The Souls-like of Dialect

ARG AP3 

D.B 2022

INTRODUCTION

"This project was like the Dark Souls of Dialect!" If that statement confused you, then you've got a jolly amount of learning to do today. Welcome to my third Argument action project, in which throughout the unit we've explored the concept of Hegelian dialect with examples throughout history that we examined. Primarily we looked at the civil rights movement and the type of dialect we could assemble from the situations presented. Hegelian dialect is interesting in that it isn't exactly consistent or black and white like a math formula, where the idea of cause --> effect is never really that straightforward. Which was perfect when looking at the complicated situations we analyzed in a film called "13th", a 2016 film that documents the history of slavery, the civil rights movement, the prison industrial complex, and the abuse placed on the black community.

We also met with a UIC professor at the Latino center (at least I believe that's what it was called) on campus after evaluating research that he had done on the Chicago gang database and an anti-protester piece of technology called Oracle, who gave us extra insight for our questions on his research, along with exploring (in-depth) about the history of protest, protesters, and policing in Chicago.

Ultimately, we were challenged with recognizing our own piece of dialect from the world around us. Sadly, this was done under a small time-frame due to us only having about less two days to prepare and finish this action project, so our dialect was heavily-encouraged not to be too complex in its process.

Below you'll find that I've decided to spend my time analyzing the dialect of a scenario produced from a series a games by the same game company known as FromSoftware. I'll be explaining unfamiliar vocabulary and my passion for the subject below as well, so you have some context for what you're going to be reading. Enjoy. 

CONFESSING MY LOVE

 FromSoftware is a company renowned in gaming history as a producer of consistently challenging games that previous games had never explored the idea of. The most notable difference in these types of games is that there is no "difficulty options" you can choose. Usually a game allows you to pick between easy, medium, or hard. This is not an option for their games, you simply play through it on the difficulty they have set for all players and that the game is designed around. This has spawned a common term used to refer to difficult video games outside of FromSoftware as "Souls-likes," which comes from their previously most famous title: "Dark Souls." It has had such an effect on the development side for games that it's become a type of genre for games to be inspired from, such as Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, or Hades, all of which carry core mechanics from FromSoftware's games into theirs.

The games produced by FromSoftware has had an incredible impact on my life for a variety of reasons. They not only had originally inspired me to pursue my passion of game design, but have taught me that the deaths players experience in-game should not be treated as failure, rather an opportunity to learn from mistakes. 

I'm an incredibly stubborn person and still remain to be to this day, but these games have forced me to accept what I once associated as failure into that learning opportunity. The opportunity to figure out what I took away from that fight, what I could learn from it, what I should look out for, and encouraging me to keep going when I visibly see my progress from my previous attempt. The only time you lose in these games is when you give up on yourself.

In this slideshow, I've conducted a dialect around the idea of movement and speed in these video game titles from the same company, and how their most recent game "Elden Ring" (2022) is a synthesis created by previous lessons learned from their experimentation. 

I will also include a vocabulary list below the slideshow for any words unfamiliar to those that do not play video games, or these types of games.

EXOTIC VOCAB

Gimmick: A type of trick in video games that's either a joke in terms of either comedic or design value. 

Wyvern: A dragon, except now it has spikes on its tail.

Elden Ring: A 2022 game title produced by FromSoftware.

Bloodborne: A 2016 game title produced by FromSoftware.

Dark Souls: A trilogy of games produced by FromSoftware.

CONCLUSION

I have an incredible sense of enjoyment whenever it comes to working on something I'm passionate about, as I believe most people are. It made making this project a lot easier, yet still exciting to work on as I wasn't exactly analyzing all the 5 (Dark Souls 1 - 3, Bloodborne, Elden Ring) games and creating a dialect that summarized how we got from all those games to this one, as that's just an incredibly long line of history that would take me much longer to analyze. Nonetheless I originally had about a books-worth of text for this dialect that I wished I could've used, as there's just a lot of interesting things about not only the games itself, but the design process of it all. Lastly, I really enjoyed the Hegelian dialect as I feel the notes I've taken on it can compliment and be utilized a lot in life. Primarily, my own written conclusion regarding the theory of Hegelian dialect is:

"Don't be original, create a Frankenstein's monster of perfection."

This came from the ideas that I wrote down regarding his theory, which was to learn from ideas you dislike, take what worked from the past, and progress is indeed messy.

It kind of felt like the idea of this dialect was to stitch things together into one finale. The conclusion I noted down doesn't apply to all situations of the usage of this dialect (because once again it's not a black and white cause and effect situation), but rather just a way I valued on how I should approach design and strategy.

Hopefully, you'll see and share the same value I've placed in it within you, along with maybe convincing you to check out some of these games I've talked about. Thank you for reading.

 TRIDENTE

SPANISH AP1 2022 DB

INTRODUCTION

I was tasked with creating a comic in Spanish that utilizes the interaction between three individuals to convey the concepts direct and indirect pronouns, reflexive, present tense, infinitive and subjunctives verbs. Overall a lot of verbs, so you're going to be seeing a lot of actions being done in this comic. Enjoy.

(If you're having trouble viewing or reading the image, download it and view it on your computer as an image instead. The stretching feature of Blogger has worsened the quality of the comic.)

Conclusion

The website we used was really cute. I enjoyed a lot of the character visuals, primarily the design of the hand which wasn't actually a "character", but was found in the masks part of the section. I just thought it looked cool enough to have its own personality. All credit for the characters goes to Bill Zimmerman and his wonderful website, it was beautifully simple to use.

 GET AHEAD

D.B LST U3 2022

Introduction

Your clocks, watches, and phones? Irrelevant. Get Ahead(TM), and get started on a ground-breaking time telling device, conducted with permission from LST U3, who has funded FORGENSEN INDUSTRIES studies on the subject, allowing us to research the significance of the time in all sorts of forms, and deciding which works best for us in these times. In our funded research, we learned about the functions of sundials, longitude and latitude of Earth, the study of arc angles and lengths utilizing the sun, and we were even granted an audience with an astrologer that had a delightful amount of information on space and time. Then we were tasked with designing our own functional time-telling device.  

I say time-telling device instead of clock, since in some cases it's not exactly our traditional idea on what we define as a time-telling device. In this case scenario, FORGENSEN INDUSTRIES has developed a product that creates the illusion of no traditional clock at first glance. Below you'll find a masterpiece (hypothetical) product composed with the funding from LST U3 and FORGENSEN INDUSTRIES genius intellect combined, I present to you: 

AHEAD (TM)

TRANSCRIPT:

I’M BORG FORGENSEN, OWNER OF FORGENSEN INDUSTRIES, HERE WITH A INNOVATIVE NEW PRODUCT DESIGNED FORR YEEEEEWWWW

HAVE YEEWWWW EVER WANTED A BRAAND NEW CLOCK THAT LETS YOU GET AHEAD OF YOUR FRIENDS IN THA HOOOOT HOT HOT TOPIC OF HOW YYEEEEEEWWWW MEASURE YOUR TIME?

WELL DO I HAVE THE SOLUTION FOR YEEEEEEEEEEEEW

FORGENSEN INDUSTRIES PRESENTS:

AHEAD!

NOT A HEAD! NO, WELL, IT IS A HEAD, BUT IT’S ALSO AHEAD! AHEAD OF TIME! AHEAD OF YOUR FRIEND’S ABILITIES TO EVEN COMPREHEND YOUR TASTE IN TIME MEASURING DEVICES.

AHEAD ALLOWS YEEEWWW TO GROW A BETTER SENSE A TIME, AND ALSO A LUSCIOUS SET OF COLORFUL HAIR!

NOW YEWWW MAY BE WONDERING WHAT THE RELEVANCY OF COLORS HAVE TAH DO WITH THIS PRODUCT.

THAT’S HOW WE MEASURE YER TIME YA GOOF!

THE MOMENT YA PLUG THIS BABY IN IT STARTS ON AN ALL-NATURALLY ARTIFICIAL HAIR GROWTH PLAN!(We advise you to plug this device in at the start of the month to avoid any complications in terms of measurement of time)

NOW INSTEAD OF HAVIN’ TAH MEASURE YER MONTHLY PLANS BY BORING OL’ DATES AND NUMBERS, JUST LOOK AT THA PRETTY COLORS!

WE TOOK THE IDEA OF A SILLY CANDLE CLOCK AND MADE IT BETTER! CANDLE CLOCKS ONLY LAST SO LONG, BUT YEW KNOW WHAT LASTS LONGER? A CANDLE CLOCK IN REVERSE! EXCEPT WITHOUT THE CANDLE! NOW.. NOW IT’S A HEAD! I MEAN AHEAD. OUR PRODUCT.

NOW YEWWW MAY BE THINKIN’, WHO’S THIS EVEN FOR? WHY WOULD I BUY AHEAD?

MAYBE YEEEWWW NEED A LITTLE POOSH FOR YER DEADLINES!! MAYBE A SILLY NUMBER AND DATE ON A CALENDAR AIN’T ENOUGH FOR YEEEWWW! MAYBE YEWW NEED A PRIMAL SENSE OF PANIC! SET YER PROJECTS AT THE END OF BLUE INSTEAD OF THE 31ST!

SO WHEN YEWW SEE THE BLEEEUWWW, IT CREATES THAT PRIMAL FEAR IN YEEEWW!

OR MAYBE YEWW JUST DON’T LIKE KEEPIN’ TRACK OF DAYS AND WANT A FUN INDICATOR FOR ALL YER TIMEEE KEEPIN NEEEDS!

IT’S ALL FER YEEEEEWWWWWWW!

AND REMEMBER!

CAN’T GET AHEAD™ WITHOUT A HEAD!

FORGENSEN LEGAL OBLIGATION

Due to legal reasons, we are obligated to inform you on the mathematical process and rough sketches of our product. Below, you (FORGENSEN CUSTOMER#001) will find our required documentation on the creation of AHEAD(TM).

Anatomy of Ahead, DB 2022

Design of Ahead and Spectrum, DB 2022

Measurements of Ahead, DB 2022

Originally, the idea was simply to create a device that only measured time by the growth of hair, with no visual approaches that made it more reliable than simply having an artificial head that could grow hair. So then comes the idea of utilizing colors to display passing of time. This would be done by breaking it down into 12 different color hues, representing the 12 months of the year. Then the idea of how this hair would “grow” came from the simple mechanic of a favorite Mexican candy of mine that uses a manual piston to push out candy. Combine that with a code that adjusts the piston to push the hair strands through the shell of the head by 4/10th of an inch every 7 days and you’ve got a pretty neat time telling device that’s unique in its time telling aspect.

The device itself has its ancestors. It’s been compared to a candle clock, a time telling device that uses a candle’s wax melting as a way of measuring time more visually with time stamps for the melting points. The significant improvement from that design model, is that this one (mentioned before) has a reverse purpose than the candle clock. Ahead(TM) is designed to measure the long passing period of time, while a candle clock simply only serves the function of short periods of time.

As for traditional clocks, the model of Ahead(TM) is designed to measure time more visually than logistically to the eye. There are many models that share the same principle of displaying a passing of time visually, such as the candle clock or a sand timer. But there's flaws to these designs, as a sand timer or a candle clock aren't able to measure a long period of time without being structured to a massive scale, while simply displaying a visual representation of time through hair growth with colors creates a system that accomplishes both long and short periods of time measured.

If you’re the type of person that needs an interesting piece of decoration to talk about in your household, struggles to get deadlines due, or somebody that prefers to think of time more visually than numerically, then this is the product for you.

When you’ve got something that lets you get Ahead™ of yourself, you won’t be able to stop thinking about that personal deadline of yours in the form of colors, rather than days on a digital calendar presumably. Let’s say that you wanna get something done by the end of RED, and it's halfway through BLUE. Maybe you’ve forgotten, or you’re so caught up with life that you need a friendly reminder that lets you get Ahead™ of the deadline when you start seeing that RED peak through.

 
Maybe you wanna be a little different than other folk around on marking special dates in your life, and create an interesting piece of conversation on the idea of time through this piece of art. Maybe you and your family went to a really memorable baseball game halfway through GREEN. Now you can give it a funny name like something reminiscent of a particularly horrible punk rock band Green Day.






Pelon Pelo Rico, by Unknown (picture from amazon)

Not only does getting Ahead™ let you have a reliable new time-telling device in your home, an appealing piece of art, but it absolutely also allows for creative freedom in ways that can be applied in hilarious and innovative ways, something that emphasizes with the colorful artists of the world that are used to incorporating their own ideas into a structure that allows for it.

As for the mathematics, I simply decided to look up the average circumference of a human head, used that to "reverse engineer" my way to find the radius and diameter, then looking up the average measurement for the height of a human head. The calculations go as follows:

Volume: 354.9 in.

Circumference: 21.75 in.

Radius: 3.45 in.

Diameter: 6.9 in.

For the specific units of measurement, I simply prefer using inches over any other unit of measurement for these kind of things since I view them as my "comfort" unit. Looking at the equations written down on the head measurements, we can see a utilization of the pi symbol in order to find our necessary measurements. Not only that, but the actual shape of the head shares a circular shape, which was thoroughly explored in LST U3's focus on time, since one of the concepts of mathematics we looked into was arc angles and arc lengths, which can be branched into from the measurements pulled from the volume of the head, if the need for finding those specifics happened to occur.

CONCLUSION

This unit, in comparison to the other two, felt a lot like a "blink and you'll miss it" kind of class. There's information you will need to know from the start that carries heavily into how we do mathematics in this class. If you forget what the longitude of GMT is, miss the exact degrees the sun changes on the Earth by the hour, or can't remember the m/s of gravity on Earth, the mathematics become gibberish. Luckily, there's the internet there to allow you a quick recovery from these vital pieces of information. But the moment you don't have these down mentally, it feels impossible to participate on assignments. Often, even the explanations on things I was confused about continued to confuse me more. 

Not to say this was an impossible unit, because I eventually ended up catching myself on the details I needed. Nothing frustrates me more than not understanding the purpose to why we do something, why we put in these formulas to find an answer. The positive of these past three units, and especially this one, is that everything can make sense in this aspect of what we're doing and why we're doing it. It's started a little bit of a new-found love in the exploration of space and time for me. This is due to the fact that it rewards this curiosity, any question you have has already been pondered by someone else just as curious as you, and there's nothing more satisfying than finding the answer to a curiosity-fueled question.

Except dark matter. Still unsatisfied by that.

 I TURNED THIS IN LATE

D.B AP2 2022

Introduction

You read the title right the first time, I promise. I turned this in late for a class called "A Nation's Argument," in which the unit for this action project covered the idea of contradiction, amendments, and rights. What rights do we have as human beings? What rights do we have in accordance to the government? We dived into post-civil war's antics on the subject, exploring how the amendments that came post-civil war (primarily the 13th amendment) were viewed, approached, and ultimately abused up to current times, which was further dived into thanks to a lecture by David Blight, and a look into how the system is run on a more local level thanks to Andre Vasquez, an alderman of Chicago. So when we look at the rule of law, a question came up. What is something we'd like to see changed in our own school? What rule would we like to amend? 

Below, I've structured an argument targeting the contradiction of a segment from GCE's social contract and explain how I would like to see it re-designed to be more fair and removed of its identified contradiction. As you may have guessed, I am going to be on the subject of the late work penalty. Without further ado, enjoy (and consider if you're staff) my argument. 

GETTING MAD

“If a student has not submitted their work on time, a 15% penalty will be applied to their grade for the assignment. Work submitted more than 72 hours after the assigned time will only be accepted at the instructor’s discretion and may be subject to further grade penalties.”

GCE's severity of this punishment is ridiculous. When it comes to action projects, missing the due date even by a insignificant amount leads to a whole letter grade being dropped immediately after the due date has been passed. A teacher could be generous and overlook the penalty if the time does not seem significant enough for the student to receive a punishment. This is not the case for this school. The moment that period of time has passed, a 15% penalty is applied to the student’s assignment which from my experience leaves no room for “bargaining” to have the teacher yield the right to apply the 15% penalty. 

Now, let's break this rule into a syllogism in order to identify the contradiction a little easier. This syllogism is taken and rearranged from the words of the rule itself to make this argument.

P1 - Work should be submitted by students in a timely manner in order to keep it relevant to the class.

P2 - Students that are struggling with work should request extensions from their teacher.

P3 - Students that do not submit work on time do not deserve full credit in comparison to those that have done it on time.

C - Therefore having a 15% penalty on late work should encourage students to turn in work in a timely manner and reach out to their teachers to avoid the punishment of late work.

Seems perfectly fine on paper, but not in action. This rule should not immediately apply to action projects. Addressing the primary concern, the 15% penalty on an action project is incredibly costly on a student’s final grade for the given class, as the highest possible score is always and only going to be 85 out of 100. This is if students actually make an action project worth 100 out of 100 in the first place, which in many case scenarios with a lot of teachers, is highly unlikely since there’s always something that a student is susceptible to missing or not meeting the teacher’s expectations.

This drops your grade even further for the project. A project worth 90 points out of 100 (which is what often students reasonably meet with ease) becomes 75 out of 100, dropping not only 1 letter grade, but two. A project that would be worth 85, is now 70 out of 100. One point away from being a failing action project for the student, despite making a worthwhile effort.

“Students should be comfortable emailing teachers for extensions, so a 15% penalty should never be a problem as long as you’re conveying this struggle straightforwardly.” 

Does this account for the student view on the subject of extension requests, or only the teacher/staff’s view on the subject of extension requests? Very often with my experiences as part of the student body, it has shown that the general impression of requesting an extension comes with the need of an excuse, otherwise it’s not an eligible request from the student to the teacher.

Without a given excuse, it feels impossible to negotiate this request with the teacher in the eyes of a student. This is further encouraged when the GCE Social Contract states: “In cases of student health or family emergency, the student is responsible to reschedule the assessment for the earliest reasonable opportunity.”

This penalty not only ignores the general take on requesting extensions from teachers by students, but going into the specifics of certain mindsets of students and teachers, it becomes a lot more complicated than just “request an extension, it’s so easy!” Sometimes students just use their time poorly. There’s nothing you can do about that. it’s inevitably always going to (and has) happen(end) with many students. We have people we’d like to spend time with outside of school, and sometimes those preferences don’t line up with the school’s deadlines. Rather than having to think up a sob story to tell our teachers why we can’t finish our work on time minutes before the deadline, it shouldn’t feel like life or death for your grade when you’ve misused your time outside of school.

In my experience, particularly with one of the teachers here, she created an interesting usage of the 72 hour period where each passing day after the due date of said homework/project increases the penalty on the assignment by 5%. You start on the first day with a 5%, second with 10%, and the third with 15%. After which is entirely left up to the teacher on whether or not you get points, since the 72 hour period is up. This highly encourages students to get things done sooner rather than later, as it currently stands its contradiction comes from the work ethic of GCE. 

GCE teachers value relevancy of material in class. Homework turned in sooner is more relevant than that which is encouraged to be turned in later. Which is exactly what the current rule discourages. That 15% penalty applies no matter what day you turn it in, as long as it is in that three day period. Wouldn't it be better to create an initiative in a student to turn it in sooner rather than later? That's where my redesign of this rule comes into play. Below is my composed syllogism:

P1: Work should be submitted by students in a 72 hour period after the due date in order to keep it relevant to the class.

P2: A penalty of 5% should be imposed on late work in order to dissuade students from turning in work late, but not discouraged entirely.

C: Therefore late work should have a penalty that rewards timeliness of said work, and punishes lack thereof by increasing said penalty by 5% per day passed to discourage further lateness of work.

Placing this argument into the form of an analogy, it's like when you're ordering food from a restaurant and they're running a little late. You'd rather have your meal sooner than later. You don't tell the waiter you're just not gonna give them a tip for the inconvenience, because now they have a reason not to bring your food sooner than later.

This social contract rule is not only unjust in its practice and contradictory of itself, but it violates my right to privacy. Looking at the constitution, I quote:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

As stated before, I shouldn't have to feel inclined to explain my life situation to a teacher every time I want an extension to avoid the late work penalty, yet it feels like this invasion of my privacy is necessary in order to achieve this. There hasn't been many case scenarios where I've simply just asked for an extension on my work without needing a reason for it, despite teachers previously attempting to persuade me into thinking that's so, it has not been that utopia so far.

In exploring the idea of true citizenship, I believe that this new rule would embrace and encourage the work ethics of not only the school, but the nation. Late is always better than never.

Finishing this off with looking into what another student of GCE has to say. After interviewing other students, one quote best advocated for my argument:

"There's been, like, many times where I feel I wasn't really rewarded for the work that I actually put in. And it upset me. Like just that small amount of time cost me something I could've been, I guess proud of."

- KH

Backed by supporters, this amendment is officially signed by:

DB, AG, CH, KH, and TEN.

SOURCES:

- SH (TEACHER OF GCE)

- STUDENT EXPERIENCE

- MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

"BETTER LATE THAN NEVER" ANALOGY
PICTURE BY ROK STRITOF/EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES