Post 3 - Respond
My own content curated, the time has come to examine what my classmates have been up to. There’s some good stuff here. I ended up choosing three very different curation posts with very different themes, but I enjoyed them all for different reasons.
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Stef Johnson - SCP Poetry with themes of Death
Stef also did a SCP content curation, so how could I resist? I’ll admit, I was very impressed. I had no idea that there was much, or any, really, SCP poetry out there, let alone also limiting herself to a theme. Far be it from me, considering the content of my own curation, to say that the SCP community isn’t artistic, but poetry is not the medium it’s best known for. I actually really enjoyed some of the poems, such as A Star In A Night Sky, which was legitimately beautiful. The way Stef describes it captured my interest, so I gave it a read, and I adored it. I love that sort of higher-cosmic-being characterization.
I enjoyed Stef’s curation for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because I discovered some really cool SCPs while reading it. Like SCP-079 for example, or SCP-2673. There are, at the time of me writing this, five-thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine SCPs on the official wiki. This does not include any of the international or country specific websites. In that menagere, there are some really cool SCPs that will frequently go under people’s radars. Reading about the SCPs other people like is a great way of discovering new ones.
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Joe Wrightson- Pop songa that Influenced Socioty
Joe’s curation was fascinating. Truly fascinating. An introspection into a genre that gets a lot of flack for being ‘empty’. ‘Pop’ is not actually a genre, but more a generalised term ascribed to a style of music that is popular at the time of its release. Certain songs in this category lead to change in said public tastes. Joe explores certain songs that changed the course of popular music in it’s time.
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At the risk of sounding like both a hipster and a punk-wannabe, I don’t listen to a whole lot of ‘pop-music’ recreationally. Mostly because I hear 18 straight hours of it at work, and in that time there are enough replays for me to have more than fulfilled my ‘pop music quota’ for the week. However, this post was informative. I didn’t know a lot of the facts featured in it, such as the tidbit about Michael Jackson’s thriller being the pioneer of seriously artistic music videos, or the sheer impact Lady Gaga’s distinctive absurdity had on the music industry. Despite personal tastes, I have a huge respect for music in all its forms. Music is complicated and I think a lot of people take for granted how difficult it is to get traction in a very aggressive industry, no matter how catchy your tune. The artists in Joe’s collection go further, and trend-set. Come up with something new, or at least present a slightly different idea with enough originality that it catches on. That’s a hard thing to do.
All in all, Joe’s post is an interesting read and well worth a look.
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Zach Storer - Big Bang Theory Fanfiction
Zach did his curation on unrealistic plotlines in Glee.
That sentence alone activated my fight or flight response,
As someone who was on Tumblr in the early 2010s, Teen drama, ‘Glee’, scares me. I would be a hypocrite if I said it was a sustainable model to judge the show on the fandom and the fandom on the show, but inhibiting certain spaces on the internet quickly fine-tunes your sense of danger. There are hornet-nests you just don’t poke.
If you aren’t familiar with the Glee fandom, especially when the show was still running, be thankful. If you dig deep enough on old fanfic sites, you can still dredge up horrific fanworks. Ranging from toxic relationship drama to just… incredibly strange and baffling porn. The fandom was freaky, and it was aggressive. Badmouthing the show, plot, characters, actors… It was a dangerous undertaking, and I steered well clear of it. In a way, my experience backs up his points about the fanbase being loyal, perhaps to a fault. As such, I knew absolutely nothing about Glee (aside from the Kurt/Blaine ship, which I only wish I could forget), and I have to say. Unrealistic is definitely the right word.
My eyebrows made a slow climb up towards my hairline as I read the post. None of the plots were particularly eyebrow raising on their own, but in the knowledge that all of them had occurred on the same show? My reactions ranged from ‘how did they get away with that?’ to ‘they seriously just dropped the whole story?’. Which I suppose was the point of the post. The fact that fans stuck with it for so long is an impressive feat of loyalty that I can almost respect. After reading, I still don’t think I’ll be watching Glee anytime soon, but it did pique my interest, for no other reason than wondering how you can fit all of those subplots in one show.
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Reference List:
Joe Wrightson - https://josephwrightson.wixsite.com/iamjoe/5
Stef Johnson - https://stefanieswriting.wordpress.com/blog-feed/
Zach Storer - https://zacharystorer15.wixsite.com/mysite/brief-two