More TV

Recently i started watching Avatar the legend of Korra and i actually liked it. now i just have to remember to watch it on Saturdays.

Analysis of the Class

Being in English 114 for an entire year has been  fascinating and fun.  Our writing topics were fun and interesting.  And i also had the chance to read two book Ender's  Game and Speaker for the Dead.  Two books that would have never picked up to read i really liked them.I also met some new people in the class, i don't say friends because i never really spoke to any of them unless we had to discuss something.  overall the class was fun and i had a good laugh every now and then.

Analysis of Project Web

I have to admit that doing a blog as an assignment was a little strange but i actually found it very interesting and fun.  With this blog i had to write a lot of different things and that was fun.  Not to mention i learned how to make and use a blog.This blog was just quite facinating.

Collector

I like collecting masquerade masks  and i have a lot of them hanging all over my wall.

15 ...

I wish i could do my 15 again  just so i could actually have the video with me and my dad dancing and my only regret at my 15 is having fallen asleep  so early  but i was so tired because i got up very early and i had to get my back yard ready.

My 2nd Obsession

I like to play the Sims social on Facebook allot and the one thing i like to do the most is rearrange my home a lot ...

Project Text (Essay)

Kassandra Corral

Sean Pessin

English 114B

April 22, 2012

Relationships and Lies

Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card are two very interesting books.  Interesting because every page, every chapter leaves you wanting to know what happens next.  The first novel is about Ender and how he is going to save the world from the buggers, an alien race, for a third time.  But in the end Ender becomes a speaker for the dead and he did that by writing a short story as to why it was not necessary to kill the buggers and made himself look like the bad guy in this novel.  The second novel Speaker for the Dead does not revolve around Ender so much but deals with more with the new alien race called the piggies.  It also deals more with Novinha and her kids.  The relationships between adults and children are very interesting and somewhat complex throughout both novels by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game and “Speaker for the Dead.”  In both books only two things come into play lies, and the relationships between adults and children.

In Ender’s Game we have several examples of the relationships between adults and children, such as Ender and Colonel Graff. Their relationship is actually quite interesting because they get off to a bad start and throughout the novel I believe that Ender realizes that Colonel Graff loves him and has a lot of faith in ender. Although Colonel Graff is the one of the many who manipulates him he carries a lot of faith and love for Ender. He is also the only one who allows him to act like the child he is. Graff stays with him throughout the novel up until he gets sent to command school where he is passed off to Mazer Rackham.

Another complicated relationship Ender has is between him and Major Anderson. Major Anderson is second in command at the battle school. He is the one who creates the scenarios in the battle room at the school. Ender views Major Anderson as the enemy, when in reality, Anderson feels for Ender. Anderson questions some of Colonel Graff’s actions towards Ender.

The final adult Ender encounters is Mazer Rackham, a really old guy who in the past defeated the first bugger war. Like Colonel Graff, Mazer loves and respects Ender. Mazer is forced to deceive Ender into thinking he is simply being trained on simulators to prepare for the second bugger war when in reality Ender is not playing a game in the simulator but actually in the middle of the actual war. Mazer Rackham has to explain to Ender that no one but a child could have won the war. Mazer also does not try to make friends with Ender and I believe it’s because he knows that when Ender realizes that it was not just a mere game that Ender would be furious.

In contrast to Ender being manipulated by the adults around him, this is not always the case. Peter and Valentine, two kids, under the pseudonym of Locke and Demosthenes create a blog and manage to govern the universal political system through their control of adults. The children in this book are smaller than adults when it comes to size, but that is really the only difference. The children’s thoughts are just as real just as their emotions. Children need to be taken seriously; they are capable of not only of killing, manipulating, and hating, the foulest features of an adult, but also of producing and aiding.

In “Speaker for the Dead” the first relationship we come across is between Novinha and Pipo. Novinha is daughter of Gusto and Cida who died and Mayor Bosquinha and Pipo took care of her. She wants to become xenobiologist just like her parents, However she has to speak with Pipo first because he needs his approval to take the test. Novinha loves Pipo like a father.

Another interesting relationship is between Ender and Novinha’s kids. First it’s Ender and Miro. Miro somewhat likes him in the beginning, then he doesn’t like him because at Marcao’s speaking he reveals that all of Novinha’s kids are not of Marcao but of Libo, making Miro realize that he is related to Ouanda. Miro realized that he couldn’t really be mad at him because he only told them the truth, a truth that his mother would have had to eventually tell him.

Then we have Ender and Ela. Ela loves him right from the start. There is also Ender and Olhado. Like Ela, Olhado also loves him right from the start; however he becomes upset with him when Ender hurts his mother emotionally. Then Olhado eventually begins to speak to him again.

Another relationship is Ender and Quara. Quara somewhat likes Ender, but she is a very quiet girl. She hasn’t spoken a single word for a while and then when he arrives Ender doesn’t get her to speak but the next day in school she begins to talk and tell everyone in school about him. Nevertheless she likes him in the end since one eventually reads that she is at his place showing of her math skills.

There is also Ender and Quim. Quim is the one who was brainwashed by the bishop to make quim believe that Ender was the devil, so he hates Ender and everything that he represents. In the end he becomes accustomed to ender since he is going to be staying for a long time.

Finally we have Ender and Grego. Grego hates him but when you think about it Grego kind of hates everyone. Grego then does something that no one has ever seen him do before he begins to cry and then eventually falls asleep while hugging Ender. Ender loves all the kids Miro, Ela, Olhado, Quara, Quim, and Grego. He loves that they are all very different from each other.

Finally we see the relationships between adults and children in Novinha and her children. Like any other mother she begins loving her kids as a mother should, however with all the hatred their father has on them, not one of them being his kids. His hatred towards her kids rubbed off on her sometime, I believe it was before Grego was born. In the end with some help form Ender she began to love her kids again. She had more hate towards Miro especially since he looked exactly like his father, Libo, which was her true love but since she did not want him to access some of her files, so she married Marcão.

One final relationship that we have is between not adult to child or child to adult, but from but from adult to alien.  This relationship is between Ender and the hive queen.  The relationship begins with him being a child, at the end of the first book “Ender’s Game,” but it evolves more in the second book “Speaker for the Dead.”  Ender and the Hive Queen have a special connection and since the Hive Queen can’t speak she speaks to him through her mind.  Another interesting relationship that Ender has is with Jane a computer program.  Once Ender placed the ear piece on himself and Jane came to him because she found him interesting and thought that of all the people he would understand her, the most, of whom she was and why she was.

A second thing that comes into play in these two books is lies.  In the first book “Ender’s Game,” we have the constant lying to Ender.  Ender was first lied to when Colonel Graff came and told him that Stilson was in the hospital, when in fact the beating that Ender gave him resulted in Stilson’s death.

Another lie that Ender was told was when he was being trained for the war against the buggers.  He was never told that he was in fact already in war with the buggers, because as far as he was concerned he was simply training on a simulator, which is like a video game.  And when Colonel Graff and Major Anderson were put on trial he found out that the fight that he had with Bonzo in the bathroom also resulted in his death.

In Speaker for the Dead there are constant lies going around such as the fact that Ender is “dead” when in fact he is still alive but better known by his actual name Andrew Wiggin instead of his nick name.  Another lie, that came out was that Novinha’s kids were not Marcao’s but in fact Libo’s.

So as one reads both novels by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead one can find that these science fiction novels are hard to put down and quite interesting.  In “Enders game,” you can see all the complex relationships between adults and children and how Ender lacks authority in the first novel.  In addition to his lack of authority and respect he is constantly being deceived instead of being told the truth.  In Speaker for the Dead you can also see all the complex relationships between adults and children which revolve more around Novinha’s kids and Ender and Novinha and her very own kids. You also find these interesting relationships between Ender and the Hive Queen and Ender and Jane.  In this novel one sees that Ender is constantly deceiving them about his identity as Ender. So when one reads these two novels you will find complex relationships between adults and children as well as lies.

Works Cited

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. New York: Tor Science Fiction, 1994.

Card, Orson Scott. Speaker for the Dead. Tor Science Fiction, 1994

Project Space (Essay Revised)

Kassandra Corral

Sean Pessin

English 114A

16, April 2011

Video Games and a New Experience

For project space I decided to do a variety of things.  My first step was going to an arcade just to get a feel for the atmosphere of the video game life.  It was quite intense it was like watching a fight, but instead of watching a fight between two people it was against man/women v. machine trying to win the game.  As I watched the gamers play I noticed that they were very much focused, but I wondered how is it that they can focus with the yelling of all the other gamers, the smell of the food and the chanting of their friends cheering for them to win.  It was an interesting experience.  

The second step that I decided to take was to watch my cousins play on their Xbox.  It was relatively the same as watching the gamers in the arcade, it was loud, and it smelled (since I was in their room); also they were very much focused.  My cousins on the other hand did not cheer each other on but fought, mostly about how one was doing better than the other.  As they were playing I decided to analyze the space in the game (Call of Duty: Black Ops).  Space in a game is the unbounded three-dimensional expanse in which all matter exists.  In a video game space is used differently in all games.  Space in a video game is used to create different scenarios.  From what I saw them play they were in a small narrowed cave.  In that cave I also saw how there were things that you would usually find in a cave, such as branches, roaches, and rats.

 The third step was going on you tube and finding different video games and analyzing the space in the game.  The first video game that I found was Call of Duty: Black Ops demo.

The space in the video was actually quite interesting because in the first scenario was what I had already scene with my cousins, which was the small narrowed cave.  The second scenario was outside the cave.  Once outside the cave you could see the camp ground in the middle of a forest.  The view is limited so one can only see what one needs to see and nothing more. The gamer does what it has to do and got where it needed to get which was to the helicopter.  Once inside the helicopter the view changed, one could now see the top of the trees, waterfalls, a river, and other camp grounds. Call of Duty: Black Ops takes place during the Cold War, in the 1960s. The story focuses on the CIA-backed clandestine black operations carried out behind enemy lines. These missions take place in various locations around the globe such as the Ural Mountains in central Russia, Cuba, Hong Kong, Laos, and the Arctic Circle.

Mass Effect

I also found Mass Effect 3, which also limited view as space. Mass Effect 3 begins on Earth, with Commander Shepard relieved of duty for the consequences of his/her actions in the Mass Effect 2 as the forces of Earth are overwhelmed by an oncoming Reaper onslaught. Admiral Anderson tasks Shepard with uniting the forces of the galaxy while he coordinates human resistance forces on Earth. Before leaving the system, Shepard stops at a research facility on Mars and saves former squadmate Liara T'Soni from Cerberus troopers. T'Soni has discovered blueprints in the Prothean ruins to a weapon that may have the power to destroy the Reapers. The blueprints are forwarded to Hackett, who dubs the weapon "The Crucible" and begins preparations for its construction.  The Citadel Council is reluctant to provide aid to Earth with Reapers attacking their own systems. To foster goodwill, Shepard is sent on various missions throughout the galaxy, gathering allies for the ongoing war and resources for the Crucible. In addition to opposition from the Reapers, Shepard must also fight the pro-human organization Cerberus, as the organization's leader, the Illusive Man, believes controlling the Reapers is better for humanity than destroying them.

  The following video that I found was portal. Portal is far more different than Call of Duty: Black Ops.  In portal what one has to do is that you have to use a portal to get from one point to another.  Such as in this picture: 

Portal

Using the portal gun one obtains in the game, one has to figure out where one has to place the portal in order to get to the desired location. The game is a series of puzzles that must be solved by creating a portal that the gamer's character uses to create portals between two flat planes. Portal takes place in the Enrichment Center for Aperture Laboratories, which is the fictional research corporation responsible for the creation of the portal gun.  Portal I believe is mostly played on the computer, so one should be sure to have a comfortable chair and snacks nearby.

             The final video that I found was Halo.  In Halo all that I saw from the video was the gamer shoot all the creatures.  Just like in Call of Duty: Black Ops the view was also limited in Halo.  Again the gamer could only see what the programmer wanted the gamer to see. The game opens as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace near a mysterious ring-shaped space station, called "Halo" by the enemy of the game, the Covenant. A Covenant fleet attacks and heavily damages the Pillar of Autumn. Captain Keyes initiates "The Cole Protocol", a procedure designed to prevent the Covenant from learning the location of Earth. While Keyes prepares to land the ship on Halo, the Master Chief and Cortana escape via an escaped pod, which crash lands on the ring. Cortana and the Chief are the only ones who survive the impact of the escape pod crash. Keyes survives the Autumn's crash landing, but is captured by the Covenant. In the second and third levels of the game, the Master Chief and Cortana gather human survivors and rescue Captain Keyes, who is imprisoned aboard the Covenant ship Truth and Reconciliation. Once rescued, Keyes orders the Master Chief to beat the Covenant to Halo's control center and to discover its purpose

 I believe that Halo took place in some kind of old where house and that the player took on the role of the Chief, an enhanced super-soldier.  Halo can be played on the Xbox 360, which you can pretty much play anywhere just as long as you have a television or a projector.

I believe that in almost all games space is limited and the makers of the game designed it that way in order to set limits and boundaries as to how far one can go.  Video games are frequently being limited when it comes to the amount of space one has to move around in.  The video game itself is a world a virtual world but still a world.  One in which you can play in an alternate reality which is one were you can reach the impossible, such as doing things that a human can’t do  such as flying, running at an impossible speed, have supernatural powers, and also stealing and shooting others without getting arrested.  The programmers like ones parents created rules for their video games but luckily in a virtual world there are cheat codes which sadly in reality there is not.

Where one chooses to play is also a very important.  If one chooses to play on a computer one is must have internet access at all time and you are restricted it sitting in a chair.  Although if you’re smart one can find a comfortable chair to sit on and have snacks close at hand in order to avoid getting up as much as possible.  Also one may not be able to yell at the computer, if one is at the library or playing at a Starbucks, where your internet access may not always be available to you.

            One can also play on a console where you are limited to playing at home or at a friend’s house.  When playing on a console one can play in any position such as in bed, sitting down, or simply on a comfortable chair.  In order to play on a console though one must have a television or a projector, if not one cannot play.

Others may also choose to play in an arcade, but in an arcade one is restricted to a time limit, so one must carry a pocket full of quarters.  An arcade is also very noisy.  If you get mad because one lost the game and you yell at the machine then others might think that you are crazy.  Several others may also play on handhelds such as the DS, or the PS3.  With the DS and the PS3 you can play just about anywhere as long as one’s DS or PS3 is charged.  You must also have the proper lighting so one can see the screen.

Another important factor when it comes to playing video game is choosing where to play, and making sure that one is comfortable.  One must choose a designated space where to play and to be completely focused.  When one finds themselves playing in an uncomfortable location it may see that the game is harder than it usually is.

Assassins Creed

The final step that I decided to take was to play a video game myself.  I choose to play Assassin’s Creed, since my sister had a DS and I borrowed the game from my cousin.  Since I played on a handheld I carried with me just about everywhere.  I played the game in many different locations such as in the bus, the car, and in bed.  For me it was very important to have a comfortable location to play which was outside.  Assassin’s Creed was very difficult for me at first to understand since I have never played a video game before.  Assassin’s Creed space was very limited I could only see what I needed to see.  In certain areas I couldn’t go through and most of the game took place on the roof tops.  Since I was an assassin I had many different choices of weapons such as a sword, hidden blade, and a grappling hook and others items.  Not to mention that I could also climb walls and other things that I have yet to unlock.  When I had to interrogate or assassinate people I had to use the stylus and make sure to touch the screen at the right time or I would lose.  It was very difficult for me to get through the game because I kept making many mistakes, which I felt I should not have made.  The game seemed easy but due to my lack of skills I got frustrated with the game many times.  I would simply turn it off and play again later.  I am still very much at the beginning at the game because I kept getting killed or I would make a wrong move and die.  I also had two screens.  The top screen had the game and the bottom screen had options such as being able to look at the weapons that you had and how to use them.  The bottom screen also showed you a map of where you were and where my enemies are.  As I continued playing the game it got more difficult for me to play.

            Desmond Miles, a bartender, is kidnapped by the Abstergo Corporation. There, Desmond is forced to interface with the Animus, a device that is able to replay the genetic memories of the user's ancestors. In Desmond's case, they seek information about his ancestor Altair, an Assassin during the time of the third crusade. Within the Animus, Altair’s memories reveal that he was attempting to stop Robert de Sable from taking an artifact from a temple, but broke all three of the Assassins' Brotherhood's tenets in the process. The Brotherhood leader, Al Mualim, demotes Altair to the rank of Novice, and assigns him the task of assassinating nine people to regain his former status

Playing Assassins Creed was an interesting experience and I also learned that I will never play a video game again.  As was going to an arcade and watching the gamers play and be completely focused as if that was all that they lived for and nothing else.  Also form having watched the video games from you tube I saw how spaced in a video game was used.  Space is used differently in all games, also that the space and the view is very limited