Heyo!

[StevenProudfoot he/him]

Heyo, I'm Steve. I've read most of the cosmere books (short of Elantris and I'm currently reading The Bands of Mourning) and my favorite Sanderson series is the Stormlight Archive (I've listened to their audiobooks 3 times now. I have a couple of headcannons I'd like to talk about but they involve spoilers so not gonna share that here).

To get a sense of who I am as a reader and person here's a few things:
I'm a psych and english double major at wayne state university at the moment and I'm going to be pursuing a doctorate soon (if I get into a program) where I'll be studying fan studies and game studies in both of my fields (hopefully). I'm always excited to talk about my academic interests too, so if anyone ever wants to talk about stuff like game studies or fan studies please send me a message!

I'm a big fan of other fantasy and sci-fi writers and series too, including but not limited to: all of Brent Weeks' stuff (I'm afraid to admit I like him more than Sanderson),  Cixin Liu (the best sci-fi writer I've ever read IMO), Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Yahtzee Croshaw, and Frank Herbert.

That's all I can think of to put here so I guess that's it.

Thanks.

Edited September 22, 2018 by StevenProudfoot

[Ashertliden]

Howdy Feller! Welcome to da shard.

[+Sorana she/her]

Hello and welcome to the shard!

1 hour ago, StevenProudfoot said:

I'm a big fan of other fantasy and sci-fi writers and series too, including but not limited to: all of Brent Weeks' stuff (I'm afraid to admit I like him more than Sanderson),  Cixin Liu (the best sci-fi writer I've ever read IMO), Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Yahtzee Croshaw, and Frank Herbert.

Brent Weeks is great, although not better than Brandon in my opinion. Still his next book was announced for August 2019 and I preordered it. I can't wait to read what will happen. Cixin Liu I discovered only recently and it took me a bit to grasp his style and the deep, almost philosophical questions hidden between the lines. But he definitly convinced me.

If you don't mind to answer a non- Brandon related question: What exactly are fan and game studies? What are you trying to find out/ researching?

[StevenProudfoot he/him]

I'm super unfamiliar with this forum system, so I'm trying to reply to Sorana here but I'm not sure if it's gonna post as that or as a general reply to the thread here. Bear with me as I figure this out lol sorry

I get why you might like Sanderson better, I personally have a bit of bias as Weeks was one of the first authors who I liked/found. 

 

I would love to answer that non-Brandon question.

It's kinda hard to answer that without sounding kinda snarky, so I'll explain but in general: they are each the academic study of video games and the academic study of fandom (two separate things, not like fan-and-game studies compounded).

The more specific answer comes down to which field you want to approach that from though. If you want to approach it as an english/film/media major, that means theory like what it means to be able to control the view of the game (which sounds like not a big deal but early game scholars were crazy about that especially since a lot of them were film scholars who were used to talking about gaze in film and suddenly here's a thing where you can control where you look like woah). In psychology, it would be various human impacts of it: how does it seem to impact development, behavior, social stuff, cognition, etc. Anthropology and sociology talk about them too I think, but that's a bit outside my expertise. They would probably be talking about games on a societal level and more frequently use methods that are more about talking to people than collecting number-data (sometimes). In my own experience/work with game studies, I'm still an undergrad, but I'm going to be trying to publish a paper soon (which is super over-ambitious, I'm almost certainly going to be rejected) about types of ARGs and I'm currently writing a paper in a class about games that make you feel bad intentionally with their narrative. 

My explanation of fan studies is largely the same as long as you switch out the word game for fan in that explanation and ignore the examples. If you approach it from an english perspective, there's a lot of people who talk about fandom generally (like who are fans and let's look at fan stereotypes) and things in and about fan fiction and fan communities. That's a bit over simplifying it but thats a decent one-sentence summary. Personally, right now and in my main interest in fan studies, I want to approach it in psychology (which is pretty rare at the moment but it's a growing field I think). I'm currently running a survey about fan personality quizzes (like the sorting hat or "which disney princess are you") in which I use social psych methods to measure a few things about that (I don't want to ask anyone here to take it until I get permission from a mod though so I'll leave it at that for now). 

They're both small fields at the moment, albeit game studies is a bit older and bigger right now. I just want to do stuff with them as I go forward in my education, which is a weird thing to be excited about I guess. But I'm a nerd, so hey, whatever.

 

Sorry to talk so much on a non-Brandon thing.

Edited September 22, 2018 by StevenProudfoot

[StevenProudfoot he/him]

28 minutes ago, Sorana said:

Hello and welcome to the shard!

Brent Weeks is great, although not better than Brandon in my opinion. Still his next book was announced for August 2019 and I preordered it. I can't wait to read what will happen. Cixin Liu I discovered only recently and it took me a bit to grasp his style and the deep, almost philosophical questions hidden between the lines. But he definitly convinced me.

If you don't mind to answer a non- Brandon related question: What exactly are fan and game studies? What are you trying to find out/ researching?

Whoops, I figured it out. I meant to quote you in my reply but I posted it as a general reply to thread instead. sorry, still figuring all this out.

Edited September 22, 2018 by StevenProudfoot

[TrдVψLшR 0115 he/him]

Hey! I just read the finished reading the three body problem, it blew my mind

[StevenProudfoot he/him]

1 minute ago, PelekinikeleT said:

Hey! I just read the finished reading the three body problem, it blew my mind

It's so good! I just finished reading the trilogy and it just gets better too

[TrдVψLшR 0115 he/him]

Someone on here recommended reading the short story division by zero. It had a really similar feel to some of the stuff in three body problem

[+Sorana she/her]

@StevenProudfoot

Thanks lot for the long answer! That sounds really interesting! Especially the psychological approach. Is here any literature I could have a look at, or is this too new/, small. And I wish you good luck for your paper!

To Brent Weeks: same here but the other way round. I read Brandon's books long before Brent Weeks and nothing can challenge their place my heart

 

(You can always mention someone by typing @ and immediatly afterwards the username. Can be helpful if you don't want quote a really long post, or if you want to add someone to a conversation,...)

 

[TrдVψLшR 0115 he/him]

Good to know. I was thinking it would be a big bummer if the sequels were not as good

[StevenProudfoot he/him]

1 hour ago, Sorana said:

@StevenProudfoot

Thanks lot for the long answer! That sounds really interesting! Especially the psychological approach. Is here any literature I could have a look at, or is this too new/, small. And I wish you good luck for your paper!

To Brent Weeks: same here but the other way round. I read Brandon's books long before Brent Weeks and nothing can challenge their place my heart

 

(You can always mention someone by typing @ and immediatly afterwards the username. Can be helpful if you don't want quote a really long post, or if you want to add someone to a conversation,...)

 

Ah, that makes sense to use an @ . Thanks for the tip!

There is literature out there but it's kinda limited in the field of psychology at the moment since it's so new. There's nothing on fan quizzes yet (except for one about the accuracy of the sorting hat quiz results), but there's a fair amount on fandom in relation to wellbeing and identity and etc. Fan studies tends to not be taken super seriously in academia so there aren't many people researching it (yet!). Still, I'll mention some fan studies articles that I personally found interesting. They might be behind a paywall if you aren't a student at university that allows access to them (which is how I got access to them). If you can't find them, email me at steven.proudfoot {at} wayne.edu and I might be able to help you out.

(I'm going to just do title and authors instead of proper APA citation format since this is informal)

"Sport Fan as the Default Fan: Why Non-Sport Fans are Stigmatized" by Stephen Reysen and Jennifer Shaw

"Better Together: Social Connections Mediate the Relationship Between Fandom and Well-Being" by Stephen Reysen, Courtney Plante, and Daniel Chadborne. 

"Online fandom, identity milestones, and self-identification of sexual/gender minority youth." by Lauren B. McInroy and Shelley L. Craig

There's some cool ones that aren't in psychology, especially some about fan fiction, but these three are a few that I liked in psychology.

Edited September 22, 2018 by StevenProudfoot

[+Sorana she/her]

Thanks a lot! I'll take a look at them!

(And I would take your quiz, if you need another participant.)

[Just a Lifetime he/him]

Welcome to the Shard, and thanks for the interesting information.  I'm actually surprised there are not yet any academic studies of fan quizzes, since such quizzes have been around for a while.  I remember encountering them when I was an undergrad, more than 15 years ago.  (I'm another academic, although in a STEM field; I always recommend The Professor Is In to current and future PhD students, especially those in the social sciences and humanities.)  It's also nice to see someone from the 313.  People tell me that things have been improving in Detroit since I left the area in '02.  Would you agree?

Or, if you might prefer a more light-hearted question: I have not yet read anything by Brent Weeks.  Do you have any recommendations for a good place to start?

[StevenProudfoot he/him]

7 hours ago, daschaich said:

Welcome to the Shard, and thanks for the interesting information.  I'm actually surprised there are not yet any academic studies of fan quizzes, since such quizzes have been around for a while.  I remember encountering them when I was an undergrad, more than 15 years ago.  (I'm another academic, although in a STEM field; I always recommend The Professor Is In to current and future PhD students, especially those in the social sciences and humanities.)  It's also nice to see someone from the 313.  People tell me that things have been improving in Detroit since I left the area in '02.  Would you agree?

Or, if you might prefer a more light-hearted question: I have not yet read anything by Brent Weeks.  Do you have any recommendations for a good place to start?

I'll try to find that book, thanks! 

I agree, I was a bit shocked that I couldn't find anything on it either! Well, there are two articles but they are specifically about the accuracy and application of the harry potter sorting hat quiz. However, just looking at if it could be used as many workplaces use the non-fan personality tests like the Myers Briggs is kinda missing the whole point of how people use fan personality quizzes in my opinion. I couldn't find any articles about fan personality quizzes in general though.

I would definitely say things are improving in Detroit. I don't want to go too deep into that though because then you have to talk about whether or not it's gentrification and that conversation can messy. 

I would recommend the Black Prism, which is the first book of his Lightbringer series. The Night Angel trilogy is shorter and also really good, but Lightbringer is his most recent work and it's easy to tell he keeps getting better with each book. Not that he wasn't good in his first books, but I think it's good to start with him at his strongest. Plus I just like the world of the lightbringer series better.

Edited September 24, 2018 by StevenProudfoot

[Just a Lifetime he/him]

Groovy.  I was not anticipating the G-word in relation to Detroit, and I won't insist on a debate about it in this thread.

The Black Prism is now on my Kindle.  By coincidence I'm between books at the moment and may start reading it during some long train rides over the next couple of weeks (though I should probably spend those writing rather than reading).