To be completely honest, this week was tough. Trying to find my rhythm and patterns between this class and my others has proved to be a challenge as I was not anticipating quite this much to do in this class alone. I wasn’t able to complete everything for this class on top of all of the other assignments and readings for my other classes. I was able to do some daily creates, my course character, and my three assignment bank assignments, but I had to keep them pretty simple to try and get as much done for this course as I could along with all my Psych and Disability Studies classes. I had the most fun working on my playlist assignment as it was the most emotionally meaningful and I really felt like I was telling a story with it. I also enjoyed writing about non-conformity and how the world we are currently living in is already a cyberpunk dystopia essentially. My noir-style book cover was simple and easy, but I’m not the proudest of how it turned out, but I just unfortunately didn’t have much time to dedicate to it since my time was running out and I had a bunch of other assignments all due tonight at 11:59pm. At the end of the week, I decided it was better to do as much as I could and at least be decently proud of it than to either turn nothing in or turn in very few things. Some points are better than no points. Here’s hoping I’ve found my rhythm and that my time commitments start to level out.
Author Archives: AzraelCelena
Modern Dystopia: A Tech-Noir Book Cover
This week has been insanely busy, so trying to figure out which assignments would fit into my schedule was quite the challenge, especially figuring out how to incorporate the theme. However, when I saw the opportunity to design a Noir book cover, it was perfect. I felt comfortable in my Canva abilities, I know book covers, I could incorporate it into the theme, and it wasn’t a large time commitment. I decided to keep it simple and to the point. It’s not very involved and if I had more time during the week outside of my other classes and my job, I probably could’ve produced something more detailed and showcasing more of my abilities, however it unfortunately was not in the cards this week for me. I thought it best to create something I felt just okay about than to not create anything at all.
I chose to use Canva because it was a software I use regularly, so I didn’t need to set aside time to learn how to use it. Not to mention, it’s good at getting the job done with design projects of this nature; very user friendly and accessible. Again, I don’t feel super great about the finished product, but I feel good enough about it matching the theme and vibe of the class and it shows a little bit of something I’m able to do.
Non-Conformity: Our Current Cyberpunk Existence
When the concept of cyberpunk is thought about, it’s often envisioned in a highly futuristic dystopian setting much like that of Cyberpunk 2077 and Bladerunner, but the truth of the matter is that we live in a cyberpunk world currently in 2025. High-tech low life discrimination, heavy emphasis on transactional trickle down capitalism, post-industrial dystopia, and a flawed emphasis on individualism where individualism is encouraged as long as you’re a rich white man. With the newly inaugurated office beginning to put their plans into place, it’s become evident to many that these changes will further the dystopian capitalist high-tech consequences of non-conformity for those outside the favor of our country’s current regime. Those who fall outside of the preferential of office, especially queer individuals, non-white individuals, those of lower socioeconomic classes, essentially anyone who isn’t a rich cis-het white man, will be subject to a violent, fearmongering style of glorified peer pressure to conform and go into hiding. ICE is already on the streets and even those who are documented are in danger, anti-abortion laws have already cost the lives of countless women, book and subject banning legislation in schools is cancelling out essential historical and scientific knowledge and putting careers at risk, etc.
As a queer, agender, disabled person who was assigned female at birth who is pursuing a degree in psychology focused in human sexuality with the end goal to be a sex therapist focusing in personal sexuality and sexual deviances, my health, safety, accessibility, and career are all at risk with this new government. The people in office are attempting to scare people into conforming, but the issue is that while, yes, it’s terrifying, it is impossible to conform. Physical anatomy cannot be changed (especially with the laws banning gender affirming care), disability cannot be magically cured, my bisexuality cannot be prayed away, and while I could alter my career choice, I will continue to fight for it because it’s more important now than ever even if I create the risk of losing it all to the hands of this fascist regime. It’s a dark time we live in and this is only the beginning.
My Life Condensed: A Take on the Soundtrack Playlist Assignment
Music is something that I’ve always been heavily immersed in; it was rare that I was ever in the silence from a very young age. My parents always had music on in the cars when they drove, the kitchen while they cooked, the living room while they lounged, and not to mention that I grew up steeped in the goth scene and its associated club nights and culture which is highly music oriented. This constant inundation of music combined with my debilitating lack of social skills and struggles growing up autistic with many other psychological issues paved the way for music and media to be my biggest coping mechanism.
Due to my autism, I’ve had to, in turn, battle alexithymia, which is the inability or immense struggle to identify, understand, and express emotions. I may not have always been able to say “this is how I’m feeling and why”, but music was my voice. I spent so much time listening to music and identifying songs and lyrics that could describe what was happening in my mind, so when I saw the option to create a playlist of songs that played a significant role in my life, I immediately thought of all the songs over the years that helped me voice how I felt on the inside and helped me describe my struggles. I have so many playlists that I’ve made over the years that are all highly categorized and organized by emotion, genre, memory, and more as this has been my primary way of processing my own emotions, but for this assignment, I narrowed it down to some of the most quintessential songs that had the most profound impact on my ability to understand myself, my emotions, and my experiences.
I used Spotify to create my playlist as this is my default music service and, as a result, the one I am most familiar with when it comes to playlist construction. Then, I began the search. I scoured all 20 of my current published playlists that range from 30 minutes to nearly 21 hours in length. The goal was to condense my alexithymic coping journey to a single hour by selecting 15 songs that gave me the biggest revelations, reliefs, and self-understandings. It was difficult to pick and choose, but in the end, I feel like I ended with a myriad of genres, emotions, and memories that one could listen to and understand the closest digital things to raw emotions of my 20 years of life in one playlist.
Week 1 Summary
This week was more-so a transitional time with more housekeeping and preparation than actual creative projects. The majority of it was spent setting up accounts, creating this blog, coming up with my semester goals, and meeting with Paul. This week I also watched my tech-noir film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and wrote my review on it. Nothing this week was particularly challenging or stood out much. I did thoroughly enjoy watching my movie as I’ve been wanting to watch that one for a while and have never gotten around to it, so this gave me a good excuse to do so while also analysing it. I felt it necessary to take a much more allegorical approach to discussing cyberpunk/tech-noir which I did have quite a bit of fun with. Cyberpunk/tech-noir is not really my thing, I tend to find it very overstimulating and sensorily overwhelming, but I loved that this film didn’t have the hyper-futuristic neon dystopian chaos feel that many films in the genre do. This week taught me a few things: mainly that cyberpunk/tech-noir is a much more broad theme than I had realized and that this course actually utilizes many things that I already have a degree of experience in and I would definitely benefit from expanding on my skills and creative repertoire in those mediums.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit: An Unconventional Look at Tech Noir
When one hears the term “tech noir”, the idea is often associated with futurism and high-level technological innovation. As a result, many would not connect 1988 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with the genre of tech-noir as instead of taking place in the future, it takes place 41 years in the past and the style of animation of the “toons” had been around for decades at that point. However, it’s the ability to integrate this style of animation into the real world as if they’ve always co-existed that provides the example of innovation. At the time of production, this sort of meshing of animation and realism hadn’t really been achieved and was an incredibly novel idea.
Without a doubt, Roger Rabbit is a cult-classic comedy noir featuring common noir archetypes like the hard-boiled detective (Eddie Valiant), the femme fatale (Jessica Rabbit), the wrongfully accused (Roger Rabbit), the corrupt “cop” (Judge Doom), and more. The film takes place in a universe where cartoon characters known as “toons” coexist with humans and the plot centers around P.I. Eddie Valiant and toon Roger Rabbit as Eddie has to work to discover who murdered Marvin Acme, landlord of ToonTown, when all the evidence points to Roger and the judge of ToonTown, Judge Doom, and his toon lackeys, are trying to hunt him down to execute him by means of Doom’s “dip”, a combination of chemicals that is the only real way to kill a toon. It is revealed that Judge Doom was in fact that one that killed Acme in an elaborate scheme to buy ToonTown in order to eradicate it for highways.
Despite this film being an incredibly well known classic and one of the most culturally significant films in the last 50 years, I had never seen it and knew very little about the plot; the only thing I knew about was Jessica Rabbit. However, it piqued my interest for this assignment as I am not generally a cyberpunk/tech noir kind of person, it’s never really been my style, but Who Framed Roger Rabbit didn’t appear to be a conventional take on this aesthetic and theme and I’ve always been a cartoon fanatic. One of the biggest takeaways from the film for me was how incredibly allegorical it is much like many other cyberpunk/tech-noir films and works. Roger Rabbit brings incredible metaphors for racism/prejudice and gentrification to the table in a way that I wasn’t exactly anticipating. It’s understood that toons are seen as inferior to humans with the humans running the show and the purpose of the toons purely being to entertain which can be seen at the humans only Ink and Paint Club that is fully staffed by Toons including a down-on-her-luck Betty Boop who had to resort to waitressing since black and white cartoons have gone out of style (fig. 1). Not to mention, it’s their home of ToonTown that is being sought out to be destroyed and make room for gentrified infrastructure. It really ties into that idea of “low life, high tech” that is often covered in traditional cyberpunk.
It’s themes like this of growing modernization, growth of capitalism, and its effects on those of varying socioeconomic classes that are continuously applicable across generations, decades, and even centuries. This film was released in 1988, but any of us here in 2025 can watch it and think “that’s relatable”. You have inferior groups being used and cast aside or treated like objects while the superior groups act like vultures taking what they please regardless of the consequences on those “below” them. I found the film as a whole to be incredibly well done and innovative as well as allegorical in a way that doesn’t use the traditional aesthetic of cyberpunk/tech-noir that I tend to find overstimulating and overwhelming.
Semester Goals
As per university requirements, we all have to take a digital intensive class, but I specifically chose this class because it sounded like a course with skills I could genuinely use both in and out of Mary Wash. I founded and run my own goth night and all the social media/outreach, I manage social media and the website for our Psych Department, and as co-president of the Rocky Horror club, I help oversee our social media manager, so I’m hoping that this class will give me a better understanding of utilizing different types of media and learning new ways to harness my creativity for effective designs which will in turn help with my promotional work. I also feel that in an increasingly digitized world, it’s important to understand how the inner workings of different platforms and media work.