Cerberus Starraiser

My Life: Year Three

Made at www.toondoo.com!

My Life: Year Two

Made at www.toondoo.com!

My Life: Year One

Made at www.toondoo.com!

My Life: Year Zero

Made at www.toondoo.com!

Self-Respect in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a film directed by Edgar Wright starring Michael Cera, an extraordinary tale is told of a young man who, in order to be with the one he loves, must face the demons of her past. Literally. These “demons” take the form of seven of her ex-lovers—“The League of Evil Exes”—whom the titular Scott Pilgrim must defeat in Street Fighter-esque duels to the death. Throughout the story, Scott not only battles these exes, but his own internal demons as well. The film aims supposedly at gamers, identifying with the “common” gamer perception—nerds with low self-esteem and no prowess with the ladies. It gives these nerds actual video game powers, but in the end, it sends the message that even so, it still comes down to wit and self-respect to make it in the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Bucks County Community College Financial Aid Department

Below is the email I sent to Financial Aid and the Dean due to the problems of my Financial Aid.  If you have any financial aid dealings with Bucks County Community College, well, first, I’m sorry.  Second, if they edited your FAFSA due to verification, please be advised that they were doing it while GUESSING at what next years’ rules would be. 

They made changes to my FAFSA that were not allowed by any official documentation based on some assumptions that certain credits weren’t allowed.  It made me ineligible for financial aid.  I had to march down there, documents in hand, and point it out.  They asked me to come back later as they researched it.  THEY COULD NOT FIND ANY DOCUMENTATION WHY MY CREDITS WERE TO BE REMOVED, and, they had never seen the official verification handbook because it was released JUST THE DAY BEFORE.  Then the documentation was published, and they were like “look at that, we’ll have to fix it.”

My question is: why were you making big changes like that without any direction from the government, or even reading the posted instructions on how to verify?  And, if you screwed up other people’s, how do they know if they don’t read the verification instructions sent to you that you’re supposed to know?

If you had changes made to your FAFSA due to Bucks County Community College’s verification process, double check them.  Use this link to access the guide that BCCC is supposed to be using: http://ifap.ed.gov/fsahandbook/attachments/1112AVG.pdf.  And complain to them if it is wrong.  If you have a problem, you can also contact me, and I’ll take a look at it too.

Subject: And ANOTHER Financial Aid issue that needs to be fixed

Dan Hughes <cerberus@starraisers.com>

To: Sandra Solar <solars@bucks.edu>

CC: Elizabeth Kulick <ekulick@bucks.edu>

 

I just received a letter that I need to perform EXIT counseling because I am “not registered for the upcoming semester or you have registered for fewer than 6 credits.”  It says I must call or stop in “once I’ve completed registration.”  According to WebAdvisor, I’m currently enrolled in 13 credits for Fall, AND HAVE BEEN SINCE APRIL WHEN I REGISTERED.

 

The number of errors by the financial aid department handling my account is ridiculous.  Additionally, the corrections to my FAFSA have yet to be submitted after I had to come down there and show the correct verification documents that you all apparently didn’t have because “the documents are not finalized yet.”  Why you edited my FAFSA without any documentation (nor could you give me any evidence why you assumed the Opportunity Credit would be removed from my FAFSA after waiting all day for you to find it) is beyond me, but this is becoming a serious problem.  Who knows how many other kids had their FAFSA screwed up because the department made changes based on hunches and assumptions.   I’m going to have to find a way to let local Bucks students know to double-check their FAFSAs in case you made anyone else ineligible for financial aid incorrectly.

 

FAFSA support gave me a phone number to call and file complaints, and I shall do that come Tuesday.  In addition,  make sure whatever is broken in your system is fixed so I don’t get pegged by the government for not paying back my loans yet. 

 

Thank you in advance for fixing these issues.

 

~Dan Hughes

Effects of Point of View on Narrative Style

Before writing, great novelists must decide which point of view to implement. The option chosen will simultaneously allow for and limit how the author shares information with the reader. For example, a first-person perspective limits the reader to what the main character can see. The writer must find a different way to let the reader know about events the first-person character does not witness. Clever authors tinker with these rules, or find unique ways to apply them. Jane Austen shifts focus to minor characters in Sense and Sensibility. Mary Shelley wraps first-person within epistolary form to create new storytelling techniques in Frankenstein. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley quickly switches through and weaves together multiple points of view as a musician combines instruments or a film director combines scenes. In addition, the first-person stream of consciousness in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians literally ensures that the reader cannot know what will happen next. It is obvious that each point of view has a different way of affecting how the author pens their story, but when an author gets clever, sensational breakthroughs in narration can occur.

In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen writes with a third-person omniscient point of view. While the narrative mainly lies with Elinor, by keeping third-person, Jane Austen can switch to other characters she deems necessary to provide information to the reader, even if Elinor is not present. This is vital for Austen’s usage of two main protagonists: Elinor—the “sense”—and Marianne—the “sensibility.”

Austen takes this a step further, switching away from the main protagonists to characters relatively unimportant to the bulk of the narrative. The whole of Chapter 2 has neither Marianne nor Elinor present. The characters involved never mention the information discussed within earshot of the two protagonists for the entirety of the story. Since Austen did not limit herself to a single character’s perspective, she can employ this method of telling the readers about Fanny’s reflection of the Dashwood girls’ situation: “Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters” (Austen 10). Austen goes on to give us the logic behind Fanny’s stance on the matter, followed by a conversation where she manipulates her husband—quite expertly—into agreeing with her. Austen helps the reader understand why the Dashwood girls are in the situation they find themselves in, and manipulates the reader into feeling compassionate for them.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Answer is “Neither”: Gender Issues in Gaming

What is the “average gamer?” What factors go into calculating what “average” means in terms of gaming? In “Average Gamers Please Step Forward,” A. B. Harris says that he is the “poster child for gaming,” according to the Entertainment Software Association: he is a male, head-of-household working professional in his early thirties (465). One concept Harris never addresses—thus seemingly inflicted with incorrect perceptions himself—is that the average gamer, by the ESA standards, cannot be so easily defined. A quick trip to the ESA’s webpage on “Industry Facts” seems to conflict Harris’ definition of “average.” There, the organization claims 40 percent of all gamers are female. This number is statistically significant enough to say that one cannot declare the average gamer as either male or female. However, just like Harris, many game developers make the same mistake, creating and marketing games strictly to males, causing an imbalance based on perceived notions that should not exist. Recently, developers have started researching the female gamer, and found that it has nothing to do with the fact that females do not game but rather that there are few games developed with females in mind. There very well could be more than those 40 percent out there if there were games to cater to them. With such an unknown, how can the typical gamer truly be defined?

Game developers want to answer this question. Studies and interpretations have formed as psychological researchers delve into the differences between male and female gaming. One of these studies in particular found that “spatial performance was significantly better among fifth-grade boys than among fifth-grade girls on a video game assessment of mental rotation” (Blumberg 152). The problem with these analyses is that researchers are not considering other key pieces of information that influence the outcome. According to Fran Blumberg and Lori Sokol of Fordham University, a study released two years later determined that boys tend to have “more overall video game experience than did girls, which may have contributed to their superior video game performance” (152). Blumberg and Sokol tried to alleviate that problem by studying not so much the performance, but how boys and girls taught themselves to play. In the end, they found that while boys seemed, as predicted, to have more previous video game experience, “gender was not implicated in our findings concerning either citation of internally or externally based video game strategies or game performance” (Blumberg 157). Simply put, the researchers could not attribute any differences in how children approached new games to gender: males are not inherently “better gamers.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Pester Power through Television Advertising

In Eric Schlosser’s “Kid Kustomers,” Schlosser makes the point that many American companies advertise towards children purposefully. He describes the many ways in which kids can successfully manipulate their parents into purchasing products for them whenever they want. He provides expert testimony and several examples of advertisements aimed at children. However, none of this is as powerful as actually sitting and viewing the commercials for what they are. On November 14, 2010, the Fox television network aired “The Simpsons” at its normal 8:00 p.m. timeslot, and the commercials contained therein are especially telling of the techniques used by merchandisers to provoke the “pester power” of children (223).

First, consider the type of programming “The Simpsons” is. It is family-oriented programming, aimed at criticizing the various aspects of life for each of the members of the Simpsons family. From Bart’s rebellion against society to Lisa’s fight to fit in albeit being intelligent beyond her age, Homer’s antics at work, and Marge’s work as a homemaker, there is something to take away for all ages.

The advertisers apparently agree, and as such, an active viewing of the commercials that air during this timeslot verifies it. The very first commercial during this particular timeslot advertised Sony’s new Move system, a Nintendo Wii-like motion sensor system for the PlayStation 3 video game console. The commercial begins with the fictional Vice President of Sony, Kevin Butler, describing how the Move is not just for kids; it is “fun for the whole family.” The commercials depict the fun competition the entire family is exhibiting, from the younger children to the old grandfather. Mom gets a hole-in-one, and then blows on the Move controller John Wayne-style to assert her victory over the others.

Read the rest of this entry »

Class Action Lawsuit Notification Against Electronic Arts

Below is the text of the notice I received regarding the lawsuit against EA.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a test.

Ignore me, go on about your business.

~Dan

Round Characters Need Flat Ones

Every character within a novel has a purpose. The main characters propel the story onward, carrying readers on a journey. Plenty of supporting characters cross paths with the protagonists, each for a particular reason. Sometimes these characters are as well rounded as the primary ones. Oftentimes, they are flat, cardboard cutouts with just enough description to bring them to purposeful life. Their purpose: to confront the main hero with varying aspects of society and emotion so that, through interaction and dialogue, the reader can learn more about the protagonist. These cookie-cutter characters are so vital in exploring the main characters’ personalities that few novels, if any, go without them. To explore this, I take examples from four of my favorite classic novels: Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comin’ Off The Hip-Hop Beat

Comin’ off the hip-hop beat, slapping my thighs, tapping my feet
When it’s the groove that has me, I can’t be beat.
Chuggin’ down the university halls with a kick in my step
I encourage the passersby to join into the feeling that can’t be kept
To myself, or to any one person, the moves must be shared
The stress must be released, the soul must be bared.
There is no more effective form of therapy
So get up off your seat and dance with me.

OMG Sources

I just thought this was funny and wanted to share.  My professor wants a list of the sources we’ve been looking at so far.  My notes are all over the damn place, so this is the first time I got all my bibliographical entries all in one place.  MY WORKS CITED PAGE IS OVER TWO PAGES LONG.

For those of you who are actually interested in how my research paper is going, I’m including my works cited here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rhetorically Speaking: Community’s “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons”

It was good fortune for this episode’s airing to coincide with the work I am doing on my research paper about the psychology behind Dungeons and Dragons groups.  In addition, one of the resources I am using details a psychologist’s use of D&D to reach a child who had no other way of expressing himself.  In this episode of Community, a college student known as “Fat Neil” is undergoing major depression and thoughts of suicide.  After giving all of his D&D books to Jeff Winger because he “won’t need them anymore,” the study group decides to play a game of D&D with Neil to make him feel better.

The episode, from a rhetorical standpoint, is amazing in the number of controversial issues tackled here: race, sex, violence, hatred, and links to teen suicide.  They do not all play a major role in the story, but the show makes a nod to each one.  If you analyze it long enough, the show seems to claim that people blow these aspects way out of proportion when using them as a basis to condemn D&D gameplay.

The first reference to race comes when a comical Chang paints his skin black and dons a silver wig, to which Shirley says, “So, we’re just gonna ignore that hate crime, huh?” not realizing that he was emulating an elven race in the game known as the drow.  The second comes when the group finds a tavern populated with “beleaguered gnomes” and Brita tries to speak to them.  In Abed’s game, there seems to be a caste system where these gnomes are very far on the bottom.  This leads to an interesting discussion in which Brita is telling the gnome that he should treat her as an equal, and Abed, as the Dungeon Master, role-plays the gnome’s dismay at such an idea.

Read the rest of this entry »