Monday 26 November 2012

Preemptive Strike!

Sadly there will be no post this week of top 10s, this is because it's the home stretch for school. I also have a large cosplay and a launch for a webcomic to get ready for. There is a silver lining, however. At the end of the term (and probably a little before that) I will post all the work I've done so far. Including the hilariously bad stuff too ;)

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Top Ten Funniest Baseball Player Names

I list off the funnies names in baseball. I recorded this on a less than satisfactory piece of equipment, so watch out for audio clipping and don't have the volume up too loud. I haven't graduated to Audition yet :|

Wreck-It Ralph Review

I check out Disney's video game inspired movie "Wreck-It Ralph". Be warned, there is some audio clipping so don't play the sound too loud.

Monday 19 November 2012

Absent Horizon First Issue January 1, 2013!

This is the flyer I handed out at AE Akimatsuri a couple weeks ago. For now I'm going to post everything on this site as well as the other, not totally finished site. I will also post the assorted pictures and pre-release artwork.






Wednesday 14 November 2012

Trikucian's Archives: Cultural History in Folktales

I've realized that it's been way too God damned long since I posted anything, so here's an old essay I wrote for my American Studies class talking about Rip Van Winkle. I plan on doing an audiobook of Rip Van Winkle in the near future. Let me know what you think!

Cultural History in Folktales

Change is a difficult concept for many people to grasp. It causes people to question and understand their own times and the times that came before. To help understand people will dissociate from the times at hand through folklore. In Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle the author represents a change in history through the life of his titular character. That which is unchanged becomes revered. In Rip Van Winkle, Irving explores folklore as a history of people trying to understand a great change in their society.

When European settlers came to North America they brought their culture with them. Local examples include the similarities between Ogopogo and the Loch Ness monster and the Westminster Abbey in Mission located close to the Xa:ytem spirit stone. Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving deals with the area of the Hudson River valley in the Appalachian Mountain range in what is now present day New York and mixing it with Dutch and German folklore. The characters and village within the story are Dutch, for the area was first settled by the Dutch. This fact is commonly alluded to within the story in a narrative sort of sense: “It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some Dutch colonists” (Irving 449). If this were not an important fact overall it would only be mentioned that the area was founded by the Dutch once or so, but the historical Dutch are mentioned many times throughout the story. This history has become a folk tale of the people of Rip Van Winkle’s village and the other Dutch settlements of the area so easily that characters from these histories have become fantastical in nature. The gnomish creatures that inhabit the Kaatskill Mountains to bowl the ninepins that create thunder every twenty years are none other than Hendrick Hudson and his gang, for whom their river was named. Literally this section foreshadows a drastic event through the sound the ninepin bowling makes. The inherent Dutch undertones in this American folk tale are that these magical characters have become naturalized to the area, but they don’t fit. They dress like Europeans and their magical potion is their special alcohol, which would not have existed in native America. Irving uses the Dutch characters in America with the old German fairy tale about a man who sleeps for twenty years to create a folk tale out of the experiences of the people before and after the American Revolution to give a simplified rural viewpoint on the historical events. This dissociation from being American but being Dutch is central to effect, or lack thereof, of the American Revolution and how it barely etches the surface of the area’s folklore.

In Rip Van Winkle change came suddenly and easily, as it usually does. The difficulty with change is how people react to it. Van Winkle is a carefree character that lives life day to day. He first loses touch with reality when he is lured by the fairy creatures of the Kaatskill Mountains. Van Winkle is an impractical man with and “insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour” (450) and is content in helping others. This impractical personality allowed him to be swallowed up by the magic that these gnomish, ghostly figures presented. When he awoke completely lost he was akin to the settlers who were lost from their native Europe and needed their old culture to keep them from being depressingly homesick. “As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none that he knew” (455). He had been alienated from his once close community through the magic that had been done upon him. His village had changed and become something alien to him, which he only recognizes through the help and memories of the village people. This section alludes to how histories are created collectively, and the tall tales are created by the ‘folk’ of the area.

In his life prior to the insurmountable event of the American Revolution Van Winkle was basically a useless person. He was kind and was socially active, but he did nothing to better himself or his family and helped too many people at once to be of much use. When he comes to the village twenty years later as the same man he becomes a village relic. Through the revolution the village had grown, become faster paced, and better connected to the outside world. Van Winkle, through his preservation, became a preserver of the time before and therefore thoroughly Dutch and steeped in heritage: “[Van Winkle] was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times ‘before the war’” (459). As a person who preserved the history and culture from before the war, his fantastic story became village lore. “[Van Winkle] used to tell his story to every stranger” (459). His tale became more important to his village than the history of the revolution, despite the constant reminders of politicians and mementos throughout the village. This is because his tale was part of his life, therefore part of the village and its culture. Even the old gnomes in their dated clothing would continue unchanged and forever creating magical thunder in the Kaatskills. Thus the folklore is about the people’s history and one man’s experience, but expands to encompass a whole culture of people because of its context.

The author, Washington Irving, acts like the editor and narrator of this piece. He is fully aware of the connections he makes between history, culture, and folklore. As a person writing about an event many years after it took place he would have an outside perspective but gains access to the inside through the collective memory of the people. His tale of Rip Van Winkle is purely fictional, though he creates the sense of the folk who live in the area. “I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvelous events and appearances” (460). He ends with the statement “The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of a doubt” (460) to enforce the truth that the story describes the collective memory of both the Dutch folk and those displaced by the emigration to North America and further the American Revolution.

Rip Van Winkle is a delightful folk tale with subtle undertones about how history is experienced and recorded. In emigration to North America European settlers brought their culture and changed their folklore to include characters from their new world. This folklore was further used to understand the constant changes in their world and to preserve their old way of life in the new era. Folklore is the history of the people who create and experience it. The stories will continue to change and evolve but the essence of their creation will continue to live on in the culture of the people they represent.

Bibliography

Irving, Washington. "Rip Van Winkle." The Norton Anthology of American
Literature. Ed. Philip F. Gura and Francis Murphy. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 2003. 446-460.

Friday 2 November 2012

Old vs. New

I made a comic! This is in practice for the release of my graphic novel style comic Absent Horizon, the first chapter of which will be available January 1st, 2013.