The Magic of Howl's Moving Castle: an Analysis of Character
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Myth, Metatext, Continuity and Cataclysm in Dc Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths
WORLDS WILL LIVE, WORLDS WILL DIE: MYTH, METATEXT, CONTINUITY AND CATACLYSM IN DC COMICS’ CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS Adam C. Murdough A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2006 Committee: Angela Nelson, Advisor Marilyn Motz Jeremy Wallach ii ABSTRACT Angela Nelson, Advisor In 1985-86, DC Comics launched an extensive campaign to revamp and revise its most important superhero characters for a new era. In many cases, this involved streamlining, retouching, or completely overhauling the characters’ fictional back-stories, while similarly renovating the shared fictional context in which their adventures take place, “the DC Universe.” To accomplish this act of revisionist history, DC resorted to a text-based performative gesture, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This thesis analyzes the impact of this singular text and the phenomena it inspired on the comic-book industry and the DC Comics fan community. The first chapter explains the nature and importance of the convention of “continuity” (i.e., intertextual diegetic storytelling, unfolding progressively over time) in superhero comics, identifying superhero fans’ attachment to continuity as a source of reading pleasure and cultural expressivity as the key factor informing the creation of the Crisis on Infinite Earths text. The second chapter consists of an eschatological reading of the text itself, in which it is argued that Crisis on Infinite Earths combines self-reflexive metafiction with the ideologically inflected symbolic language of apocalypse myth to provide DC Comics fans with a textual "rite of transition," to win their acceptance for DC’s mid-1980s project of self- rehistoricization and renewal. -
Marvel Fantasy Role Playing Game
MARVEL FANTASY ROLE PLAYING GAME A Fantasy RPG using the FASERIP System Table of Contents Character Creation ......................................................................................................................................................... 5 Race ........................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Origin of Power ......................................................................................................................................................... 6 Primary Abilities........................................................................................................................................................ 6 Secondary Abilities.................................................................................................................................................... 6 Powers ....................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Talents ....................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Contacts ..................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Heroic Alignment ..................................................................................................................................................... -
Copyright by Jason Todd Craft 2004 the Dissertation Committee for Jason Todd Craft Certifies That This Is the Approved Version of the Following Dissertation
Copyright by Jason Todd Craft 2004 The Dissertation Committee for Jason Todd Craft Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Fiction Networks: The Emergence of Proprietary, Persistent, Large- Scale Popular Fictions Committee: Adam Z. Newton, Co-Supervisor John M. Slatin, Co-Supervisor Brian A. Bremen David J. Phillips Clay Spinuzzi Margaret A. Syverson Fiction Networks: The Emergence of Proprietary, Persistent, Large- Scale Popular Fictions by Jason Todd Craft, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December, 2004 Dedication For my family Acknowledgements Many thanks to my dissertation supervisors, Dr. Adam Zachary Newton and Dr. John Slatin; to Dr. Margaret Syverson, who has supported this work from its earliest stages; and, to Dr. Brian Bremen, Dr. David Phillips, and Dr. Clay Spinuzzi, all of whom have actively engaged with this dissertation in progress, and have given me immensely helpful feedback. This dissertation has benefited from the attention and feedback of many generous readers, including David Barndollar, Victoria Davis, Aimee Kendall, Eric Lupfer, and Doug Norman. Thanks also to Ben Armintor, Kari Banta, Sarah Paetsch, Michael Smith, Kevin Thomas, Matthew Tucker and many others for productive conversations about branding and marketing, comics universes, popular entertainment, and persistent world gaming. Some of my most useful, and most entertaining, discussions about the subject matter in this dissertation have been with my brother, Adam Craft. I also want to thank my parents, Donna Cox and John Craft, and my partner, Michael Craigue, for their help and support. -
Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World Across Distinct Media and Environments
Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments by Christy Dena A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) School of Letters, Art and Media Department of Media and Communications Digital Cultures Program University of Sydney Australia Supervisor: Professor Gerard Goggin Associate Supervisor: Dr. Chris Chesher Associate Supervisor: Dr. Anne Dunn 2009 Let’s study, with objectivity and curiosity, the mutation phenomenon of forms and values in the current world. Let’s be conscious of the fact that although tomorrow’s world does not have any chance to become more fair than any other, it owns a chance that is linked to the destiny of the current art [...] that of embodying, in their works some forms of new beauty, which will be able to arise only from the meet of all the techniques. (Francastel 1956, 274) Translation by Regina Célia Pinto, emailed to the empyre mailing list, Jan 2, 2004. Reprinted with permission. To the memory of my dear, dear, mum, Hilary. Thank you, for never denying yourself the right to Be. ~ Transmedia Practice ~ Abstract In the past few years there have been a number of theories emerge in media, film, television, narrative and game studies that detail the rise of what has been variously described as transmedia, cross-media and distributed phenomena. Fundamentally, the phenomenon involves the employment of multiple media platforms for expressing a fictional world. To date, theorists have focused on this phenomenon in mass entertainment, independent arts or gaming; and so, consequently the global, transartistic and transhistorical nature of the phenomenon has remained somewhat unrecognised. -
TALISLANTA MAGIC SYSTEM Second Edition Revised (SER) System V3.4
TALISLANTA MAGIC SYSTEM Second Edition Revised (SER) System v3.4 Magic in Talislanta is a powerful but limited art practiced in as many different ways as there are cultures and races in the world. They key to understanding how magic works in the game is to remember that the largest part of the magical knowledge of the ancients was lost during The Great Disaster, and what remains is but a fraction of the spells, enchantments and magical items of that forgotten age. Rules Spellcasting is governed by Magic Rating (MR). MR = (INT+WIL+PER) ÷ 3. A magician may cast as many spells per day as his MR. The spellcaster rolls d20 + MR – Spell Level on the Action Table to determine the results of a spell. There are 15 Greater Spells that are commonly known across most Talislantan races & cultures. There are countless Lesser Spells with more minor effects that can be invented by the GM on the spot. There are dozens of lost Archaen spells that have to be unearthed during the course of play. These are initially known only to the GM and are often tied to particular magical races or traditions. There are over 30 different magical traditions which govern how spellcasting is performed, from Sawila Spellweaving to Cymrillian Wizardry to Rajan Necromancy &c. Each tradition knows certain greater spells and a few secret spells, and has spellcasting bonuses and limitations. Starting PC magicians know as many greater spells as their Magic Rating (eg, a magician with a MR of+5 would know 5 spells). Once all spells are expended, the magician must rest 7 hours to regain them. -
The Sense of a Beginning
THE SENSE OF A BEGINNING: THEORY OF THE LITERARY OPENING A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Niels Buch Leander January 2012 © 2012 Niels Buch Leander THE SENSE OF A BEGINNING: THEORY OF THE LITERARY OPENING Niels Buch Leander, Ph.D. Cornell University 2012 This dissertation is the first comprehensive study in English of the literary opening and its impact on modern literary criticism. It thus fills an astounding gap in Anglo-American criticism, which has neglected openings and instead focused on endings, as exemplified by Frank Kermode‘s The Sense of an Ending (1967). Through a study of the constant formal challenges of novelistic openings, primarily during modernism, this dissertation illustrates the significance of the opening in literary creation and in literary criticism. Chapter 1 analyses how openings attempt to lend authority from natural beginnings as well as from cosmologies, which leads to the conclusion that the beginning of a story is also a story of the beginning. Chapter 2 examines literary openings more closely from a formal and narrative point of view, thereby outlining a theory of openings based on linguistic considerations such as pragmatic conventions and cooperative rules. The chapter establishes a taxonomy of openings based on five ―signals‖ of the opening. In particular, the chapter develops the concept of ―perspectival abruptness‖, which is to be differentiated from the temporal abruptness known as in medias res. ―Perspectival abruptness‖ is presented as a tool for the critic and the literary historian to understand the particular nature of modern fiction. -
Degree Project Level: Master’S Bringing the Magic Back to Structuralist Approaches in Fantasy Literature
Degree Project Level: Master’s Bringing the Magic Back to Structuralist Approaches in Fantasy Literature Supporting Themes of Unity in Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicle Author: Sarah Schroer Supervisor: Billy Gray Examiner: Carmen Zamorano Llena Subject/main field of study: English (literature) Course code: EN3063 Credits: 15 ECTS Date of examination: May 28, 2020 At Dalarna University it is possible to publish the student thesis in full text in DiVA. The publishing is open access, which means the work will be freely accessible to read and download on the internet. This will significantly increase the dissemination and visibility of the student thesis. Open access is becoming the standard route for spreading scientific and academic information on the internet. Dalarna University recommends that both researchers as well as students publish their work open access. I give my/we give our consent for full text publishing (freely accessible on the internet, open access): Yes ☒ N o ☐ Dalarna University – SE-791 88 Falun – Phone +4623-77 80 00 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Establishing Patterns of Binary Thinking Between Hard and Soft Magic Systems 9 Madness as Mediator: The Whole is Greater Than the Parts 16 Conclusion 26 Works Cited 30 1 Introduction From witches and warlocks, wizards and sorcerers, spells and incantations, magical potions, wardrobes that transport you to another world, and even one ring to rule them all, magical elements or beings are considered to be the fantasy genre's main defining feature. But what are the different ways magic appears in novels? In 2007, fantasy author, Brandon Sanderson published an essay where he not only explained his personal guidelines for creating magic systems, but more significantly to the genre, he proposed a scale for defining the different types of magic. -
Questing Feminism: Narrative Tensions and Magical Women in Modern Fantasy
University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Open Access Dissertations 2018 Questing Feminism: Narrative Tensions and Magical Women in Modern Fantasy Kimberly Wickham University of Rhode Island, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss Recommended Citation Wickham, Kimberly, "Questing Feminism: Narrative Tensions and Magical Women in Modern Fantasy" (2018). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 716. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/716 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. QUESTING FEMINISM: NARRATIVE TENSIONS AND MAGICAL WOMEN IN MODERN FANTASY BY KIMBERLY WICKHAM A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2018 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DISSERTATION OF KIMBERLY WICKHAM APPROVED: Dissertation Committee: Major Professor Naomi Mandel Carolyn Betensky Robert Widell Nasser H. Zawia DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2018 Abstract Works of Epic Fantasy often have the reputation of being formulaic, conservative works that simply replicate the same tired story lines and characters over and over. This assumption prevents Epic Fantasy works from achieving wide critical acceptance resulting in an under-analyzed and under-appreciated genre of literature. While some early works do follow the same narrative path as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Epic Fantasy has long challenged and reworked these narratives and character tropes. That many works of Epic Fantasy choose replicate the patriarchal structures found in our world is disappointing, but it is not an inherent feature of the genre. -
How Do Readers Understand Character Identities
How do readers understand the different ways that characters behave when they appear in both the text and paratext of the same comic? Mark Hibbett, PhD student at University of the Arts London. Comics characters have a long history of being used for advertising purposes, perhaps most famously in the long-running series of advertisements for Hostess fruit pies, in which superheroes thwart evildoers through judicious use of processed confectionaries. A great example of this appears in "Fury Unleashed," a strip which appeared in Marvel comics dated April 1982. In it, Captain America realizes that neither his shield nor his superhuman strength can save Nick Fury, so instead throws Hostess fruit pies at his friend's captor, distracting him long enough for the heroes to escape. However, when Cap faces a similar scenario in Captain America #268, published that same month, he chooses to surrender himself to save his friends rather than simply providing a dessert option for his enemies. How are readers of Captain America #268 meant to understand what is going on? Are they expected to view these two versions of Captain America as different characters who just happen to look the same, or is something else going on? Another example of this tension between text and advertisement paratext appears in Fantastic Four #200, a double-length issue featuring a duel to the death between Mr Fantastic and Doctor Doom, with a center-spread advertisement in which Doom implores his own fans to enter a competition run by a candy company to ensure that fans of superheroes don't win instead. -
Eiglophian Lodge
Conceptualized by JACK VANCE and E. GARY GYGAX Additional Material by SHADRAC MQ Edited by GREG GORGONMILK Afterword by GREYHARP ABOVE ILLUSTRATION BY MOEBIUS EIGLOPHIAN LODGE E G L 0 0 3 M A R C H 2 0 1 3 This humble book of magical lore is hereby dedicated to BLAIR OF ALGOL, DAVID MACAULY and MATT SCHMEER and all the other OSR gurus who cast green fireballs on my imagination. FIGHT ON! 2 C O N T E N T S TURJAN OF MIIR 5 Fiction by JACK VANCE MAZIRIAN THE MAGE 20 Fiction by JACK VANCE THE D&D MAGIC SYSTEM 37 Non-fiction by E. GARY GYGAX ROLE-PLAYING: REALISM VS GAME LOGIC 43 Non-fiction by E. GARY GYGAX AD&D'S MAGIC SYSTEM: HOW AND WHY IT WORKS 52 Non-fiction by E. GARY GYGAX 3 JACK VANCE AND THE D&D GAME 58 Non-fiction by E. GARY GYGAX DYING EARTH SPELLS FOR D&D 63 Optional Rules by SHADRAC MQ AFTERWORD 91 by GREYHARP SOURCES 92 ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL HUTTER 4 TURJAN OF MIIR by JACK VANCE TURJAN SAT IN HIS WORKROOM, legs sprawled out from the stool, back against and elbows on the bench. Across the room was a cage; into this Turjan gazed with rueful vexation. The creature in the cage returned the scrutiny with emotions beyond conjecture. It was a thing to arouse pity—a great head on a small spindly body, with weak rheumy eyes and a flabby button of a nose. The mouth hung slackly wet, the skin glistened waxy pink. -
SRP $ 79.90 Sword & Sorcery® — Immortal Souls
SIMONE ROMANO & NUNZIO SURACE Sword & Sorcery® — Immortal Souls In Sword & Sorcery®, you control heroes with unique powers — legendary characters, brought back to life by powerful sorcery. Weakened by the resurrection, they grow stronger during the story–driven quests. Explore dangerous ruins, ominous forests, and the besieged cities of the Talon Coast. Fight together against the forces of evil — controlled by the game system itself — to save the kingdom and break the spell that binds their immortal souls. Sword & Sorcery is the ultimate heroic fantasy board game experience, with an advanced AI system for monsters, a high degree of character customization, and rich tactical options during battles. At the same time, gameplay is fast and dynamic, thanks to an innovative area movement and area control system, and to new features never seen together in a game of this category: — Ultra detailed 32mm scale gures — Solo or group fully cooperative gameplay, with no game master — No player elimination: when your hero dies, you continue to play as an ethereal soul — Ten different hero classes with hundreds of skills, weapons and spells to choose from — Sophisticated combat and magic system, using ten- sided custom dice and an intuitive cooldown system for spells and skills — Modular boards, allowing the creation of endless new quests — A deep, story–driven campaign, with different paths to follow and multiple endings 13 + 30 + 1 – 5 SRP $ 79.90 SWORD & SORCERY — IMMORTAL SOULS RELEASE MARCH 2017 ORIGIN CHINA PRODUCT CODE CASE QUANTITY CASE SIZE CASE WEIGHT PRODUCT SIZE PRODUCT WEIGHT GRPR101 3 pieces — — 40,7 x 27,8 x 8,9 CM — CONTENTS OF THE BOX: 1 Rulebook, 1 Storybook, 1 Book of Secrets, 1 Reference Sheet, 28 Plastic Figures 32mm Scale, 19 Double–sided Map Tiles, 8 Custom Combat Dice, 5 Double–sided Soul Gems, 5 Hero Sheets, 2 Master Enemy Scrolls, 244 Cards, 226 Tokens and Markers. -
Realistic Fantasy Or Fantastic Realism: on Defining the Genre in Susanna Clarke´S Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Carl-William Ersgård Supervisor: Eivor Lindstedt EngK01 6 Januari 2010 Realistic Fantasy or Fantastic Realism: On Defining the Genre in Susanna Clarke´s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Table of contents: 1. Introduction 1 2. Mirroring the world – Realism 2 3. Summoning the otherworld – Fantasy 9 4. Beyond reality – Fantasy and mimesis 15 5. Conclusion 18 6. Works Cited 20 Ersgård 1 Introduction: ”He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.” (1) With these, the first words of her novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2006), Susanna Clarke might as well have been describing the entirety of her work, not only one of its protagonists. The character described is Mr Gilbert Norrell, the first practical magician in England for centuries. He is one of a pair of magicians working side by side, and against each other, in the novel. The other, Mr Jonathan Strange, is Norrell´s opposite in every possible way. Where Norrell thinks all magic should be learnt from century-old-books, Jonathan Strange wants to experiment; where Norrell finds fairy-magic appalling and quite detestable, Jonathan Strange sees it as intriguing; and, perhaps most importantly, where Norrell wants to destroy all traces of the Raven King, the great magician- king of northern England, ever having existed, Jonathan Strange secretly houses a want to bring him back from the otherworld of Faerie. The quote above, together with the duality of the two main characters, create an excellent symbol for the whole novel. Whether or not the reader can “bear to listen” to Susanna Clarke´s narrative is, of course, a completely different question.