Interactive Gaming 2009

Hello gamers, these are the resources from last weeks sessions. If you have any questions regarding the assignment do not hesitate to email me on: rosie.francis[at]confetti-ict.com

This week you will be completing this assignment in class. See you Thursday!

Wow! What a great day today! We covered much ground:

From Drop Box

The Hounds Gate "Bridge of Sighs"
http://www.nottshistory.org.uk/articles/tts/tts1930/itinerary1930p4.htm

A toughie, this week was a hard week!

This is from last year's class, I thought it might help?-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Jean Grey, what a woman! I chose her because of her sheer strength as a character and yet, she's often quite shadowed by Wolverine, Professor X and Magneto. Let's just set a legend firstly. Our X-Men have X names as well as regular names, rather like a human/X-Men alter-ego let's have a look:


Dr Jean Grey(-Summers) = Phoenix
Scott Summers = Cyclops
James ('Jimmy') Logan = Wolverine
Charles Xavier = Professor X
Ororo Munroe = Storm
Dr Hank McCoy = Beast
Kurt Wagner = Nightcrawler
Remy LeBeau = Gambit
Anna Marie = Rogue
Erik Magnus Lehnsherr = Magneto
Raven Darkhölme = Mystique


So that's just a selection. The names for the human alter-ego are as significant as the X-Men names, and I'm guessing that if I had the chance to name myself with either a human or an X name I'd pick something significant too.


Of course, it's impossible to name something unless you truly know it. Some writers refer to this as allowing the character to speak for itself. So I guess when you character has a voice or learns to speak (just as you did when you were a kid) you'll be ready to name him/her/it.


As an example, until X2, we don't really know tjat Jean is going to become her X-ego Phoenix. Wow. We waited for 2 whole movies until we really knew. That's a long time. Often X-Men characters just are, they don't earn their names. In a strange twist, it's a fact that Rogue didn't even have a back story until some 20 years after her induction into X-Men comics. That's a pretty huge fact when you think that I'm forcing you to create 2 characters in less than 2 weeks.


So back to Jean. She's quite old for an X-Men character and slips into the Wolverine/Cyclops/Storm/Mystique kind of age-range interms of life experience. Not as much as Professor X, Stryker, Senator Kelly and Magneto; but more than Rogue, Archangel, Iceman or Pyro. Mmmm, I'm not sold on Gambit yet - I'll re-post my thoughts on Gambit later...


Jean was pulled out of a terrible home-life as a teenager, and living under Charles Xavier's ward she has become the 'dependable one' hasn't she? Sensible, reliable, realistic, intelligent, intuitive - these are just her human qualities! She is after all a woman first and a mutant second. As she has developed and has become Dr. Grey, her powers of telekinesis and telepathy have grown to almost beyond her control as a human/mutant. Imagine having one foot in a life you can control and another foot in a life you have no control of day to day? Let's have a look:

How does she hold it all together? The key to this is her relationships with Professor X, her mentor and teacher and Scott Summers, her husband and best friend. The relationship between Jean and Scott goes back almost as far as Jean and Xavier. Nice. She's grounded. Therefore could it be a brave statement to make if I tell you that I think the reason that Jean loses it at the end of X2 is because of Wolverine? We all have triggers, things that make us flip, it's a pretty human trait. What's yours? Lol! I could probably tell you...

Well, that's all for Jean Grey for now.

Prep for Monday?

A halcyon day of sun that felt like a half painted image of children having fun. The steam rising from the tarmac created an horizon of vapour and fuzz. Before the North Sea turned the green/brown mix like rotting tea in a mug the little girl was able to play, with her brother until the sun shrouded by a milky cloud skulked behind a passing freight ship like a bowling ball rolling from the pier ahead.
Early evening, same as any other holiday evening consisted of food on the go before her parents took the girl and her brother to a pub on the seafront. As she looked through the 1950s louvered windows she saw the beginning of a tar and smoke fix sticking to the window through the growing condensation. It started to rain. No surprises.
The other children, those out there, must have been dead by the time the rain and wind hit the pier. Like the girl and her brother, they watched the sun go down but didn’t have some food on the go; instead they played. Though the coming storm, tide and current may have took their lives, I believe those children play on.