Blog Prompt #1 (9/7/21):
My name is Alexander Cooper and I am a junior here at ODU. I am 21 years old, and some of my favorite hobbies are airsoft, and Russian gear collecting. Airsoft is the recreational hobby in which participants shoot each other with plastic bb’s. I have been playing airsoft for about 10 years now, with more of my primary hobby being Russian gear collecting. It’s not that I am “bored” of playing airsoft, but I am more interesting in playing realistic games at Milsim West. These games are 40-48 hours in the field, nonstop, meaning you could be shot at any time. I spent my weekend 2 weeks ago participating at an event in West Virginia, The Saratov Resurgency. Basically a wargame in which we are roleplaying as civilians inside of a war torn country, and there are 2 other sides.
The two other sides are NATO, and RUSFOR. NATO, being mostly American forces, were our primary enemies two weekends ago. The RUSFOR team was small in numbers, but guarded the checkpoint to not let the NATO forces in. The other faction was the Civilian faction, in which there were about 140 ish of us. We were in the town in the Panthera Training Center in WV, pretty much just vibing the entire weekend. We had blank fire guns (real firearms that only shoot blanks), and regular airsoft replicas. Overall it was a fantastic weekend and my first ever MSW, and I will 100% be back for more.
Blog Prompt #2 (9/14/21):
I’m going to continue talking about Milsim West for my topic this week. I had not been to one of these events before, so I was quite excited to go with my friends. I had not been to other “milsim” events, such as https://www.oplionclaws.com/ or https://americanmilsim.com/. Both of these events I had not heard great things about, so I instead contacted the owner of Milsim West, Josh Warren. Josh is a blunt, but nice person, so I kept my questions quick and concise. I recently turned 21, so instead of using a normal airsoft replica (like mentioned above), I decided to rent a blank fire AKS-74U. This is a real firearm with a blank adapter that requires a background check, and a preapproval from MSW to use. Blank fire weapons do NOT fire bullets, but fire a blank round, in which nothing is fired but a round is ejected from the chamber.
This was the first time this company had rented out these blank fire weapons during one of these games, and the guy made a metric shit load of money renting them out. They cost $200 to rent, and then you had to buy ammo. Ammo is where I spent a good amount of money, more than I probably should have if i’m being honest. Before you are allowed to take these on the venue, you must go through a proper safety check. The people who supervise these milsims are called “cadre”. These cadre have all served in the US military, and had some sort of leadership role. You must show how to field strip your firearm, show all ammo (to make sure you only have blanks), test fire, and tell the 4 firearm safety rules. I passed, and bought about 600 rounds worth of blanks. Now, you can’t really “force” someone to call a blank fire hit, as they’re not being hit with anything. However, they must REACT to your blank fire, or they can choose to take the hit if they’re willing.
Blog Prompt #3 (9/20/21)
So at this current moment I am planning on creating a review on Milsim West, as shown above in my two previous prompts. I have only been to one of these events but I have watched enough content and talked to enough people to create a solid review on it. I am not 100% sure what my review is going to be structured like at this moment but I am brainstorming a process now. In terms of another full definition for MSW, I plan on giving a full introduction on it during the review. The primary reason I want to do a review on this is because I had such a good time, I want to give it the praise it deserves. This did not originally connect with me during the first initial plan of this course. In terms of structure, this is what I am looking at:
Introduction: Talk about Josh Warren, and the other co founders of MilSim West, and how MSW was founded. Go into details about when they started, and talk about the first few events. Probably mention some of the older events and older venues that are no longer in production.
Playerbase: Talk about how MSW is constantly growing and has a consistent and fluid playerbase, and how despite Josh’s constant trolling still manages to make a bunch of money every event. Mention in this part the various organizations/teams, such as The Rushing Russians, Task Force Mayhem, Task Force Mongoose, The DOI miltitia group, The Druznia, Grommets, and Kampfverband. Some of these groups are less known about than others so put as much information as known about them.
Gameplay: TBD
Current Venues Played at: Panthera Training Center, Guardian Centers, Andrews AFB, GTI (Government Training institute.
Camping/In game stuff
Closing and final score
Blog Post #4 (9/24/21)
Blog Post #4.5 (9/28/21)
I am still thinking of putting together a story for my GIF review. I know I am doing it on my uncles animals, but I want to make sure I tell the story correctly. Using GIF’s for sure allows us to express ourselves in a way that’s not text to the reader, which I think is pretty helpful. My full story isn’t completed yet, as I am still working on the details on how to make it not super boring. I know everyone loves animals, but I am thinking on how I can drag the story out a bit longer than I currently have. My uncle has 8 goats, so I think I can talk about each one in a different way to make the story a bit more interesting. In terms of GIF’s, I am thinking I am going to use non-animal ones at times to not bore the audience too much, as if the entire story is just animal animal animal, they might think it’s too repetitive. I made a few edits after someone told me my current story was a big too repetitive, so I want to avoid that overall. Formatting wise, I think I need to fix a few things.
Blog Post #5 (10/6/21)
The brief explanation behind this story is pretty simple overall, it shows a car driving towards a cliff, and immediately jumping off it.
In terms of creating this microstudy, I was originally going to do something with goats. However, I could not think of a good “story” with pictures in terms of making one with goats. I then switched my line of thinking to cars, as there could be plenty of funny stories made with cars. I decided a test car going off a cliff would be the perfect last image for this, and finding a random car for the first image worked well. I really didn’t make any major decisions doing this, but I did switch my line of thinking a few times, from goats, animals, and then to cars.
Blog Post #6 (10/13/21)
As far as brainstorming goes, I still am thinking about doing my project on MilSim West. Overall I think that is the best topic for me to pick in terms of the knowledge I have about it, and therefore I think it would be the most logical choice. Overall I would like to go into a lot of detail about MSW, and it being a complex topic, I think I could break it down pretty well, as well as go into detail about how it operates. I need to research more in terms of layout and staff structure, to make sure that the project turns out well, as well as makes sense. I don’t want to expand it too much, as too much filler content would be bad for the essay.
Blog Post #7 (10/20/21)
This is the annual Halloween party ODU will be hosting inside of Constant Hall. This event will be promoted all over social media pages, mostly the various ODU Instagram pages. This is simply because the primary audience for ODU is pretty much all on Instagram and nowhere else. The main reason this event is happening because the ODUSES department throws this event every year and this results in good relations with the ODU students. This advertisement above is the primary source in terms of promoting this event, as it sticks out and is simple. Keeping things simply often results in money saved as well as time saved. This primarily allows ODU to save money on promoting this event as it often costs a lot of money to put together.
Blog post #8 (10/27/21)
I am currently doing Hansel and Gretel. My script unfortunately did not save but I can put some of the rough draft ideas below.
I was talking about the storyline and how I thought it was really interesting for a fairy tale, as it was quite violent. However, if you have read Grimm fairy tales before, you will know that these fairy tales are quite violent. The Germans seem to love the violent stories that they tell their kids.
Blog post #10 (11/10/21):
I am doing my final project on premiere as well as adding some elements in from word, and YouTube. A combination of all of these elements. Both are relatively affordable, with premiere being the most expensive, being $35 a month. YouTube is free to use, with Word being free to use with a university ID.
Blog Post #11 (11/17/21):
Task: Picking a proper digital tool
Response: I am picking YouTube simply because it is one of the biggest platforms to help creators make and share content around.
Task: Start working on introduction:
Response: Introduction has started as well as pulling sources for this paper is completed. Introduction is about 200 words give or take.
Task: Decide what sources will be used
Response: Not fully decided yet. Various sources have been found and located but none are fully solid yet.
Task: Talk about usefulness of youtube
Response: Not fully done or completed yet.
Blog Post 12 (12/1/21)
(WOULD NOT LET ME IMBED, SORRY)
Blog Post 13 (12/8/21)
As of right now things are almost completed with my Digital Design project. Cultivating this project throughout the semester has been a constantly changing process, in terms of how I wanted to create the project. At first I was temped to change my format altogether and not make a blog on my topic (MilSim West), but my love for it remains strong so I decided to keep making it. I have encountered a few main issues when working on this project, mainly that there are very few papers/blogs written on this topic. There are only 2 primary ones I have been able to find, one being a Vice documentary, and Wall Street Journal article from last year.