PB1B

After browsing through the SCIgen, comic strip, and meme website, I found that they were all somewhat similar website. Of course they all had differences, but they were all somewhat random. For SCIgen, I would plug in names to the website, and they would return with a paper about computer science. On pandyland.net, clicking on the “generate new comic” button would reveal a new comic that seemed completely random. The only one that kind of stuck out was memegenerator.net, because unlike the other two, this one wasn’t random. It featured an online community that would post and make new memes, taking already invented conventions and making a funny caption with the picture associated with it.

SCIgen was a very strange website, whenever I generated a new paper, the website spit out a title that made no sense to me, such as “Decoupling Thin Clients from Kernels in Voice-Over-IP.” After playing with the website a little more, I found that every paper they gave back to me had computer science in it. It would always have a fancy title that pertained to computer science, with the name I inputted, Michael Jordan, as the author. Each would then have the label Abstract, which seemed to give a brief description of what the author aimed to do in the paper. Most of the papers generated had the same sections, an introduction, the architecture or framework, implementation, an evaluation with sub-chapters and chapters about how the concept was supposed to work and how it performed, related work, a conclusion, and reference the author used. I thought the website was incredibly interesting after I read the About section on the website. The SCIgen website would randomly generate computer science research papers, and if I had known any better, I would have known that none of it made any sense.

Pandyland was a little interesting, and much more amusing than SCIgen, it was much simpler, involving three panel comics that were randomly generated. They often made zero sense, but were still very entertaining. These comics feature two characters named Finlay and Simon saying and doing various things. When clicking on the generate button, 3 random comic slots are fit together, and they match up to form the comic. It was incredibly simple, with pre-drawn art made for each comic slot, and being matched up similar to how a slot machine is.

Meme generator was somewhat different, it involved an online community making memes and up voting and down voting each other. They used already invented conventions for pictures in order to make a caption that would only be funny to people who understood the convention. All of the captions are short in big bold uppercase white letters on the top and the bottom of a picture. They featured many different meme characters with some of the more popular being Bad Luck Brian, Good Guy Greg, Foul Bachelor Frog, and Philosoraptor.

Thinking about what’s happening in these websites helps someone better understand genre because they are able to compare and contrast the different websites and see the differences. This allows the person to know what to look for and how to know the difference between everything. They can see compare the websites and understand why all of the websites are in different genre categories. I usually would only distinguish the different genres of books, movies, and stuff, but now, it’s much easier for me to observe and distinguish genres. Before, I would put them in the generator genre, but now I look at a lot more of the little stuff and I understand genre and can categorize more effectively.

PB1A: Dissecting a Genre’s Rhetorical Features and Conventions – Fairy Tales

            Fairy tales is one of the oldest textual genres, marked out as a genre by writers in the Renaissance period. Fairy tales are meant to be entertaining and thrilling for children, while also teaching children lessons, and morals. For example, in The Tortoise and the Hare, the tortoise and the hare race each other. Since the hare thinks he’s hot stuff, he blows off the tortoise, and thinks the race is going to be an easy victory. The hare runs really fast in the beginning, but before he reaches the finish, he decides to take a nap as he thinks the tortoise would never be able to catch up with him. The moral of The Tortoise and the Hare, is “slow and steady wins the race”. This story teaches children not to underestimate anyone else and to always try your best, and that if you keep trying at something, eventually you’ll be able to reach your goal.

            Fairy tales, or at least Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the Disney remakes of the stories, were never meant for children. When the Grimm brothers first made the book, the book had scholarly feel and tone, with no illustrations in it, and many footnotes. The stories in the book also had many dark themes, like graphic violence, premarital sex, child abuse, and incest. Only after the brothers Grimm received more of a younger audience did they tone down the sex, but continued to have very gruesome scenes in their fairy tales, such as Cinderella’s stepsisters cutting of their toes in order to fit the glass slipper. Now, Disney has remade those classics into a more friendly viewing experience for this era, making them the soft movies loved by parents and children.

            Many of the conventions usually celebrated in fairy tales involve fantasy characters, such as elves, giants, fairies, and witches and also tend to have magic in the stories. They typically begin with “once upon a time” which suggests a time when magic was still in the world. This idea is reinforced by the German starting line, “In the old times when wishing was still effective” Fairy tales also usually have happy endings, a fairy tale ending, where everything goes well, and there is nobody suffering, a true happily ever after.

            A fairy tale is a fairy tale because of its themes and conventions. They are usually stories that have been handed down for generations and generations. They also tend to have many morals in the story, such as The Boy who Cried Wolf and The Tortoise and the Hare, teaching children lessons. They also nearly always start with once upon a time, when the world was still a magical place, and end with “and they lived on happily ever after”.  Fairy tales have changed a lot over time, especially in the past century, but they still contain the same basic themes. Being handed down orally and literally, fairy tales entertain and also teach lessons.

Hi! My name is Brian Ku, and I'm a first year Economics and Accounting Major at UC Santa Barbara. I'm from Hacienda Heights, California which is in LA County. My whole family is in the restaurant business, and I have a little brother in 8th grade. Even though I'm an Econ/Accounting kid, I'm still not sure what I want to do in the future, there's a lot of stuff that interests me, and I don't want to make the wrong choice and end up with a job that I hate. However, I do know that I want to travel, I think seeing the different viewpoints and thinking styles of people in different countries and cities would be super cool. I really miss home right now, especially after winter break, seeing my family and friends was great and I can't wait to go home and see them again spring break. It's not that I don't want to meet new people or anything here, it's just that I had a really close group of friends back home and I haven't found anything like that here yet. Some of my hobbies are playing basketball, and I also like hanging out with my friends whenever I have free time. My favorite basketball team is the Chicago Bulls, and I'm hoping they go far this year, they're doing really good this year. I also like old American and Japanese cars. This quarter I'm trying to focus on gym and school and grind it out. School, gym, homework, sleep, school, gym, homework, sleep. Last quarter I screwed around too much and didn't get the best grades, so I'm trying to do much better this quarter. With that, I hope everyone has a great quarter and achieves their goals!