Is Pretty Little Liars A Great Show?

After months of gathering information and researching whatever I could find on my hashtag #PrettyLittleLiars, I have found a few interesting things out about it. The major one being that not too many fans are as fond of the show as I thought.

To my surprise, most of the tweets I had gathered from the day of the Big A Reveal were negative comments about the ending of the season. And I completely understand where they are coming from, I was disappointed too. The producers and cast of the show kept building up the suspense of finding out who A really was and the ending was a huge let down. It ended up being a character named Charles, a character who has never been mentioned or seen before. I, along with many other viewers were expecting a repeating, popular character of the show to be the villain.

Of the tweets I had gathered from this night, some were retweets from unhappy users, tweets to the producer telling her she did a horrible job, and a lot asking who Charles was, written with a foul but quite possibly deserving language. In boyd, Golder and Lotan’s article, Tweet, Tweet, Retweet, they say that “Retweeting can simply be seen as the act of copying and rebroadcasting, the practice contributes to a conversational ecology (1)” and I completely agree with that, now seeing how Twitter works. In a few of the tweets I had analyzed that were retweets, I noticed that some of them had added conversation, perhaps to get the original tweeters attention.

Though I had never seen a full conversation develop within my hashtag #PrettyLittleLiars, I do know that I happens often; I can see it looking through my newsfeed.

Overall, yes I was surprised by the reactions of the fans of the show, but at the same time I really wasn’t because they’re reactions were the same as mine.

Typewriter Results

Here is the original paper that had been typed using a typewriter. Check out my response to this assignment here.

Click on the image above and you should be able to read it.

The Reflection to End All Reflections

Congratulations, Kids. You’ve made it to my last post. You okay? No one got alcohol poisoning, right? I know my titles are bad enough to make great drinking games (take a shot every time I try to be cool and fail) but like, be responsible. Stay in school. Don’t say I never gave you any good advice.

Moving on.

So, over the past semester, I’ve explored many different writing spaces. Zen Pen. Werdsmith. WordPress (holla). Google Docs. I mean, they’ve all got their perks and their downfalls. None of them do the thing I most need writing spaces to do, which is yell at me (although Werdsmith does have the option to send you little notifications to remind you to write). Seriously, my ideal writing space would shut down all of my other applications, screech at me every time I stop writing like something out of Harry Potter, and if that doesn’t work, has the option to send someone to my house specifically to smack me in the damn face. Clearly, the issue here is my penchant for procrastination and my tendency to lay down and groan like Tina Belcher until the absolute last possible moment.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what my Professor had in mind when he asked us to write about our ideal writing spaces, though, so I’ll get a little bit more into the specifics.

So, I know that some people don’t like the distractions of having different font options/spacing options/etc, but I’d prefer my program to have the same interface as Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Let me format it how I want, because otherwise I’m going to get very obsessive-compulsive about putting it in the correct form to see if I’m meeting my length requirement, etc. I’m aware some people do better not knowing how much they’re writing, but I like to know, and I like to have everything formatted correctly. However, I also like the simplicity of Zenpen? I know, I know. I’m a dirty hypocrite. So, give me the options of Google Docs–the tool bar, the spacing, etc–but give me nothing but a full screen of black or white behind it and everything very nice and neat. I also want this ideal writing space to have the organizational options of Werdsmith; let me save them in separate chapters if I please, and organize them by different projects.

Super original, right? Something like this probably already exists. But the most important aspect of my ideal writing space that I truly believe everyone would benefit from is having someone on hand to smack you in the face when you get off track. This blog post would’ve been done on time, probably, if I were at risk of getting my glasses broken. Someone should probably just capitalize on this before it’s too late.

#GleeGoodbye

When I started studying #glee, I already had an inkling of what I was getting into; although I was never an active part of the fandom, I have a Twitter and a Tumblr and a pair of eyes and, with those three key elements, it’s very easy to see that Glee held a very powerful pop culture presence for six long years. However, over the past couple of months, I’ve come to realize that these practices aren’t just a bunch of young girls being really into fictional couples (although that’s probably a good eighty two percent of it) but rather evidence that we have to re-evaluate the meaning of fandom now that social media spaces such as Twitter allow new communities to evolve.

Throughout studying this hashtag for the majority of the semester, I’ve come to realize that this is a group of people who pride themselves on being able to express their own opinions. I’ve been looking, specifically, at tweets that are considered a “liveblog” of the episode that was airing when I ran my archive, and whether or not the opinions are positive or negative, fans of Glee have no qualms about opening up and sharing exactly how they feel. Which, really, wouldn’t be possible without social media; it’s kind of socially unacceptable (and really annoying) to continuously express your opinions on an episode verbally when someone else is trying to watch with you, but Twitter? Twitter is a harmless location to express your thoughts and feelings. No one can physically smack you over the head for insulting their favorite character on Twitter. Plus, you can’t fit thousands of other Glee fans in a single room to hear your witty commentary.

I don’t know if this being a participatory culture was ever up for debate, but I learned just how the practices of this fandom make it one. Henry Jenkins (2006) describes a component of participatory culture as one where “members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connections with one another (at least they care what other people think about what they have created).” I’ve learned that the fandom participates via transmedia storytelling, which is the act of using other mediums to add to the television show. Roleplay accounts, fanfiction, art. This fandom is invested enough in the show that they go above and beyond just watching the episodes.

My 11 yr old daughter shared her #glee fan drawings with me that is taking into school for her project. Proud of her pic.twitter.com/xJv0ugYuwx

— shiftingfocus (@shifting_focus_) April 14, 2015

Is it a community? I’ve thrown the term ‘community’ around a lot, I’m sure, in these discussions, but the term is so blurred in relation to social media that it’s difficult for me to really tell. Nancy Baym names five characteristics that she believes could make online groups a community: space, shared practice, shared resources and support, shared identities, and interpersonal relationships. It’s difficult to determine this just by searching the hashtag. I believe that if I delved deeper, further immersed myself in the fandom, did research on other social media spaces, I’d be able to give a more concrete answer. However, Twitter certainly gives this group the necessary space to gather and discuss. This group of people practices live blogging, shipping, roleplaying. It was hard to tell from the tag if there were many shared resources or support, beyond retweeting in what I assume is an act of supporting other’s opinions. The hashtag also didn’t give me much in the way of shared identities. Interpersonal relationships, although not something evident in the sample I archived, is something I did observe. People have absolutely made friends through this show. For as much as I learned, I can’t really draw a conclusion as to whether or not this could be considered a “community.” Even though my own personal study is drawing to a close, that doesn’t mean there isn’t much more that I could explore.

The curtain has closed, but the memories we made together will last a lifetime. Once a Gleek, always a Gleek! #glee pic.twitter.com/Z50fz6nxA6

— GLEE (@GLEEonFOX) March 27, 2015

I learned a lot from studying #glee, as you’ve probably seen throughout my admittedly long and rambling blog posts. The most conclusive thing I’ve been able to draw, however, is that Glee has touched the lives of many people; even though the show ended nearly a month ago, the hashtag is still alive and active, and I believe the fandom will persist for a long while. Like a cockroach. A stubborn cockroach. That won’t die. For better or for worse.

(I’m kidding. It’s cool. Scary, but cool? I don’t know. Catch you later, Folks.)

My Written World

What is my ideal writing environment you ask?

Good question!

This is what I typically look like on a regular day when writing. Except, I normally do most of my writing (and occasionally my best) when its past 10 o’clock at night. I am also a girl, not the guy in this picture. I like to put myself in a comfortable, warm, and soft environment away from people. Me, my bed, and my laptop. We make a wonderful love triangle.

In addition to my location of choice, I also have been known to quietly listen to classical music when composing a magical piece of my brain into words on a page. If you are the proud owner of a pandora internet radio account, I recommend adding the “Classical for Studying” station. If you do not have a pandora radio account, I recommend getting one ASAP! (It’s free)

The third thing I typically add to my writing environment is:

A warm cup of something. Typically I will drink tea or coffee. I don’t know why, but hot drinks tend to get the creative juices flowing rather than ice cold beverages.

Now that I have set up my physical environment for your imagination, let me discuss what kind of writing space or program would be ideal for my needs and writing style.

I picture myself gracefully tapping away at the screen of a large tablet or ipad type of device. Laptops are great but they can be bulky and temperamental. Some tablets are just too small to be typing or drawing on so I would want this one to be bigger. A feature on this tablet would allow me use a stylus to hand-write things if I choose to do so, because with certain inspiration, things sometimes feel like they need to be hand-written instead of typed. With this program, I would be able to use the stylus to click and hold onto words and drag them into a different place, almost like cutting and pasting, but it would be my electronic hand writing that I would be able to edit and move around.

This large tablet would also have the capabilities to wirelessly connect (maybe through bluetooth) to speakers in my room so that my classical music can lightly drift throughout the space inside my four pink bedroom walls.

When it comes to saving my work, I would like the device to automatically save as I type or write. Then, these files could automatically upload onto a cloud or some other type of internet based server where they can be reached from other devices, with the proper login of course.

I would like the program to be similar to GoogleDocs considering that is my favorite writing space that I’ve used all semester. I would like to be able to insert media, pictures, videos, gifs, and links into my writing space.

I wouldn’t really want it to be connected to places like Twitter or Facebook. I find a lot of the time, that easy access to those social media places serves only as a distraction for me and my writing. I don’t picture myself needing to use Twitter to research or study anything in the future.

This writing environment and device would definitely be textually interactive. That’s what I would like its main purpose to be, but it could also be socially interactive if need be. Technology is incredible but I wouldn’t want it to distract me from doing something that I love, writing.

What I Should Have Learned In Studying #PLL

Props to anyone who got the Ice Nine Kills reference in the title of this post. I like to keep it intertextual (check out James Porter in Intertextuality and the Discourse Community for a solid definition of this word).

Today friends, I am here to wrap up this study of #PLL and what I have determined based off of my results.

First and foremost, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,Pretty Little Liars has a huge fan base. There was definitely a lot for me to look through and observe. I found it very fascinating that this show reaches so many different countries and is translated into so many different languages. This made it a bit of a challenge to translate and understand everything! I noticed that if a tweet about #PLL was written in another language, there was less of a chance of it being a retweet.

Secondly, I found that a good majority of the tweets that include this hashtag, are predominantly retweets. Fans are constantly retweeting everything between theories, articles, news, reactions, and pictures. This is how information gets spread so quickly. The producer or actors will tweet a clue or a piece of news and it will get retweeted hundreds or thousands of times in a very short span of time.

We are getting so close to knowing all about Big A, it's getting harder for me to answer your questions w/out giving it away.

— I. Marlene King (@imarleneking) March 27, 2015

the most outta the box episode so far. I dug the script and the execution. As for the big reveal well… We couldn't give everything away

— Troian (@SleepintheGardn) March 25, 2015

A lot of the other tweets are just statements or exclamations, not necessarily an attempt to start a conversation or to communicate with others.

#PLL IS ADDICTING

— Lauren Powell (@lpowww) April 13, 2015

While coding my tweets, there were definitely usernames that popped up time and time again. In the image to the left, we can see that user sarah052794 tweeted 138 times within the span of a week. We can also see that 100% of her tweets were actually retweets. User pllfinale tweeted 173 times, all responses to another user using @reply method.

Something else I looked into was the social media spaces associated with #PLL. This took me to lots and lots of websites. (Check out my blog post about this). Some of them were news sites, others were fan made blogs, and some were gossip pages. I did a lot of digging around on Facebook and Instagram too. Just search “Pretty Little Liars” and I guarantee that you’ll find more than you were looking for.

One thing that I struggle to wrap my head around still, is the idea of Twitter being a source for a community. Does everyone who uses the hashtag #PLL belong to a cluster or group of people? Are PLL fans considered a community through Twitter?

Howard Rheingold in The Virtual Community defines

Virtual communities as: social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.

This makes me rock my head back and forth and go “ehhhhhhh… maybe”. 

I wouldn’t say I have personal relationships with these strangers on Twitter who just so happen to tweet about a common subject. So no, Twitter does not make a virtual community for #PLL lovers, well at least not according to Reingold’s definition.

What does Twitter do for the TV show Pretty Little Liars? Well, a lot actually. The fact that the producer Marlene King does Q&A (Question and Answer) sessions with fans makes people want to get a Twitter account so they can be in on the action. Also, the network abc family hosts live chats with some of the main actors. They ask fans to tweet their questions and responses. Who wouldn’t get a Twitter in an attempt to chat with @Tylerjblackburn?

I'm live tweeting now!! Tweet me using #PLLchat! ❤️ @tylerjblackburn pic.twitter.com/WklrsPfRLc

— Pretty Little Liars (@ABCFpll) March 25, 2015

As if all of these attempts to communicate within the fandom isn’t enough, the network abc family posts up relevant hashtags in the corner while the show is being aired. It’s as if the network and the show are both promoting Twitter as a means of communicating about the show.

  #Ezrasnewfamily

#Ismelldeadpeople

What I’ve learned from researching the Twitter usage in regards to #PLL is that is actually is a very good way to network about the show. Fans retweet important things that help out other fans get bonus insights or clues. My favorite aspect of this “Twitter family” is that I can share my theories and also read other theories. This helps me adjust my opinions and suspicions of characters. When I find something mind-blowing, I will tweet it @ my friends or other well known followers and fans. Without Twitter, I wouldn’t have the information and resources that I have. I definitely wouldn’t be the super fan that I consider myself.

So, thanks Twitter ❤

I’ve Failed my Fellow Hipsters

I think, after four weeks, I’m ready to share my biggest secret with you all.

I am a hipster.

That’s right; my inner aesthetic is floral dresses, Harry Potter glasses, and a Death Cab for Cutie concert. The day my hair dresser told me I would never be able to pull off straight across bangs was the day all of my dreams died and I realized I had to actually apply for college (just kidding: I didn’t accept the reality of it until last year). My glasses may not be actually Harry Potter-esque, but I am currently wearing a floral print dress and in May, I’ll be attending my fourth Death Cab concert, so it’s close enough, I think. But that isn’t the point. No, the point is that the words “I want a typewriter” have, in fact, left my lips, only to be met with “Ashley, stop being a douchebag.”

Haters, I swear.

The point is, when we were told to write our last blog post on a manual typewriter, I was pretty psyched. Unfortunately, due to troubles and time restrictions during the week, I didn’t really have the opportunity to fully explore the medium.

This is destined to be a disaster. #wrts15 pic.twitter.com/3L835XQnOB

— Ashley Vorshak (@ashleyisnoadult) March 11, 2015

Overall, I struggled. I mean, right off the bat I had a “how to use a typewriter” tutorial on my laptop and it still took me a good five minutes to figure out what I was doing. Eventually I figured it out, but the page was still riddled with typos; try as I might to hit each key precisely, it was incredibly easy to make a mistake. I know that I would have had to write two or three drafts before it was presentable. Also, halfway down the page, something must have screwed up with the ribbon because no matter how hard I pressed the keys, it wouldn’t ink the page enough and it was entirely illegible by the end. We were supposed to write our entire posts on the typewriter, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If I had written the entire post as instructed, it would have been shallow and brief, so I gave it up.

That didn’t turn out as well as I hoped it would. #wrts15 pic.twitter.com/L0wZyX53yJ

— Ashley Vorshak (@ashleyisnoadult) March 11, 2015

It was also strange to have the contrast between new and old technology. As I was using the typewriter, I was using my laptop to read the articles. I know that I wouldn’t struggle nearly as much with the typewriter if wasn’t so accustomed to the ease of a computer keyboard.

If I were writing something creative, it might be a medium I would be more inclined to play with. But for an assignment with a due date and limited hours in which I could do it, I found that using the typewriter was mostly an inconvenience. Plus, it really screwed with my need for neatness in my writing spaces.

My aesthetic still includes a typewriter. But now, I’m realizing how little I actually need that typewriter.

A Study of Glee’s Studies

Most television shows aren’t monumental enough to have studies conducted on their behalf (save for the ones that determine whether it’s worth keeping on the air), let alone scholarly ones. And yet Glee has proven to be so much more than just a television show based around overly sexual singing teenagers. It is a show with a passionate fan base and one of the few television programs to openly represent the LBGTQA+ community. For that fact alone, it has proven itself to be a worthy source to study.

There are many articles out there written about Glee’s representation of homosexuality. Some people believe the show has made impressive strides with two of its leading couples being of the same-sex variety while other people believe it puts a hetero-normative spin on homosexuality. It’s difficult to say what the intent is; after all, show creator Ryan Murphy is gay himself, but Glee was airing on Fox Network, which doesn’t have the best reputation for its open mindedness. In the article Teenage queerness: negotiating heteronormativity in the representation of gay teenagers in Glee by author Frederik Dhaenens (2012), he explores Glee’s handling on the subject.

From the abstract:

“By means of a qualitative textual analysis, the article demonstrates thatGleerepresents gay youth as suffering victims or as teens aspiring to heteronormative values. On the other hand,Glee also provides counter-narratives in which gay teens are represented as happy, self-confident, and able to position themselves beyond the boundaries of the heterosexual matrix.” (p. 304)

Dhaenens breaks down different elements of the show’s gay-centric storylines. He notes how the show “joins the range of teen dramas that represent gay identity formation as a staged process from sexual confusion to self-acceptance” (p. 309) and how “the subject is demanded to assume and accept an identity that is fixed and hierarchically inferior to a heterosexual identity” (p. 309). All of the characters on the show who aren’t heterosexual started off ashamed of who they are, and had long journeys to self acceptance. He goes on to discuss the way Glee victimizes its gay characters by making them deal with homophobia. Although he notes the various ways in which Glee’s storylines are heteronormative and therefore shouldn’t be considered ‘progressive’, he also acknowledges the possibility that Glee’s working to expose “the mechanisms of heteronormativity that govern contemporary Western societies.”

Despite the numerous other literature that exists on this same subject, due to the nature of this blog, I’m turning my focus to the Glee fandom. Linda Baughman and Megan Wood (2012) penned an article entitled Glee Fandom and Twitter: Something New, or More of the Same Old Thing? which talks about the fandom using supplementary accounts to roleplay as the Glee characters on Twitter. In other words, they studied fan-formed groups of people tweeting as if they were these fictional characters, filling in between the episodes with scenes that weren’t shown. The authors note that, by doing this, they are participating in “transmedia storytelling” by taking canon events and adding to them in their own way through social media. However, the authors claim it goes deeper than simply roleplaying:

“On another level, these fans become marketing labor, constricted by the nature of their character identities to advertise the same products (Clorox), celebrities (Barbra Streisand), fashions and tastes (The Justin Bieber experience), public opinions, and even the show itself (Rachel and the Regionals episode titled ‘‘Original Song’’; Murphy, 2011) that the media producers and advertisers want marketed. Occupying the characters of the show in this way, transmedia storytelling becomes less of a transgressive audience practice and more of an unintentional, fan-driven reinforcement of the aims of the producers and advertisers” (p. 339).

Because of this, there’s a need for both shows and advertisers to reconsider their strategies. Whereas, in the past, people could only view the television programs and discuss them among fellow fans, now people are able to participate with the storyline in new ways. After investigating the roleplay accounts noted in the study itself, I’ve noticed that a few of them are still in use today, carrying Glee’s narrative on despite the fact that it’s over.

ohhh… In the early days @FinnHWMHS was trying to get people to join New Directions and he made these sing up sheets with like skulls, …

— Mercedes Jones (@MercedesWMHS) March 31, 2015

My final piece of scholarship has nothing to do with Glee, admittedly, but it does focus on Twitter and fandom. Researching Online Fandom by Lucy Bennett (2013) begins with a narrative of how she got into researching, well. Online fandoms. She discusses how fans utilize social media to further their experiences. Specifically, she analyzes tweets made by Lady Gaga fans when she began to engage with them on Twitter.

There are plenty of pieces of literature that can be applied to this subject; both Glee and social media hold a very large presence in today’s Western culture, even if they’re both two very different contexts.

Ideally…

As our blogging assignments come to an end, I look back and think of the pros and cons of each of the four writing spaces I have explored. My last assignment is to take different elements from those sites and create my ideal writing space; the features, the layout, and any add-ins to make the site easy and enjoyable to use. Lets start with the first writing space we were assigned, the ZenPen. This was by far one of my favorite writing space we had used. I liked the layout of the site; a small task bar that won’t distract you and I really liked the option for fullscreen mode, blocking out all things on a computer that cause the brain to wander. Those two elements would definitely be a part of my writing space if I were to create one.

Though I did not like Google Docs, mainly for the layout of the text and images (its not very blog friendly), I did like that it had the options for adding links, images, changing the font and other important features a task bar should have. I am iffy about the sharing and multiple user feature that Google Docs has.

 

It can be very useful for documents that need multiple contributors, but if you are trying to type something and somebody else tries to work on that section of the document as well, it is a pain. I also like that it automatically saves your work as you type, and you can share that document with others and they can view or make changes to it as well. In my ideal work space, I would also include easy access to adding links and media and have the site automatically save any work done.

From the response I did on the notebook on my cell phone and the response on the typewriter, I would not have any elements from either of those on my ideal work space. The notepad on the phone was way too complicated to compile a blog post; there were too many spelling errors, no room for media or links, and you had to retype it onto WordPress when you were done. The typewriter as well. I found it extremely difficult to type on both devices and neither are user friendly. I enjoy adding links, pictures, videos, and switching up the layout of my blog posts, so the elements from the four that we explored that I chose to incorporate into my word space would work the best in accomplishing the most creative blog. I would also include easy access to adding Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles because I think that they are the most important way that one can get their ideas and blogs to others.

The Good Ole Typewriter

Last week our assignment was to look up some scholarly articles that have to do with our hashtag. Of course, #PrettyLittleLiars is anything but scholarly, but I ended up finding some pretty interesting articles.

Our task was to compile our blog posts using typewriters that our professor brought in for us. Each one of them had a special name, relating to a specific topic. My typewriters name was Floyd Pepper. When I first chose it, I had no idea what that meant. A classmate of mine brought it to our attention that the theme was the Muppets, something that I have heard about but knew nothing of the characters or concept.

So I was really excited to use a typewriter; I had never been in the presence of one before. Thank god two of my classmates were working on them as well because when I sat down in front of it I had no clue what to do.

My thoughts on the type writer are as follows: interesting but very time consuming, painful and annoying. It is crazy to think about how easy it is for us (those computer savvy) to type on a keyboard, but when it comes to a typewriter it is a whole different story. The keys are in different spots, you have to push down extremely hard to get the print to show up on the paper, and the keyboard is on an angle, so your fingers cramp as you type. It was hard for me to adjust to pushing the keys hard enough to get the letters to show up. I had to go back on several of the letters and go over them. My problem when I pushed hard on the keys, they would either get stuck in the down position, or my fingers would get stuck in between the keys on the keyboard. It happened multiple times and it is pretty painful. I should have used a typewriting for dummies website, maybe I would have learned something.

I thought the best part of the typewriting was having to reset the paper every time it got to the end. I would hear a ding, then I would have to slide it back to the left, move the paper up, and continue writing again. Because I wasn’t aware of how the type writer worked before using one, I did everything the hard way. Instead of pushing the paper over and turning the dial, I found out later that I could have easily pushed the lever to the left of the typewriter and preset the line spacing before hand. Oh the joys of a pre-technology world.

If I had the choice between using a typewriter or a computer for the rest of my life, I would hands down choose a computer. I am so accustomed to the way it works and feels, after using one for so many years, that it just comes naturally to me; I don’t have to look at the keyboard. I guess if a typewriter was my only option, like it was back in the day, I would probably become accustomed to that as well. Overall, I enjoyed the assignment our teacher has given us, even if it was a little tedious.