Exploring Love Through Fan Culture [OWLS September Blog Tour: Lover]

This month, the OWLS are talking about our favorite couples in pop culture as we explore the theme "lover". If you've ever shipped characters in your favorite anime, book, video game, or other narrative work, then you've participated in what reception studies terms decoding and sense-making. When we take in a creative work, we have the opportunity to form our own version of its happenings. These fan-made versions give us a chance to explore meaning in our own lives. For this month's blog tour, I'll be taking a look at fan interpretation related to romance.

No One Struggles Alone, Exploring Dual-Vulnerabilities in The Prince and the Dressmaker [OWLS June Blog Tour: Vulnerability]

Individuals celebrate LGBTQ+ visibility everyday using the seemingly endless mediums available to us, including the narratives found in pop culture. Using creative mediums, we tell the stories of LGBTQ+ characters, and sometimes ourselves, in order to keep that visibility alive all year long and often tell the stories of our own vulnerabilities. One such pop culture work worth celebrating this month is Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker.

Exploring Grief Through Playing Rime [OWLS August Blog Tour: Journey]

People say that life is a journey. Though this saying is true, it's not entirely accurate. Actually, life is made of many different types of journeys starting and ending at different points in our lives. Some of these journeys are fun and uplifting, such as creating a new blog, starting a family, climbing a mountain, or getting a degree. Others are more difficult, and often turbulent experiences. Today, I wanted to take a look at one of these difficult types of journeys as explored in the game Rime: grief...

Envisioning Worlds Without Hate [OWLS June Blog Tour: Pride]

Pop culture acts a platform for self-expression and provides a space for the LGBTQ+ community to find visibility. There are a number of pop culture works that include and revolve around LGBTQ+ characters. A number of these works focus on overcoming hate and discrimination, raising awareness for what individuals in the community experience in the …

Lost Groups and Shifting Allegiances in Gargantia [OWLS May Blog Tour: Movement]

This month, we're talking about "movement" in pop culture. Throughout this month, we are talking about the movements, organizations, and systems that individuals join that align with their personal values and beliefs. Often, individuals join these groups because they believe that they are doing good and are making positive changes in society. Often, these groups help to shape individual identities, with individuals either aligning with the values of the group, or rejecting them and rebelling against them. Join me in exploring this theme in the anime Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet.