The purpose of this creative project is to explore the concept of character development as it appears in non-linear story formats. These formats are those of relatively recent technological advances that have paved the way for stories to be related to an audience in ways that are completely unique to each individual audience member. This project specifically is a murder mystery story, told in such a non-linear fashion. The story is capable of being viewed in a completely unique manner by each individual audience member. From this story, viewer's opinions have been examined, and conclusions have been drawn of the value and significance of non-linear story formats in relation to character development. / Department of Telecommunications

This document vaguely describes what happened to me and my paintings during my time spent at VCU.

Horizon as a line that can contain a mystery. Without any futilities, just because it goes from one point to another. It doesn`t matter what scale we find it in. The Possible Borderline will consist mostly from photographs, but also from drawings and watercolours. Another part will be a subtle wire installation dealing with the horizon topic in a metaconcrete level – at someone`s home. The entire artwork should create a gentle story, a personal, imaginary horizon.

M.A. (African Languages) / The main aim of this study is to make a critical evaluation of the detective story, and to draw a line of demarcation between a detective and a crime story. This chapter is based on the theoretical arguments of different scholars. However, an extensive study needs to be done to come up with a clear and convincing difference between the two ...

The aim of this work is to analyze the current state of tourism development for the target group family with children. The analysis was first made on the basis of Mystery shopping, controlled interviews, and a proposal of a suitable solution for the target group of families with children was made based on the data.

Typescript, etc. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Det finns en pågående samhällsdebatt om spridning av desinformation på internet och vilka samhällskonsekvenser det kan innebära. På internet, exempelvis YouTube, möjliggörs spridandet av information till en stor publik, utan att någon granskar eller reglerar dess innehåll, vilket i sin tur gör det lättare att sprida desinformation. I studien analyseras en konspirationsteoretisk video på YouTube med hjälp av metoden narrativanalys. Syftet med studien är att öka förståelsen för uppbyggnaden av en konspirations- teoretisk video utifrån de narrativa drag som uppvisas, vilket görs med hjälp av teorier inom narratologi och konspirationsteori. Vi har som mål att utreda vilken betydelse de aktörer som verkar inom videon har för att skapa ett övertygande narrativ. Utifrån syftet har studiens frågeställningar formulerats: Vilken funktion fyller aktörerna i videon? Vilka narrativa hjälpmedel använder sig producenten av för att ifrågasätta tidigare forskning? Studien besvarar syfte och frågeställningar genom att i analysen undersöka videomaterialet med hjälp av narrativanalysmetoden aktantmodellen för att söka efter narrativa strukturer,  generella teorier om konspirationsteorier samt hur den litterära berättarformeln mysterium uttrycker sig i videon. Resultatet visade att aktantmodellen underlättade struktureringen av materialet och att berättarrösten inom videon besitter en omfattande kontroll över innehållet och den narrativa strukturen. Vi upptäckte att materialet inte uppnådde samtliga klassiska narrativa drag och mysterieformelns kännetecken, men vi kom fram till att producenten till viss del använder sig av en narrativ struktur och mysterieformel för att skapa en konspirationsteori. Avslutningsvis upptäckte vi att videon är uppbyggd av sammankopplade händelser vilka bygger upp konspirationsteorin till en helhet som ämnar att väcka uppmärksamhet och möjligen förändra den nuvarande etablerade teorin kring att Cheopspyramiden var en gravkammare. / There is an ongoing public debate regarding desinformation on the internet and what consequences it might cause to society. On the internet, for example on YouTube, dissemination of information is possible to an wide audience without anyone reviewing or regulating the content which makes it easier to circulate desinformation.    This study analyses a conspiracy theory on YouTube through narrative analysis. The purpose of the study is to increase the understanding of a conspiracy theory and research how the narrative is constructed within the video, this is executed with theories from narratology and conspiracy theories. The study also wants to investigate the function of different actors within the video and their roles in the creation of a persuasive narrative. From this purpose we formulated our research questions, which are: What functions does the different actors within the video fulfill? Which narrative instruments does the producer use to question former developed research within the field? To approach the purpose and the formulated questions we research our empiric material with actantial model to look for narrative structures, usual characteristics of conspiracy theory and how mysteries is manifested in the video. The result of the study showed that the actantial model eased our structuring of the video and that the storyteller did possess an comprehensive control over the video. Through the analysis we discovered that all of the usual narrative characteristics of a narrative was not met and that goes for the formula of mystery as well. We did however conclude that the producer uses parts from both narrative and mystery to develop the conspiracy theory. Finally we identified that the video is created with connected events which are constructed to a whole that becomes a conspiracy theory which intend to raise attention and possibly change the current understanding of the function of the Cheops pyramid.

Orientador: Silvana Vieira da Silva / Banca: Julio Cesar Pimentel Pinto Filho / Banca: Karin Volobuef / Resumo: Essa dissertação dispõe-se a estudar o romance O perfume do escritor alemão Patrick Süskind, publicado pela primeira vez em 1985. Tem-se o objetivo de demonstrar como essa obra, que antecipa no subtítulo ser a história de um assassino, se configura em romance policial. Para viabilizar o trabalho, busca-se subsídio na teoria da literatura policial e na história desse gênero, permitindo então estabelecer semelhanças e distinções. Antes, porém, discorre-se brevemente sobre os variados gêneros que compõem O perfume, que leva ao extremo a definição de romance, ou seja, uma composição híbrida por excelência. A obra em questão mescla, além das duas categorias principais do romance policial, a saber, enigma e negro, os gêneros predecessores a ele. O perfume rompe as convenções da ficção policial, com isso, aproximá-lo do gênero possibilita que outros romances sejam analisados pelo mesmo viés e possam eventualmente ser considerados também romances policiais, embora aparentemente estejam distantes do romance policial tradicional / Abstract: This essay intends to study one of Patrick Süskind's novels, Perfume, published for the first time in 1985. Our goal is to show how this work, which subtitle foresees the story of a killer, is configured in a crime novel. To make this concrete, we look for some data in the theories of the crime novel and in the history of this gender, which allow us to establish similarities and distinctions. Previously, however, we briefly expose the several literary genders that compose Perfume, carrying the definition of the novel too far; in other words, a hybrid composition par excellence. The work at issue blends, besides the two main categories of the crime novel (the mystery and the noir one) the predecessor genders to it. Perfume tears the conventions of crime fiction; then, approaching this novel to the gender makes it possible for other novels to be analyzed the same way, so that they can occasionally be considered crime novels as well, although apparently far from the traditional crime stories / Mestre

This study is concerned with the spiritual impetus and the lived dimension of the philosophy of the French Thomist Jacques Maritain in light of John Caputo's Heideggerian critique of Thomist metaphysics. In Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics, Caputo argues that the thought of Thomas Aquinas, probably the most important and most representative figure of orthodox Catholic thinking, is a paradigmatic case of what Martin Heidegger calls 'ontotheology'. This is the dominating tendency of Western philosophy and theology to view Being not as a mystery, but metaphysically as a mere collection of things which are simply present- external to the human being and the value of which is use. For Aquinas, according to Caputo, God is the highest 'being' that creates other 'beings', and it is in virtue of this relationship that human beings, allegedly made in God's image, view the world simply as a collection of things to be manipulated. The first question constituting this study's point of departure, then, is: if Aquinas is indeed an exemplar of ontotheological thinking, is the same true of Jacques Maritain, perhaps the twentieth century's most influential follower and interpreter of Thomas Aquinas? Yet in the same work Caputo also proclaims that what has been said is not the whole truth about Aquinas, and the argument that his thought is an instance of ontotheology is in fact what Caputo sets out to respond to-for the sake of recovering an Aquinas who was not a 'cold rationalist', but a spiritually gifted contemplative, a Catholic saint. Caputo makes the case that we can, by employing a method of 'retrieval' or 'deconstruction'-inspired by Heidegger and Jacques Derrida-find that which is hidden or left 'unthought' in Aquinas but which nevertheless determines his entire philosophical and religious life. This, Caputo argues, is a pre-metaphysical, mystical tendency directed towards the mystery of being, which overcomes metaphysics and escapes ontotheology. Here I apply this Heideggerian critique and retrieval to Maritain, and I argue that while there is in Maritain the same 'ontotheological' tendency to view reality as a collection of things and God as paradigmatic maker of things-the prima causa so richly expressed in Thomistic doctrines of the 'transcendentals' and participative being-there is in him a deep pre-metaphysical, mystical tendency which is, in fact, far more explicit than in Aquinas. In the first part of the study, I compare the philosophical doctrines and projects of Maritain and his first teacher and guide, Henri Bergson, and then of Heidegger in relation to Maritain. I also give a sketch of Maritain's religious and intellectual development, identifying the key religious and artistic figures involved: the novelist Léon Bloy and the painter Georges Rouault. In light of the philosophical analyses and what can be gleaned from Maritain's biographical notes, his correspondence, and the biographical insights provided by those close to him, I argue that we can see in Maritain the same concern for the question of the meaning of being in relation to human life that we find in Heidegger, and that, like Heidegger, this concern underlies his philosophical thought and serves as the impetus for something beyond philosophy. I show that from his Bergsonian beginnings to his later days as a Little Brother of Jesus, Maritain has a profound sense of the pre-conceptual and intuitive kinds of knowledge that we find in existentialist thinkers such as Heidegger, and also artists and mystics. I posit that while Maritain claims what he calls the 'intuition of being' is the most primordial experience human beings can have of ultimate reality, there is, in fact, an experience, or aspiration to have such an experience, which is even more basic, with greater implications for overcoming metaphysics and ontotheology: mystical communion with ultimate reality. The aspiration for such communion is, I claim, the 'unthought' in Maritain that must be sought out for the purpose of retrieving a Maritain who goes beyond metaphysics. Mapping out the main branches of Maritain's thinking about being in terms of the classical doctrine of the 'transcendentals' and corresponding instances of connatural knowledge, the second part of the study is devoted to finding where, in Maritain's thought, a retrieval might be possible. Examining Maritain's conceptions of the connatural experience-knowledge of the moral good and mystical experience, I conclude that we cannot discover any overcoming of metaphysics and ontotheology in either when they are taken on their own terms. For underlying both conceptions, I claim, is Maritain's 'master concept' of the 'act of existence', or esse, the metaphysical principle which makes it possible for the human being to take hold of their own existence and participate in the moral and divine life. The distinction between esse and the essence of beings (essentia) and a stress on the former, as Caputo argues with regard to Aquinas, in fact only supports Heidegger's thesis on the ontotheological character of Thomist thought. For a stress on esse, the principle by which God creates and sustains things in existence is only the outcome of a preoccupation with conceiving God primarily as the 'maker' of things. And what of esse when it comes to mystical experience? Mystical experience, Maritain says, is that of which metaphysical wisdom 'awakens a desire' even while it is unable to attain it, such that the testimony of it, such as that provided by St. John of the Cross, 'no philosophical commentary will ever efface'. Yet here, too, esse only serves to make an unbridgeable ontological and cognitive divide between God as viewed in terms of His causal transcendence and as an intentional object of consciousness, as presence- something or someone external to oneself. This is so even as one is, in virtue of the connatural experience-knowledge of love, united with Him in 'one spirit', as Maritain says, following St. John of the Cross. Given this, I seek a retrieval of Maritain elsewhere, in the richest and most original areas of his thought: the connatural experience-knowledge of the artist and the relationship between the artist and the mystic. For Maritain, true artists and mystics are not concerned with reducing reality to manageable chunks but with expressing the mystery of reality, and, as I demonstrate in the final two chapters, it is when the vocations of the Catholic artist and the Catholic mystic converge in Maritain's reflections-in the cases of Léon Bloy, St. John of the Cross, and Maritain's wife Raïssa-that we are able to retrieve a Maritain that, while very much remaining a Catholic philosopher, is also a mystic. I claim that it is when his thought is situated in its wider existential and religious context that Maritain as both thinker and contemplative escapes the charge of ontotheology because there exists in him a primordial and utterly determining mystical aspiration to experience a communion in love with ultimate reality, best expressed in terms of poetic and mystical language, rather than the metaphysical language of Thomist philosophy. Essential in demonstrating this are events in Maritain's life as well as people-artists and mystics-who reveal the mystery of Being to him. Toward the end of the study, I claim that this immanent mysticism in Maritain-which, unlike that of Caputo's retrieved Aquinas-balances apophatic and cataphatic elements and, as such, is complex and profound enough to render the categories of contemporary debate on the nature of mysticism and mystical experience in need of revision.

This mystery is set in the early 1980s and based on actual events. A high-school student unearths dark and deadly secrets of his Appalachian community. The explosive consequences forever mark his own life, his family's, and his town's. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1009/thumbnail.jpg