So I may be behind in this neat little invention but I saw it on Facebook and had to share it.
When I was younger my mom had this cool cup that if you poured a hot liquid into it, the cup changed. It originally would say "I love you" around the top, but with a warm liquid the cup would then show the image of the phrase in Sign Language.
Well, this idea has been transformed by Harry Potter fans. A Mischief Managed Heat Transformation Mug has come on the market! Take a look here!
If you would like to buy this mug follow this Link.
I thought this was really neat because it brings to life the magical world of Harry Potter. While it may not actually be magic, I know that it feels like magic when you're a kid. My mom's "I love you" mug was my favorite whenever we had hot chocolate because it made it feel magical. To not only incorporate the words but also the magical theme of the series into this mug brings a whole new level of awesome to this product!
IZombie, a new CW show, was first introduced to the public on March 17th, 2015. The show follows the life, or rather living death, of Olivia "Liv" Moore played by Rose McIver. This character is a young woman who was turned into a zombie when, at a party, was scratched by a fellow zombie. The show starts five months after the incident. Her live has been turned upside down because of this change, including her career choices, her love life and her eating habits.
Liv has gained an ability that allows her access to memories, habits and abilities of the people whose brains she consumes. Because of this, mixed with her access to the brains of murder victims through her job as a mortician assistant, she becomes the assistant to a cop that looks into these murders.
This show, created by Rob Thomas and producer Diane Ruggiero, is a loose adaptation of the comic book, iZombie, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Michael Allred.
The comic book's main character is Gwendolyn Dylan, a 20-something grave-digging zombie, whose best friends are a ghost and a were-terrier. Gwen also has the ability to gain access to memories, habits and abilities of the different people through the consumption of their brains. She, just like in the show, uses this ability to help solve murder cases of the people whose brains she has consumed.
The original version consists of many introductions to supernatural characters, including zombies, ghosts, were-terriers, and vampires.
While the two versions of the story differ greatly, we can still see that the underlining idea of the original story is present across these two medias. Both of these stories are showing a young woman living life as a crime fighting zombie.
I'm normally not a fan of when new medias change much of the original story, but I do like what CW has going and I'm hoping they start to incorporate more of the original plot by adding in other supernatural beings.
So, originally I had started a blog post today to discuss some video game advertisements I had seen recently. When I opened up YouTube to grab links to the video game advertisements, I was recommended to a video that looked really interesting. I opened it, and THREE AND A HALF HOURS LATER I finally closed YouTube up. And yet in those three and a half hours, I never made it to the video game advertisements I had been looking for.
I have no idea how many videos I watched during this time, and to tell you the truth, I don't remember what they were all about. But during this time, I remember feeling extremely hungry and not being able to put my computer down. I was so intrigued and entertained that it made it hard to look away.
When I finally closed YouTube and looked at the two paragraphs I had originally started, I dreaded the idea of going back to YouTube for fear that this would happen again. This is not the first time I have diverged into binge watching when I was supposed to be doing something important, and it probably won't be the last.
I started thinking about all of those videos that were created by the same users.Here are some of my favorite YouTube channels that are consistently adding new videos:
An article from CelebrityNetWorth, called 25 Highest Earning YouTube Stars, estimated (in 2013) that the annual income that Jenna Marbles makes is about $4.3 million, while CollegeHumor only makes about $3.3 million. BuzzFeed isn't even on this list but it's likely that it is also making a fairly good sum from their YouTube channels.
It was amazing to me to see this because these people have made careers using this new new media. They have established a fan base that continues to grow and change, but the truth is that as long as they keep posting, there will likely always be that fan base for the information they offer. It's inspirational to see these channels succeeding to the point of making millions for simply getting views.
The study of English is a study of the way we communicate with the world
through language and shared stories and that's exactly what YouTube
allows us to do - share stories. JennaMarbles has been sharing her life story for over four years. She has introduced the public to her family, friends, boyfriends and pets. CollegeHumor has shared knowledge and stories that are focused on the humorous thoughts and situations we deal with in college or around that time frame of our lives. BuzzFeed tells stories, shares information and discusses serious topics. All of these stories can be experienced over and over again the same way we can experience literature over and over again. YouTube just allows us to experience these stories in a different format than classical literature.
One last thing I'd like to note is that since all of the videos are like little stories, and because they are all within this larger frame that is YouTube, we can consider YouTube a Frame Narrative!! Woah! Mind Blown!
In my Short Stories class a few weeks ago, we were discussing a few short stories and my professor introduced us to this really cool website called LitGenius. Originally, the site was created to share song lyrics written by well anyone, but it has become a place where people create annotation about stories that they know and love.
How it works:
You create a profile, and you search for your favorite story or for a story where you discovered something really cool within the text of that story. If you find it you go to a section where you discovered that really cool think and you comment on it. In the comment you can add pictures and links to help explain your point. This comment is then considered an annotation.
You can also vote annotations up or down depending on if you thought the comment was helpful. You comment on the annotation to tell why you agree or disagree with it, or you can suggest to the author to edit the original annotation so that it explains what they were trying to say more efficiently.
If you can't find the story you searched for it's really easy to add it so you can share your discovery with others and so others can share discoveries they've made while reading the piece.
Why this is so cool!:
This site is really neat because it allows people of all walks of life to share and discuss their favorite stories. It creates the opportunity for people to look more critically at a piece and to share their discoveries.
This new media site also allows easy access for people to discover new stories that have been written and they can see what other people have said about the story while they experience the story themselves. I think this is important, especially for stories that can be hard to understand, because it allows us to give specific details about what the author meant and how the words can have different meanings today that can help create different readings of the story.
Some Examples:
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
This is honestly my favorite Shakespeare sonnet, and to find an annotated version is interesting because it allows me the opportunity to see what others have said about it.
Joseph Conrad's "Youth"
This was the first piece that we, as a class, worked on together. We each had to create an annotation within the piece.
Carolyn Kizer's "Bitch"
I studied this piece in my Intro to Literature class and found there were two meanings to the word "mistress" and knowing there were two definitions to the term "bitch", made this a really interesting piece in my eyes and I wanted to see what others have said about it!
I have always had a fascination with Japanese manga, from when I was really in my younger teens I was always checking out manga books from the library or searching YouTube to watch different anime cartoons and to see the animation that they use compared to how we create it here in America.
My favorite manga is one called Pichi Pichi Pitch: Mermaid Melody created by Michiko Yokote. It is about the seven mermaid princesses that were the guardians of the seven seas. It focused on one princess in particular, Luchia, because she was coming into adulthood and had fallen in love with a human boy, Kiato. It was forbidden, but the princess continued to kind of "woo" Kaito.
Kaito and Luchia
Unfortunately, her true form and the monsters that were trying to capture the princesses created complications for the couple. I have not finished the series, so don't spoil it for me.
Luchia's Different Forms (Human, Mermaid, Warrior)
Various Mermaid Melody Villains
How I stumbled on the story is kind of interesting. I had been watching music videos on YouTube that showed animation clips from different cartoons. One of the clips showeda mermaid and a young man together. It caught my attention so I looked into the list of cartoons the creator had used and found Mermaid Melody listed among them. I investigated into the cartoon and found episodes of the anime on YouTube.
During my youth I was only able to find episodes that were in Japanese with English subtitles. I was also able to find similar versions with French or Spanish subtitles, instead.
But recently, I was able to find versions that have voice overs in English, French, Spanish and even Greek, which you can see below, respectively.
I knew the anime was based off of the manga, but I hadn't really looked for it. One Christmas morning, sitting in my stocking, I found an English copy of the first volume of Pichi Pichi Pitch: Mermaid Melody! I was so excited! I have plans to buy the other six in the series and to finish watching the anime on YouTube when I can find all of the episodes.
I found it really interesting how over the course of ten years the manga was created and published in its original form, was translated and published in other languages, and then became an anime that has been recreated by YouTube-ers to have not only subbed versions, but dubbed versions, as well. It is so neat how new medias have allowed the public to not only share stories internationally but how they can be recreated, or changed so that a new audience can understand them in their own languages.
Changes like these also show us back to that idea that "Medium is the Message", because of the different formats this story was created in.
In its original form, its message was meant to reach Japanese individuals for entertainment purposes, then when the English versions came out, it was given the chance to reach a wider audience. It's possible there are other languages the manga came out in, I am just unaware of them at this time.
When the anime version came, it was meant for the content of the story to be shared in an easier format because people no longer needed to read a whole book, but they could watch half hour episodes that breaks the story down.This version was meant to stay specifically in Japanese. The creators did not have plans to create it in English or any other language. But YouTube-ers had different plans. Because these people created versions of subbed and dubbed episodes, the message had now been changed again to allow a wider audience to enjoy the story in the new format.
I was at the theater this weekend to see Kingsman. (Btw great movie!!!) During the commercials, there was a new horror movie being advertised. I was very intrigued by it because it put a twist on the usual horror film.
The film is based on a group of students having a conversation on Skype about a friend that had passed away. A video had been posted on YouTube about this friend and the results from the cyber-bullying that occurred affected the girl enough for her to commit suicide shortly afterwards.
As the group talks they notice an extra viewer, or Skype-er as we'll call that person, within the conversation and they start to question who it is and why that person is part of the conversation. The extra Skype-er starts to harass the students to find out who had posted the video. As the movie goes on some of the students die by the hand of this extra Skype-er.
This is the official trailer for the movie. It was posted on YouTube on January 13th, 2015 and as of today (February 18th, 2015) has received over 5 million views. The movie is said to arrive in theaters on April 17th, 2015.
In case there are people reading this that don't understand what Skype is, it is a program that allows people to message, call, and video chat with people. It is a free program that connects people all over the world and allows them the benefit of seeing each other physically even though they cannot touch each other.
With the opportunities that new medias allow for us, the general public, it brings to light that our safety and privacy are now, more than ever, harder to protect because it is so easy to find almost anything online. Even if you're not the one posting them.
The video of the girl, Laura Barns, left an everlasting impression of her to the rest of the world that she was never going to be able to escape. This video was not approved by her, posted by her or even taken by her. She had no ability to control whether this was put out into the World Wide Web, nor did she have the ability to take it down and destroy it. In the end, as cliche as it sounds, this video destroyed her and all of the friends that were involved in the making and posting of it.
I have a terrible obsession with television shows. Here are a few of my favorites.
Once Upon A Time Cast
Being Human Main Characters
Galavant
Walking Dead Cast
These shows create a variety of emotional responses from me because their characters are very interesting and entertaining to me. Once Upon a Time is neat because it pulls together and recreates all of the fairy tales I remember from my childhood. Being Human has memorable characters who are trying to live normal lives while hiding and dealing with harsh struggles. Galavant is a cheesy, funny show that I enjoy watching and talking about with my dad. Walking Dead is a zombie apocalypse show about a group of people trying to survive.
