The Narrative Book of Database Narratives: Le Book of Rage

So, for this narrative I'm just going to outline it and do brief summaries of said chapters. That being pointed out, I think that I'll also just do a bit of creative editing of le names. These are the names:

• Rage Comics--Express Your Rage--rage comics--Cheezburger
• Hot Rage Comics
• Rage Collection--Home of Rage Comics

I'll be editing some for redundancies and others to makes them more titlely (totally a word). They're going to look like this now:

• Express Your Rage
• Hot Rage
• Rage Collection--Home of Rage

So with that in mind, let's get started!

Express Your Rage
This is an introductory bit, explaining how to create rage comics. It'll talk about the superiority of MS Paint over Photoshop and how to draw on experiences of everyday life and make them hilarious through a standardized, poorly drawn comic. All will love it!

Hot Rage
This one will go into great detail about how to push your comic to the front page in tumblr. The chapter will go into the proper way to deal with trolls--because your comic is so good, it's "Hot Rage."

Rage Collection--Home of Rage
The third chapter of this epic series will expound about the collection of rage that you built up because of all the rage comics that you're making. It should emphasize what to do with all of your comics--whether to only post the best, or just spam the Internet (spam). The chapter will recommend which sites are the best to post on (all of them) in order to get your comics out there (to show off).

Well, True Believers, this is it. That is the narrative I drew from a simple google search. I thought it worked out pretty well. I'm going to go eat some cake.

Once upon a time . . .

. . . breasts abroad in all the land were suffering. Many breasts saw ads on the tube, offering products and services to to create recovery plans and offer hope for healing. One month was set aside for all breasts to paint the town pink in order to spread awareness and gather attention that would the efforts to find a cure for the pain. 

One of the breasts was named Susan. She held a parade. Everyone lined the streets, proud of life, hopeful for change and miracles, waving pink banners and eating pink popcorn. Donation boxes were placed in every store in every land and at every finish line. 

All the pink proceeds were poured into the foundation of a massive organization and packed tight until a giant castle was formed. And there, the dreams of happily ever after are shaken and stirred and steamed and stored. Pairs and pairs of breasts flock to the castle in search of their one true cure. 

And some breasts live happily ever after.

The Elven Memes

So we have multiple versions of elves: Santa's elves, Harry Potter's house elves, Lord of the Ring's elves, video games elves. The list goes on an on, which provides lots of great material for meme creation.

Many times mockery is the subject of elven memes. However, sometimes political references are made, such as with Santa's elves and house elves. Freedom seems to popular when concerning house elves and sometimes Santa's elves, though Santa's elves are used to mock Christmas.

Mockery comes mostly from the LOTR and video gaming elves. Elves in LOTR and video games often have powers unattainable to humans and are considered "better" races. A common meme for LOTR is when Legolas, a very popular elf among LOTR and elven fans, is looking out into the distance to see what humans and dwarves cannot. People place a funny image for Legolas to see in the center picture, leaving Legolas shocked in the last frame.

Here's an example:

This meme is mocking computers and losing all the information available. Legolas can see what is happening when the others cannot.

Another common theme is mocking the better abilities elves have in video games. Dominating as an elf is a common theme and often the players of these elves are mocked for their pride and overbearing attitudes.

Example:

In this meme, Joseph Ducreux, a French painter during the French Revolution, is used in memes that mock different subjects. Often the words in the meme are from a vocabulary of large words and using an old way to speak. However, this is not the case since the meme is mocking the language of internet and gaming. The "Level 80 Elf Paladin" is supposed to be a strong character that can dominate in the World of Warcraft games. The "In...Yo...Face" is to mock the gamers' pride for their characters.

In this next meme, the mockery of LOTR and gaming is combined into one.

This is a combination of two memes. The top part is the original meme that circulated around the internet. It's mocking how Legolas never ran out of arrows during the the LOTR movies. The bottom meme is a response to the top meme. The man in the middle is associated with gaming and his words are gaming referencing, bringing together LOTR and gaming into one giant joke.

Besides memes, there are other ways to create internet art about elves. Fan art is really popular as people can curate images, sounds, videos, etc. into a group setting for their individual purposes.

This montage was created from images of Legolas and a quote in the bottom right corner. It was probably created in a photo editor to make the images blend together seamlessly and to add the quote and make it look good. And each montage or fan art carries some meaning from the creator. I believe this creator meant to show their devotion to Legolas. The quote, "And when I look into your eyes, the sky's a different blue" is romantic and all the pictures used are supposed to be attractive. This creator was expressing her devotion and warm emotions towards this fictional character.

But not all fan art is this way. Some have more negative, mocking meanings like memes. The tones are determined on the content and words used within the images created. Elves tend to be more mocking or political in their memes while fan art is devoted more to the likeable emotions.

Memes and Art

Being an intense sports fan, I found some really great memes on my favorite team.  Most of them revolving around one of our stars.  Oh, Kobe Bryant!  While I love and respect what an amazing basketball player he is, I am keenly aware of how much distaste there is for him among the basketball community.  He is notorious for being a bit of a ball hog and maybe a little bit cocky.  This meme mocks that notion but defends how most Lakers fans feel about his dominance on the court.

While I am from Southern California and have been a Lakers fan since I was a little girl, a lot of the Lakers fans around the nation are what we call "Bandwagon Fans" which are the fans who just follow the team because they win and have more money to build better teams.  As true Lakers fans, we are often called upon to defend ourselves and our star players and this meme helps us do just that.  All the Lakers Haters out there get on Kobe for not passing but what's the point of having a great shooting guard on our team who just passes the ball instead of making baskets. 

Now this meme, while it again portrays Kobe's passing problem, also requires a bit more knowledge about the team and the things that are happening in the season.  It references game 2 against OKC Thunder during the playoffs earlier this year.  It the nail biting last seconds of the game, it was Steve Blake who they passes the ball to in the last seconds rather than Kobe, and he missed the shot, losing the game.  Coach Mike Brown got a lot of rap after that game for designing the play as such.  Now, while I saw this and laughed, it wouldn't mean so much to someone who didn't watch the game. 

Now, fan art was a little bit harder to find, but not impossible.  This first one I found, I actually do not like at all. 

I'm a fan of Michael Jordan too, and I don't think that there can be only one master.  Michael Jordan was a phenomenal basketball player in his time, Kobe is in his on time as well.  This is mainly referencing a play that they both performed that is very similar.  I think that digitally, this wouldn't be that hard to create, but it definitely had to take some time to select some photos that have each player looking in the same direction with the same size smile and all the elements that make it so these interesting right next to each other.  But besides that, there is simple 5 words placed over the top.

This next one seems to require a little bit more technological skill:

This image portrays our new addition Dwight Howard.  I like the way his arms are held out because it shows how he is being welcomed to our team with open arms.  He has often been referred to as Superman so it is showing how he now fits into the Lakers team and along with our starting line up, will rise and create a great season for the Lakers.

Pokemans?! No, really.

Ok, this might just blow your mind: when I was ten years old, I was into Pokemon. No, really. You know, like every other ten year old at the time, except I would willingly admit it. :D  I'm a fan of the old stuff, and when it comes to the generation after generation of new pokemon, it's become like a bad novel series - it just needs to stop.

I find the idea of a widening generational gap within the same game absolutely fascinating. There are so many memes, comics, and writings about growing up with 'pocket monsters' - it left a mark on us, and that's why we still love them! Think back to the games that you loved to play, the 8-bit ones with the terrible music, and it makes us want to go back and play them again.

But then we get older. And the old stuff gets more awesome.

Gyrados vs Articuno - Gyrados uses splash!

Yes, THAT is Gengar. Is your mind not blown?!

 The stories and cute little 'monsters' you played with as a kid get twisted into the awesome stories and art of today. I think the memes are there to remind us of just how embarrassing it was when  we were little, but all the fan art, the really cool, realistic stuff, is there to show us that ANYTHING can become meaningful or gritty, creepy or inspiring. It brings back those memories when we were kids, the ones that made us love pokemon in the first place.

Isn't Photoshop just awesome?

Meme Awareness

This definition for "meme" is offered on my computer dictionary:

"an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation."

It's a term used in biology, usually, I guess. But it totally makes sense why that word is applied to the current use of meme media, of passing ideas through use of familiar images in order to link to it all connotations and past hyperspace/mainstream culture associated with it. 

Dr Pepper is right, virtually every topic has memes made for it—even Breast Cancer Awareness, the topic I believe I'll be doing. I'm doing research about it for now. (If, in the end, it looks like it won't work for whatever reason, my backup is Harry Potter. Potter Project = done in one second.)

Clearly these memes don't follow the common route of mocking or poking fun at their subject matter. It seems they're more poking fun at the idea of memes, but that may be the nature of memes in general anyway. 

But the first image is just not even humorous on any level. We know cancer kills. We know it. Then not eating kills us too. Looking at that meme makes me think: awareness doesn't change anything; DO something. Give food to those who starve. Get informed about cancer, your own history and treatment and prevention procedures.

The second meme brings to light the often overlooked fact that breast cancer has no gender bias. It's not all about pink. Look at all the blue in that meme; and the male fish is solemn, serious, while the female fish (eyelashes) in the background is surprised. Some people get caught up in the pink and don't remember breast cancer is just cancer located in the breast, same mutation that happens anywhere else in the body, no matter which body. 

Once we become familiar with memes, we realize their intent is to deliver a message, and one, like I said, heavy with preconceived notions and ideas of the image. Connect these with obvious statements to contradict or reemphasize the image, and your message is wrapped and delivered. The two (image and text) work together, blend flavors, to get the right taste in your mind: you are now thinking what I wanted you to think. And now, every time you see another meme you'll have that meme in mind, and a whole web of relating images and thought patterns is forming.

Memes are a strain of new media cancer on the web culture system: mutating out of control, sometimes ruining once-innocent images/icons (Wonka, fist pump baby, Schrute) so that, always, those images will represent something more than ever they originally did.

Fan art was a bit harder to find. Interestingly, a lot of what I've found so far is anime style. 

I don't know much about digital art rendering whatnot, but this would appear to be not drawn by hand. Shadowing/highlighting looks pretty cool, proportions also seem realistic, so it wasn't just some beginner, is my guess. The artist has two works posted where I found the one above, both relating to breast cancer awareness. Going off what Lev has said about Selection and Compositing, it would appear that the artist hasn't composited separate existing material and rendered a new media, but has more or less "drawn" the image using selections offered through digital software. The final presentation isn't montage, because it isn't made of complete media elements pieced together; however, anything digitally rendered isn't coming purely from scratch, either. The available colors, any filters or effects, these features are "shipped" with the software, included, programmed in. So, this artist isn't necessarily producing this "fan art" as an imitation of something she saw already displayed in association with breast cancer awareness (a lot of fan art is pure or exaggerated imitation, much like a singing attempt at a karaoke bar versus a professional band cover of the same song), because there is no real "image" for breast cancer, excepting the pink ribbon, which does make its artistic appearance in the piece.

Here's one last photo that I believe does represent a composite of familiar images mixed together with "invisible" editing to send a "real time" message.

Elves and hyperlinking

So I was thinking of using elves as a possible topic because there are so many definitions and cultures of elves created by authors, games, movies, and myths. One site I found introduced the culture of elves for a game I've never heard of. Here is the link http://www.elftown.com/_elves.

This site used a lot of hyperlinks on the many pages. This worked well because when you are introducing an entire culture for a game, there will be many questions along the way. I liked the hyperlinks because I could go to a different page to read more about something that caught my eye and then return to the original page that I was on when I was ready. Sometimes I kept clicking links continually and found myself on entirely different topics concerning elves. I was able to get the information I needed when I wanted it. It made the website more informational for the new reader.

Le Rage Comics

So for my final project, I think I'm going to look at rage comics, like the ones at ragecomics.com. While there are several sites devoted to rage comics (ragestache.com, ragecollection.com, and ragecomicarchive.com) I picked ragecomics.com because it was the first on the list that didn't link to a website devoted to lolcats.  So yeah, time to look at links.

It turns out that ragecomics.com does not link well to other sites, but instead to rage comics on its site. It knows its purpose, what people come to expect, and how to present it.  There are two small links at the bottom of the page, devoted to what are called "sister sites." All three are own by the same media group--Rainy Cape S. L.. Ragecomics does also host links to follow them on Twitter or like them on Facebook. That's about it. I almost find it interesting that the site does not link to other rage comic sites. I think it doesn't because then they'd have repeating comics or that the site is simply trying to make money and by linking to a competitor, they would be taking away hits to their own site.