Talk:Maggie Dechant
Overall, I thought your inclusion of outside sources was very creative and inspiring. They were seamlessly integrated into your essay to the point where I had to go back and look for them again, indicating that your essay flowed well. I think that elaborating and reflecting on them a little more would have been nice. The Annie and Life Size sources just seemed kind of stuck in at the end of the analysis and expanding more would have made your reflection more personal and stronger.
Your explanation of the issues you encountered in the process were detailed and descriptive. Your reflection successfully illustrated an honesty in your feelings about the experience. First of all, your point in the beginning about finding comfort in there not being a premade avatar that resembled you was an appealing reflection that I had not thought about before. You touched on a lot of interesting limitations of the Evolver software, including the construction of the face as a static object without emotion, and the lack of the ability to control height. One thing that you could have touched on to strengthen your reflection could be about how everything relates to identity in the online environment, by translating your personal feelings to make a broader statement/opinion.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about your fantasy avatar. It was certainly very creative and all aspects were well thought out considering her special agent occupation.
-M. Washington
Incredibly detailed! Seems like you really wanted to make your self-avatar absolutely accurate and perfect! You make a very good point in describing how people focus on the face shape first as it is the most naked. I definitely agree that selecting the body structure accurately and without exaggeration is very hard. People always tend to want to tweak themselves in a different way.
Although you seemed to have a few issues involving Evolver's limitations, in particular the eyes and your height, looks like it didn't bother you too much. You were able to find a relatively close match.
Your fantasy avatar is clearly influenced by the movie Taken as well as your strong, personal desires to be powerful, adventurous, and risk-taking. The "special agent" version of you probably already mirrors a lot of what you have already done and want to do!
Overall, this is very detailed and reflects a lot about your personal self. You made me realize many of the same decisions that I made that I tend to subconsciously forget. Great job!
-S. Winters
This essay is great! I loved the point you made about the pre-made avatars. I found none of the pre-made avatars looked like me either, but I viewed it negatively. I preferred to have something sort of like me to start with then personalize. However, you're absolutely right about preferring to not be a template; especially since individuality is a large part of my identity as well.
I also liked how your avatar was a character, not so much a self-adjustment. This, to me, digs deeper into yourself because it describes a change in lifestyle rather than just appearance. The contrast between your meek, professional-looking avatar and your Special Agent, mysterious avatar really drives home the Self-portrait vs. Fantasy aspect of this assignment.
I understood the Taken reference, but I would have like to know exactly why you wanted to be like the main character and do those risky things. Is it because you want a change in scenery than this safe, college town? Or did you used to be more adventurous, but have changed since?
Lastly, I'm curious about the hair color of your fantasy avatar. In the essay, you say your fantasy avatar has black hair because it works better than the blonde hair due to the blonde stereotypes. If you were to become a secret agent would you want to dye your hair? Or was the hair color different to further portray the "Secret Agentness" of your avatar?
Her choice of personality for her fantasy avatar, contrasted with her real avatar suggests a sort of actual personality versus an ideal personality; one that she aspires to be and looks up to be--one that is her ideal conception of who she is. The other--her real avatar--is who she sees herself currently, including her self-realized weaknesses and flaws, and strengths. This dichotomy exists in other avatars I've looked at, as well as mine. That said, she takes key traits from her movie sources--traits that she seems to value or traits that she feels are otherwise important-- and incorporates them into her reflection seamlessly. The transition into discussing these sources is smooth, because she is already discussing her traits. The sources introduce not only other traits, but give a whole other personality that she is comparing herself with; for example, the secret agent in her fantasy avatar. The issues that she faced when writing this, specifically, the traits she chose to represent her fantasy avatar and traits that she described herself—her real avatar—as, were seamlessly described by her inclusion of external examples from films. From the start, I knew that she was going to struggle with traits that she had to come to terms with for herself and traits that she desired—traits she have to her fantasy avatar. This was clear from her writing.
D. Potts
