Chapter 8

Chapter eight focused mainly on the different types of arguments:  explicit and implicit, and their various implementations across different mediums including photographs, music, film, and advertisements. The section on the political advertisements was very interesting, simply because I have been seeing these ads all my life, but never really bothered to try to categorize them or break them down. The power of editing was something that I am coming to realize more and more across all forms of media:  whether this is, as in the text, how the political ad with Eisenhower was edited to make it look like he was actually speaking to "real" Americans, or whether it be a doctored photo or anything else. It is sometimes hard to trust certain things because anything could have been retouched from the original content. Most of the rest of the chapter seemed to be pretty common knowledge or have been things that we have discussed before as with the arguments contained within ads. May be we didn't explicitly go over this aspect of ads, but we did look as magazines before to break down their rhetorical appeals. I did find the section dealing with how arguments can be situated within pictures to be interesting, specifically the bit about how sometimes adding text isn't the best option.

Chapter 11

Chapter 11 focused on the process or revision across the different mediums of writing, photography, and video. The biggest thing that I took away from the chapter, and also something that I hadn't really considered before, is how caught up I can get in the minutia of whatever essay or story I am working on, instead of following the pyramid approach presented in the chapter. I usually find myself jumping ahead to editing or proofreading before approaching the work as a whole and beginning with the revision step, often even before the work is technically finished.  I also tend to do all of these things simultaneously, jumping back and forth, which sometimes has a snowball effect where one little change somewhere can lead to massive changes further on. I think that the way the author presents this process would work better, to be methodical about how you are looking for and applying changes to whatever you are working on.

I also found the section dealing with proofreading to ring particularly true, specifically the part about how it can work better to get someone else to look through whatever you have written. It can be difficult to separate yourself from something that you have probably spent a significant amount of time with over the course of the creative process. It is also easy to become precious about something that you have created as you likely still have the ideal form of the idea that you initially conceived and will have a difficult time separating that from what it is that you have actually created. Having another pair of eyes that are detached from the work can give you great insight.

Blog Post # 2: LogiComix, Asterios Polyp and Boxers & Saints

I've read quite a few comics in my life, so I come to it not totally virginal, but these were definitely different from my usual fare. I'd say that these being nonfiction/historical fiction/less fantastic was the biggest thing about this trio that was new to me. Usually the hero/heroine in the comics I read has something special, albeit not always fantastical or otherworldly, about them that distinguishes them in bold strokes from the other characters. Here the main characters are set apart, but through more traditional narrative character development. Nothing in the art styles or panel layouts was totally new to me, though some of these comics did some very interesting things very well in my opinion. To rank these as far as my personal enjoyment I would say that Boxers & Saints was my least favorite while LogiComix second and Asterios Polyp my favorite, though I honestly did enjoy them all, and took something away from each.

Boxers and Saints - This one definitely gave off the "edutainment" vibe much stronger than the other two. Even though LogiComix is basically, as the book itself states, the history of logic and a brief description of its theories and giants for dummies, I found that I was more interested in the story of Bertie than that of the two characters in Boxers and Saints. I enjoy reading philosophy, so this might be why this was more appealing. At first I found myself disliking how much emphasis was placed on the religious information put forth throughout the Saints portion of the set, but when I got to it's counterpart, I discovered that this was in fact not religious propaganda. At least not in its entirety. It seems much more to be concerned with the idea that there are always two sides to every event and that we would do well to keep this in mind. That brings me to one of my biggest questions about the book:  Which one are you intended to read first? The idea of this being left ambiguous is somewhat intriguing, and honestly brought back some very fond memories of the Choose Your Own Adventure series from my childhood. I like that depending on which side you start from, your view of the other side will be affected. This was probably my favorite thing about the two, if that is indeed how it was meant to be consumed. I never found anything directing me otherwise, so I'll go with that. I wasn't a huge fan of the art in the book overall, but really enjoyed the artwork of the people transforming into the ancient Gods to defeat their enemies. The segments where the character speaks with the ancient emperor were very interesting as well.

LogiComix - I found this to be by far the most dense of all the comics assigned and ended up finishing it up over the course of three sittings where the other two I read straight through. I enjoyed how dense the information was, and truly felt I was receiving an education on the history of logic and mathematics. I really liked how the story was framed, with the actual authors and artists having discussions throughout the course of the main story. It really gave a feeling of shared  humanity, to know that these people understand that they are undertaking the somewhat herculean task of condensing and explaining all of these things over all of these years to people who probably have no background in them. Its nice to know that they understand that these are not simple concepts. There were some very interesting things done with the panels throughout, from changing the shape and size to using giant full page spreads. The sequence of the logician who volunteered to be a forward observer in WWI was particularly well done, and probably my favorite aside from when Bertie comes up with his paradox. I think that the thing that I liked the most about LogiComix may also be my biggest complaint:  that it set its focus too broad and tried to include too much information for one book. I could easily have seen the tale of Bertie spread across several more trades.

Asterios Polyp - Of all the comics, this is the one that I will recommend to my other friends who are into the genre. The story of a "paper architect" was truly a pleasure to read. It contained, much the same as LogiComix, a fair amount of philosophical, mathematical, and other ideas, but it peppered them throughout, and unlike LogiComix, it never felt too dense, or like the ideas were being explicitly listed. This book did the most with panel variation and art style. The scenes where Asterios and his wife are having a conversation and it becomes clear that they are two drastically different people - when the art actually changes for each person, and you witness it grow more and more out of sync were some of my favorite. Another artistic moment that stood out to me was one page where Asterios appears surrounded by other objects and things that fill the page, but when the page is turned he is alone in a sea of white space. Things like this occur all throughout the book, and they were very fun to experience. I also absolutely loved the notion of a "paper architect" and believe that that comments on far more than the architectural industry, but on the majority of the human race. I loved the ending of the story as well, and felt that it was totally in line with what had been set up throughout the rest of the book. I think that the writing was the strongest out of the three, as I felt genuinely engaged in the story for the sake of the story, and less for my desire to know and understand history to a greater degree. I guess you could say that I went into this one with no preconception of what I would be reading, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Chapters 3 & 9

     Chapter three contained several ideas that I found interesting, or hadn't really previously considered. The first of these was the importance of being aware of the author of any particular piece of writing. Every bit of writing that you read through was generated by someone sitting at a keyboard or typewriter, and each person has an agenda for that writing. It's easy to be apathetic in all aspects of life, but being aware of this is something that seems to have many benefits. The other interesting concept was how each of the different sides of the Rhetorical Tetrahedron may exist independently, they are portrayed as being on each of the edges for a reason. The exercise we did in class, working with several different advertisements in magazines and analyzing their authorship as well as they use of rhetoric really drove this point home. Logos, pathos, ethos and kairos rarely exist independently, especially in advertising, and most commonly are used together.
     Chapter nine was, overall, not mind-blowing, but it did contain one thing that I found interesting. I have read through a few movie scripts, and so the format given by the book was not new, but all of the different labels that are available for people to communicate their visual concept through writing were fun to read through. Most of the rest of the chapter dealt with the inner workings of plot and different things to do and not do with regards to things like narration. Over the many English classes I've taken, most of these things have been covered or examined in various contexts.