Week 14 Digital Storytelling

I've decided to stick with the blog post idea for my final project.  It's simple enough.  Write, edit, include links and other multimedia elements, post.  I will need to remember to post them in reverse order, that way the story being told can be read chronologically.  Like I said, its very simple, very straightforward.

I'll be using Blogger for this, but creating another blog entirely for this project.  I'll play around with the settings too, try and make it prettier than this blog looks right now.  It's gotta look good, not just read good.

Week 13 Digital Storytelling: Final Project proposal

The narrative found in my Photo essay was one where I explored how my tastes in comic books shifted.  I want to expand on this and tell the narrative as to how I became interested in the things I am today.

The big thing is to keep to the idea of exploring different fictions and franchises, so hyperlinks will be key to this, linking to relevant Wiki pages or other pieces of the narrative.  It is a linear story, but there are tangents to it.  'A' will go to 'B' but it could lead to 'A1' as well for a shorter point in the narrative.

I'm still debating what format this should be on, but I know video/podcast is out of the question.  Maybe a simple Google Doc linking to other Google Docs will do?  Or a number of blog posts, as each "chapter" will be brief.  I know my story.  I know how I want to tell it.  And I have a good idea as to where I want to tell it.

Week 12 Mars

I feel that colonizing Mars is an inevitability.  However, at this time, I don't at all think it is a good idea to go forward with colonizing a planet.  We have no clue as to what we are doing here.  Terra-forming is a science that's still a fiction.  Getting people to survive the journey without major long-term issues is still being figured out.  A human being hasn't even set foot on the planet yet, so why would we consider building a settlement on the surface?

Exploration missions are a great stepping stone, but constructing a colony is jumping way too far ahead.  I expect the first few attempts at Martian colonization to fail.  The whole thing is an investment, and one that doesn't show much potential for profit.

Instead of colonization, I'd much rather see more rover missions to other bodies in the Solar System.  Venus is a great candidate for studying an extreme greenhouse effect, and Europa has something similar to Earth's water cycle but with liquid nitrogen and methane.  Landing rovers on these worlds would also prove to be a nice challenge given their extremely harsh environments.  Studies made on worlds like these can be much more beneficial compare to ones made on Mars, a planet covered in rust.

Week 12 Digital Storytelling

For my video project, I decided to answer a question I've been asked for the past year.  Any time someone finds out I play Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017) I'm always asked "Why?"  At launch the game got a stigma that even kept some of the most devoted Star Wars fans away from it.  The year it launched was the year microtransactions in video games became a huge issue, and Battlefront II ended up being a catalyst for the backlash against the practice.

Despite the monetization system being removed hours before the game was available to everyone, the damage had already been done.  To this day people still view the game as "Pay-to-Win."  Since it's launch, however, I've witnessed huge changes come to the game, and next to all of those changes have been for the better.  I mention in my video how I only played the game at first for the Star Wars brand.  Now I play it because of how much the game has evolved and continues to show positive growth.

I brought up in my reflection for the Photo Essay that I'm not much of a photographer.  Capturing still images isn't my strongest quality, so filming motion was going to be a challenge.  Luckily for my video, I didn't need to use a real camera at all.  The Xbox One has a built-in game DVR system.  All I have to do is hit "record game clip" and the last two minutes of gameplay is captured and saved on to Xbox Live.  The problem was that every time I wanted to use the game DVR, any gameplay after that point would be lag-city.  Uploading those clips practically ate my internet connection, so I could only get one or two clips per match.  It slowed down my filming process by a long shot.

Luckily, my roommate Joe came in and saved the day yet again.  He let me borrow his elgato (an external game capture device that avoids lag) and I got the last of my footage easily.  After all my footage was recorded I would quickly cut some clips and save them onto my flash drive.  Audio was easy enough to record and cut; I had audacity on my laptop, so that task was completed within an hour.  Video, on the other hand, was going to take a trip to the library.

I don't have Adobe Premiere on my laptop, and it's the only video editing software I'm familiar with, so I had to use the Owen library computers to finish my project.  While I did do some minor cuts to the footage I recorded, they were very rough, only cut to conserve storage space on my flash drive.  I spent about two and a half hours cutting together my video essay, then I needed to export it.  Last year I used Premiere 2017 to edit my videos.  This year it was 2018, and Adobe drastically changed how to export video files.  I was lost until I figured it out later in the Mac lab.  I exported my video, and it went very poorly.  Clips were playing the wrong section of footage, audio in some sections was out of sync, some footage was extremely jerky, etc.  I ended up going back to the library and using the same exact PC I edited the project on to export it, and it worked just fine.  Macs and PCs really don't get along.

Uploading to YouTube was simple enough, and I made sure to share it with some of the people I play Battlefront II with.  Their feedback gave me a lot of confidence in the final product.  I'm glad I stuck with this project to the end.  The most challenging part was filming, as most of the footage I needed to capture was left entirely to chance of what map I got in multiplayer (getting that shot of the AT-M6 on Crait took a lot of patience) and the DVR lag was not helpful.  After all my footage was recorded, the rest of the project was a breeze.

Week 11 Digital Storytelling: Storyboard

My story-board became a bit unconventional.  I wrote my script over the weekend, and I then restarted it 2 days later.  I'm much more satisfied with the 2nd draft.  For my storyboard, I ended up highlighting what shots I would be using for each sentence of the script instead of physically drawing it.

I did this because a brief description of the shots I needed worked better than visualizing them.  Most of my footage is coming from the video game Star Wars: Battlefront II.  My video essay is on why I'm still playing the game despite the negative stigma it has.  I am my own cameraman in the game.  There are plenty of shots that might be difficult to achieve in multiplayer, but a few I can easily make happen in arcade.

I've attached my entire script here, each sentence highlighted with a comment for what shots I will be using.  Some shots I've already gathered, others I will need to work on soon.

Week 10 Digital Storytelling

Hotel Chavelier:  I always enjoy going to a Disney/Pixar film in the theaters for the animated short before the feature film.  Not every story has to be condensed to a 90-120 minute film, or stretched out to meet a 13 episode quota.  Sometimes the stories are brief.  This short film gave that Pixar feeling of brevity.  Obviously there are elements in here that you wouldn't find in any Disney or Pixar project, but the overall short and simple nature gives that vibe.

"Everything Sleeps but the Night":  Man, poetry goes right over my head every time.  I have no idea what was being said, but the visuals were really neat.  I especially loved how one of the first visuals is the moon with shards of broken glass in front of it, then towards the end those same shards are moving in the opposite direction, and behind them we see a tunnel with the light at the end taking the moon's place.  Pretty creative visualization.

"The Most Important Game of 2017":  I decided to go off the syllabus for this last one, and I looked at the YouTube channel Raycevick, a widely appraised video essayist who focuses on video games.  Here he does a breakdown of the game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.  After this video, I was sold on wanting to play it, and soon enough I did.  Raycevick's mix of criticism, delivery, and editing style all combine to create a stellar video essay each time.  I don't suggest just watching this one video, but looking at all his work.

Week 10 Mars

"Points of Origin" was fun, especially from an astronomical perspective.  It looked at human expansion within our solar system (referred to in many SF works as "the Sol System"), and it didn't just stop at Mars or Pluto, it went all the way out to the Oort Cloud.  I really like the idea of that.  Humanity hasn't gone to other star systems at this point, but we've gone literally everywhere of note in the entire Sol System.  We didn't just stop at Mars and call it a day, then move on to Alpha Centauri, we went to Europa, Titan, anywhere we could stand, and even places we could not.

It's cool thinking about just how recently we actually had our first (and so far only) man made object pass the farthest reaches of our star system with the Voyager probes.  I believe that was back in 2012 this happened?  One of the neatest parts about this is how in the game Elite: Dangerous, players have actually tracked down the probes, and you can listen to the Golden Record.

I do want to know more about the culture of people who live in the Oort Cloud.  I assume these small modular ships meet up often and families "interact" for some genetic diversity, which is essential in a community like that.  I know the Quarians of Mass Effect do something very similar with their Migrant Fleet.

Digital Storytelling Week 9

Wes Anderson's Hotel Chavalier only two characters (five if you count the hotel staff, but they play next to no part in the video).  We don't get a name for the two main characters, so we just associate them as "Man" and "Woman."  Man is staying at a hotel in Paris.  Woman calls him and invites herself over.  Man is clearly disturbed by this.

Upon arriving, Woman and Man have some dialogue, and even without context, the viewer can quickly gather that these two had some romantic history together, but Man ran away from Woman.  There is no specific reason ever given, but there is a reason.  Eventually the two have some physical romance, and Man shows Woman his view of Paris, which pans over to the last shot of the short film.

Throughout the entire video, Man has a song playing through his iPod docked into a radio.  I am the farthest thing there is from a man familiar with music, so I wouldn't be able to tell you the name of the song, who wrote and performed it, or its meaning.  BUT, I know the song speaks more to the plot and theme than the two characters do.  The music would not be present or as prominent in this short film if it didn't benefit it in some way.

Week 9 Mars: Man Plus

This is perhaps the weirdest cyborg I've come across in fiction.  Normally what I see is a human getting a bunch of metal bits grafted to their skin, some computer stuff replacing their brain.  Torraway in Man Plus is a very different cyborg.  Some of the augmentations he goes through are organic.  His skin is more like a rhino's.  It's dense, but its not at all metal.  It can flex just as any other person's skin can.  The wings as well are portrayed as an organic addition, looking like giant bat wings, but collect sunlight like leaves on a plant.

There are some elements of his that are completely inorganic.  Most of his skeleton is made of metal.  He has computer programs in his brain.  It's all just so odd thinking of an organic cyborg versus a synthetic one.  The picture in my mind when I hear the term is always something like Robocop, General Grievous, or Adam Jensen.

I also applaud the novel for covertly introducing AI into the story.  If the novel didn't use the term "We" every once in a while, this would've come out of nowhere, but with it being there, it provided some nice intrigue.  I always assumed it was someone working with the project.  Someone without a name, maybe a really low-level scientist.  Turns out it was AI that developed itself in secret.  Whodathunk?

Podcast Reflection

This was a bit difficult, and I'm not sure where to start.  I guess the script will do for now.  I had an idea on what I wanted the podcast topic to be: fandom.  Outside of that, I didn't really know where I wanted the conversation to go.  I had a few bullet points in my script, but that's it.  I never had a clear example of what a podcast script was supposed to look like.  My entire basis was timestamps in a YouTube podcast that listed where topics shifted, that's it.  My script ended up looking like an amputee's skeleton.  The bones are there, but it was missing a lot.  At the time I was writing it, I didn't have any solid answer from what guests would be on, so names were kept out on purpose.  It's tough to anticipate and script an entire twenty-minute conversation that hasn't even taken place yet.  I didn't even have a proper scripted introduction.

Recording was hit or miss.  Originally, I planned on using my roommate Joe's Yeti microphone, but he ended up taking that home the weekend before.  We then tried using our gaming headsets, and after some sound tests it sounded like a phone conversation quality-wise.  Ironically, we ended up using the mic in Joe's phone, propped upside-down with a few boxes of Ramen noodles.  Sound test sounded decent, and we rolled with it.  Joe then e-mailed me the sound file, and I had my raw footage.

Editing. Was. A pain.  I started with about twenty-six minutes and change of raw footage, and ended with about twenty-two of edited footage.  We would pause in our sentences every once in a while, but Joe (no offense to him) would do this every few words.  Eric was much better; I only had to edit out a small handful of those pauses, and I was somewhere in the middle.  There's two or three instances where I edited out pauses, but it sounds like I edit out more than that, as if I was changing someone's words by getting rid of a "not" or something like that.  I tried many times to get those moments to sound organic, but its just the way we say things that makes even the unedited footage sound edited.  I'm not sure how well I'm conveying what I'm trying to say, so I'll leave it at that I never altered anyone's meanings or stances on any topic, it just sounds like it, and I couldn't fix that.

Music?  God, I still can't find anything.  I'm writing this before I try and find stuff to edit in, to be completely honest.  After weeks of thinking about this project, I still have ZERO idea on what music could be used, and where it could be implemented.  I honestly feel like it would intrude on the flow of the conversation.  Throwing music or sound effects into a conversation just doesn't sound right to me, even at the beginning or the end.  I don't see how it could benefit what I have now.  It would be like throwing in a poorly rendered CGI dinosaur walking in front of a camera shot in a film that was already released twenty years ago *cough, cough* Star Wars Special Editions *cough, cough*.

Making this podcast was a rough ride.  A bumpy road, but it came with a great view.  My script was God awful, but my guests were willing to record with me the next day.  Editing out pauses every few seconds was a pain in the ass, but the discussion sounds WORLDS better for it.  The two hours of just editing it took to get it to that point was well worth the effort, and I'm proud of what I have today.  I always joked at how my definition of a podcast is "a conversation you can't take part in" but now I got to lead that conversation, and it felt great.

Week 7 Digital Storytelling

I'm not used to podcasts under twenty minutes.  Just about all the ones I listen to are over an hour long.  I listen to them while I play video games most of the time, mostly mindless ones like Elite: Dangerous or Battlefront II.  Its about the most multi-tasking I am capable of.  Flying a spaceship or playing a multiplayer match I've done dozens of times before?  It doesn't require my full attention.

Most of what carries me through a podcast isn't the stories, but the personalities telling them.  How does the saying go?  "A good joke told poorly doesn't land, while a bad joke told well can get an entire room to laugh."  Something along those lines.  Basically says that no matter what your story is, if the person telling it isn't entertaining, the story won't grab anyone's attention.

Week 7 Mars: War of the Worlds

I feel like "War of the Worlds" is more known for its radio dramatization than for its actual story.  There isn't much to it outside of "Martians come to Earth and fuck shit up."  There was no reason given as to why.  They just land on a farm, don't even attempt to communicate, and *FWASH*.

A little praise I can give is the fact that these Martians die to a common human illness, that's a nice oversight on their part.  I'd be curious to see this from the Martian's perspective; maybe have the Martians believe they're so evolved that human disease can't hurt them.  They believe this so much that they don't even bother testing it.

"Hey, Space Tom."
"Yeah, Space Jim?"
"You think human disease will affect our biology?"
"Lol, nope.  We're so advanced and evolved, there is no way their illnesses could harm us!"
"Sounds like a solid theory, Space Tom."

Another bit I especially enjoyed was a line from the radio dramatization, where I believe the other human Pearson meets says something like, "You call this a war?  The Martians are at war with us as much as humans are at war with ants!"  That one line really stands out to me.  It puts the entire scenario into perspective.  If we were to have a planet-wide invasion against our technology at the time, we'd be properly screwed.

Its something about being completely unprepared for such an occasion.  It reminds me of one game I play, Elite: Dangerous.  The game takes place in a 1:1 scale map of our galaxy, yet there were no aliens to be seen.  It took a whole two years before a player discovered an alien, or rather, the alien discovered the player.  The developers of the game later said that these aliens have been in the game since day 1, it just took a while for someone to stumble across them.

Week 6 Mars: Red Planet

The writing in this novel felt surprisingly modern most of the time.  I guess I'm just so used to seeing "Well, you good ol' chap!" type of dialogue from pulp magazine stories that this was a nice refresher.  There were a few moments here and there that the dialogue seemed dated, but they were few and far between.  I was primarily excited to read this mainly because I found that the author also wrote Starship Troopers, which would be adapted into one of my favorite films.

Its clear to me, upon researching Heinlein, that whatever political views that are held by characters in his novels are not at all shared by Heinlein himself.  He often contradicted himself regarding political matters, but I believe his works were purely satirical in that regard.  Who really would agree with the Doc in Red Planet that anyone that can hold a gun, should hold a gun, regardless of a license?

How about Rico in Starship Troopers?  What American author would really portray their protagonist going from an individual in a fascist society, to just another brainwashed fascist?  I don't believe there is any way Heinlein took these ideologies seriously, or ever agreed with them.  He was trying to show the extreme side of things he disagreed with.

Week 6 Digital Storytelling: Podcasts

Artism Speaks:  I only discovered this podcast last Spring, and it had just started a few weeks prior to then.  It's tough to find words for it, as there's no real theme to it.  It's just a bunch of people in an online community (mostly within Youtube's art and gaming sphere) talking to each other.  It's hosted by Sparky, and co-hosted by literally anyone else.  The roster of who is on changes each episode, with a few people coming back every once in a while, such as Raycevick, who makes video essays on video games, or ShammyTV, who makes extremely sarcastic game reviews.

Back Issues:  While it does have a video element to it, 99% of the time the video is just 3 people on a couch.  I mainly just listen to it, my eyes focused elsewhere.  In this podcast series, Sal summarizes and discusses comic book stories with his two friends, Ben and Ethan who know little to nothing about comics.  The stories they discuss are both old, new, good, and downright awful.  Occasionally one or two members on the couch will be swapped out (Sal's parents have replaced Ben and Ethan before).  It's a series I've listened to since freshman year, and haven't dropped from it since.

Weekly Planet:  James (Mr. SundayMovies) and Nick (Masso) discuss weekly news in the pop culture industry, mostly relating to comicbooks, films, or TV shows.  Their two personalities never cease to get a laugh out of the listener, with great commentary and longstanding, definitely-should-have-died-many-weeks-ago-but-still-hasn't-so-they-keep-doing-it jokes.  A prime example of this is Masso's character of "Man who doesn't know what Star Wars is because he's been living under a rock for the past few years, and every time he is told about what Star Wars is he immediately forgets about it."

What carries all of these for me is the personalities of each person.  They never cease to entertain.  I don't notice editing too much outside of an intro theme that's barely 10 seconds long.

Week 5 Mars: The Martian Chronicles

I know at the time this was written, every piece of science-fiction had some pretty ridiculous elements to them.  50-ft Spider attacks, robots that do nothing but shoot lasers, and Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles had bee guns.  BEE GUNS.

It was certainly interesting to see the same "telepathic martian" trope, but its played off very differently here.  The humans in the story are assumed to be just a couple of martian pranksters using their abilities to appear to be human.  Instead they get thrown into an asylum.

Its also interesting to see how human colonization ruins everything it comes into contact with, just by a simple disease.  It makes me curious if we try and colonize some other world without sentient life on it, would we be killed by the brand new yet simple diseases there, or would we completely ruin the ecosystem by introducing simple Earth-born pathogens?

Photo Essay Response

At the start, I had zero clue as to what my subject or story would be for this essay.  After seeing the examples used in class, I took a heavy inspiration from "Books from my mother."  Instead of looking at books or movies or any other collection of a medium that was shared to me, I instead looked to comic book panels and how even a single image could capture the tone of the story it was in.  This idea quickly evolved upon learning that it needs to have a real story behind it, so summarizing each book based off of one image wasn't going to work.

My idea became more focused on myself.  What do I want to say?  What do I have to say?  This can't be a review, so what will I say?  After some time thinking on these things among others, I found what my subject would be: the evolution of my taste in comic books, and how my critical eye towards them has developed over the course of a decade (gosh, its been that long?).

My initial list, as you can see in a separate blog post, is pretty different from the one I ended on.  Some of my selections didn't quite make the cut, as I either had nothing to say about the book or if I felt like I would be repeating myself.  Other changes, like Bone, were added because I had forgotten about them, yet upon remembering I saw just how much it impacted my tastes.

I started out with that initial list finding images of the panels and pages I was looking for online.  Some, like the one for Low, were extremely low-res to the point you couldn't make out what people were saying.  Then another constraint came in: all pictures must be your own, and they should all have a consistent aspect ratio.

This constraint had me worried.  While I could easily take pictures of the pages and panels I wanted to mention, most of the issues they are found in are at home, a 4 hour drive away.  There were a few that I have digitally, but I doubt a screenshot would be any better than a Google image search.  Last Tuesday, a stroke of luck hit me regarding these issues (pun intended).

My parents would be coming to visit my sister while they all went up to the Penn State football game.  I asked those loving people if they wouldn't mind bringing up my comic book boxes, and they said yes.  I met them over the weekend, got my boxes and a lunch, and came back to my dorm and took the pictures I needed.  Out of the ten comic books in my Photo Essay, nine of them have an image I took myself.  The only one I couldn't get a picture of was for Bone, as I had no idea where those books went.

The hurdle I was not able to jump was one that's pretty hardwired into me, and that is making these pictures look good.  My aforementioned sister, Bethany, managed to snatch up all the natural photography skill in our family's genetic code, I was left with an eye for a good story, one that I still had to train.  While the photos themselves aren't too pretty, the art within them is incredible.

Overall, I'm proud of the words I wrote for this Photo Essay, but I know the photos could all use improvements, I just don't know what those improvements would be.  They're pictures of pages, how creative can a guy with zero photography experience get with that?  Hopefully, the stories found within this essay reach more people, because all of them deserve to be experienced (aside from Reborn, you can live with skipping that book).

Week 4 Mars: A Martian Odyssey

I have no idea why I find it so hard to read anything from before 1950.  Luckily this was a much easier read than others.  While the main Martian in the story, Tweel, has some humanoid features, the description giving him an 18 inch beak immediately made me think of Kevin from Pixar's film UP.

The story became much more interesting when this was the image that was constantly in my head while reading it.

I did get a laugh out of a few lines of dialogue early on briefly covering how exactly not just these men, but humanity managed to reach Mars.  It's said they used atomic fuel, and that the man who discovered it should rest in peace, implying that he died during his "Eureka!" moment.

The main character and Tweel come across many different species that live on Mars, and I'm always baffled at just how many intelligent, or semi-intelligent species a writer can say are native to one world.  It makes me wonder how different Earth could be if we weren't the only ones to learn how to utilize our thumbs.  Would we still be the dominant species?  If not, who else?  Probably bears.  No, definitely bears.

It is cool to see hard science making its way into fiction, but my only gripe is that its not easy to organically place it in a story or dialogue.  People still struggle with this today.  My main issue with the film Interstellar is that it spent too much time on its science and not enough on its characters and story.

Week 4 Digital Storytelling: Photo Considerations

I've already stated that my basic idea for this was to use panels or pages that in my eyes perfectly summarize what the story is about, display its themes, and so on.  In no particular order, here is:

Saga: Volume 6


Moon Knight: The Bottom

Dark Night: A True Batman Story

Low: Before the Dawn Burns Us

Batman: Zero Year


Batman: Ego


God Country


Batman: The Dark Knight Returns


Batman: The Court of Owls


Marvel: Civil War

Week 3 Digital Storytelling: Photo Essay Idea

I don't have any interesting stories of my own to tell.  Most of what I do is find other stories to experience for my entertainment, and most of those are found in comic books.  The only "story" I really could tell is that of how my taste in comic books has evolved since I first started reading them way back in 2004, maybe a walk through of my personal history with the medium from its origins to the present day.

The challenge is going to be the photos.  Originally I had the idea of finding one panel from some of my favorite stories that perfectly coveys the tone and themes of the comic book they are from, but the work must be my own, so screenshots will not get the job done.  That means if I hope to do something similar, the picture must be of the book itself (similar to "Books From My Mother") or the panel I am discussing.  The real catch is: most of my comics are at home, a 4 hour drive away.  I've still got plenty of graphic novels to satisfy most of this, and I do have digital copies of some series, but a huge chunk is at home.  I was planning on bringing them up after Thanksgiving.  Hindsight is 20/20 I guess... (Below is all I have to work with, minus the digital books)

Week 3 Mars: The "Bad Guy" Aliens

One example of how to do aliens correctly from the start is the Mass Effect trilogy.  A lot of the races look like they could be painted as a "Bad Guy" race just from their intimidating appearances, yet we get to see both peaceful and aggressive examples of them.  Sure, you fight a lot of Krogan, but you also fight alongside them as well.  You get to see why they are a more aggressive race than others normally are.

In a work of science fiction, I always love seeing how different alien cultures and races interact with each other.  Sometimes a work will come along that isn't taken as seriously and the aliens are simply painted as the "bad guys," which is completely okay with me when it comes to a simplistic piece (Mars Attacks! or Starship Troopers, come to mind).  When a work does take itself seriously, I expect characters to be the antagonists in a story, not their entire race.

There are plenty of examples of this "Bad Guy" alien trope in many famous works of science fiction.  In Borough's A Princess of Mars, its is very clear that specific Martian species are painted as evil, not individuals.  This could be attributed to any sort of xenophobia that was around at the time this work was written, or even held by the writer himself.  One of the only "Good Guy" Martian races just happen to be the ones that look exactly like humans on the outside.

Another more recent example is the first installment of the Halo franchise, Halo: Combat Evolved.  There's next to no explanation as to why you should be attacking all the Covenant you come across outside of "Kill it, it's different!"  Thankfully in Halo 2, the narrative provides an incredible amount of detail into the culture of the Covenant, and giving us the story of the Arbiter who the player can sympathize with.


Just about every Batarian you come across has a resentment towards you, but its not because "You're the good guy and they're the bad guy."  It's because you're human, and the galactic council allowed Humanity to establish colonies on worlds that previously belonged to Batarians.

This trope is fine to use in a work that doesn't take itself too seriously, but when a deeper story is to be told, some gray areas in alien races should be shown.  It helps build the world the creator is trying to get across, makes it just that much more believable.

Week 2 Mars: Martians in Pulp Fiction

Its kinda insane how obsessed people got with the idea of Martians when the "canals" were "discovered."  A pretty common theme I noticed was the idea of Martians with different skin tones.  Rather than various shades of black and white as we have on Earth, Martians practically covered all colors you'd find in a bag of Skittles.  Interestingly enough, this idea is still used in reference to Martians today with DC Comics.  In their version of Mars, there are two types of Martians: Green skinned as seen with J'on Jones (a.k.a. Martian Manhunter), and White skinned, as seen with J'on's niece, M'gann M'orzz (a.k.a. Miss Martian).  The White skinned martians were seen as more violent most of the time, and normally looked more monstrous, though all Martians had the ability to shape-shift, along with a slew of other powers.  There is a really interesting Justice League story where a number of White Martians try and replace the JL, which I will point you to a fun summary here.

Week 2 Digital Storytelling: You are about to enter...

It's bright where I am.  White covers the ground, wind has caused it to begin to climb up tree trunks.  The sky itself is dull, covered with the clouds that brought the snow down here.  Not a sound is heard.  The wind -while present- is not strong enough to be heard.  It is cold, yet comfortable.  And me?  I am just sitting on a rock, enjoying the silence.  No thoughts go through my head, as I have nothing to worry about or ponder on.  I only have an emotion: tranquility.  Where this snow-covered forest is doesn't matter at all.  The only thing that does matter is what it is, and that is what makes it my place.

Week 1 Mars: Canal Crazies

Mistranslations can be forgivable.  We still manage to have it happen often in the present day.  Today, however, our means of communication are much faster, and so we can correct ourselves/ be corrected by others much earlier than before.  This wasn't the case in the late 1800's when an Italian astronomer believed he had found naturally formed waterways on the surface of Mars.  What was written was the word "canali," and it had been mistranslated into "canals" in the early 1900's, suggesting that these waterways were man-made.  Luckily it only took a few decades to spot this mistranslation.

We all know today thanks to the many different satellites and rovers we have sent towards the red rock that the only water on its surface is the ice caps on its poles.  All that dots the planet is craters and cracks.  Maybe one day humans would be able to make some canals on the planet, but that could take decades of terraforming, a technology and process we have yet to figure out step 1 in.

Week 1: Database Highlights

I can be a bit obsessive sometimes.  For seven years of my life, all my focus and fandom was on a buildable action figure line by Lego.  It was called Bionicle, and it was the only thing I knew about during that period of my life.  While all the other kids would be playing with the new toys that came out with the latest Star Wars prequel, swinging their plastic lightsabers at each other, I was creating [admittedly terrible-looking] characters with what adults at the time considered to be "not real Lego."  I didn't care what others thought of my obsession.  I had fun with it.  This world of robots living in a tribal island, fighting off an evil darkness was intriguing to say the least.

Eventually I got older and moved on to my next craze: video games.  I had tried them before and didn't care much for them, but suddenly, playing Guitar Hero III at a friend's house ignited my interest.  I quickly transitioned into playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance which introduced me to comics, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed brought me in to a franchise I had ignored for so many years.

As I grew older I played more games, read more comics, and so on.  I dove into more mature stories like Mass Effect and Saga, loving the worlds that these stories to place in.  This is where my obsessions lie today: discovering new worlds and stories.  My focus is no longer on one specific piece of fiction.  I'm always on the lookout for new ones.

About

I'm a guy that loves a good story.  To me, what makes a good story, especially an engaging one, is believable characters.  If you craft a character that an audience can empathize with, one that they feel they could easily have a conversation with about that character's personal history, their beliefs and where those came from, if your character can be seen as a person, then you have created someone truly worth following on the journey you have in mind.

Its details like the one above that I adore in writing.  How far one needs to go for even a small piece of a larger puzzle to be well executed.  There are plenty of great examples of these things.  Some video games like Mass Effect or DOOM have the luxury to include a sort of "database" with its world's history or description of its technology, where a film needs to find a way to fit some of that information inside the script.

The most important thing I like to see in storytelling, is people creating exactly what they envision.  The vision may morph and shift and change, but what it most important is that the vision is their own.  Making that vision happen is always an amazing accomplishment.