Fictional World Research Articles

Кинематографичность как особенность поэтики романов Кадзуо Исигуро

The aim of the study is to identify the features of implementation of the cinematic chronotope by means of creating literary cinematic quality in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels aimed at ensuring an audiovisual and emotional impact of the literary text on the reader. Despite the interest in this writer, at the moment, there is a gap in research on the interaction between literature and cinema based on the material of Kazuo Ishiguro’s creative work. The scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the identified set of literary means of creating cinematic poetics makes it possible to determine how Kazuo Ishiguro’s work with screenplays, personal interest in cinema and focus on the “reader-viewer” determines his individual style. As a result, the study revealed the implementation of the cinematic code in Kazuo Ishiguro’s texts at several levels, which indicates the artistic value of these means for blurring the boundary between cinema and the modern intellectual novel. The pragmatic function of cinematic techniques in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels helps to dynamically develop scenes, rhythmically alternate images and paintings, deepens the range of problems and contributes to the visualization of psychological experiences of characters, affects the readers, immersing them in a unique fictional world.

Locating the Subject in Postmodern State: A Critique of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day

A British novelist of Japanese origin, Kazuo Ishiguro explores the social and political atmosphere of England that unsettled the nation in the decade after World War I. He brings to notice the significant role of an individual’s inner emotional dilemma of the professional self. This paper then offers a close reading of Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989), exploring the discourse of the subject within a social, political and ideological framework that constructs the concept of selfhood. This play of socio-political ideologies includes subjects that are no more than cultural performances. Centring on Ishiguro’s exploration of this decentred subject, this paper scrutinises the symbolic link between the protagonist Stevens’s selfhood caused by self-deception or the ideological state apparatus and fictional world leaders’ discourse on professionalism. From this viewpoint, the main objective of the paper is to uncover how Ishiguro’s work dramatises the transformation of the modernist preconstituted subject into the postmodernist decentred subject.

Strategy optimization for breakout games based on improved BFS algorithm and image recognition techniques

This paper develops a Dungeon Game and details the development process of the City Game. The Dungeon Game is an adventure-themed role-playing game in which the player takes on the role of a character he or she creates and engages in a variety of adventurous activities in a set fictional world. It also allows the use of various props to add interest and realism to the game. In the development of this game, the pathfinding algorithm is crucial to the character's movement and behavior, and the previous traditional pathfinding method can no longer meet the needs of the game, so we optimize the original algorithm, adding dynamic programming and backtracking method in the original algorithm to improve the original algorithm's pathfinding logic to make the character pathfinding in the game more reasonable, to improve the game's performance and user experience. performance and user experience. At the same time, this paper tries to incorporate an image recognition technique based on ANN neural network into the game by adding figures as images into the game, to enrich the content of the game and make it have more possibilities, which increases the playability for the players. In the path optimization test, although the response time is slightly inaccurate, the overall response time is gradually decreasing as the optimization algorithms improve. These algorithm improvements have a more significant increase in the efficiency of the game.

Invitations Within and Beyond the Fictitious World: An LDA Discourse Analysis of Female Game Preferences in Chinese CMC Forums

Throughout the conventionally masculine video game culture worldwide, the existing literature on video game preferences mainly focuses on the West, overlooking Chinese female gamers, who make up the largest female gamer population globally. This study aims to explore their preferences by analyzing responses from four female-exclusive video game forums. Using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) Topic Model, 1321 responses were analyzed, extracting females’ preferences into six dimensions: characters, design, genre, narrative, engagement, and experience. This multifaceted research offers preliminary insights into female gaming experience. Our findings highlight the evolving portrayal and preference of game characters, a complex interplay between aesthetic appeal, genre, and the intriguing relationship between game narratology and empathy. The study further explores how narrative structures in video games can evoke empathy, and advance understanding of females’ engagement and flow experience in the virtual world, challenging conventional assumptions and expanding the understanding of player interaction with digital media.

The omnipresent character and possible worlds theory

Fictional texts might present storyworlds that include both human characters and omnipresent characters. When they share the same ontological plane the specific dynamic occurs between them. Furthermore omnipresent characters may be able to transgress a singular plane, in consequence making the whole storyworld appear more complex, but also seem less coherent. This essay focuses on the case of Judge Holden, the antagonist of Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian, in order to dissect the role of an omnipresent character within the fictional world. The introduction contextualizes the figure of an omnipresent character, by explicating its nature on the background of other texts and their characters. Applying the possible worlds theory adapted by literary theorist Marie-Laure Ryan serves as the adequate means of analysis. Her take on possible worlds theory enables to make a clear distinctions between ontological planes that an omnipresent character occupies and define what it means for the reader.

A Historical-Cognitive Linguistics Study of Caesar’s Characterization in Shakespearean Plays

By using “polysemy model” of semantic change theories in historical linguistics, “mapping” and “conceptual integration” of metaphor, and “classical taxonomic structure” of categorization theories in cognitive linguistics, and literary conventions of structuralist poetics in literary studies, this article studies Caesar’s characterization in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and other plays. After analyzing the semantic change of “Caesar” and different characters’ cognition on Caesar in the fictional world created by dialogues and character interactions, this article discovers that the negotiation and exchange between the totalculture in 1599 and Shakespeare’s personal artistic pursuit propel Shakespeare to create an ambiguous but great and unique Caesar in Julius Caesar, within the two kinds of intertexts consisting of different characters’ discourses scattered in other Shakespearean plays, Caesar’s ambiguity is eliminated, and his greatness and uniqueness are strengthened, and it is in his skillful maneuver of different literary conventions in characterizing Caesar that Shakespeare’s great literary competence is manifested.

Analysis of Chicory: A Colorful Tale

“Chicory: A Colorful Tale” is a 2D adventure puzzle game with elements of exploration and creativity, set in the Picnic Province, a fictional world where color comes from a magical paintbrush. Each person holding the paintbrush continues a long tradition of renaming themselves after picking up the brush with their favorite food. Using the gameplay and rules as an entry point to analyze this game: In “Chicory: A Colorful Tale,” operational rules are conveyed to the player primarily through the context and intuitive design of the game. In summary, “Chicory: A Colorful Tale” creates a meaningful play through narrative depth, player agency, great integration of the mechanism and the theme, and broader cultural impacts. At the heart of meaningful play is a sense of purpose, discernableness, and integration.

«Случай» и «Двойная жизнь Вероники» К. Кесьлевского: рецепция «расходящихся тропок» Х.-Л. Борхеса в польском кинематографе

‘‘Forking Paths’’ by J.L. Borges had a great influence on the culture of the second half of the 20th century, including films of the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski. Since the late 1970s, he has been turning to feature cinema and in this world of fiction, he has been experimenting with a narrative cinematic form. Thus, both ‘‘Blind Chance’’ (1981) and ‘‘The Double Life of Veronique’’ (1991) refract this Borgesian in their own way: ‘‘Blind Chance’’ opens up several ‘‘roads’’ for the viewer at once, as well as for the protagonist to take, since it is based on the consistent presentation to the viewer of variants of the same fate. ‘‘The Double Life of Veronique’’ is also based on variations, but also includes an experiment with a ‘‘denarrated’’ ending of the story told, otherwise rethinking Borges’ ideas. In the ‘‘Blind Chance’’ Kieslowski uses a means of narration that the narratologist G. Prince called ‘disnarration’: he puts the emphasis not on what actually happened to the hero, but only on what could possibly have happened, yet was not realized. In ‘‘The Double Life of Veronica’’ he resorts to what is described by the narratologist B. Richardson as ‘‘denarration’’: many variants of the film’s ending refute each other, imitating the “infinity” of storytelling, text, and variations, conceived by Borges in ‘‘The Garden of Forking Paths’’.

Психологічна залежність особистості від інформаційних технологій

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the problem of personality dependence on information technologies; the concept of psychological dependence of the individual on information technologies is revealed; addiction to social networks and game addiction are analyzed in detail. Dependence on social networks develops gradually. First, a person shows interest in various types of social networks, registers, expands the information of his account. Then she is more and more engaged in endless correspondence, viewing messages, participating in discussions on forums, in various applications and games offered to her by friends and new acquaintances. This turns into a pathological addiction. The main reasons for game addiction are self-doubt, complexes, conflicts in the family and life troubles in general. Gamers often escape from reality in this way for some personal internal reasons. They have no hobbies, friends and personal life. Their entire existence is focused on a fictional world. Positive and negative aspects of the development of human dependence on information technologies are also considered; substantiated conclusions and recommendations are presented.

A Functional Study of Film Sound Design in Science Fiction Films

As a form of art combining audio and visual, movie sound effect is an important element in building the story world of the movie. When sound films first appeared, they were recognized and welcomed by the public, and it is extremely important to use sound effects in narrative films so that the audience can have a better connection with the fictional world. As one of the popular cinema genres, science fiction movies were loved by the audience when they first appeared, attracting the audience's attention with brilliant special effects, but the role played by sound effects in them should not be neglected. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of sound effects in science fiction films, and will use Avatar, Inception, The Prestige and Gravity, the four films, respectively, to explain the three functions that sound effects have. They are to enhance the realism of the movie, to help complete the temporal construction of the movie and to express the inner world of the characters.

The Iconography of Ada Lovelace in Fictional Worlds

La figure d’Ada Lovelace a été une sorte de révélation pour ceux qui travaillent dans le domaine artistique. Elle a inspiré une réévaluation de la façon dont l'histoire de la science elle-même est racontée, dans une perspective qui reflète plus étroitement la réalité de ceux qui travaillent dans les disciplines des STIM (Science, technologie, ingénierie et mathématiques), comme un système de collaboration où la connaissance progresse grâce aux efforts du plus grand nombre, et non à l'effort d'un seul. À cet égard, Ada Lovelace apparaît à la fois comme une icône de l'émancipation globale des femmes, et un parangon d'une culture entièrement repensée des domaines des STIM. Cet essai examine l'iconographie d'Ada Lovelace en mettant l'accent sur quatre œuvres : The Difference Engine, Arcadia, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, et Doctor Who.

Using Content Analysis to Analyze Issues in the Development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Their Impacts

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become one of the most successful and popular franchises worldwide due to its continuous development. Therefore, this essay employs content analysis to investigate the worldbuilding and character develop issues in the Marvel Cinematic Universe productions. The findings reveal that the dense interconnections within the productions of the franchise makes it challenging for new audiences to enter. The repetition and declined quality of the plot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s productions after Avengers: Endgame (2019) has also made old fans begin to lose interest. The imbalance between old and new characters leads the franchise to an awkward situation. To address these problems, Marvel can slow down the pace of new releases, so that the new audiences will be given more time to know the fictional world by catching up previous productions. Besides, Marvel Studios can have more time to improve the quality of their works to maintain the attraction to old audiences. Furthermore, they should focus on balancing the development of both old and new characters to better serve different audiences.

The Myth of the Artist – from Birth to Collapse: Notes on the Lithuanian Present-Day Novel

The article based on the comparative principle seeks to introduce to a wide audience two novels by Lithuanian writers Kęstutis Navakas (Vyno kopija[“The Wine Copy”], 2016) and Marius Ivaškevičius (Tomas Mūras, 2022),whoseauthors wishto reflect on the status of the artist in the current era of excess and prosperity. The myth of the artist began taking shapein the 19th century and remained at its height throughout the 20th century,even though art itself underwentmany changes. Is theartist still the representative of the elite in society in a post-modern age, when the line between art and pop, between personality and promotional image is almost blurred? These are the questions the authors ask and try to answer, joininginevitably those European authors who placed the creative person at the centre of their fictional world over the last two centuries. Anyone who writes on this subject almost inevitably becomes an author of World literature,as we have understood it since Goethe. The study seeks to reveal the diversity of literary associations, sometimes unconsciously touched upon by the authors, and the tradition of the European novel in dealing with questions of art, man, and his meaning on Earth.

Вненаучная фикция и научная фальшь

The article presents a critical response to Quentin Meillassoux’s essay Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction and proves the impossibility of “fiction of worlds outside- science.” A reconstruction of Meillasoux’s three types of XSF-worlds followed by a demonstration of their failure. Author suggests a shift of emphasis in the notion of “science fiction” from the first word to the second: this move draws attention to the constitutive role of fictitiousness as a characteristic of XSF-worlds rather than their scientific nature. Referring to the philosopher’s earlier works, the author performs a “Ptolemy’s Revenge:” fictional worlds are the product of imagination, which implies the impossibility of decentring thought relative to extro-science fiction. Both classic and contemporary works of the SF are used as illustrations, so the text will be of interest not only to speculative realism researchers, but also to sci-fi fans.

The Dramatism of Realism

Theoretical conceptions of realness can indicate what is fundamental or invariant in our experience of the world but are bound to miss a main point of realism due to the practical detachment of theoretical world modeling. The central sense in recognizing beings we encounter as real is accepting that we are or might be sharing existence with them, partnering with them in some significant way in the development of the world. This stance of engagement belongs to our modeling of how to live. The intentional sharing of existence makes for a dramatic situation, the sharers being viewed as interesting agents or quasi-agents who bear watching because the results of their combining actions might be important (possibly in a fictional world). Dramatizing life realistically is a basic expression of intentional vitality and is presupposed in highly serious forms of moral and aesthetic engagement (such as reverence and enchantment).

ՄԱՐԴԸ ԵՎ ԱՌԱՐԿԱՅԱԿԱՆ ԱՇԽԱՐՀԸ ՎԻՐՋԻՆԻԱ ՎՈՒԼՖԻ «ՋԵՅՔԸԲԻ ՍԵՆՅԱԿԸ» ԵՎ «ՄԻՍԻՍ ԴԵԼՈՈՒԵՅ» ՎԵՊԵՐՈՒՄ / THE MAN AND THE MATERIAL WORLD IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S NOVELS “JACOB’S ROOM” AND “MRS. DALLOWAY”

The subject matter of this article is the examination of the literature of one of the outstanding English modernist writers, Virginia Woolf, and the problem of establishing the human “I”, where human senses record the process. As a literary critic and theorist, Woolf was also a bold experimenter who sought to explore new possibilities and perspectives of the novel genre. She used the psychological method of the “stream of consciousness” in her prose. A method by which the “conscious reality” of the character is brought out. Through this technique, the writer creates a unique fictional world that “lives” only by its own laws. The most prominent representative of modernist literature in her novels attached primary importance to a person’s state of mind, his personality and feelings. While depicting human personality Virginia Woolf strives to see and capture in the moment what is inherent in human nature: all the complexity, the unfathomable changeability of his inner being, at the same time contrasting it to the eternal and lasting. In her works, Virginia Woolf refuses to follow rigid literary norms, in contrast to the “materialistic” writers of the previous era, considering herself “spiritual”, i.e. a “spiritual” writer. People, things, feelings are “temporary and transient”. The author strives for that “transient” to find the “spirit” in which the issues of life are embedded.

РИТОРИЧЕСКИЙ СУБЪЕКТ У СОФИСТА ГОРГИЯ: ЛОГОС, ФЕНОМЕН, БЫТИЕ

The article attempts to reconstruct Gorgias’ theory of logos. It is shown that the logos, hiding reality, produces infinite existential possibilities in the consciousness of the subject, connected not with truth, but with doxa. The article also suggests that Gorgias, unlike Parmenides, limited the use of the logos only to this world. In our world, the phenomena of consciousness, qualia, all perceptual acts are somehow linguistically encoded. When we approach the realm of the transcendent, the language falls silent, and any attempt to describe such an experience turn out to be profanation. Of the diverse discourses that exist in our world, according to Gorgias, only poetic creativity is authentic, which, being in no way connected with objective reality, creates an entirely fictional world of art, where only true empathy through catharsis, i.e. morality, is possible.

Concept of “Go Green” in O.V. Vijayan’s the Legends of Khasak: Growing Consciousness towards Mother Nature

In recent years, the global “Go Green” movement has garnered significant attention, serving as a universal call to embrace sustainable living and prioritize environmental conservation. Drawing inspiration from Vijayan's literary masterpiece, this study explores the parallels between the ecological challenges faced by the fictional world of Khasak and the urgent issues confronting our planet today. The Legends of Khasak intricately examines the intricate relationship between its characters and nature, offering a lens through which we can understand the intricate interplay between human actions and the environment. This paper posits that the “Go Green” movement, with its focus on sustainable practices, conservation, and the safeguarding of Mother Nature, resonates deeply with the themes presented in Vijayan's work. The Present Paper aims to explore the Concept of Go Green in O.V. Vijayan’s The Legends of Khasak in the backdrop of growing consciousness towards Mother Nature. Keywords: humanity, crises, suffering, nature, environment, pollution

Лирический герой и образная картина мира Екатерины Боярских по данным языка

The research analyzes the poetry of Ekaterina Boyarskikh, a contemporary poet from Irkutsk. The aim is to identify and describe the persona and the figurative picture of the world she creates. The method applied is linguistic data analysis. It is the poetic grammar, vocabulary, and the means of creating imagery that are the focus of the study. Consideration is given to lexical and grammatical features contributing to the creation of a persona and the world around it, such as the substantivization of adjectives and participles and the omission of syntactic subjects, finite verb forms, and primary nominatives. The syntactic specificity of Boyarskikh’s poetry manifests itself when compared to the conventional usage of the structures under investigation that were retrieved from the Russian National Corpus. The frequent use of the linguistic means involved is found to indicate a reflection on the cognized reality. This reflection proves to be an essential linguistic strategy for creating a fictional world. The analysis of comparative tropes unveils the striking parallels between the main images found in Boyarskikh’s poetry and the significant features of her figurative representation of the world. The research identifies nature as a common source of imagery, with natural objects regularly undergoing personification. The persona created by Boyarskikh is found to be strongly connected with the surrounding world being repeatedly cognized, as evidenced by the renunciation of conventional nominations and the search for new nominations of the objects of this world.

The Machine of Power:The Dystopian World in Death in the Shellby Agop Melkonyan and The Squares of the City by John Brunner

The current text’s purpose is to compare the two novels mentioned in the article’s title, so it could examinesome differences and some similarities in creating a fictional world, while emphasizing on the political dimensions of a dystopian narrative. The machine of power is a metaphor used in both novels, whichare also comparable in their intention to show general mechanisms that take place within similar political regimes.