Plan for the Week

TO DO THIS WEEK:

• Edit a-spec characters database and graphs - find way to visualise data about orientation and genre more clearly
• Respond to thesis feedback
• Add focus group points to Findings section
• Make summative review presentation! - IN PROGRESS
• Write script for summative review presentation - IN PROGRESS
• Write conclusion LOL - IN PROGRESS
• Rewrite abstract

Reading of the Week

In between bouts of thesis-writing insanity, I have been at least attempting to read through Rhonda Wilcox's collection of essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer Why Buffy Matters. Hey, Buffy's a teen show, so it's at least relevant to my thesis in some extremely nebulous way, and also I'm going to be leaving this uni soon and I need to make the most of the library while I can!

Some potentially relevant notes:

• From the Introduction: This Our Magic World: "It is also true that - logically or not - there is a tacit hierarchy amongst fictional art forms. In the past few decades, film studies departments have made great advances in universities, but most professors would acknowledge that film is considered by many to be a less prestigious study than traditional drama and novels. Television would be considered lower still [...] Television studies have usually been made part of communications departments and have generally been given a sociological rather than an aesthetic slant" (p.3) - AND DON'T I KNOW IT LOL. Honestly this is why I like TV studies people tbh. There's a certain humility and je n'ais se quois you gain from knowing your entire field isn't taken seriously. Speaking as an animation undergrad. Also sorry Rhonda about the fact I'm also coming at TV studies from a sociological perspective. Unfortunately for you I like. Objectively should have done a sociology undergrad instead of what I ended up doing. But let's not dwell too long on that.
• The first essay There Will Never be a "Very Special" Buffy: Symbol and Language was very interesting to me in terms of its engagement with the concept of "public service broadcasting" that has been so influential on teen TV, and how that notion was engaged with or rejected on Buffy: "In the comment above ["I have often said, "There will never be a 'Very Special Episode' of Buffy"] - made in 1997, the year the show began - Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, repudiates those television series which aim for redeeming social value by focusing episodes on unmediated presentations of social topics (p.17) such as AIDS or alchoholism: sending Hallmark cards of virtue" (p.18)
• Instead "In Buffy's world, the problems teenagers face become literal monsters" - interesting that even though the writers of Buffy rejected the whole notion of the Very Special Episode, they do still... kind of do that. Just mediated through metaphor. Like it's still tackling the same issues other teen shows tackle it was just the approach that was innovative (p.18)
• Another interesting teen TV point: "Harvey Greenberg, in his psychoanalytic discussion of teens and Spock, suggests that Spock's half-alien body reflects the physical changes adolescents sense taking place in themselves" - obviously Star Trek wasn't a teen show but it's interesting that even there you have this idea that characters or stories in the 'in-between' are inherently relatable or relevant to a teen audience (p.21)

Peer Review Feedback

Did a couple of peer review sessions with other MRes students to get some much-needed feedback on my summative review presentation. Main points:

• SIX MINUTES OVER TIME LOOOOL
• Group themes and navigate by group – can cut down on what I’m saying for each theme
• Theme part needs cutting down
• Bit about influence of media is a bit confusing – add intro bit explaining what I’m talking about
• Could cut down media and society bit?
• Too many words on slides!!
• media and society -> summarize into two points since the quotes are slightly repeating the same idea
• i cannot see the database. maybe dont say you can see lol they might try to watch it
• maybe plant the idea for the "theme of coming out" earlier
• the focus group section is super solid. do not change that.
• all 12 is maybe too many lol, you grouped them in themes which i think might be easier to digest if that makes sense? like do change the title of the slide Value Judgement, Importance of Sex, Difference, Language
• you might want to make that graph bigger/text in the graph bigger (genre graph in the first themes slide)
• u name dropped varys but we dont know who that is sooo
• maybe dedicate a different slide to that graph about aro character distribution
• i think the age range and teen shows thing is a better
• i would leave out the extra themes tbh. but i think that the aspec is not the default is like really interesting!!!
• structure the themes to the three conclusion points??? it just needs reordering tbh

Other Events of the Week

• Working on the summative review presentation! For once I'm not leaving it until the very last minute, so clearly at least some lessons have been learned from this year. The main issue with my formative review was that I didn't include enough context, and it was difficult for people like Louise who hadn't seen my previous presentations to tell what the hell I was talking about. So now I'm trying to find a better balance of including important contextual information from the literature review and such while also leaving room to discuss the results of the thematic analysis and focus groups
• Other than that most of this week has consisted of me shutting myself away in the library (or libraries. I've been hopping between AUB and BU) to get my thesis done. It's actually looking in pretty good shape! Plenty of editing left to do but it's not all in bullet point form anymore!
• Unfortunately I currently once again have about five nukes blowing up in myself. Nukes in question pictured below:
• 

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