Elizabeth ColtonFollow

Date Collected

Fall 9-15-2018

Place item was collected

Online

Informant

Myself

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

My name is Elizabeth Colton. I am nineteen years old, and I am an undergraduate student in my senior year at Utah State University, where I will graduate with a B.S. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. I was born and raised in Park City, Utah, where I still visit for holidays. I have also lived in Fremont, California. Like a lot of young adult residents of Utah who aren’t Mormon, I am spiritual, but not religious. I was homeschooled (just like my four siblings) for the entirety of my childhood, until enrolling Salt Lake Community College at fifteen. I joined the Harry Potter fanfiction writing community almost two years ago, but only recently have entered into any competitions. At the beginning of the previous summer, I signed up for my first fanfiction competition and have only become a bigger part of the community since then.

Context

I originally know Amber because she is the captain of my team for one of the Harry Potter fanfic competitions that I am currently competing in, which is the Quidditch League Fanfic Competition (QLFC). Since meeting her there, she has dragged me to the Hunger Games: Fanfic Style competition (HG), and also the Hogwarts School competition (HS). I’m pretty sure I would follow her to just about any Harry Potter writing competition. I created (updated might be a better word for it) a meme after an incident during the Hunger Games: Fanfic Style competition (HG). The way this competition is set up is a little like a roleplay. Each contestant is like a ‘Tribute’ from the Hunger Games canon, and instead of getting eliminated, they get ‘killed’ and there is usually a story with it. Amber, after deciding that she was too busy to continue this competition (between round one and two) asked the judges to kill her off, and here is how she wanted them to say it happened: “Amber got distracted by a butterfly and followed it off a cliff as the gamemakers stared in disbelief, because it wasn't even an engineered butterfly. It was just a regular butterfly.” In the Hunger Games universe, normal things don’t kill people; either a tribute is killed by another tribute, or a tribute is killed by the Arena, which is made and controlled by the Gamemakers. Of course, Amber had to ask to be killed by something simple and plain. When I read the update of who had been killed off between round two and three, I laughed really hard, and just had to make a meme. Around that same time there was this meme circulating. The original photo is of a pokemon character gesturing towards a butterfly while saying (the subtitles at the bottom of the image) “Is this a pigeon?" Of course, people began creating their own versions of the meme, sometimes, but not always, altering the image itself, but most of the time just putting text over the butterfly, the character, and the question at the bottom to make their own joke out of it. I used that templet for the meme I made about Amber, and I sent it to one of our rather large group chats who were all laughing about Amber’s chosen way to die.

Text

When I recreated this meme, I was about as dorky as could be. Over the character, I just put “Amber,” over the butterfly, I put “A Really Fuckin Average Butterfly,” and as the caption, I put “Is this a good way to die?”

Texture

When I sent the meme, it was met with a lot of emoji’s, which generally means it’s well received in this group, and Amber made it her profile photo for about two weeks, which was quite an honor, honestly. I wasn’t expecting that. All in all, I quite enjoyed making/altering and sharing the meme.

Course

Folklore 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2018

Theme

G9: Internet Memes

EAD Number

5.39

Download

Additional Files

1544186796472.jpg (566 kB)

2bh05r.jpg (33 kB)

is-this-a-pigeon-anime-irl-3026600.png (135 kB)

Share

COinS