Scott Snyder. Batman Volume 1: Court of Owls. 26 March 2003. September 2014. DC Comics.
Bruce Wayne, continuing the alter ego of the crime-fighting Batman, has stumbled upon a hint of Gotham City's shadowy past and folklore. The story about a shadowy organization called the Court of Owls but Wayne is hard pressed to believe such a thing. As time goes on, more clues are revealed about it's existence: an attack by a masked man under the alias of The Talon along with a corpse with their signature owl motif in one of his filled-in molars. But when he comes face-to-face with the Court itself, or the ones claiming to be the Court, he realizes that even Batman does not know all of his city.
Mimetic, Thematic and Synthetic: I realized now that I did not use too many methods to look at the text but I believe it was due to not having a grasp on both the subject matter and what we were looking over at the time in class. It was mostly mimetic, thematic and synthetic that I looked at, which helped me look at this better (seen in this blog post http://dambrosif.weebly.com/blog/batman-the-court-of-owls-birds-of-a-feather). With the mimetic, there is a definite sense of power in numbers that is surely present in our own lives. It makes this impending sense of being ganged up on and danger very real in a reader, and perhaps makes the outlandish situations in the story a bit more believable.
The thematic and synthetic I lump into the same paragraph due to how they seem to go together in some way, shape or form. The thematic of the Court of Owls seems to push the idea of power in numbers: the sheer amount of the Court members, how many of the Talon assassins they have in storage (for a better word then anything else) as well as how many of Batman's associates go looking for him and worry for his safety when he disappears from Gotham. The synthetic, specifically the colors used in the text, push this as well. A define large usage of red and white, colors that symbolize both peace and warfare, indicates a mass amount of both of these ideas and actions. That much peace cannot be accomplished by just one person as well as a great deal of blood.
The part I am talking about the most with the usage of red and white comes from page 92 (or roughly around that page number, as each page is not numbered like traditional texts are). Here, Bruce Wayne comes across a room full of crimson coffins, all containing a young child or adult inside of it. One of them is opened, however: the corpse of the person the Court of Owls is using for their current undead assassin known as the Talon. Just how the color is used in that single selection of panels reveals a bit with the Hermeneutic Code: up until then, the audience knows about the Talon and what he or she is ordered to do but their origin is unknown. The owl claws adorning the wall, and the opened coffin reveal a fact about the story that has not been known about before. This resolves an already-known "enigma" that has been shown through the plot of the story so far.
J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. 2 June 1999. October 2014. Scholastic
The young boy wizard Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the second y ear of his magical education. After a terrible summer with his adoptive family, he yearns to see his friends once more and begin the second year with excited anticipation. But what he does not expect to find is a world of danger, with students appearing dead and a disembodied voice whispering things to him throughout the year only to stumble across a terrifying, ancient secret from the school's past.
Underlying Themes: There was a large amount of character analysis in this text in particular, whether I realized it or not. A good chunk of that was in the blog post titled 'Lions and Snakes' (http://dambrosif.weebly.com/blog/harry-potter-and-the-chamber-of-secrets-lions-and-snakes), which helped me understand some of the themes that are prevalent in the text. Both the characters of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, who are different in many aspects yet the same, give a sense of being able to choose one's fate. Malfoy, whose family has always been in Slytherin house, holds pride in this and goes along with where the Sorting Hat has placed him. Potter, on the other hand, was originally to be placed in Slytherin as well but through will power alone changed the Hat's decision with him. Just relating this particular situation through the rest of his second year reveals that there is a re-occurring theme of making one's own fate.
Something that popped up at me after reading it was that there was definite piece that defined Harry as different from Draco, and that was in chapter 1 before he even went back to Hogwarts for his second year of schooling. On page 9, Harry is threatening his adoptive Muggle family that he will perform acts of magic in their house: something which students should not be doing outside of their classes while still enrolled. His brother Dudley becomes fearful and Aunt Petunia "aimed a heavy blow at his head with a soapy frying pan,". Draco, on the flip side, would have been encouraged by his pure-blood wizard parents to perform acts of magic, even though such things are looked down upon on youth learning of their abilities without any of the consequences. Even for starting an argument in a wizarding bookstore, his father Lucious does not seem to get too infuriated with him and simply tells him to let adults settle the matter (it had turned into a fight between him and Ron Weasley's father). One family encourages the use of magic while the other treats it like a virus that can only infect and cause harm.
I chose this book out not only because it was one of my favorite books as a young reader but because I felt that there was something deeper. From looking at it, I can accurately say that this was entirely true. When I was a young girl I did not see the overlapping theme of creating your own fate in the text but now I do. I am very glad that I decided to tackle this piece of writing from my past, because I can see even more clearly that Rowling's hype is truly a real thing to get behind.
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere. 16 September 1996. BBC Books
Richard Mayhew lives an incredibly boring life. But this is soon turned onto it's head after finding a young girl laying on the streets of London, bleeding pools of red. Her name is Door, and she brings Mayhew into a dark world beneath some of the world's most famous locations: Big Ben, the British Museum. Every place is touched by a dark magic that Richard cannot believe no matter how hard he tries. And in London Below, the dangers are even more real then the odd folk who call this place home.
Themes: I knew that this book was going to be more difficult then the two texts that I had red prior to this one, and I was correct in this assumption. One of the more difficult tasks was deciphering the motives behind each of the main players in the game, with a focus on those of the Marquis de Carabas and the angel Islington (who is not just a pretty face). Through them I figured out some central points of the text: the arching themes and some interesting things that one could relate to a reader's state when consumed by a piece. Comaparing the two, Carabas is the reader before they break free from their usual readerly roles: they trudge along what they know works for them, rarely going out of their way to change while Islington is the "enlightened" reader. He has broken free from those chains and, like how the angel causes chaos at the end of novel, can become whatever they wish once entering a text. They can change themselves through each new experience and emerge with something different every time.
de Carabas and Islington's states can even be seen purely in their garb and what they represent. Carabas "wore a huge dandyish black coat that was not quite a frock coat nor exactly a trench coat, and high black boots, and, beneath his coat, raggedy clothes. His eyes burned white in an intensely dark face. And he grinned white teeth, momentarily, as if at a private joke of his own, and bowed to Richard, and said, "De Carabas, at your service, and you are...?" (chapter 2, page 45), while Islington "was a tall figure, dressed in a white robe," (chapter 9, page 197). Carabas' garb is dirty all over, representing the grime that comes with being an inexperienced reader, while the pure whites of Islington could mean the awakened and realized reader when he or she breaks free of the readerly chains that bind them down.
Carabas, I think, is more interesting then the angel in terms of character. According to Mckee, the true side of a given character is shown when " Choices made in moments of crisis filled with risk cannot be undone. The character forevermore will be responsible and accountable for the consequences of that act,". Here, it is when he accepts the duty of being Door's guardsmen as well as Richard. As doing such, he is responsible for keeping Croup and Vandermeer at bay, but comes face-to-face with death as such and manages to survive a brutal crucifying by them. This shows just how much he aims to keep his vows, no matter how dangerous and deadly they may be despite the arrogant dirty man that the reader comes across during the first few chapters.
Also, I still do not understand why there are so many people who adore Gaiman's works as if they are on a plane of existence of their own. A reason I wanted to tackle this piece is to see why exactly critics hold him in such high regard. To be truthful, I did not find such praise deserving of him. His words were generally uninteresting, sentence formation did not surprise me or make me nod my head in approval. While the characters by themselves were interesting enough, the story felt contrived: the "good verses evil" vibe is overplayed in modern fantasy stories, and that is a stigma that not even the so-called greatest of us writers can shake off.
KV Johansen, Blackdog. 21 September 2001. Pyr
The goddess Attalissa, born into the body of a child, is in grave danger from a warlord and wizard: a terrifying combination of things, with how he wishes to devour her and gain her powers for himself. But cannot face him now in this state, and she flees with her supernatural bodyguard called the Blackdog. The caravan warrior Holla-Sayan finds them, and he is swiftly whisked up into the stories of the most powerful deities and demons who walk the land.
I did not get very far in Blackdog, due to it's immense length and just how difficult this was for me to read even after picking it up again after so many years but I knew this was going to occur. This is what I attest to me not understand much of it and how to apply what we have gone over countless times in class to it. The characters were still as hard to keep track of, and I had to actually use an Excel spreadsheet to make sure I remembered all of the names: of the warrior priestesses, of the warlord, the assorted travelers who would re-appear five chapters after their initial involvement with the plot. Perhaps that is why I feel like I did not get anything out of the story at this state in time. Or, you know, an overly complex story that likes to change character viewpoints every few chapters can do that to you as well.
What I can say, at least, is that the language used in this is terrible and hard to grapple with. The descriptions of the natural surroundings around Attalissa's temple complex, the bronze armor which the Blackdog host Ototkos wears before he is slain in battle. The structure of the sentences, however, suffers from this. Constantly you will see paragraph-length run-on sentences, which are literally nothing more then long-winded pieces of description. It is not the best text to read thoroughly to analyze over. I would skip out on having to try to read it again.
A prime example of Johansen's inept sentence structure is seen below, from chapter 5 on page 71:
Bruce Wayne, continuing the alter ego of the crime-fighting Batman, has stumbled upon a hint of Gotham City's shadowy past and folklore. The story about a shadowy organization called the Court of Owls but Wayne is hard pressed to believe such a thing. As time goes on, more clues are revealed about it's existence: an attack by a masked man under the alias of The Talon along with a corpse with their signature owl motif in one of his filled-in molars. But when he comes face-to-face with the Court itself, or the ones claiming to be the Court, he realizes that even Batman does not know all of his city.
Mimetic, Thematic and Synthetic: I realized now that I did not use too many methods to look at the text but I believe it was due to not having a grasp on both the subject matter and what we were looking over at the time in class. It was mostly mimetic, thematic and synthetic that I looked at, which helped me look at this better (seen in this blog post http://dambrosif.weebly.com/blog/batman-the-court-of-owls-birds-of-a-feather). With the mimetic, there is a definite sense of power in numbers that is surely present in our own lives. It makes this impending sense of being ganged up on and danger very real in a reader, and perhaps makes the outlandish situations in the story a bit more believable.
The thematic and synthetic I lump into the same paragraph due to how they seem to go together in some way, shape or form. The thematic of the Court of Owls seems to push the idea of power in numbers: the sheer amount of the Court members, how many of the Talon assassins they have in storage (for a better word then anything else) as well as how many of Batman's associates go looking for him and worry for his safety when he disappears from Gotham. The synthetic, specifically the colors used in the text, push this as well. A define large usage of red and white, colors that symbolize both peace and warfare, indicates a mass amount of both of these ideas and actions. That much peace cannot be accomplished by just one person as well as a great deal of blood.
The part I am talking about the most with the usage of red and white comes from page 92 (or roughly around that page number, as each page is not numbered like traditional texts are). Here, Bruce Wayne comes across a room full of crimson coffins, all containing a young child or adult inside of it. One of them is opened, however: the corpse of the person the Court of Owls is using for their current undead assassin known as the Talon. Just how the color is used in that single selection of panels reveals a bit with the Hermeneutic Code: up until then, the audience knows about the Talon and what he or she is ordered to do but their origin is unknown. The owl claws adorning the wall, and the opened coffin reveal a fact about the story that has not been known about before. This resolves an already-known "enigma" that has been shown through the plot of the story so far.
J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. 2 June 1999. October 2014. Scholastic
The young boy wizard Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the second y ear of his magical education. After a terrible summer with his adoptive family, he yearns to see his friends once more and begin the second year with excited anticipation. But what he does not expect to find is a world of danger, with students appearing dead and a disembodied voice whispering things to him throughout the year only to stumble across a terrifying, ancient secret from the school's past.
Underlying Themes: There was a large amount of character analysis in this text in particular, whether I realized it or not. A good chunk of that was in the blog post titled 'Lions and Snakes' (http://dambrosif.weebly.com/blog/harry-potter-and-the-chamber-of-secrets-lions-and-snakes), which helped me understand some of the themes that are prevalent in the text. Both the characters of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, who are different in many aspects yet the same, give a sense of being able to choose one's fate. Malfoy, whose family has always been in Slytherin house, holds pride in this and goes along with where the Sorting Hat has placed him. Potter, on the other hand, was originally to be placed in Slytherin as well but through will power alone changed the Hat's decision with him. Just relating this particular situation through the rest of his second year reveals that there is a re-occurring theme of making one's own fate.
Something that popped up at me after reading it was that there was definite piece that defined Harry as different from Draco, and that was in chapter 1 before he even went back to Hogwarts for his second year of schooling. On page 9, Harry is threatening his adoptive Muggle family that he will perform acts of magic in their house: something which students should not be doing outside of their classes while still enrolled. His brother Dudley becomes fearful and Aunt Petunia "aimed a heavy blow at his head with a soapy frying pan,". Draco, on the flip side, would have been encouraged by his pure-blood wizard parents to perform acts of magic, even though such things are looked down upon on youth learning of their abilities without any of the consequences. Even for starting an argument in a wizarding bookstore, his father Lucious does not seem to get too infuriated with him and simply tells him to let adults settle the matter (it had turned into a fight between him and Ron Weasley's father). One family encourages the use of magic while the other treats it like a virus that can only infect and cause harm.
I chose this book out not only because it was one of my favorite books as a young reader but because I felt that there was something deeper. From looking at it, I can accurately say that this was entirely true. When I was a young girl I did not see the overlapping theme of creating your own fate in the text but now I do. I am very glad that I decided to tackle this piece of writing from my past, because I can see even more clearly that Rowling's hype is truly a real thing to get behind.
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere. 16 September 1996. BBC Books
Richard Mayhew lives an incredibly boring life. But this is soon turned onto it's head after finding a young girl laying on the streets of London, bleeding pools of red. Her name is Door, and she brings Mayhew into a dark world beneath some of the world's most famous locations: Big Ben, the British Museum. Every place is touched by a dark magic that Richard cannot believe no matter how hard he tries. And in London Below, the dangers are even more real then the odd folk who call this place home.
Themes: I knew that this book was going to be more difficult then the two texts that I had red prior to this one, and I was correct in this assumption. One of the more difficult tasks was deciphering the motives behind each of the main players in the game, with a focus on those of the Marquis de Carabas and the angel Islington (who is not just a pretty face). Through them I figured out some central points of the text: the arching themes and some interesting things that one could relate to a reader's state when consumed by a piece. Comaparing the two, Carabas is the reader before they break free from their usual readerly roles: they trudge along what they know works for them, rarely going out of their way to change while Islington is the "enlightened" reader. He has broken free from those chains and, like how the angel causes chaos at the end of novel, can become whatever they wish once entering a text. They can change themselves through each new experience and emerge with something different every time.
de Carabas and Islington's states can even be seen purely in their garb and what they represent. Carabas "wore a huge dandyish black coat that was not quite a frock coat nor exactly a trench coat, and high black boots, and, beneath his coat, raggedy clothes. His eyes burned white in an intensely dark face. And he grinned white teeth, momentarily, as if at a private joke of his own, and bowed to Richard, and said, "De Carabas, at your service, and you are...?" (chapter 2, page 45), while Islington "was a tall figure, dressed in a white robe," (chapter 9, page 197). Carabas' garb is dirty all over, representing the grime that comes with being an inexperienced reader, while the pure whites of Islington could mean the awakened and realized reader when he or she breaks free of the readerly chains that bind them down.
Carabas, I think, is more interesting then the angel in terms of character. According to Mckee, the true side of a given character is shown when " Choices made in moments of crisis filled with risk cannot be undone. The character forevermore will be responsible and accountable for the consequences of that act,". Here, it is when he accepts the duty of being Door's guardsmen as well as Richard. As doing such, he is responsible for keeping Croup and Vandermeer at bay, but comes face-to-face with death as such and manages to survive a brutal crucifying by them. This shows just how much he aims to keep his vows, no matter how dangerous and deadly they may be despite the arrogant dirty man that the reader comes across during the first few chapters.
Also, I still do not understand why there are so many people who adore Gaiman's works as if they are on a plane of existence of their own. A reason I wanted to tackle this piece is to see why exactly critics hold him in such high regard. To be truthful, I did not find such praise deserving of him. His words were generally uninteresting, sentence formation did not surprise me or make me nod my head in approval. While the characters by themselves were interesting enough, the story felt contrived: the "good verses evil" vibe is overplayed in modern fantasy stories, and that is a stigma that not even the so-called greatest of us writers can shake off.
KV Johansen, Blackdog. 21 September 2001. Pyr
The goddess Attalissa, born into the body of a child, is in grave danger from a warlord and wizard: a terrifying combination of things, with how he wishes to devour her and gain her powers for himself. But cannot face him now in this state, and she flees with her supernatural bodyguard called the Blackdog. The caravan warrior Holla-Sayan finds them, and he is swiftly whisked up into the stories of the most powerful deities and demons who walk the land.
I did not get very far in Blackdog, due to it's immense length and just how difficult this was for me to read even after picking it up again after so many years but I knew this was going to occur. This is what I attest to me not understand much of it and how to apply what we have gone over countless times in class to it. The characters were still as hard to keep track of, and I had to actually use an Excel spreadsheet to make sure I remembered all of the names: of the warrior priestesses, of the warlord, the assorted travelers who would re-appear five chapters after their initial involvement with the plot. Perhaps that is why I feel like I did not get anything out of the story at this state in time. Or, you know, an overly complex story that likes to change character viewpoints every few chapters can do that to you as well.
What I can say, at least, is that the language used in this is terrible and hard to grapple with. The descriptions of the natural surroundings around Attalissa's temple complex, the bronze armor which the Blackdog host Ototkos wears before he is slain in battle. The structure of the sentences, however, suffers from this. Constantly you will see paragraph-length run-on sentences, which are literally nothing more then long-winded pieces of description. It is not the best text to read thoroughly to analyze over. I would skip out on having to try to read it again.
A prime example of Johansen's inept sentence structure is seen below, from chapter 5 on page 71:
Broken spear in the man's chest, the overlapping bronze squares twisted, torn. Otokas. He was soaking wet, black and slick with slow-oozing blood. He tried to push himself upright, crumpled, and Holla caught him, almost as weak, crouched there before holding him, feeling the racing, staggering beat of his heart, chest to chest, feeling it's faltering. He didn't know the face, round mountain-man's face with it's earrings and fringe of black beard and shaggy-cropped hair, a crooked nose that had been broken once. Just the dog's intensity, in brown human eyes.
Johansen suffers from overuse of description in long-winded paragraphs like this, where nothing is advanced onward for the plot. It feels as if it is just to stall and take up the reader's time: this is the mark of a bad author and, in turn, bad writing. How can you have a reader fully grasp with what you are trying to say when you yourself cannot express it? Because of the few chapters I had grappled with in the text, I cannot fully draw a conclusion whether or not Johansen is a "good" or "bad" writer. But from my experience with the text, I can say though that I do not quite like her style.