Author: abrandon23

Great Rock n’ Roll Pauses uses diagrammatic storytelling to tell a story through Alison Blake’s perspective. The story follows the interactions that occur within the Blake family from Alison’s point of view. Throughout the story, Alison tries to analyze and make sense of the actions and behaviors of her family members, Sasha (Mom), Drew (Dad), and Lincoln (Brother). Throughout the slides within the story, we are provided with information that Alison deems important in our understanding of her family dynamic.

The story’s conflict revolves around the relationships between the family members, or the lack thereof. I think that a majority of this conflict is centered around Alison’s father Drew due to the fact that Drew is hardly ever around and when he is home he is very distant and does not show much affection. It is also revealed that when he is home he uses gin to calm his anger which can be said to add to the conflict. In addition, he struggles a lot with connecting with his son Lincoln. I think that this is somewhat balanced out but also adds more conflict with Alison’s mother’s somewhat apparent favoritism towards Lincoln.

The conflict is resolved when Drew asks Alison to go on a walk with him in the desert. During this walk Drew starts a discussion about how he needs to do better with Lincoln. The conflict is therefore being resolved because Drew recognized the problem and is now trying to fix it. As for the change in characters, there is an inward change because nothing is really changing on the outside it is the inside that is being changed for the better with the mending and development of their relationships.

For my diagrammatic storytelling, I want to incorporate the visual aspects seen in Great Rock n’ Roll Pauses. The shapes and the colors help to move and allow the story and keep me engaged. In addition, I think that the placement of the text and the arrows/shapes leading the text made it easier to follow. With the text being so minimal, the visual elements really bring everything together and create a bigger impact on the story you are trying to tell.

The film I wanted to discuss in my blog post was the short film “160 Characters”. I chose this film because it was the one I was the most interested in. The story presented in the film is a personal story which is part of the reason I was drawn to it. Another reason I was drawn to it is because it is a story that I think tells a somewhat relatable story (in one way or another) with our day and age being absorbed in technology.

The film follows the story behind text messages over a decade from 2003 – 2015 between Victoria and her ex-partner. With that being said, the world in this story is built primarily from text messages with some dialog here and there to provide more context to the story behind the messages.

The conflict in this short film lies within the relationship or lack thereof at some points with Victoria and her ex-partner. Their relationship starts off well with the first text revealed from Victoria saying, “I had a great time last night” however, it quickly ends with a phone call from the ex-partner saying “it’s not you it’s me”. After the phone call, it is made known that Victoria is pregnant and is not with the father of the baby. So, we now have a conflict where Victoria finds out she is pregnant shortly after the father of her baby breaks things off with her. Following this, we now have another conflict with the continuous back-and-forth of the father’s involvement with the mother and the child. Therefore this short film does not follow the Aristotelian plot structure that we learned last week because the story does not develop around a single, clear conflict.

In the movie Fargo, the plot moves forward in a domino effect of bad decisions and actions. At the beginning of the movie, it is revealed that Jerry Lundegaard is in some sort of financial trouble. In order to escape this financial trouble Jerry wants to obtain his father-in-law’s money. To do this he contacts Shep Proudfoot who then sets up a meeting with Carl Showalter which ended up being a meeting with Carl and his partner Gaear. Jerry discussed a plan with Carl and Gaear to kidnap his wife Jean Lundegaard and demand a ransom of $80,000. Carl and Gaer would receive a tan Ciera in addition to half the ransom, $40,000. A seemingly simple plan that quickly turned sideways. In the process of kidnapping Jean and taking her to the cabin, Gaear killed a Minnesota State Trooper and two seemingly innocent bystanders who drove by the dead Trooper. As a kidnapping that was intended to have no physical harm to anyone quickly turns into a triple homicide Carl quickly becomes overpowered by stress and begins to panic, requesting $1 million as the new ransom which Jerry now gets no cut in the ransom. As tensions run high and Sheriff Marge Gunderson begins asking questions reckless decisions are made which lead to catastrophic consequences. Ultimately resulting in the death of Jean, her father Wade Gustafson, and Carl. As well as the arrests of Gaear and Carl.

When comparing Aristotle’s Poetics and the movie Fargo, the first connection I made was with Aristotle’s definition of tragedy. In chapter 6, Aristotle defined tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude…” This stands true because Fargo is based on a true story that took place in Minnesota in 1987. So, it is therefore an imitation of an action (the kidnapping leading to a string of murders) that are serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude because it shows how one bad decision led to another which ultimately lead to a great deal of sadness with many innocent lives taken.

The second connection I made between the two was when Aristotle said, “Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves and these – thought and character – are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends.” This is something that I connected to Fargo because each of the characters had different personality traits that affected their decision-making. However, once the first person was murdered things started to spiral out of control which demonstrates an action that sprung, resulting in further actions which eventually led to failure.

Hello everyone!

My name is Allison. This is my fourth semester at WSUV and I will be graduating in the Fall. Prior to coming here I went to Battle Ground High School and did running start at Clark College. I am a DTC major with a minor in Communication and just completed my Social Media Certificate. I took this class for two reasons. The first reason is because in all honesty I just needed an elective. However, when looking through my options I knew that this was the best option for me. This brings me to the second reason I wanted to take this class which is to challenge myself. Storytelling is not something I am not very good at. I don’t see myself as a creative person when it comes to writing/creating stories. I am the type of person who tends to overthink things and ends up just deleting everything I had written because I don’t think it is good enough. However, think that this class will help me improve my creative writing skills which will help me later on in my career path. After graduating I plan on going into Social Media Marketing.

I would say that my favorite genre of storytelling is probably mystery if I had to pick one. However, I also like horror, drama, and romance. As for my favorite story media, it would definitely be movies or TV shows. I like being able to physically see the characters and hear their distinct voice to be able to follow along with the story.