Why I Write: Expression, Comfort, Possibilities, Imagination, and Freedom

Writing is for expression,
An art that is seen, heard,
And felt by the readers
In their hearts and souls.

Writing comforts everyone
with meanings, truths, and
Untruths that simplify the
World in which we suffer.

Writing shows the possibilities
Of everything in the world,
From the reality of our lives,
To the fiction within our souls.

Writing escapes normality,
and from outside its throughs,
dances into the dawn of creation
To enhance dreams of imagination.

Writing becomes the palladin,
Knight, rogue, hero, or villain
In the effort to touch the sky,
To gain freedom from worries.

Article Response: Plagarism

I can't help but to agree with many students that the old way of citing is too much work. I feel that if it is a book that is being cited people should have to write the title of the book and the author. If  it is a website, we should just have to copy the website, and maybe the article title as well if it is a database that will not let you see it if you are not logged on. I just don't see the importance of giving the date you accessed the article, the year it was published, or anything else that must be written.

Reading Response 7: Clone Codes

Clone Codes is about Leanna, an average girl in 2070. Her world is tilted upside down when she finds out her mother is part of a rebel movement called, "The Liberty Bell". She is forced to run as that is what her mother taught her to do, but as she runs, she will find out many secrets about herself and her world.

Leanna is so confused. She believed she was a First, a person naturally born, yet she finds out that she is actually a Second, a clone of another person. She was raised from the moment she was created as her original's twin. Only three people knew that she was a Second, at least, that she, specifically, was the clone. This off balanced her so much that she trusted a veritable stranger. She plays a sport called swift, and won against Houston, a guy she met on her escape route. She finds out that Houston is a cyborg, and she just tells him all that she recently learned. She foolishly believed he would help her, yet she was so prejudice against what she is, and cyborgs as well, that she made flimsy connections with Houston.
I picture cyborgs as this picture, which lets me understand why she might be so cautious and prejudiced against them. She later goes on to regret her actions thinking, "I should have known Houston couldn't be trusted." This shows that she is learning that she won't get help from just anyone. I believe she will develop into a less bratty and entitled person as the book continues.

I'm not sure if I would recommend this book to anyone because I haven't come to like the protagonist yet. I can't encourage a book that has a story line that will make you hate it due to the main characters actions. I believe she will change at the end of the book, though, so I will hold back on my rant of displeasure.

Reading Response 6: The Clone Codes

In the futuristic world of 2070, clones are a common sight. Clones, much like slaves in the past, are believed to be sub-human and are servants. Leanna is thrust into a battle between freedom fighters and the government due to her mother being a freedom fighter. Leanna doesn't know what to think, but she has to make a choice since the government is soon to be after her when her mom is arrested.

Leanna is a normal girl, at least she thinks she is. Sandra, her best friend, and herself spend most of their time on what is frisk. What I find interesting is that Leanna isn't so normal. There are foreshadowing hints from what I have read so far that Leanna is important to the freedom fighters that call themselves The Liberty Bell. Leanna used to have a twin, but when they were in an accident, her twin died. I have the feeling that Leanna's mother broke the law by cloning a child, and that Leanna is the clone. I figure if this is true, then they were probably cloned as children. That's what made me choose this picture to represent this response, a baby and the clones of it!
Double the duty, the horror! I get this feeling due to Annette, Leanna's mother, saying, ""Clones are human beings. We have proof of this,"" I just have that feeling, but it could be my suspicious or paranoid nature to jump to that type of conclusion, though.

I can't help but think of that sheep, Dolly, that people cloned in the past, the poor thing. I just can't think of humans being cloned as the book has talked about. It just feels wrong to clone a person, let alone multiple times! I hope we don't ever really go down this route, even if we get the technology.

My research project

My project is about video game addiction. I will be going into the positive and negative effects of this addiction, as well as some symptoms. I will also go into treatment options since this is actually a pretty serious topic for the twenty-first century. I will be using articles from these sites: scienceblog.com, webmd.com, today.colostate.edu, addictions.com, huffingtonpost.com, tellinitlikeitis.net, livestrong.com, symptomfnd.com, and bada.hb.se. Another resource that I will be using will be my family, as my parents are definite video game addicts. My brother might be one, but the only reason I don’t believe my sister and I are addicts is because we use the computer to read more often than not. If you find any other sites that aren’t blocked at school to use, then I would be happy to take a look at them!

Reading Response 5: A Sword In Her Hand

This book is a book about Marguerite, a countess in the 1300s. She defies tradition throughout the book from sword fighting to writing left handed. All of these things were frowned upon by the general populace during these times, which occur before and after the second attack of the Great Plague.

Marguerite is comparable to the tomboys of the modern world. She refuses to just sit idly and participate in what she deems as a boring waste of time. These wastes happen to be embroidery, art, and a few other lessons she has to take as a countess. I knew for sure she would be a tomboy during this little exchange when she was a child, ""Quiet," says Willem, trying to calm things down. "It's just something we have to do on our own, Marguerite."
"Yes, this is men's work," boasts Hendrik. "Unless you're a man and can pee against a tree standing up, we don't want you."
"So if I can pee against a tree standing up, I can come?" I ask.
"Yes, if you can do that, you can come," Hendrik blusters, far too confidently.
Willem looks at Hendrik angrily, as if to say, "Did you really have to promise that?"
"What?" Hendrik asks, his hands spread in certainty that I won't be able to perform his task in a hundred years.
But I've already turned around. Standing in front of a tree, I use one hand to hoist up my skirts, while with my right hand I do something the boys can't see. And in a beautifully curved stream, I pee against the tree." This excerpt from the book is a fairly comical and lighthearted example of how she shows that she is a tomboy. Later on, Marguerite also gains a rapier with her namesake on the hilt. Her namesake is the flower shown below.

This book is a beautiful and creative rendition of how Marguerite of Male's life might have been. This is a historical fiction that has the main character as a real person instead of them being fictional. I wish I could know whether she actually acted the way she was portrayed, or if she was like most other women of the time. I recommend this book to people who enjoy extrapolations about largely mysterious historical people's lives.

Article 1 Response

The idea that how a person gathers information will affect how they think is a valid theory. This article was based on the traits that seem to change in a person's reading style and writing style when they use computers rather than books. This is surprising, but I don't believe that the medium people use to read with changes a person's reading style. It is more of the fact that people want to finish reading quickly and make a habit of doing so by skimming the information they read on the web. I believe this because most of my reading is done online, but for pleasure rather than for researching using articles. That may be pleasurable for some, but most people do not read information from historical articles for fun, they do so for work, school, or to find proof of an idea.
"As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought." This may be true in the aspect of if the media is visual, auditory  or physical, but not in whether it is technological or not. I only am taking this stance because I read novels easily, and yet most of my time is spent reading online. How a person chooses to read, and whether their method of learning is one of the previous aspects, is what truly shapes a person's brain.

Reading Response 4: Dark Parties Spoiler Alert!

Dark Parties is about a futuristic world. Neva is a teenager who lives in this washed out and inbred sphere. She, and others, do not like how the government forces the people to stay in the sphere. There are rumors that the sphere is slowly killing everyone inside. All items, other than perhaps food, are recycled in the sphere. All citizens in the sphere look the same unless they get an identification mark, a tattoo. Neva does whatever she can to oppose the government and discover the truth.

Braydon was just Sanna's boyfriend in the beginning. Then he became a cheater by kissing Neva. He continued to bounce back and forth between the two girls, causing a tension to form. Ironically enough, he turned out to be working for the government. He was the snitch about the dark party, and he was the one to turn in Neva's friends. Braydon worked for the government, but he ended up loving Neva. This is known because the last thing he said to her was, "I love you, Neva. No matter what happens, never doubt that." He put his life in jeopardy by lying to let her escape to the outside in the end! He should be pitied: he loves Neva, is stuck with dating Sanna, and might never see Neva again. He reminds me of Loki, the Norse god of mischief and lies, because he does not mean to hurt anyone, yet started so many lies.This is why I chose to use Loki's symbol. He was just doing his job, until he let her escape to freedom and safety that is.

This book was interesting, but left me wanting to know what happened after Neva escaped. When I found out that Braydon was the traitor I remembered my last book, The Hunt of the Unicorn. That is because a main character, who also happened to be male, betrayed the heroine. This was really ironic to me at the time since I had not meant to pick up another book that had betrayal in the story. I would recommend this book to conspiracy theorists since this dabble quite bit in that aspect.

Reading Response 3: Dark Parties

Dark Parties is about a girl named Neva and how she is resisting the government. The government is not innocent, and she continues to find evidence proving her belief. There is also a love triangle type of thing going on with Sanna, Braydon, and Neva. Braydon is Sanna's boyfriend, but he seems to like Neva. Neva reciprocates,but does not want to hurt Sanna. Sanna is unaware of this love happening between her boyfriend and best friend. The world they live in is severely inbred, so everyone looks alike unless they obtain identity marks. These marks are frowned on by the government.

Neva is strange. She has all this proof of the government getting rid of people, yet she never did anything about it until Sanna brought it up. Her own grandmother was taken away from the government when she was a girl, yet she only thinks to save something to remember her by. She remembers saving the necklace that her grandma gave her by sticking it in her mouth. The government removed all traces that they could find of her as if she never existed. Later on, Neva betrays Sanna when she and Braydon interact. "With one move, his lips are on mine." She resisted but hormones were just too strong for this duo. This is important because that is when Sanna finds out and Neva's life goes from mostly sunshine to ominous clouds and thunder. This is also why the picture is a sun being covered by storm clouds.

This is a heavy conspiracy theorist type of book. It centers around the government wanting an increase in population by reproduction, yet is killing society with a protectosphere. As inbred people, I guess they just can't reproduce as well. If blaming the government for all the problems in the world is something a person enjoys doing, then this is the book for them.

Discrimination

I expected the stories of discrimination from the older people on the face-to-face site, but not for the video about the children. I don't really understand why, but the video shocked me with how the children could think nothing of being mean to one another. I am also surprised that the children didn't take advantage of the fact that the teacher was "lesser" than them on one of the days. The children probably could have asked that they teach the class. I guess the kids weren't as cruel as they could be, but they didn't act the same as they would normally act either. 

Starting and Finishing Quotes

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
This quote is from a book about a girl who lived in poverty in England. This story was so well written that in 2003 a movie was made for it.

"Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out." Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
This quote is from a book about manners and is a satirical novel. The two main characters are female and the setting is a time period where women are less valued than men.

I personally have not read either of these novels, but they are now on my to do list.

Reading Response 2: The Hunt of the Unicorn

Disclaimer Clause: Key twists of this story are expounded upon.

C.C. Humphreys writes a tale of a New York City girl going into another world, the world of Fantastical Beasts. Alice-Elayne finds that the fantasy book about her family history is actually true! While there, Elayne meets Marc, a player; Leo, the king to be; Moonspill, a unicorn; and Amaryllis, the fiancé of Leo. Leo wants Elayne to help him tame Moonspill so that he may kill him. Moonspill wants Elayne to help him get back his wife Heartsease and kill Leo. The weavers, rebels, want the death of the king as well. Marc is called a player due to his career in acting, and he claims to be a weaver. All these people, or beings in the case of Moonspill, want something from Elayne, but all she wants is to go home to her sick father. Elayne weaves herself through deceit and manipulations so as to succeed in what she wants to do.

Now Marc is quite the character in this book. The first time Elayne met him she had thought he was a female, as he was in a costume brandished a knife at her in surprise. From there, he told her of the prophecy surrounding a tapestry that her ancestor had made. He sticks with her throughout the book until the end. The realization of his trickery came about when he said, "No, maid. There is no escape now. There is only... obedience." He said this when he had captured her and Moonspill to bring to Leo. Through the whole book he was truly obedient to the Leo, which means he was never a weaver. This came as a shock since he was always helping Elayne out. The only hint, in hindsight, that he might have been a double agent would have been when Leo had been paying the acting group for their skills. Leo had called out that marc was a weaver, yet paid the group three gold bars. I should have realized that Marc could not have been a weaver if he was allowed to live. This picture represents Marc because he helped Elayne and then betrayed her. He was good and evil to Elayne.

This book focused a lot on Elayne's perspective of the people around her. Each character has their own agenda and the story is heavily influenced by the character's ploys. There are two main sides, yet each side has a kindness and hardness to them. Secrets and information that Elayne was not aware of worked against her, such as Amaryllis and Marc were siblings. The book shows a realism that is not commonly found as most fantasy books make the characters more honest than most people in reality. I liked this book and the subtle impressions made by each character that left me wondering. The flack for reading a unicorn book was worth it.

Morning Mist Memories

I am inspired by many common occurrences. I am inspired by dawn and twilight, grass, and people. The most inspiring sight I remember seeing once was a sunrise where stars were still out and about. At the time, I was inspired to paint or draw the sight before myself. This may not have inspired me to write, but it eventually did. That sight touched my heart and I will always remember it when I want to write a compassionate or emotional scene within my writing.

This isn't exactly what the scene looked like. Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the scene when I had seen it. There was not a river, the sky was a peach or salmon, and the sight was slightly misty from morning dew. This was the closest picture I could find that embodies what I had seen that summer morning.

Of Things Treasured

My life is just beginning

With me born in '97.

Always, I was surrounded

By my adventurous brother,

Or my bookworm sister.

Siblings I admired

And still do to this day:

Were kept close to heart.

School was great:

So many new sights

And sounds to be discovered!

Friends came and went:

Letting me change as

The years went by.

Growing from school

To school.

From a sibling

This passion was learnt,

Texts never lasting long.

From knights to rogues,

And dragons to witches,

Words of fickle fantasies

Brought my world alive.

Words were forgot,

As the stars are

What I sought.

Meanings for thought

Circling my being of

Taurus, Willow, and Ox.

Life is so fleeting,

I crave a meaning,

Otherwise life might

Be for naught.

Reader Response 1: Outpost

Outpost is the sequel to Enclave and is set in a post apocalyptic world. The story focuses on Deuce and how she adjusts to Salvation, the outpost that took her, Fade, Stalker, and Teagan in. Salvation is a very religious type of group that has gone back to the belief that women have to be submissive to the men around them. Deuce challenges that with her very being as she was raised to fight Freaks, the mutants, and to survive. Along with that, Deuce is loved by both Stalker and Fade, yet she only loves one.

Throughout this book, Deuce was unhappy with the way women were expected to act. She seems to use her teacher from Enclave to bolster her confidence and get what needs to be done, done. Wearing dresses, sewing, and studying is not something she enjoys. Deuce doesn't really understand love, yet she has this inherent intuition about what it is. She seperates herself into two parts, her huntress side and her girl side. Eventually one of the boys, Fade or Stalker, gain "personal kissing rights" from her. The "personal kissing rights" is Deuce's way of understanding love and having a boyfriend. She is still very naive, yet she can read body language very well. This helps her when she gets stuck in bad situations.

This trilogy is a unique mixture of a viral mutation, survival of the fittest, and the path of the human psyche. Many zombie based creations have some sort of virus that started it. The Freaks fight with the humans and if you do not get stronger, you die. The Freaks are smart and are getting smarter, they act as if they are humans and make Deuce think on her morality. This series is amazing and I can't wait for the third book to come out in October!