Talk:Melissa Arthur

I thought overall the author did a good job of describing the process she went through as she created her avatar. First she wrote about some of the issues that she faced: for example, when she made her real life avatar, she talked about loving making it a "ginger" but not giving it other qualities (pale skin, wide nose etc). And then she led really nicely into how the online world can make any undesirable qualities just go away with her fantasy avatar creation. I also like how she brought in ballroom dancing, which is central to her identity, and how she was able to give her fantasy character that ball room essence. One thing that I found interesting was the name aspect - so she chose a fantasy name that reflected her personality more than a set standard name she was born into. However, I wished she would have gone into a bit more detail about exactly what specific aspects of the facial features made it hard for her to resemble herself. She just mentions that overall, the features weren't really flexible or resembled herself. I also feel like she could have used more supporting outside evidence. I really liked the L'Engle quote in the box - I felt like this offered concrete supporting evidence for the issues/choices she went through, rather than the other ones which just provided. But overall, it was pretty good!

-Pat Walter

I really liked the creativity of how this reflection was put together. The reflection was not the same old one like most other people in the class did. The book by L'Engle as an outside reference was used evenly throughout the reflection and helped guide the reader through the authors thoughts. You could tell that the book wasn't an afterthought just to try to get an outside source into the reflection, it really seemed like the writer/creator was thinking about this book throughout her process and that she was very familiar with the book. I liked how she did not go into every little detail of the building process of the avatar, she stuck with the parts that were important to her and critical to her identity. She gave some insightful reasons for why she was self-conscious about some of the parts of the avatar and let the reader to get into some seemingly difficult parts of her life. I felt like she should have went more in depth with the issues that she had in the creation process like if she ran into any problems with the software or if the software gave her difficulties in portraying her avatars. Overall, I really liked the creativity and the change in scenery from the "norm" for most of the reflections.

-Ericka Mosley

This was one of the most interesting reflections for me to look at. Melissa did a very good job laying out her issues with the evolver program itself as well as bring in creative outside sources. I would not have though to use the Madeline L'Engle quote, however I though it was very relevant to the reflection as a whole. How society valuates particular qualities effects our own personal tolerance of those characteristics. As Melissa said, virtual environments are a good time to explore inner aspects of ones self without the worry of being judged about your outer appearance. Your inclusion of the Shoemaker article also added insight into your identity issues. I agree that there are multiple layers incorporated into ones sum identity that are not reflected by outward appearance nor activities. A personal history is a major factor in the decisions we made while designing our fantasy selves. The lack of hair color choices seemed to be a major issue for many of the females making avatars. There is such a broad scope of colors that the program did not do the natural variation justice. Also, your thoroughness in choosing a name was very thoughtful. I think it is important for the creator to have a strong connection to their avatars in order to consider them moral, and I think the strongest tie for you was in the name. - C. Calhoun