Musical Theater Nerds: The Musical Synopsis

Explanation of my Post: If you aren’t familiar, a musical Synopsis goes through the plot of a musical and inserts all of the songs names, the songs are listed in bold. That’s what this piece is doing. :)

Musical Theater Nerd: The new musical Synopsis Musical Theater Nerds Unite. Google and Angie contemplate together about how the internet is a great place to find people who love musicals. As they each Stand Alone, they realize that without the internet, they might never connect with people who knew all of the lyrics to every song in Les Miserables. Angie clicks on a link to a fellow musical theater nerds blog and finds herself connecting with her New Best Friend who just happens to have the same three musicals in her Top 3 Musicals of All Time. Meanwhile, Google discovers that there are actually nerds featured IN musicals due to a compiled list: Nerds Are Hot. As Angie and Google turn away from the sites they just discovered, they begin dancing around the living room excited to have found a Haven of Musical Theater Nerds. Nerd-dom Continues as Angie and Google sing about the various sites they are encountering that emphasis how awesome it is to be a musical theater nerd. Things turn serious as they sing a beautiful love song together The Most Romantic Love Songs (in Musical Theater). At the end of the song, Angie goes to her laptop and clicks on a new link describing what a lot of musical theater nerds are like: 40 Ways. Angie feels so happy that she is finding so many awesome sites about musical theater nerds, that she starts to lose her mind. She imagines she gets into an argument with Broadway actor/writer Harvey Fierstein about the new musical she just discovered from Google Nerds: a musical comedy about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Dumb Idea. Harvey argues that since there are already so many musical theater nerds out there, why not try to Recruit actual nerds to love musical theater. Angie is outraged, thinking that Technology is Ruining Theater and her and Harvey have a fight that nearly comes to blows until Google interrupts Technology Brings Us Together, reminding everyone that without the magic of internet search engines, they might not hear about great new musical theater shows, or find other nerds just like them. Angie and Harvey sing Musical Theater Nerds Unite (reprise) while they look at Google to find out more amazing websites dedicated to musical theater nerds.

Blog Post 7

The first two hits google gave me when I typed in The Lord of the Rings were thelordoftherings.net and a Wikipedia page. The initial reaction to thelordoftherings.net would be annoyance at the long load time of the video depicting the swirling ring to advertise for the extended edition on blue ray. This is followed by another long load time when entering the actual site as you watch the broken sword put itself together again. Though the site shows elements from the story (ie. map, ring, sword), its primary purpose is to sell products, video games, the films on blue ray. The actual narrative of the films is not discussed on the main page; only when you click the ‘film’ tab and select an individual movie do you learn what the story is about. This site is definitely an example of a database. It lists information with no real direction. Unless a web user was willing to travel deeper into the site, they would see very little narrative and not know what The Lord of the Rings was all about.

            The second link on google was to Wikipedia. This is a very interactive site with numerous links and a thorough synopsis of the story. While the previous site was primarily a database for selling products related to the film, this site is a database narrative; it lists the information, but in a way that tells a story. This is especially exemplified in the ‘content’ section where the list of information is available in a chronological order. This site is definitely more narrative-oriented and a web user would be able to make more connections with this page and know more of the story.

Magic: The Gathering
A Story About the Life and Struggles of a Prostitute
An analysis of the tragic tale of the world's premiere card game.

In the opening chapters of this sad story, we are introduced to the protagonist Magic: The Gathering. We learn about her personality, her traits, and the multitude of the intimate parts of her body. We then learn about her conception as the brainchild of Richard Garfield and her subjugation at the hands of him and his business partner Wizards of the Coast, the pimp of such maidens as the table top game Dungeons and Dragons.

The story then goes into more detail about the parts of her body and how you can buy these parts one at a time or in sets, whatever your pleasure. There are also a lot of detailed instructions on how to arrange these parts into a whole that satisfies your fantasies and fetishes.

The book then introduces StarCityGames.com. It is here that Magic: The Gathering experiences the majority of her subjugation. It is here that she is bought and sold most often.

Also introduced in the later passages are online videos which are uploaded by those who have used Magic: The Gathering. In these videos they discuss her merits and her faults, talk about and showcase her parts, and tell glory stories of times that they have used her for their pleasure. Players even upload videos of how they use her.

The story ends with a list of places where you can buy parts of her body at a price that suits your means. This product is for anyone who can afford her.

Stephen - Blog Post #7

Minecraft's Google-Narrative

If a Google search of "Minecraft" were arranged in a narrative structure, it would be classified as a biography, detailing the life of Minecraft, the protagonist, from birth to the present. This biography would be interesting due to the fact that the subject would still be fairly young and would have much more to accomplish, although his present accomplishments would be many and varied.

The first section of the story would be explaining Minecraft's birth and his family. It would discuss his father Markus "Notch" Persson and his family, Mojang Computer Entertainment. The conception scene would be detailed, although it would be kept appropriate for younger audiences. This section would also give all of the necessary background on Minecraft, so that people new to him would understand in detail who he is and how to properly play.

The second section would be the first few years of Minecraft's life. As he moved from PC to other platforms, he tried very hard to find players, and succeeded. Before long, he was one of the "popular games". He developed an extremely large player-base that continued to grow. He also went through numerous updates in an attempt to keep up with the current gaming trends.

The third section would be Minecraft's graduation from the "indie game" category and his progression into the big leagues. As he grew up, more and more people took notice and started to play. His updates became more frequent, allowing more and more features for users. This would also be a place where responses from interviews and forums would be posted, giving the reader exact quotes explaining how people feel about Minecraft.

The fourth and final section would lead up into the present, where Minecraft has been praised with a multitude of awards, downloaded by millions, and continues to grow. It would discuss his plans to move forward onto other systems, including the upcoming next generation consoles. The story would end with an encouraging note, letting readers know that anyone can accomplish great things. It would leave the reader waiting for the next installment about Minecraft's life.

Blog Post Six

            The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were epic fantasies written by professor J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937 and 1954. These books tell the quests of small hobbits that occur in a fictional world called Middle Earth. In 2001, director Peter Jackson began to bring Middle Earth to the silver screen with the making of The Lord of the Rings trilogy into movies. These movies starred Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Sean Austin, etc. The trilogy as a whole would be nominated for 30 Oscars and win 17 of them, including Best Picture and Best Director. In 2012, Peter Jackson continued to bring to life Tolkien’s epic with the making of the prequel, The Hobbit, into a movie trilogy as well.

            The Lord of the Rings trilogy depicts the quest of a hobbit named Frodo Baggins as he journeys to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring of power created by the dark lord Sauron. The Hobbit is about the adventures of Bilbo Baggins as he goes on a quest with 13 dwarves to regain their homeland from the clutches of an evil dragon.

            This website will depict Tolkien’s masterpieces through the eyes of people. It will show the countless memes and youtube videos that are related to the story and culture of Middle Earth. This will show the lens of how people appreciate Tolkien’s work humorously and artistically.

Blog Post Seis


Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game that was developed by Richard Garfield and produced by Wizards of the Coast, the same company that makes Dungeons and Dragons. In 1991 Peter Adkinson, the CEO of Wizards, was working with Garfield on another game that Garfield had developed. Adkinson wanted to make a portable game that could be played during the down time at gaming conventions. When Garfield brought the concepts of the trading card game, which he had been working on as a student, to Adkinson he published the game. Neither of them fully realized how popular the game would become.

Magic went through its first release in 1993 and now there are literally millions of people who play, both the physical rendition and the online version.

Magic is constantly being updated with about four sets released every year and each set containing around two hundred new cards. Once a year a new set comes in that will make three of the sets from two years ago obsolete and unusable for standard play.

There are many different game types, like commander, and archenemy, that get their own specific cards printed as well as a plethora of other ways to play just with the normal cards.

Magic: the Gathering cards exemplify the five principle of new media in a variety of ways. Most cards have a numerical representation for the online version for example. This site will discuss the various aspects of the game as well as how it applies to the Manovich's principles of new media.

Not Just For Gays Anymore: Musical Theater Nerds

A Musical Theater Nerd is not just a person who loves musicals; it’s a person who is obsessed with musical theater! A Nerd knows the names of practically every musical ever produced; knows not only the big name Broadway stars, but many of the ensemble members as well; they tend to perform musical theater numbers at karaoke night; and they may have a shrine or two in their homes dedicated to everything musical theater! A true Musical Theater Nerd knows all the best shows by heart including: Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Next to Normal, The Book of Mormon, Rent, etc. They have their favorite Broadway performers: Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, Sutton Foster, Aaron Tveit, Kristin Chenoweth, Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli. Because of their familiarity with so many varieties of shows, the Musical Theater Nerd has a song that they can sing about any situation happening in their life. This website will be a musical playground for theater lovers and theater virgins alike and will hopefully create new Musical Theater Nerds. The site will be a digital curation based on new media theories by one Lev Manovich, a professor of Computer Science at City University of New York. Manovich’s theories are made up of five principles which are: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding and these ideas will be shown throughout the website. So, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of a Musical Theater Nerd. As Neil Patrick Harris sang in his opening number of the 2011 Tony Awards, “it’s not just for gays anymore!”

League of Legends

League of Legends is an online MOBA or multi-player online battle arena where you play with teammates as a team against another team to achieve victory. This game is an offshoot from the very popular game Warcraft 3 where Riot Games--the company who founded League of Legends--took one of the maps from Warcraft 3 and built it into its own world with different rules and more competitive play. This took place in 2009.

This is the most popular PC game, surpassing World of Warcraft by and any of the other competing MOBA's. Tickets to the world championship for LoL sold out an hour after they were available for purchase. There are 32 million active people playing LoL each month which is only surpassed by the Xbox users, Grand Theft Auto, and Call of Duty. More than 1 billion hours of LoL are played and each month with 90 percent of the players being male. 3 million people is the usual amount of people on LoL in a day more than doubling Call of Duty's 1.4 million. This game can definitely be classified as the most popular video game as of 2013.

This website is specifically engineered to help understand how a simple video game encompasses theories of New Media and what that means for users and observers. New Media has changed the lives of so many and League of Legends is a prime example of entertainment benefiting from the technological progression of media into New Media. Lev Manovich has surgically taken apart this new media and is forcing us to realize how the merging of the old media with the new technology has impacted our life. LoL is a "living" embodiment of the 5 theories which Manovich discusses in his book The Language of New Media.

The principles of numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding are apparent in this video game that has affected the lives of 32 million people and will continue to grow as new media integrates more and more fully into our lives. Unless we take the time to study these changes now and they way they're affecting our lives, soon we will not even be able to distinguish life before new media and the present. 

Stephen - Blog Post #6

    Minecraft is an indie sandbox game. It was originally created by Swedish programmer Markus Persson (AKA Notch) and was later published by Mojang. Minecraft is currently available on PC and Xbox 360, as well as having mobile versions for Android and iOS. Versions are being developed for the PS3 and the upcoming PS4 the Xbox One. All of the versions receive periodic updates to add features and fix bugs.

   Minecraft is a creative building game, which allows players to build out of cube shaped blocks (it is often referred to as virtual Legos). The game has three modes. The first, survival, allows the player to build structures out of blocks that they must gather. The player explores the world and gathers the blocks, which they can then craft into different blocks and materials. There is also combat; players can create weapons and fight off enemies, called mobs. In creative mode, players already have access to all materials, and are able to build huge structures without exploration, gathering, or combat. The third, hardcore, is similar to survival. It is the hardest difficulty and players only have one life.

   Minecraft has become extremely popular, with millions of players worldwide, extensive merchandise, multiple awards, and even the yearly convention MineCon. Their PC stats can be seen on this site: https://minecraft.net/stats. As of October 23, 2013, the game has sold over 12.5 million copies on PC, and over 33 million copies across all platforms.

   This site is a digital curation of web-based Minecraft creations, explained through the theories of Lev Manovich, a professor in Computer Science at City University of New York and a new media theorist. In his book, The Language of New Media, he details five principles of new media, which will be used throughout this site. They are: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding.

The Polarization of Competition

 

As in any game or sport, there seems to be two areas of interest--competitive play (and how to improve) and hilarious bloopers. When you watch the replays of a football game on the news, they show both the most amazing, technically skilled videos that inspire others and they show the crazy, funny mistakes. This is applicable to the game of League of Legends as well when you're surfing YouTube.

The videos vacillate between videos on how to improve your play and the best way to make the epic plays featured there. These comprise more than half of all of the amateur videos out there while the other portion is comprised of videos that are deliberately made to incite laughter either through mistakes, memes, or joke-filled commentary about other games.


For the most part, the videos are unedited except for potentially music or commentary or title pages and the like. Usually the content speaks for itself and does not need to be altered. Definitely a lot of montages both in the instructional and parody videos with cuts from professional and amateur streams.

These different types of videos drive the types of personalities that you find within the LoL community. The drive to improve your play and win more and more games creates the need for instructional videos from other players that have figured out the tricks or skills needed already--people to learn and grow from. The pressure to perform, however, can take its tole and the need to blow off steam comes in the form of these gag videos, both to make fun of others' mistakes (which you have probably made a few times) and laugh at the inside jokes of the game.

Blog Post #5

            Most of the youtube videos I found were parodies of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. One example took The Lord of the Rings culture and embedded it with BYU/Mormon culture. It is called “The Lord of the Engagement Ring,” making fun of the high marriage rates at BYU. It keeps the basic plot and characters of The Lord of the Rings, but adds Provo’s culture to it.

            There were a few videos that paid homage to the music from The Lord of the Rings movies. Many of these were of amateur performers playing/singing the music. A few (groups such as The Piano Guys and Lindsey Sterling) performed their own adaption of the music.

I suppose the way The Lord of the Rings culture is being changed in these videos is that the people who make them are trying to put of piece of themselves in it. They loved the story (or music) of The Lord of the Rings and wanted to be part of it. Many did this though humor as you can see in the Studio C parody “Gandalf Intervention.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3n-s6rT_6c

Magic on Youtube.

There are several different kinds of videos on youtube that pertain to Magic: The Gathering. People do instructional videos that can teach prospective players how to play. There are reviews of certain decks and creature types. There are videos of players competing at both national tournaments and in their basements. There videos of people opening booster packs and discovering what cards they purchased. Pretty much every aspect of the game has some sort of representation on

youtube.http://youtu.be/OJ6zZS8FjEs

Musical Fan Videos are Hilarious! (Blog #5)

I thought it was kind of hard to find videos about musical theater that weren't strictly performance videos.  There were a lot of videos that were made using the soundtrack with cast album pictures, or people who taped themselves or friends onstage.  One of my favorite channels for musical theater is AngelsBWay Karaoke. I love karaoke and this girl posts only musical theater karaoke, which is my absolute favorite.

Other than those types of videos, I found that a trend is doing humorous videos about what its like to be a musical theater fan. I think they are absolutely hilarious, but I wonder if people who don't know much or anything about musical theater would even get them or understand why its so funny. There are some parodies out there (again it was hard to find fan parodies and not professionals). But there were a few hilarious homages, I guess you would call them. They just kind of make fun what people who love musical theater are like, but they are directed so that musical theater nerds would look at them and say, "that's totally me!"  As an example of this, I am posting a video below of a boy who says all these things about musical theater (and I found myself laughing hysterically and saying "That's totally me!"  . The video is also funny because there's a stereotype of guys who like musical theater being gay, and while some people might find this video offensive, theater people just think its hilarious because they know people like this.

I don't know if these videos are changing any cultural meanings per se. But I think what they are doing is connecting musical theater lovers to each other around the country and the world.  Unless you are in theater yourself as a major or in community musicals, you don't usually run in to too many people who are musical theater fanatics. But it is nice to know that there are other people out there just like you! (I just made us sound like some secret minority or something--and maybe we are!)

Stephen - Blog Post #5

Minecraft is an ideal topic for finding videos on YouTube. It has become very common for gaming channels and just average gamers to post gameplay videos, walkthroughs, instructions, and ideas from Minecraft. Many of these videos are humorous, but it really depends on the players. My favorites of these videos are created by two linked channels: Rooster Teeth and Let’s Play. 

These feature a wide variety of Minecraft gameplay videos in which they come up with, build, and play different games and contests. One series that they have is called Things to Do. In these videos, they give suggestions for players to do in their own game. They are generally fairly short, I have posted one below. These videos are culturally significant because both Rooster Teeth and Let’s Play have an enormous number of subscribers (6,374,506 and 1,085,016 respectively.) Their videos get huge amounts of viewing and very large amounts of response and recreation. They are far from the only channel doing this as well. Minecraft is a very popular source for online videos. 

To tweet, or not to tweet

            The twitter persona I have been trying to create is mainly geared towards technology. I was not on twitter previously; so my tweets have only been the 5 weekly tweets about technology for this class. I have had a few followers from friends and those taking this class, and a couple of my tweets were favorited if they were amusing.

Most of the topics on my feed are concerning technology since Dr. Pepper recommended we follow groups of that interest to see who is saying what about new media. I suppose being on twitter is a part of our class assignments because social media has become a huge factor and influence in the world of new media. Though for the most part, I dislike tweeting. I suppose this is mainly because I do not like to be social in general and it is difficult to say something in 140 characters or less, let alone about technology which is not generally a topic I talk about regularly.