# I finished my dissertation on fantasy!



## AngelaRCox (Nov 8, 2016)

Hey, Mythic Scribes! It's been a while because I've been working so hard on my research I haven't had much time for social stuff, but I FINISHED IT! (literally last night) And YOU ALL HELPED ME! 

I can't tell you how grateful I am that you guys literally let me lurk for a year and just read all your stuff (well, all the stuff that was relevant to the research and not too personal). And here we are two years later, and the dissertation is being reviewed as I type this by my committee. I defend on November 22!

I want to tell you some of the cool things you guys helped me discover about genre. 


I defined genre as a transmedial, mutable, associative, recognized system. There's a lot of really labyrinthine theory behind that, but it's also based on watching how you guys talk about fantasy and, I hope, describes your (our) processes fairly. 
I'm calling it the "genre space model" because I argue that genre functions like a game. If you're familiar with Huizinga's concept of the "magic circle," it's based on that--the notion that everyone knows that there are different rules in the game space and follows them. 
There's a thing at the core of each genre that I'm calling the "generative tension." This is a pair of paradoxical ideologically opposed values that makes the genre work by driving change and generating new texts and criticism. In Fantasy, it's a tension between escapism and a desire to make stuff allegorically parallel to the real world, which obviously don't work together logically but work together great in fantasy. 

Also I've got some really cool charts.

These are the most commonly attributed authors/texts/etc. It's pretty unsurprising to me, but Star Wars? That intrigues me. (keep in mind this data was collected 2 years ago)







These are the most commonly mentioned conventions or "tropes": 






These are the most commonly expressed values, which is where I'm getting that "generative tensions" thing from (in combination with explicit definitions of fantasy). It's a really interesting chart:






I've got some other charts and data that I can offer if requested, but most of it takes a little more explanation of the method to make sense, so that will do for now. 

Again, I love you guys. There was one other community involved in the study, but it was reading the Mythic Scribes posts that really got me motivated, and you guys made me smile almost every time I sat down to work on it, even when it seemed like awful work. You're a great community!


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 8, 2016)

Congratulations, this is awesome! And what a great topic for a dissertation  happy for you


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## Reaver (Nov 9, 2016)

Congratulations Angela! I wish you nothing but great success in all your endeavors. I'm very happy that the great things posted here by our amazing members has helped you so much.

Rest assured that we love you too as well as all of our members. It's an honor to have you as a member of our growing community! I hope that now that you've made this post, we can look forward to seeing more of you around here.


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## CupofJoe (Nov 9, 2016)

Well done AngelaRCox!!!
:showoff::goodjob:


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 9, 2016)

This is really cool. Best of luck with the review and the defence. Will it be published somewhere online for us to read once it's done?


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## skip.knox (Nov 9, 2016)

Congratulations on finishing. That's a really big deal. The defense will be a cakewalk.

Your post sounded like there were supposed to be some images. I'd love to see the charts.


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## Ban (Nov 9, 2016)

skip.knox said:


> Congratulations on finishing. That's a really big deal. The defense will be a cakewalk.
> 
> Your post sounded like there were supposed to be some images. I'd love to see the charts.



If you right-click on- and open picture in new tab you can see the pictures.
Not ideal, but it works.


Also congratulations!


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## Gryphos (Nov 9, 2016)

This kind of stuff fascinates me, and I'm thrilled to have been, in even a small way, a part of your study. I hope the defence goes well.


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## AngelaRCox (Nov 9, 2016)

Thank you for the support guys. 
Yeah, the images didn't work as well as I'd hoped, but I need to post more to use the gallery (working on it! Been reading around, getting my bearings back). But they do open with a double or right click. I'll fix it soon. 
As for publishing, all dissertations at my institution are made available via ProQuest, although I don't know what the delay is. The final version will be turned in on or before December 9th. 
However, now that I've got this incredible corpus of data, I intend to use it for other academic writing too, or to cannibalize the dissertation for publications (which is common practice). But academic writing is a slow process, and publishing even more so. 
And, more importantly, now I can get back to writing fiction!


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## Michael K. Eidson (Nov 10, 2016)

Congrats! Definitely, when it is published, please provide a link. I'd love to read your dissertation.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 10, 2016)

If you want the photos to pop up in the posts, you can use a site like photo bucket (that's the one I use). Upload the photo into a Photobucket folder, and then copy the image link, and then on MS, on your post, if you go "advanced" you can "insert image" and you put in that image url, and the image will come up right in the post. Like this...







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## Tom (Nov 10, 2016)

This is awesome, Angela! I can't wait to read your dissertation.


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## Devor (Nov 10, 2016)

That's awesome!  I was wondering how it was going to come out.  Please do let us read it, even if it's boring academic stuff, because some of us will be into it.

:wavespin:


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 11, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> If you want the photos to pop up in the posts, you can use a site like photo bucket (that's the one I use). Upload the photo into a Photobucket folder, and then copy the image link, and then on MS, on your post, if you go "advanced" you can "insert image" and you put in that image url, and the image will come up right in the post. Like this...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That's a really big spider.


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## AngelaRCox (Nov 11, 2016)

Keeping in mind that there are two communities represented here, with 1665 documents between them, and a code may appear more than once in the same document.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 11, 2016)

yay! Glad you got the graphics to work. of course, I checked them out already. Interesting! I love the things you worked up as categories. You did a great job.

And yes, it was a big spider. I usually just leave them in the house...but that bad girl had to leave and go keep my sunflowers company, because it was too big to stay. I had to find a common item to use as a reference, because I didn't think my mo would believe how big it was, HA! I upset someone by posting that photo one time, so sorry I grabbed a random photo for my example, but it was readily available.


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## AngelaRCox (Nov 15, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> And yes, it was a big spider.



I don't know about anyone else, but I think that spider is BEAUTIFUL. Probably a very helpful critter to have around.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 15, 2016)

AngelaRCox said:


> I don't know about anyone else, but I think that spider is BEAUTIFUL. Probably a very helpful critter to have around.



I love spiders. I don't understand why people kill them, unless they are the dangerous kind.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Nov 16, 2016)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I love spiders. I don't understand why people kill them, unless they are the dangerous kind.



Same with the smaller non-poisonous snake species that help keep pests under control.

I was running through a field of grass once as a kid. A flash of blue caught my eye. A blue racer was pacing me! It was _so_ cool.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 16, 2016)

Michael K. Eidson said:


> Same with the smaller non-poisonous snake species that help keep pests under control.
> 
> I was running through a field of grass once as a kid. A flash of blue caught my eye. A blue racer was pacing me! It was _so_ cool.



We have garter snakes in our back yard. They're...actually really cute.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 17, 2016)

Sorry to have taken your thread off topic. Yeah, I don't kill spiders, as the photo shows HA! But this bad girl had to be relocated. I leave the small and unassuming ones in the house wherever I find them, but this one had to go find food in the garden, because I wasn't living in close quarters with it. I took the photo because I didn't think anyone would believe how big it was, so I had to find an object to give perspective. HA! I think I've got about two dozen bug photos on my Facebook page because I love to post the wildlife I find in my yard. I also have these:








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## AngelaRCox (Nov 20, 2016)

No need to apologize, Caged Maiden. I'm loving this!


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