#since its heavily focussed on my personal bias

[dapper-lil-arts]

I don't have many ships of active interest in the show outside of these; i thought it'd be fun to see what my followers, amidst this MLP infection i'm currently entering terminal stages of, think is the best among my favorites specificaly!!

[lnkedmyheart]

Hello! I'm writing this ask because I wanted to correct something (not you, but a common error). It's about the sentence from Chap 24 where Bond said he had to perform a "role". The same sentence anti-trans James Bond people use to prouve that he is only playing a man. Bond never said he has to perform a role but he said "to be a useful to Al and Will, I need to feel integrated in the group"

The word "role" was never mentionned in the Japanese nor French official translation.

Same for Moran's sentence " you're pretending to be someone you're not" He never said it. He said "I don't know if you'll do good during missions"

This makes me wonder what the person who translated thinks about Bond's gender... these aren't translations, these are changed sentences on purpose.

(Ps: I love all your metas!!)

THANK YOU!

This is exactly what I mean, as a non Japanese reader it's very hard to know which translation is accurate considering even the official translation will often remove aspects like familiarity (Sherlock calling William by his given name and not the nickname on the train etc) so it's incredibly easy for the translator bias to trickle in. Even what Moran and Bond said in the altered text isn't necessarily anti trans unless you're specifically looking to read it as anti trans.

And I've seen this before, I was in this isekai fandom and when that was at its peak the popular ship was between a guy and his godfather because they fit the whole popular at the time yaoi visual aesthetic and so the anime and manga played up their interactions, completely changed dialogues and events. The anime even made the canonical mlm character into this obnoxious gay joke (the mc is engaged to said mlm character) and since the fandom was so aggressively bent towards the godson/godfather ship they refused to actually translate the main source novels that favored the mc and his fiancé, either only translating snippets that focussed on their ship or reframed entire paragraphs and key sections of the text to make it appear that the important moments were shared between their prefered ship.

Sorry for the tangent I am just shook about how people go so far as to change things up because of ships or fear of any LGBT rep invading their pure Christian cishet spaces. YuuMori is a well written story and even with the translation fumbles you can tell that it foreshadows a lot through its use of language so for the language to be altered so heavily can affect ideas but at the same time I've literally seen people say Alisha and Sorey from Zesty were obviously meant to be canon endgame because they shook hands once while Sorey is clearly not gay for his bestie who he describes as being a porcelain skinned beauty with sophisticated violet eyes and hair like aquamarine. It just goes to show that people will actively ignore anything and read too far into certain lines to prove their point even if their proof has no real foundation.

And thank you for reading my meta anon, I'm lonely in this pandemic and my brain is too full of YuuMori thoughts and tumblr has become my outlet, so I'm genuinely glad that people like to read my ramblings. ❤❤

[krgeog2260]

Coding Qualitative Data

Overview

For this week's blog post, we’re going to be focussing on coding and the benefits it can bring to a research project. The two types of coding include inductive and deductive. In my opinion, deductive seems more beginner friendly because of the predetermined set of codes that you have ready for analyzing your data. On the other hand, inductive coding allows for less bias and a complete view of the project’s theme (Hooykaas, 2021). I decided to code one article that I had already found when working to complete the digital storytelling assignment proposal because of its contents pertaining to our final project and to current events such as systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic. The second is a resource I have found since continuing on with the project. My first article is titled “Social Equity and COVID‐19: The Case of African Americans”, which was written in May of 2020 and written by James Wright and Cullen Merritt. The second article is titled “A Short Definition For Population Studies”.

My Coding Choices

Since I am the beginner in this circumstance, I decided to go with deductive coding. The codes I created were based on keywords and important themes. I chose to use a flat coding frame because of where my group is in the project progress and its organization style. The project would still benefit from compiling all of the important and specific data, so I kept it more on the broader side Hooykaas, 2021). I also chose flat coding because my articles aren’t overly long, which is when hierarchical frames work better.

The codes I’m going to be working with are:

“Population” / “Demography” - Highlighted yellow

Unevenness between demographics (theme) - Highlighted red

“Person/People of colour” - Highlighted green

“COVID-19” - Highlighted blue

These are keywords or themes that I know will be heavily talked about in my first article and the theme of unevenness can be quite broad in demography. The pictures below are my coding for my first article “Social Equity and COVID‐19: The Case of African Americans”.

Using the same keywords, here is my second coding attempt with the article titled “A Short Definition For Population Studies”.

Application To The Assignment

Spending the time to code research can help bring further understanding to certain topics as well as providing strong evidence in our finished storytelling assignment. By manually coding these articles I am “making accuracy a priority” (Hooykaas, 2021) and completing a preliminary analysis of the information my group is using. A great strategy my group can take on is doing individual coding and rereading our peers codes to make sure we aren’t drifting far from our research prompt. Once this process is done, it has shown us where our strongest evidence is and where additional research may be needed.

References

Dartmouth Libraries. (2015). Human Geography: Population studies. Retrieved from https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/human_geography/population

Hay, I. (2005). Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Hooykaas, A. "Week 8. Coding" University of Guelph, 2021.

Wright, J., & Merritt, C. (2020). Social Equity and COVID‐19: The Case of African Americans. Public Administration Review, 80(5), 820–826. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13251

[alexandersactingblog]

My Country: A Work in Progress. Performing, Researching and Developing

Creating My Country in our Image.

 Our performance of My Country: A Work in Progress deals with many themes and issues focussing mainly on social aspects. For example, a key social issue that takes place within the piece is immigration. This was one of the instrumental leave campaign arguments during the Brexit referendum and it is showcased within our performance, notably with East’s anti-immigration rhetoric. East’s anti-immigration stance was born from the struggle they have had during their lives for which they blame immigration. One of the key themes within our performance is dishonesty, as all of the regions make some sort of negative remark towards the people in power whether that be the UK Government or the EU Parliament.

Our creative vision for the piece was to make it as technically interesting as possible to keep the audience interested. However, it was important to make sure that this did not get in the way of the performance itself. For example, we originally decided that during the second scene monologues ‘The Six Areas’ there would be pictures shown to give the audience a visual reference to what the character is talking about. We decided however that this would distract from the importance of the monologues. We also wanted to incorporate a Facebook page to somewhat break the fourth wall within the performance. Again, we decided that this would distract, and we would go against what we were trying to do. So, during the development of our piece we detracted somewhat from the technicality and concentrated more on the character development itself.

One of the key dramaturgical decisions we made during the performance was to keep the backgrounds behind the characters predominantly blank with the exception of things which were representative of our chosen areas. The idea behind this was that because this was Verbatim Theatre and we all multi rolled throughout the performance, we wouldn’t have things in the background of the performance that are personal to the characters. This was also so the audience wouldn’t be distracted by personal items within the frame of the performance.

One of the key moments within our development stage was the incorporation of the pre-recorded video, and this was for a number of reasons. First of all, for the cohort to have in person time to develop a bond. Although we had already worked together in person for other projects, we had never met in person under the guise of this performance. This gave us, as an ensemble, crucial bonding time. Secondly it gave our performance a new dimension for the audience members. Another key moment would be the creation of the of the feast movement sections. These moments of movement gave the audience an insight into the characters state of mind and helped break up the performance into three sections.

Click on the following link to find a breakdown of some of the favourite Flipgrids my cohort and I completed during our process: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12zb_PlKlp4lNM1Smw_n2XIBi4nz3Oq1R

Researching the Play, Genre and Themes.

Verbatim Theatre otherwise known as Documentary Theatre an increasingly growing form of drama and has become more popular in recent years. Claire Summerskill states in her guide, Creating Verbatim Theatre from Oral Histories, ‘Theatre created from interviews, uses first person narratives to tell a big story through a finely focused lens’ (Summerskill, C., 2021) and it is this focused response to Verbatim Theatre which gives it its provenance. In essence, Verbatim Theatre is about telling stories and using the text in a controlled yet interesting way. How you go about using this verbatim text dramaturgically is up to the theatre maker. This gives Verbatim Theatre a certain fluidity. Summerskill goes on to state ‘there is no fixed set of rules for creating Verbatim Theatre, since every individual playwright or theatre practitioner decides on their own method’ (Summerskill, C., 2021). Verbatim Theatre also has the ability to explore narratives in an intimate and effective way and to do what Will Hammond describes as, ‘what journalism fails to do’ (Hammond W., 2008) by addressing ‘a lack of representation, or the misinterpretation of people and issues in the media’ (Atasoy, M., 2021). These sources highlight the intrinsic importance heteroglossic Verbatim Theatre has within society as a storytelling device. It gives an audience a look into an event without the political or social bias that naturally comes with mainstream media. Jess McCormack sums up the main elements of Verbatim Theatre by stating it ‘is repeatedly framed in terms of accuracy and fidelity, accuracy of spoken text, fidelity of performance, accuracy of meaning’ (McCormack, J.,2011).

Born in December 1955, Carol Ann Duffy is an English poet who served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009 to 2019. Although she is most well known for her work in the poetry field, she has written a number of plays including ‘Take My Husband’ (1982) and ‘Little Women, Big Boys’ (1986). Duffy’s adaptation of 15th century play  ‘Everyman ’ originally written by  Petrus Dorlandus was described by critic Michael Billington as ‘But what was originally church propaganda has been turned, in Carol Ann Duffy’s stunning adaptation, into a scathing assault on the myopic materialism of the modern age and a reminder of our own mortality.’ (The Guardian, 2015). This is a typical response to Duffy’s writing style and story telling prowess. Her plays always have an underlying social aspect to them giving the audience members an opportunity to evaluate their social situations through the lens of the given play or moment. Duffy has won a plethora of literary awards including the ‘T S Elliot Prise’ for her work on the poem ‘Rapture’ (2005).

With My Country being set in the deeply divisive time of the European referendum in 2016. It was important to do extensive research into the social attitudes and values of the time to give the characters relevant context to work from. One of the most important factors of the referendum was the general confusion as to why or how we would actually leave the EU. In the opinion of Dr Alan Renwick, ‘A referendum result is democratically legitimate only if voters can make an informed decision. Yet the level of misinformation in the current campaign is so great that democratic legitimacy is called into question’ (The Telegraph, 2016). It was important from a performance standpoint to showcase this misinformation and confusion within the piece. It was also important to research what areas of the country voted for what result, so when trimming down the script we can have a character politically lean one way or the other. For example, with the exception of Leicester and Rushcliffe, the entirety of the East Midlands voted leave with majorities of between 51% - 71%.

Other Online Performances. 

Shakesqueer, performed by Tom Marshman, is a piece that looks retrospectively into the works of Shakespeare and investigates whether Shakespeare could be referencing homosexuality within his pieces. One of the moments that stood out to me technically was when he would split is face in half while performing the monologues. This created a sense of unease and the uncanny valley for the audience as no face is completely symmetrical. This effect is something that is heavily linked to online performance as it would be near enough impossible to achieve during an on-stage performance. This technique is a good example of how we can technically manipulate frame and a performer’s physical attributes in real time. Another moment which stood out to me was when Tom was performing one of Shakespeare’s monologues and had another performer on another screen drawing a woman. This was memorable because both elements of this moment had equal screen real estate. This meant that the drawing did not get in the way of the monologue and vice versa. Again, this is something that would be almost unachievable during a stage performance.

Sharp Teeth’s performance ‘Sherlock in Homes’ is an online murder mystery set in Antarctica. The performance relies heavily on breaking the fourth wall and audience interaction for the interview scenes. One of the moments that particularly stood out to me was their use of an online poll to determine who the audience thought the murderer was. This allowed for the audience to directly communicate with the performers without the need for the audience to actually speak and risk interrupting the show. This is something again which would be hard to achieve during a stage performance. Another aspect that interested me was the scenes in which the entire cast were present. These were busy scenes, with a lot of talking going on. Conversation, especially learnt conversation, does not flow as well at all over online video calls. These scenes showed the level of focus and the quality of rehearsal implemented by Sharp Teeth to create a compelling performance for their audience.

‘You Are Here: A Homebound Travelogue’ is an online performance based on the trials and tribulations of home and where we exist physically and virtually. The performer explores the rationale between physical and online presence, in one instance, by pointing out how she can spread out her online presence into different apps and programs in one moment. One moment of this performance which made me think was when the performer asked the members of the zoom call to point their camera out of their windows so the rest of the audience can see what they see. This provided the audience with a live snapshot of others physical environment. Which in a way connected the audience virtually by giving something away to the others. Another moment which technically stood out to me was when the performer was touring her local area on google maps. As this was happening sound effects of a street were played. This helped immerse the audience into what was in essence a still image.

Our Performance of My Country: A Work in Progress.

One of the strengths of my cohort was commitment to character and character development. This shone through during the performance, especially during the scene ‘The Six Areas’. These are monologues which each held a different meaning and had a different objective. These well-rehearsed and developed monologues created a certain variety of theme which kept them interesting and compelling to the audience. This would not have been achievable without extensive character development. A general weakness of the cohort within the performance was prop and costume organisation. Online performance in your own space calls for a high level of organisation and focus as, for one, you don’t have a backstage crew there to organise props and dress and for two, you would not have the normal visual ques you would normally have preforming on stage. For example, I might rely on being in a certain position on stage as a prompt for a line. This could have been rectified with a heavier rehearsal schedule and possibly better focus during the performance itself.

If I were to make this performance again, I would spend more time on the ‘Feast sections’, as for me, they seemed to be the weaker sections within the performance. We should have thought more about the relationships between these characters and the sociological connections between them. For example, how would south react to north? What are the opinions for people from Leicester about the Northern Irish? Although I believe these scenes to have been entertaining, I think we may have missed an opportunity to tackle cross country opinions which would have boosted our performance level.

One of the most important things I have learnt, throughout this performance process is how to implement facial expression effectively within an online performance. On stage, as the audience could be sat a fair way from you, it is important in some way to over extenuate facial expression to be visible to everyone. However, for online performance, as the camera is almost completely focused in on your face you must dial these down to a more realistic and accurate portrayal. This is essential for naturalistic moments within the performance. I have also learnt how to interact with characters without them physically being in the same space. Having never performed in online theatre before, this at the beginning was very alien to me.

As we move away from online performance as the pandemic comes to a close, I could definitely translate what I have learnt in relation to facial expressions into film based acting and performing as there is a larger scope for facial performance. Although I do believe, the stage is a dominant force in storytelling and creating compelling pieces of drama, online performance has solidified itself as a medium to explore narratives in a new way and will be here for many years to come.

Bibliography.

BBC News, (2016), ‘EU Referendum Results’ Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results (Accessed 23/04/21)

Renwick, A. (2016) Letters: Both Remain and Leave are Propagating Falsehoods at Public Expense, Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/06/13/letters-both-remain-and-leave-are-propagating-falsehoods-at-publ/ (Accessed on: 20/04/21)

Atasoy, M. (2021) ‘Rethinking the Refugee Experience in Verbatim Theatre: Hospitality and Translation in Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s Aftermath’, Modern Drama 64, Page: 47 – 66,  Available at: https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/786170. (Accessed: 20/04/21)

Hammond, W. and Steward, D. (2008) ‘Verbatim, Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre’. Oberon, (Accessed: 21/04/21)

Billington, M. (2015) ‘Everyman review – ‘Chiwetel Ejiofor’s rich sinner feels modern wrath of god’  Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/apr/30/everyman-review-chiwetel-ejiofor-national-theatre-carol-ann-duffy-morality-play (Accessed: 21/04/21)

Summerskill, C. (2021) ‘Creating Verbatim Theatre from Oral Histories’ Taylor and Francis Group (Accessed: 21/04/21)

Carol Anne, D. (2018) ‘My Country; a work in progress’. Faber & Faber (Accessed 04/03/21)

‘ShakesQueer!’. By Tom Marshman (2021) Directed By Tom Marshman, [Online, 28/02/21]

‘You Are Here’. By Marike Splint (2021) Directed by Hana S. Kim, [Online, 02/05/21]

‘Sherlock in Homes 2: Murder on Ice’. By Sharp Teeth and Wardrobe Theatre (2021) Directed By: Stephanie Kempson, [Online, 04/03/21]