Blog #5

Watching the documentary Growing Up Online was rather like watching a review of the last twoe decades. I was born in 1990, and having grown up at the start of the Digital Era I recall many of the concerns and issues that were brought up in this documentary.

I believe that the documentary covered most of the major issues of the internet age from a fairly well balanced point of view, covering issues such as internet privacy vs. children’s safety, online personas, cyber dating, and cyber bullying.

However, there were several points that I think could have been better done. One of my biggest concerns is that they spent far too little time discussing the issue of using the internet to cheat at school, and went for a far too neutral approach. Essentially, they interviewed a teacher who uses traditional methods and one who employs the internet heavily in his classes and left it for the reviewer to decide. The full ramifications of either side is left ambiguous, and it’s even implied that there is some great debate now about the nature of cheating, about whether it is even possible to cheat when using the internet. Certainly the internet is extremely useful as a research tool, but there is an enormous difference between reading Romeo and Juliet and reading a synopsis on Spark Notes. And the boy who brags about essentially not doing his school work is met with utter neutrality.

I was also a little skeptical that the documentary portrayed kids recreating new identities on the internet as a wholly positive thing. While the girl they focused on in the documentary became an amateur model and a minor internet celebrity, many things could have gone wrong, like attracting cyber stalkers. And while cyber stalkers were brought up, the documentary seemed to minimize the threat they can pose, brushing the danger off by citing a study that said most children have the sense to stay away from sexual solicitations. This is not only careless, but dangerous as well. Cyber stalkers can be just as dangerous as real life stalkers, and glossing something like this is terribly negligent.

I was also rather irritated by a lot of the parents, especially in discussing matters of privacy. They showed that many parents are concerned about the trouble their children can get into on the internet, and yet were willing to let their kids spend six hours or more on the computer with no supervision. Attempts to monitor the children on the documentary were half-hearted and often laughable (such as using a parental monitoring system that can be subverted just by changing windows) and many of them seemed scared of being seen as a bad parent for not respecting their child’s privacy. While I would never say that the dangers of the internet are not real, I would say that some of those dangers could be minimized if parents would show some spine. The threat of banning the kids from the internet for misbehavior or loitering on dangerous sites was never even mentioned.

However, I did feel that they covered the issues of cyber-bullying adequately, and that they did a good job of presenting the dangers that can come of it. It is difficult to escape a determined bully while online when so much of our lives anymore are centered around the internet.

I’d guess that the documentary is about five or six years old, judging by its reference to MySpacem as the other major social network rather than Twitter. However, the issues discussed within are still quite relevant even now. The internet is not a fad that will go away after a while, and it is essential that American society learns to adapt to this new Digital Age.

We live in an era of constant information constantly vying for our attention. Teachers need to know how to utilize the internet as a research and teaching tool, and being able to identify work plagiarized off the internet. Parents need to set limits for their children, and know how to keep their children safe while surfing the web. Universities and employers will continue to use social networks to monitor prospective applicants. Even if its performance was often lackluster, the documentary’s message is still very applicable: We need to adapt.

Videos

– Emma’s Story- Cyberbullied by former best friend
– Watch out cyber-bullies: Kids have new tools to fight back
– Cyberbullying Prevention Tips for Kids
– Parenting in the Internet Age
–

Other Sources

– Keeping Your Child Safe on the Internet

Blog #4- Publication: Traditional vs Self

In the Digital Age, the ability to complete almost any task with the push of a button has revolutionized nearly every industry, and none more so than the publishing industry. Gone are the days when an author spends half a year waiting till he’s even out of the slush pile. Now aspiring authors can publish their own works, free of the tyranny of evil publishing conglomerates to gobble up our profits, and become an over-night millionaire selling e-books on Amazon. The day of the lone author-publisher has come at last, the print house’s death knell has been rung, glory hallelujah, amen. Or rather, this is the myth that the advent of online publication has created.

In truth, traditional publishers are no more a bad guy to authors than self-publication is a short cut to becoming a successful author. Like most things in life, there are advantages and disadvantages to both options.

Self Publication

Pros

• Control- Perhaps the most appealing advantage self-publication holds for authors is the increased control that it gives the author. With traditional publishing, editors often will try to change aspects of your work. The publishers make decisions about illustrations and design, who gets the rights for film or television rights. The author can certainly make recommendations, but it’s the publisher who gets the final say. Not so for the self-published writer. All control belongs to the writer, who is free to fulfill his full artistic vision.
• Time- Traditional publishers always have a back-log of submissions, and it can take months for a writer’s work to be even up for consideration of publication. The self-publisher can crank out hundreds of copies of their work in just a few months, or in a day if they are publishing online.
• Money- Even famous authors don’t see more than a portion of the profits their books make with the traditional route. For the self-published author, one hundred percent of the profits goes to the author.

Cons

• Money- Every wondered why traditional publishers take such a big percentage of sales? It’s not greed. Even with modern technology, publication is an expensive endeavor, and the publisher takes on all of the financial risk. When you self-publish, it’s the author who takes on that risk. In the United States, self-publishing a first novel can cost as much as $1500, covering design costs, ISBN purchasing, business licensing, marketing and numerous other costs.
• Marketing- After spending that $1500 getting your book out, now you have to earn that back, and that means letting people know about your book. While a large publisher won’t go on a huge advertising campaign for any but the most prolific authors, they have more resources at their disposal for getting the word out. A self-publisher has to rely on word of mouth and web presence for sales, and foot the bill for ad space, trade reviews, and signing tours.

Traditional Publication

Pros

• Experience- You know all those pesky editors telling you what to cut out of your book? Telling you need to write the scene differently, or pointing out errors in grammar and punctuation? It’s not the Man trying to stifle your creativity, it’s because the editors have years of experience in the book business and they want to make your book the best it can be, because it makes money for both of you. What is lost in control is made up for with the collaboration of many professionals who know how to make your work look the best it can.
• Distribution- Most physical book retailers (what’s known as brick and mortar stores) won’t sell self-published works due to the reputation of low-quality that self-publication tends to hold. With a traditional publisher, your book can be sold in many locations all at once, and with far better resources to advertise. And as of 2012, print books still hold 80% of the market. Even online, traditional publishers have more resources to advertise your book, providing a much larger potential audience.
• Money- Even with the heavy percentage publishers take, the average self-published author doesn’t actually make that much more money than one that takes the traditional route. Initial publication costs are going to eat up a lot of your profit for publishing physically. However, traditional publishing allows for more sales over a shorter amount of time, with the addition of trickle-in later on from online sales, whereas the self-publisher has to rely on trickle-on from the get-go. Also, self-publication doesn’t give advance pay.
  Furthermore, the publisher assumes all financial risks. This means that the publication process costs you very little even if the book doesn’t sell.

Cons

• Loss of control- As stated above, traditional publishers give the writer less say in how the book will be printed. They also buy the publishing and distribution rights, meaning television, film, and audio-books as well. If you don’t like the illustration on the cover or who is narrating on the audio book, you’re tough out of luck.
• Time- Traditional publishers have to juggle many books and thousands of submissions at once, and publication this was is a very lengthy process. Between going through the submission process, several layers of editing, marketing and distribution, most books take about two years to hit the shelves. However, topical books dealing with current events (such as the death of a celebrity or the latest political scandal) will often be rushed through the process and can be published in a fairly short amount of time.

Conclusion

In point of fact, there really is no right way to go about publishing a book anymore. Both paths offer their own set of risks and advantages. You may not even have to choose at all. Many writers make a comfortable living as “hybrid,” authors, publishing work through both venues. What it really all comes down to what you feel is best for your book.

Videos:
– Self Publishing with Print on Demand
– A self publishing enthusiast speaks
– Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing
– Traditional Publishing vs. Self-Publishing

Sources:

– Scribendi: Traditional Publishing vs. Self-Publishing
– Nathan Branford: Self Publishing vs. Traditional- Some Straight Talk
– Nathan Branford: The Real Skinny About Indie Publishing (with Tracy Marchini)
– Nathan Branford: Traditional Publishing, Self-Publishing and Control
– Self Publish or Not?
– Amanda Hocking’s Blog: Some Things That Need to be Said
– The Blog: Should You Self-Publish Your First Book?
– Keith Martin-Smith: Self Publishing versus Traditional Publishing: An Author’s Guide
– Writer’s Digest Shop: How to Publish a Book- An Overview of Traditional and Self-Publishing

Blog Post #3

In these troubled times, few things are guaranteed to spark controversy in this country like those thought to be motivated by race. Far removed from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a world where people are judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin, we live in a world where we are expected to walk on egg-shells for fear of offending someone, even over the most innocent of words. We are not united by our differences, but split apart by them, and we are expected to categorize and align ourselves by broad, arbitrary categories, with skin color—the most meaningless of human characteristics—being the most divisive. We are always on the lookout for racial motivations. Looking out for racist motivations, looking out to not seem racist. Too large a portion of the votes in our last two presidential elections were motivated by racial pressures, rather than by questions of qualifications or his stance on issues. And heaven help you if you commit a crime against a minority, because that will make you a racist for sure.

On February 26^th, 2012, a young man named Trayvon Martin, an African-American, was killed in a scuffle with neighborhood watch Captain George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, a Latino man, claimed he had spotted Martin acting suspiciously and called the police before getting out of his car (against the dispatcher’s advice) to confront Martin. Official reports say that Martin ran away, only to double back and ambush Zimmerman, slamming his head into the concrete and pummeling him. Fearful of his life and his pleas for help being ignored by witnesses, Zimmerman pulled out a hand gun and shot Martin at point blank range, killing Martin.

This was the official report stated by Stanford police, and Zimmerman claimed self-defense on grounds of Florida’s Stand Your Ground statute, which allows the use of deadly force to defend oneself from an attacker. Almost immediately, the mass media jumped on the killing as racially motivated, with critics accusing Zimmerman of everything from profiling Martin as a criminal for being a black boy in a hoody at night, to deliberately instigating the attack to kill him. When thousands of protestor began to gather in opposition to Zimmerman’s release, he was arrested and charged with second degree murder.

Court proceedings for either side cannot be called anything but farcical. Hiding or tampering with evidence. Blocking insinuations against Martin’s character, but allowing such attacks on Zimmerman. Zimmerman and his wife lying about the state of their finances in order to post bail, while Martin’s parents tried to block anyone from seeing his emails or social media information in an effort to keep his image spotless. Media and internet controversy became so heated that the identity of the jurors was kept hidden so as to protect them from reprisals from either side, and their names remain hidden to this day. On July 13^th, 2013, Zimmerman was cleared of all charges and released, to much public outcry.

The disgraceful way in which the mass media handled the affair has made the question of whether Zimmerman truly acted in defense or not, or if Martin is actually a murder victim, almost irrelevant. Looking back on their personal history, it’s clear that neither’s record was spotless. Aside from the obvious problem of neighborhood watch attempting to confront a suspect directly, after being ordered by police dispatch to keep his distance, Zimmerman’s record reveals several close encounters with the police involving domestic violence and striking an undercover officer. Likewise, Martin was under a ten day suspension from school for drug possession when he was killed.

However, the news seems to like having a clear cut good guy and bad guy, and Martin was never shown on the news with his most recent photos, preferring photos from middle school while appearing sweet and innocent, and without making gang signs. And despite being Latino—and to see him, very obviously Latino—Zimmerman was constantly reported by the news as being white, and altering the lighting of his mug-shot so that he would appear as such, and playing down or denying Zimmerman’s injuries. All so that the liberal-dominated media could play up the story of a racist white man murdering a defenseless black boy for no provocation. In one especially egregious instance, NBC went so far so to cut out a large portion of Zimmerman’s conversation with the 9-1-1 dispatcher to make it seem as if Zimmerman was saying that Martin looked like he was up to no good because he was black.

This is a disturbing trend in modern media outlets, the way in which they almost glorify in racial tension. But only in what has been determined to be the “politically correct,” manner. That is, if it’s white on a minority. If a black man kills a white man, or an Asian man kills another Asian man, then it’s just murder. If a black cop is forced to gun down a man in the line of duty, then it’s something unfortunate. But if a white man kills a black man for any reason, then it becomes a travesty. Then it becomes an act of hatred, further proof that America is an oppressive, racist society.

The news seems to thrive on these sorts of controversies, but neglecting to give equal weight to their opposite number, as with the Kansas City teenager who was set on fire by two black boys for being white, which did not receive even a fraction of the media attention that the Treyvon Martin killing did. And the fact that this brutal attack took place a matter of days after Martin’s murder, or that it was in reaction to the killing, was often ignored. In fact, at least one online news article took pains to make it known that the victim’s mother thought the attack on her son “didn’t compare,” to Martin. True, the boy survived—with 1^st degree burns all over his body, and it’s unfair to even suggest that the two attacks can’t be compared, and despicable to draw attention away from this tragedy in favor of a “more controversial,” one within its own column. This attack was every bit the act of racist hatred as a Ku Klux Klan lynching, or what Treyvon Martin’s killing may have been, and treating one racially-spurred tragedy over another merely because of the victim’s skin color paints a dark picture of America’s priorities.

Social media was no less help in muddying the issues, largely feeding off of the flanderized portrayals of the media. In fact, social media is partly to blame for the controversy growing so out of hand, as its instantaneous nature allows rumors and speculations to spread and fester far faster than facts can circulate. Twitter in particular became a hotbed of anger, all throughout the court proceedings.

Comments box discussions on news sites frequently break down into flame wars very quickly, and in most cases each side is as firmly entrenched in the myth of a blameless party as the media is. Few attempt to find a balanced view of events, and are content to sit and fester in the hatred these types of events spawn, and the truth gets lost in the blame and the anger. At this point, the only things we know for certain is that young man lost his life unnecessarily, and the rift between black man and white man has been driven further open.

True equality means treating every tragedy with equal concern, with equal outrage. Racially-motivated offenses against one’s fellow man should be treated with equal condemnation, not some sensationalist agenda, or to repaint hatred into a more acceptable form. Only by letting go of the illusion of race can we truly be equal.

Videos

Reaction to ZImmerman’s release

Trayvon Martin original 911 audio

Protesters attack non-blacks

Newscaster flips out

Trayvon Martin protesters block Times Square

Boy set on fire ignored

Sources

– Wikipedia: State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman

– Eighteenth Judicial Circuit Courts: Zimmerman trial information

– CodeSwitch: The George Zimmerman Trial; One Year Later

– Daily News: Teenagers pour gasoline on boy…set him on fire

– KCTV5: Mother of teen who claims set on fire…brushed off

Blog Project #2

Of all the fandoms that I consider myself to be a part of, none are larger or more creatively inclined than that of Star Wars. With a fanbase of millions across the entire world, it is no surprise that fan sites dedicated to Star Wars measure in the hundreds (if not more), and dedicated to a wide range of topics; everything from the films to the most obscure corners of the Expanded Universe, or fan activities like conventions or fan fiction. Therefore, it is my task to try direct my fellow fans to some of the best domains of Star Wars fandom in an attempt to demonstrate the diversity of fan creations.

One of the most prestigious of the Star Wars fan groups is the Imperial 501^st Legion. Dubbed as “The World’s Definitive Imperial Costuming Organization,” the 501^st Legion is one of the single largest fan organizations founded as a community for costume enthusiasts, which now uses its costumed members to raise funds for charity.

The 501^st’s website is used primarily as a hub for sharing news between the numerous garrisons (regional and local clubs), organizing events, and displaying the costumes created by its membership, with its target audience made up primarily of members or potential members. The homepage is very professional looking, topped with a large banner baring their logo and an easy to navigate scroll-over bar with labeled with all of the site’s most important functions labeled, such as scheduled events (or how to schedule one), a costume gallery, and membership requirements. Improving navigation even more, the right hand side has twitter listings, featured costumes, recruitment bars, ads for major events, and even a map for locating your nearest garrison.

Overall, the 501^st’s homepage is a very smart-looking site. As the Legion is played up as an Imperial stormtrooper legion stationed on Earth, the News articles are written semi-in character, without oversaturating the reader with military language or Star Wars references. Overall, it maintains an inviting, humorous tone, and does an excellent job of presenting their organization.

For those who enjoy writing about their own Star Wars adventures, there is Star Wars Fan Fiction. It is a site dedicated solely to Star Wars fan fiction without content restrictions, though they profess a focus on romance or dark fictions. Be warned, however, because this site does not place restrictions on the posting of mature content, although users who state that they are younger than eighteen may navigate the site with stories labeled as mature safely hidden away.

The site itself is quite simplistic, and is formatted as a message board. It is separated into four sections: The Holonet, a section for site rules and general chat; Fan Fiction, which is further split into the four primary eras of the Star Wars timeline; Adult Fan Fiction, which is subdivided into the same sections, with the addition of a section for adding adult scenes to the movies; and the Imperial Palace, a section for fan art and personal blogs. While certainly easy to navigate and user friendly, it comes across as very bare bones, with no additional frills, and a rather plain looking formatting. In itself, this is not a bad thing, being dedicated primarily to fan fiction, though I do wish that it had a more interesting banner.

While I am not much of an artist, I enjoy the opportunity to explore large archives of artwork for my favorite continuities as much as anyone, and the Star Wars Elite group on Deviant Art provides this in spades. With over forty-six hundred members, it is one of the largest dedicated Star Wars groups on the website. It caters to Star Wars artists of all stripes, from drawings to paintings, fan fiction to fan comics, and even crafts and cosplay.

The site is set up as a standard Deviant Art website, with a home page filled with thumbnails of featured artwork from every category, and the navigation bar split up into the home, the gallery, favorites, and the group administrator’s journal for group news. And, being a Deviant Art group, the background formatting remains a rather uninspiring gray-green. The gallery can be a bit overwhelming to navigate, as the site has over categories to submit one’s art under. Due to the sheer number of submissions, searching for a specific piece even in the smallest category can be a daunting task. Especially as it lacks a search bar for the categories, and extremely inconvenient. For sheer volume, the Star Wars Elite can occupy your time for days, but it is not very user friendly.

Pictures

                                                                                   501st Legion at the Anovos Costume Convention.

                                                                                   501st Rome Garrison on Star Wars Day.

                                                                             Mythbuster Jamie Hyneman inducted asv an honorary member of the 501st

 

                                                                                      Star Wars Fan Fiction Banner

Videos:

501st Ice Bucket Challenge
501st- Troopers for a Cause
501st- Why we do this

Sources:
501st Legion
Star Wars Fan Fiction
Deviant Art: Star Wars Elite

Blog Project #1: Comparing and Contrasting Blogs

Log and diary keeping has been a popular way of expressing oneself for centuries. So with the advent of the internet, it only made sense to start posting logs there as well. What no one could have fathomed was the explosion of popularity in reading other people’s thoughts online. It has become an industry of its own. News, web magazines, product reviews; some companies will even pay someone for advertising space just because the blog is popular and sees a lot of traffic. Far removed from simply an online journal, nowadays can cover any and every topic. Of course, because anyone can post a blog for anything, content can range anywhere from the thought provoking and professional to the frivolous and stupid. Because there are no editors, it is up to the blog writer to maintain the quality of the blog. And as these popular blogs will show, this ‘no rules,’ approach does not lend itself equally well to everything a blog can be used for.

The blog Girl’s Gone Child was started by Rebecca Woolf in 2005. It is a classic online-diary type of blog, centered on the occurrences of everyday family life, and written for the enjoyment—or as for—mothers. Originally, it centered on what she was going through when she first became a mother, and the troubles she was having just keeping her family together. One saved marriage and three more children, it has evolved into a sort of slice of life chronicle, dedicated to daily musings, photos of Mrs. Woolf and her family, recipes, and other uplifting works for fellow mothers.

Because it has been ongoing since 2005, Girls Gone Child has become rather stuffed with content, and feels bloated in places. This is most obvious on the homepage, which stretches down for many, many pages, and holds all Mrs. Woolf’s posts for the last week. Not simply a banner and a snippet with a link to ‘read more,’ but the entire post, most of which are quite lengthy and often one or more pictures. Mrs. Woolf does not seem to have a set schedule for updates, but the blog’s archive indicates that she strives to post several times a week, although it fluctuates. Aside from the content overflow, the rest of the blog comes across as rather clean and well organized, with a plain background, well organized and easy to see links to other portions of the website (albeit top and right centric), and topped with a banner showing one of her daughters playing in a field, which lends to the warm, inviting atmosphere of the blog. She has even set up a “Life Story,” link at the top to summarize the history of the blog and the major events of the last nine years, which is extremely useful for newcomers.

As can be expected of the target audience, Mrs. Woolf’s readership comes off as far better mannered and respectable than what is often found on the internet. Comments tend to be from mothers expressing either gratitude for the uplifting nature of the post or discussing how the post relates to their own lives and experiences (often both), and tend to be rather lengthy. Also unlike much of the internet, her commenters seem to care about proper sentence structure, grammar and spelling.

Girls Gone Child can be somewhat difficult to navigate. Along with a search bar at the top, past articles are organized in an easy-to-find archive on the right hand side, listed by month and year. Links to years will take you to the last December article of that year, and the archive expands to include links to specific articles in that month. This is especially helpful, as monthly lists of articles have the same problem as the first page, and one often ends up with a single paged packed full with several articles, and would otherwise be difficult to search for specific postings.

The most prominent ads on the blog are advertisements for the book Mrs. Woolf has written and three similar blogs that she endorses, ever present on the right hand side and above the archive. Paid ads are of a domestic nature, linking to Target, Home Depot, auto insurance, and other practical things that mothers might need to shop at, which comes as very in keeping with the blog’s domestic and down to earth themes.

Overall, Girls Gone Child is effective in the delivery of its themes and in its appeal to a broad readership. It is simply a log about Mrs. Woolf’s life which tries to communicate to and uplift other women in her position. While the pages are overstuffed and severely in need of abbreviated with length, the writing of the articles themselves and the attempt at easy-to-find archiving lends to the idea that Mrs. Woolf is trying hard to be professional, while also being open and approachable, and all in all is excellent at what it does.

By contrast, the blogger Perez Hilton strives for a blog which is professional in nature, but quite amateurish in execution. The self-styled “Media Queen,” Perez Hilton’s blog, simply called Perez Hilton.com, is in theory a news blog, but the supposed news is really nothing but celebrity gossip stories, with the occasional personal entry about his personal fashion. The home page slams the reader in the face with a bright pink border and a rather garish banner of himself, giving off an unavoidable air of unprofessionalism and egotism. The articles give no indication of being written by a professional journalist, being as full of personal opinion as fact, slang, excessive quotation marks, comments photo-shopped into the photographs, and a fair amount of profanity.

The blog’s layout is no less messy. Rather than an archive, the blog has a page count at the bottom of the screen. While only six pages are displayed at a time, one quickly finds that they stretch on indefinitely, with no indication of how far back it goes. Attempts to view previous pages can quickly turn futile, as Hilton dumps a number of articles onto the website every day with no such set schedule, and one can go from page two to three and find the articles at the bottom of page two at the top if unlucky. Worse still, Hilton has been known to dump as many as 5 ½ pages worth of articles onto the website in one day, and as a result of this sheer volume many articles don’t have any comments simply because there is too much for any one person to read. Comments are typical internet fair, less than a line long and lacking in grammar, and very often are derisive and mean spirited towards the people featured in the articles

The only real attempt at organization is a long list of featured articles on the right hand side of the screen which, like the mass of articles in the center, are largely superficial and rarely have any news that is newsworthy. That, and a standard issue search bar, labeled as a “star seeker.” The site is further organized by a bar with tabs for articles with a different focus, such as like celebrities and fitness or celebrities and their children, rather than general stories about celebrities, and with no real change in style or substance. However, these tabs are labeled with cutesy names like CocoPerez, FitPerez, and Teddy Hilton, and it’s not always obvious what the topic is until you click on it. And sometimes it isn’t obvious even then, as the Teddy Hilton category features the gimmick of being written (or at least selected) by Hilton’s dog, without any other noticeable difference in theme. Paid ads are mostly for clothing stores and new electronics.

While technically a news blog, Perez Hilton’s site lacks anything of substance, has horrendous formatting, and comes off as terribly unprofessional. If nothing else, it is useful in how it demonstrates that news is better handled by professional journalists rather than amatuers.

Then there is the blog Fantasy Scroll, which a professional blog for aspiring writers of speculative fiction, written by a professional writer. Written by Lulian Lonescu, the blog exists symbiotically with the home page of the author’s science fiction and fantasy e-magazine, and was created as a way to give back to the writing community which helped him become a published author. The blog portion of the website is dedicated to discussing ways to improve one’s writing, tips specifically for writers of speculative fiction, but which are useful for fiction writers in general. These include in-depth discussions on craft, the methods in designing a fictional world, tips on the modern publishing market, and over fifty writing prompts for writers to exercise on. The writing style is approachable and open, but maintains a professional air, which subtly assures the reader that this is someone who knows what he is talking about.

The layout is interesting without being distracting, such as a dark blue background of stars and nebulae, which lends itself to the theme of the blog without drawing attention away from the articles. The blog has been ongoing since 2012, but only has about a hundred articles, due in part to most of 2014 being devoted to the release of Fantasy Scroll the e-magazine and the Kickstarter program which funded it, although the Mr. Lonescu still tries to update once or twice a month. Comments are generally small in number and succinct, but their tone is overall appreciative for Lonescu’s work and supportive. As well as being positive, they also have a general trend towards grammatical correctness.

Fantasy Scroll is very easy to navigate, almost to the point of redundancy. The archive on the right side of the screen is organized by topic, with the number of articles in each category in parenthesis on the right. Articles also feature links to other articles when an issue that might need more detail is brought up, and links to articles with a similar topic are found at the bottom of every post. Also, unlike the above blogs, Fantasy Scroll features a comment box for immediate feedback, rather than using a separate link. Despite being interconnected with the homepage of the e-magazine, the two sites are cleanly separated, but with an easy to find link to one another, and new issues of the e-magazine are announced on the blog.

Fantasy Scroll’s main advertisement is for the e-magazine, and a list of featured sci-fi and fantasy blogs, posted permanently to the right under featured articles. Strangely enough, a deactivation of AdBlocker did not reveal any paid advertisements on the website, though the program had insisted that it was holding some back.

Overall, Fantasy Scroll demonstrates a very well organized professional blog, written by a professional writer for the benefit of others in his profession.

What all of this shows is that while there are many ways in which blogs can be used, the blog can be more or less effective if the writer matches with the sort of blog that he wants to create. An amateur writer can do very well with a more casual style of blog and still resonate deeply with her audience, and a professional who blogs to discuss his craft is likely to present his blog in a presentable manner because he wants to be taken seriously, while an amateur who wants to engage in a professional type of blogging (or a professional with no sense of professionalism) comes off as sloppy and looks like an amateur. Of course, this is the internet, and popularity and skill are often unrelated. However, this should never be an excuse to give it anything less than one’s best when blogging. Shoot for respectability over popularity, and at the least you won’t look like a fool in front of the world.

---

Sources

Girls Gone Child: Rebecca Woolf

Perez Hilton.com: Perez Hilton

Fantasy Scroll: Lulian Lonescu-