't something we'd necessarily expect from the archetype-based view of her we are initially presented with. 

Her interest in rock climbing and trail hiking never come up again, because these details don't really deepen her characterisation (or at least, they aren't really used to deepen her characterisation beyond proving that she isn't entirely all-work-and-no-play). In contrast, Minkowski's love of musicals is brought up over and over because it shows another side of her that she struggles to reveal on the Hephaestus, and that allows more interesting things to be done with her characterisation.

"You wanted to write showtunes": Episode 35 (Need to Know)

Alongside the more high stakes discoveries prompted by the leak from Kepler's files, we also learn that Minkowski applied to - and was rejected from - the Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program.

Up until this point, we've only had evidence that Minkowski enjoys performing in musicals. But here we learn that Minkowski doesn't just love watching or performing in musicals - she wanted to write them too. This suggests a creative side to her that we never see her fully express.

The course

The Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program claims to be the only course of its kind in the world and it accepts just 30 students each year. The current application process requires applicants to: upload play scripts or recordings of songs they've written; answer a large number of extended response questions about their creative process and views on musical theatre; write a 'statement of purpose' which has to talk about why they are applying and include 3 original ideas for musicals; provide a professional resume and a digital portfolio; complete an exercise of writing in response to a prompt; and undergo an interview. The process might have changed somewhat since Minkowski would have been applying (which, if it was soon after she finished college, might have been around the early 2000s) or it might be different in Wolf 359's alternate universe, but I think we can safely assume that applying to this course was a serious undertaking that required an intense amount of commitment and work. 

Applying to a course like that isn't something you do half-heartedly or on a whim. You couldn't apply to this course if you hadn't done a fair amount of musical theatre writing already. (The course requires applicants to choose to apply as bookwriters, lyricists, or composers, but I'm not going to make a guess here as to which of these Minkowski went for.) The fact that Minkowski wanted to study this course suggests that she was seriously considering trying to make a career out of musical theatre writing. In Once In A Lifetime, she tells Cutter that commanding a space station has always been her dream job, but we've got evidence here that it wasn't her only dream job. There's something kind of funny and kind of sad about the idea that writing musicals was her back-up / fall-back career path. She does not like to make life easy for herself.

The revelation 

This information is revealed against Minkowski's will. It's not something she wanted people to find out, and she isn't happy about them knowing:

JACOBI: "Dear Renée, thank you for your interest in the Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program..." MINKOWSKI: Oh, come on!  JACOBI: (pressing on) "We are sorry to say, we will not be able to offer you a spot in this year's blah blah blah." Oh this is too good. You wanted to write showtunes?  MINKOWSKI: Number one? Shut up. Number two, why are my personal records on there?! [...] How is it in any way relevant?! JACOBI: Oh, I think it's very relevant. I mean, if you're sending someone to pilot ships in deep space, you want to make sure that they can, you know... paint with all the colors of the wind.  Jacobi CRACKS UP - and, although to a lesser degree, so does Lovelace. Minkowski looks at her: really?  LOVELACE: Sorry, Minkowski. It's... it's a little funny.  MINKOWKSI: No, it isn't!

Minkowski seems defensive and embarrassed here. She obviously doesn't trust everyone there with this revelation (Jacobi, Maxwell, Lovelace, and Hera are all present). She considers this information to be "personal" and irrelevant and not even "a little funny". She's used to reactions like Jacobi's (and to a lesser extent Lovelace's); in Ep41 Memoria, she says "most people think it's hilarious that I like musicals" (see below for more thoughts about this quote). But the fact that these mocking reactions are expected doesn't mean that they don't bother her. She wants so badly to be taken seriously and, in this scene, her interest in musical theatre seems to be incompatible with that. Jacobi reacts the way that he does because of the idea that I've already expressed, that a passion for musical theatre does not fit with the serious authoritative image that Minkowski has often presented. It's not the typical hobby of a soldier, especially not a Commander.

To me, the way Lovelace laughs suggests that she might not have previously known about Minkowski's love of musicals, or at least perhaps not the full extent of it. At any rate, it's definitely news to Jacobi. And Minkowski clearly hasn't talked about it enough for it not to feel like a big reveal for her.

The rejection 

It's notable that this reveal is not just that she wanted to write for the stage, but also that she failed to get into a course that might have helped her work towards that goal. This of course compounds Minkowski's discomfort at having this information revealed. Not only did she want to write showtunes, but she encountered rejection in her attempts to do so. This detail implies that perhaps it wasn't just the appeal of her spacefaring dream that stopped her going down a theatrical career path. 

I'm about to move more into headcanon territory rather than just straightforward analysis, but I personally believe that, while Minkowski auditioned for a lot of musicals (particularly as a child / young person), she was never cast as the main role. She seems embarrassed about her interest in musical theatre in a way that (at least judging by people I've encountered) people who were always the lead in their school / college productions don't tend to be. 

We don't have much evidence about her actual level of singing/acting ability, given that she is inebriated during the only time we hear her sing in the podcast. However, it resonates with other aspects of her characterisation to imagine that Minkowski was generally good enough to get an ensemble part but never quite good enough to be cast as a main part. I think she might see only ever being cast as part of the ensemble, and failing to get into the Tisch Musical Theatre Writing programme, as slightly more down-to-earth examples of the same pattern as her repeated rejections from NASA. She is desperate to prove herself. She is "someone who very much wants to matter. To do something important." When she casts herself as almost every part in Pirates of Penzance, she is finally taking the opportunity to be a main character, an opportunity which I imagine had been denied to her over and over in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

"It's just from a play I saw once": Episode 41 (Memoria)

The next scene I want to talk about is from a memory of Hera's, which took place on Day 57 of the Hephaestus mission and in which Minkowski appears to be talking about the Stephen Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park with George:

MINKOWSKI: Oh, it's just from a play I saw once. It doesn't matter. (BEAT) The guy who sings it is this famous French painter. And his entire life is kinda falling apart. But he can always turn what's happening around him into these beautiful paintings.  HERA: And? MINKOWSKI: And... That's, I don't know. Reassuring, maybe? (BEAT) I don't know why I'm going on about this. You don't care.  HERA: I think it's interesting.  MINKOWSKI: Yeah? Most people think it's hilarious that I like musicals.  HERA: I don't see what's funny about it.  MINKOWSKI: Well, thank you Hera, but you're not exactly... you know.  HERA: I'm not... what? 

There's a couple of different things I want to pick out from this exchange. Firstly, the line "Most people think it's hilarious that I like musicals" makes me sad. I don't think she's talking about people on the Hephaestus there. Judging by the quote I talked about from Bach to the Future, Eiffel definitely wouldn't have registered Minkowski's love of musicals at this stage, and I doubt Hilbert cares at all about the hobbies of his fellow crew members. So Minkowski is talking about experiences that she's had on Earth, of people mocking her interest in musicals and thinking it doesn't fit with who she is. You can hear the impact of those experiences in Minkowski's reluctance to elaborate, in the way she says that something she obviously cares about doesn't matter, in her assumption that Hera doesn't care.

Secondly, this scene is a complicated one for Minkowski and Hera's relationship. On the one hand, Minkowski freely talks to Hera about something she's passionate about, and Hera listens and expresses interest. Hera validates Minkowski's interest in musical theatre without making a thing of it being weird and Minkowski thanks her. Again, it’s shown as an interest they could could potentially share.

But on the other hand, it seems like part of the reason Minkowski feels able to open up to Hera is because at this point Minkowski doesn't see opening up to Hera as fully equivalent to opening up to a fellow human. She doesn't just accept Hera not making fun of her interest; instead it seems Minkowski is about to imply that this lack of judgment indicates Hera's difference from humans (although she does have the decency not to say it outright). Minkowski's expectation of judgment from others contributes to her saying something very hurtful to Hera here. (This kind of potential consequence of negative self-attitude is explored a lot with Eiffel, so it's interesting that Minkowski can sometimes have a similar issue.)

Minkowski and Hera's conversation is interrupted when:

The DOOR OPENS.  EIFFEL: Hey, Minkowski, we've - What are you guys talking about?  MINKOWSKI: We were just discussing how I'm going to take away your hot water privileges if you don't reset the long-range scan.

Eiffel can obviously tell that he's walked in on a conversation that is about something other than work, or he wouldn't have asked. But Minkowski actively chooses not to tell him that she was talking to Hera about musicals. Perhaps she doesn't know how to open up to a human subordinate about it. Perhaps she doesn't trust him not to make fun of her. Perhaps she just doesn't have any impulse to talk about her interests with him. Either way, if Minkowski's love of musicals is something which reflects a side of her personality outside of her Commander role, this is a moment where she chooses not to take an opportunity to share that side of herself with Eiffel. This reflects the emotional distance between them three months into the mission, which forms a nice contrast with the next couple of quotes I'm going to talk about.

"Composition. Balance. Harmony.": Episode 54 (The Watchtower)

When Eiffel comes directly face to face with alien life, he discovers that music is the human invention that fascinates the Dear Listeners:

EIFFEL: You haven't figured out music?  BOB: ORDER. DESIGN. TENSION. COMPOSITION. BALANCE. HARMONY.  EIFFEL: (low, to himself) Minkowski's been talking about Sondheim again…

I only learned in the course of writing this post that in this moment the Dear Listeners are almost exactly quoting a repeated phrase used throughout Sunday in the Park with George. The titular protagonist lists various combinations of these qualities in multiple songs in reference to his art. In the closing song, the lyrics are "Order. Design. Tension. Composition. Balance. Light. [...] Harmony." It's not only Eiffel's references that the Dear Listeners are incorporating into their speech - they've picked this one up from Minkowski. This also suggests that some element of her appreciation for musicals and the way she talks about them has fed into the Dear Listeners' understanding of the human phenomenon of music. The Dear Listeners aren't just parroting - they understood the quote enough that they left out the word "light", arguably the only quality in that phrase which isn't a big part of music as well as visual art. Eiffel likes music too, but I don't think that this is how he'd talk about his favourite songs.

This is a refrain about finding order and beauty out of the chaos and uncertainty of life, which was also the aspect of Sunday in the Park with George that Minkowski focused on when talking about it in Memoria. It suggests that art/music could be something governed by rules and principles, which is potentially something that appeals both to Minkowski and to the Dear Listeners.

Eiffel's response to this reference is one of those little hints that reminds us that Eiffel and Minkowski have spent a lot of time together and that not all of that time has involved them being at each others' throats or actively in a life-or-death situation. Some of it has just been Minkowski going on about a musical she loves and Eiffel (willingly or not) paying enough attention that he recognises this phrase as a Sondheim quote that Minkowski has talked about. I suppose that this quote might have been in Eiffel's pop-culture-brain anyway, but judging from Eiffel's general tastes and the fact that I don't think Sunday in the Park with George is one of the more commonly known Sondheim musicals among non-musical fans, it seems more likely that this quote is something he only knows because Minkowski has talked about it. 

Eiffel sounds exasperated at the mention, like he's heard Minkowski talk about Sondheim far too much. But I'd argue that this still says something positive about their relationship, when we contrast it with a couple of other moments I've already mentioned. Firstly, when her previous musical theatre ambitions are revealed to Jacobi, Maxwell, and Lovelace in Need to Know, Minkowski seems embarrassed and defensive. Secondly, in the memory from Memoria, she avoids telling Eiffel that she was talking about this same musical. Yet, by the time The Watchtower takes place, Eiffel is sick of hearing Minkowski talk about Sondheim. She doesn't have the same barriers up in sharing her interests with him, even though he doesn't have the same interests. I think this is a demonstration of how comfortable she feels with him. It's a hint at the kind of easy downtime that they've sometimes shared.

"One day more": Episode 61 (Brave New World)

Eiffel recognises another musical reference of Minkowski’s in the finale. As the crew are preparing for their final confrontation with Cutter and co., Minkowski quotes Les Misérables, mostly to herself - but Eiffel recognises the lyrics and joins in:

EIFFEL: Hey - chin up, soldier. We're almost through. Just one more day, and then we're done.  MINKOWSKI: Yeah, one more day. (more to herself) The time is now, the place is here - one day more.  EIFFEL: - one day more.  They both stop, dead in their tracks. MINKOWSKI: Did you just - ?  EIFFEL: Was that what I - ?  They look at each other: No way. And BURST INTO LAUGHTER.  EIFFEL: Man... this is really it, huh? The end of everything. 

It feels really important that Minkowski and Eiffel share this moment of togetherness before she tries to send him back to Earth and before the rest of the action goes down. I think there’s some nice symbolism about them finding a way to communicate that they both understand. Making references is Eiffel's thing, and musicals are Minkowski's thing, so this is a synthesis of their two approaches. Again, there's a contrast with Minkowski's previous unwillingness to share her musical theatre passions with Eiffel (at least without the mitigating circumstances of a mandatory talent show and some kind of intoxicating substance).

I talked about the significance of the fact that they reference this particular musical in this post from ages ago. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler for Les Misérables to say that the revolution that the song One Day More is building up to does not end well for the revolutionaries. When Eiffel says "Just one more day, and then we're done", it encompasses both the possibility that the crew will escape to travel back to Earth and the possibility that they will all die. Minkowski's reference to a famously tragic musical suggests that it's the latter possibility that's at the forefront of her mind (right before she tries to send Eiffel away from the danger). But Les Misérables is also a story about people standing together in solidarity against powerful oppressive forces, which gives particular resonance to the way that this reference brings Eiffel and Minkowski together in a moment of being completely on the same wavelength as they prepare to fight Cutter and Pryce's plan.

When they laugh here, it's not about the 'hilariousness' of Minkowski's interest in musicals, it's about their unexpected unison - Eiffel's recognition of Minkowski's reference and Minkowski's surprise at the fact he joined in. It's a laugh of togetherness, of shared understanding, of friendship. It's a moment of lightness in dark times. And that moment is provided by Minkowski's pop culture interests, not Eiffel's. In spite of all they've been through, she's not lost that part of herself, and in fact, she's more open about it, at least to Eiffel.

I'll finish by highlighting what Eiffel says when he's trying to get into character to impersonate Minkowski so he can turn the Sol around:

EIFFEL: Umm... yes, this is Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski. I'm... uh... well I sure love schedules, and, uh, musicals. And that man, who I married…

I just think this is a nice example of Eiffel not defining Minkowski solely by her professional Commander role. Sure, she likes schedules (probably in a personal as well a professional capacity to be fair), but she also loves musicals, and her husband. It is a fairly reductive overview of her as a person, but it feels reductive in a fond way, like these things are part of Minkowski's brand to Eiffel in a way that he might affectionately tease her about. (Credit to @commsroom for this thought.) His view of Minkowski has come a long way from "our resident Statsi agent" or even just "you must have some hobbies other than making trains run on time." He doesn't see any contradiction or inherent humour in Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski's appreciation of musicals.

Conclusion

Minkowski's love of musical theatre is used to deepen her characterisation and is one of the ways in which we gradually begin to see her complexity beyond the strict Commander archetype. The degree to which she is prepared to share this interest at various points is used to illustrate the nature of her relationships with other characters: a general unwillingness to show a less serious side of herself; a complicated potential shared interest with Hera; and the growing understanding between her and Eiffel.

If you read this whole thing, well done / thank you 😄 It wasn't meant to be this long - it just happened… Feel free to share your thoughts!

[alexhwriting]

Bloodborne: A Study of Environmental Narratives and Ludonarrative Harmony.

III. Immersion

In talking about the way that Bloodborne ties its gameplay and its narrative together harmoniously, it is necessary to reflect on the concept of “immersion.” This is the experience that a person has when they are engrossed in a narrative world completely while they are experiencing it. Mark J.P. Wolf breaks down immersion into three useful categories in his essay, “Beyond Immersion”.[1] Rather than being concerned directly with the world of videogames, Wolf’s discussion concerns imaginary worlds regardless of media form and what an audience needs to have an immersive experience.[2] His three categories of immersion are Absorption, Saturation, and Overflow. Each of these indicates a different level of engagement that can be achieved by an imaginary world, with Absorption being the shallowest level of immersion that indicates engagement with the story alone, and Overflow being the deepest immersion where the world information cannot be held in the audience’s mind all at once.

To start with Absorption, “world builders must introduce their worlds with the right balance of familiarity and strangeness, drawing audiences in with invention while not changing so many defaults that confusion or even alienation occurs.”[3] This first element of immersion indicates that the understanding of the imaginary world should not take too much focus, or draw the audience’s attention away, from the activities or story happening within that world. Though at the same time the world has to balance this familiarity with novelty to make it stand out as interesting.[4]

With Saturation, we reach, “the pleasurable goal of conceptual immersion; the occupying of the audience’s full attention, concentration, and imagination, often with more detail, nuances, and subtleties than can be held in mind all at once.”[5] This second element takes on what writers typically mean when they refer to immersion, that is the way that the player is engaged with attention and concentration on the world itself. This includes memorization of large amounts of information to have at hand, and in the case of video games this would include information like environments, world lore to utilize during in-game dialog, and the systems of how the game itself works.[6]

Finally, we have Overflow, which keeps the audience engaged over longer periods of time: “An overflow beyond the point of saturation is necessary if the world is to be kept alive in the audience’s imagination. . .[but] can never be held in the mind in its entirety; something will always be left out.” [7] This is the kind of immersion that occurs in more dense or protracted works, such as the Star Wars franchise, where there is constantly more important information to keep in mind to understand the world. A good example of this in practice would be in the case of Massively MMORPGs like World of Warcraft that utilize massive maps and vast amount of background information on top of player interactions and characters adding to the populace of the world.

In the context of video games, immersion also includes the way that players engage with the game itself. Torben Grodal touches on this in his essay, “Videogames and the Pleasures of Control,” where he talks about the two engagements that distinguish videogames from film: self-controlled actions (how a player interacts with the game world) and environmental reactions (how the player reacts when the game world moves out of their control).[8] These details enhance immersion by games typically following a “user-gratifications” system to encourage and reward players for becoming more immersed and gaining control over the game itself.[9] For example, when the player completes a puzzle and gets rewarded with a new tool to bring to future challenges. Really, for Grodal, it is this active control aspect of videogames that makes them engaging enough to return to repeatedly and distinguishes them from passive media objects (those that do not require constant input from the audience) like film.[10]

It is worth noting, of course, there are also players who engage with the game in ways unintended by the developer. Bonnie Ruberg addresses this in her book, Video Games Have Always Been Queer when she discusses how players engage with speed in various games.[11]  Ruberg analyzes competitive “speedrunning” events, where players aim to beat a game as quickly as possible by any means necessary, thus changing the very rules of how the game was intended to be played.[12] For example, if a game is intended to be taken in slowly and the characters engaged with, then the player (or speedrunner in the community parlance) may only talk to the bare minimum of characters to reach the end goal. Rather than the game being experienced as intended by the game designers, the rules of the game are utilized to make it to the end screen as fast as possible, and in doing so make a new kind of game out of an existing one.

Ruberg notes how a slower approach to games replicates the 19th century French figure of the flaneur, whose “purpose is not to get from one place to another, but to meander and observe.”[13] This is worth mentioning within a discussion of immersion, because the pleasure of exploring or engaging with a video game world does not need to only follow from the intended route of completion through that world. For instance, in my research for this paper, I had to engage with Bloodborne in a very unintended way, that is, as a kind of museumgoer looking at the vistas, trying to piece my way through the meanings that each locale was trying to communicate. These alternative modes of engaging with the environments, game rules, and narrative are not necessarily detrimental to immersion, but rather offer different kinds of immersive experiences. In Bloodborne, this involved spending time with the monocular item that let me zoom in on the environment and deemphasized the engagement with enemies that the designers intended.

[1] Wolf, “Beyond Immersion.” 205; Wolf, 206; Wolf, 208.

[2] Wolf, 205.

[3] Wolf, 205.

[4] Wolf, 205.

[5] Wolf, 206.

[6] Wolf, 207.

[7] Wolf, 208.

[8] Grodal, “Video Games and the Pleasures of Control.” 203.

[9] Grodal, 204.

[10] Grodal, 207.

[11] Ruberg, Video Games Have Always Been Queer. 184-185.

[12] Ruberg, 195-196.

[13] Ruberg, 204.

[adm-starblitzsteel-4305]

🌟Cosmic Incarnation🌟

Something that sparks the dream into reality when you realized that you are incarnated from a majestic Godzilla-Mothra hybrid Titan (a moth specifically with Godzilla's features and tones), who is also happens to be a Princess and Future Queen of the Monsters.

Link Here of the short story:

[drsueishaq]

Tolu Esther Alaba sets a date for her PhD Defense!

The Ishaq Lab is delighted to announce that Tolu Esther Alaba will soon be defending her PhD dissertation on the antioxidants and anti-inflammatories in broccoli sprout diets and their relation to health. Her dissertation will be presented over Zoom on June 25, 2024, from 2 – 3 pm EDT, which is open to the public. Registration is free but required here. Tolu has been researching the benefits of…

[grad-premed-suffering]

2024.04.10 | Day 81/100 days of productivity

Slept in today and that extra sleep seems to have made all the difference to my mood and energy levels (who knew!). I'm hoping to get done with my decision analysis final essay either today or tomorrow so I can edit and move on to my research proposal for qualitative methods (and eventually get back to the research - which I actually enjoy (no offence to my professors)).

Today's goals:

Drink water (2/3)

Finish readings for tomorrow

Finish first draft of decision analysis final essay

Have a good formal dinner :)

Do at least 1 load of laundry

Get enough sleep

[tothechaos]

I FIND MYSELF IN A PREDICAMENT

[doctorweebmd]

also uh….real life update

my grant got funded