Let's Play With Jen

English class was all right today. We talked about viewing the world through different lenses, such as being prejudiced against people because of education, race, and age (There are more we'll talk about in the future, but those are the only ones we got through today). No one looked eager to speak on race, so I talked about how I grew up in Georgia, and at my school a few of the black kids used to pick on the white kids, trying to trick them into saying something that they could twist as being racist to get them in trouble. 

So I told the story of when, in fifth grade, my friend Katherine was pressured into making a comment like "black people are like black dragons: being black doesn't make them evil", or something along those lines. Of course, the black girl in question told the teacher that my friend had said "black people are like black dragons", and I was called into the office to act as a witness. The counselors and other authority figures were legitimately baffled by the fact that I didn't understand the concept of racism and that it was unfortunately still applicable to our day.

Point being: I never took this event and broadened it to "all black people are mean" (even though the vast majority of my bullies have been black). I've always understood that there are people who will be nice to me, and people who will be less nice. Race shouldn't have anything to do with it. I don't understand why this isn't clear to the rest of the world.

I followed this with the story of the writing conference I attended when I was sixteen. As someone who was writing leads of color, I was thrilled to attend a workshop about "Writing beyond the boundaries", supposedly about how to write other races. Except, it wasn't a "how" workshop. It was a "why we need it" workshop. We viewed a slideshow about how many white protagonists there are compared to other races (Did they look at every single book? Just the ones in America? I would think there would be more Asian leads if all books produced in Asian countries were taken in to account). At one point, someone in the audience asked if she had advice on how to write a side character who makes a judgmental comment, presumably to push the story into action. The teacher turned to her husband (who was Japanese, because of course she'd never marry a Caucasian man), and said, "How do we protect evil racists?"

For the next half hour or so, it was beaten into my head that all whites are inherently racist, and that the only way to not be racist is to not be born white. I learned nothing useful about how to write my characters (except that I, a white person, was likely to do it wrong and offend minority groups), and it was very irritating. That was years ago, but it still haunts me on a regular basis.

Fun fact: In all my years writing my own characters, I've only had one white male protagonist in my life. I don't know how this happened, but it did. It was never intentional. It just... happened. My white leads have always been girls. I went through a phase where I had dragons for protagonists. Ben Hollow from The Shadow Guild was half-Navajo. Timothy from Silverfish was Japanese-American. Ethel is "Stars and Finches"' equivalent of black, while Gavin is half the equivalent of Latino, and half elf (my elves being a sort of evolved feathered monkey creature). Even 124, the cat from Courtesy of Number 124, wouldn't be Caucasian if he were human, because he's half Ragdoll and half Siamese. He'd be Latino-Asian. Et cetera, et cetera.

The only story I have where the main character is a white male is Protagonist For Hire (which is the story that actually has a chance at being published... that figures). I think it's interesting.

Anyway, my cool friend who lives in Hungary - and I talk about "my squad" of online friends enough that I should probably just give their names, and she's Jen - was digging through some old files yesterday and found a game she made in RPG Maker years and years ago when she twelve, about "Fairly OddParents". English isn't her first language - though she speaks it fluently now - and she sent screenshots yesterday to mock her past self for her language abilities, questionable plot and writing skills, and the way the characters quickly ended up nothing like their canon counterparts and the whole thing became a mess.

She's trying to remake the game now that she's older - for practice if for nothing else, since she wants to be a game designer, and she's not in school anymore, and wants to redeem herself of this monstrosity - and today she was hoping our other "squad member" (Linzie, our awesome artist friend) and I would watch her stream it. So that went on for what seemed like most of the day. It was very long, but we got quite a few laughs out of it. I took a couple of screenshots near the end:

Anti-Wanda's lullaby written on the steamed-up mirror. There were 

several pieces scattered about and it was supposed to be a riddle.

Jen said, "Oh, come on! I won't be able to solve it because I

don't understand my past self's Engrish!"

I almost didn't breathe for several hours because 

I was laughing so hard the entire time.

We weren't far into the game when Jen started screaming at Wanda

and threatening to delete the file if this sort of OOC dialogue kept up.

Anti-Cosmo doesn't want to "let's look the stars"

The game just goes on with this kind of stuff. For hours.
Many jokes were made about how many times the characters went to sleep
(and shortly woke up after) because Jen loved night scenes so much.

I should explain the "I got the egg scene" comment. Earlier in the game, Cosmo, Anti-Cosmo, Timmy, and Wanda were staying at the house of a girl named Jenny (Present-day Jen regrets so many of her past choices). Jenny left to get eggs. But when the player walks Jen into town, she finds the shopkeeper standing outside his shop, which was "locked because the many rats inside". She asked the guy if she could "buy egg". He said, "Is fifteen enough?" Then he just HANDS THEM OVER, so apparently he just stands around carrying fifteen eggs on his person.

Fast forward. There's supposed to be this really romantic dream sequence not too long after that (it's a very ship-heavy game written by a twelve-year-old). There was a piano of all things in the middle of a deserted island. Jen said, "I wish you could hear the music through the stream, because this scene doesn't make much [of its limited] sense without it. Basically, Anti-Cosmo plays, and when he says, 'This is how I feel when you're not around', it's slow, and when he says 'This is how I feel with you', it gets faster, signalling his heartbeat".

A creative idea, but straight after she said it, she said, "THIS IS THE WRONG SONG"! Apparently, her game loaded the town/shop music instead!

So of course in the middle of this romantic scene that was playing, while Jen was listening to the town music, I typed, "You make me feel like a shopkeeper with fifteen eggs".

She couldn't stop laughing for a long time, and I promised I'd draw a comic for her sometime in the next few weeks. Linzie wants to draw another of the early scenes, but I can't remember which one.

Anyway, that was an experience. I was able to get some work done while the stream was going in the background, though. And after Jen finished with her stream, I asked if she wanted to see some of my old game attempts. So I streamed myself playing several of my Multimedia Fusion games that were made between four to seven years ago- all of which are so much worse than I remember.

I asked Jen, "Do you feel better about your game now?" since hers had cool backgrounds, text boxes with character icons, and everything (although some of her edits for those face icons were... amusing, to say the least). Jen said that she actually didn't feel better, because she had used pre-programmed items whereas my MMF games were more... homemade. Linzie pointed out that Jen had had to create an entire plot, and that her game went through to the end and lasted for HOURS, compared to mine which were each like five minutes tops, so we decided to call it even.

Tonight, I had dinner while watching another "Star" episode with Demetria. I loved the show-not-tell in it (One example being Ludo asking Glossaryck to say he's proud of him, Glossaryck saying he did a good job, and Ludo hesitating, then stubbornly repeating, "Can you say 'proud'?")

After it was over, I took my stats quiz for the week. 10/10 first try! Huzzah! Then I did my English quiz, about "avoiding stereotypes and sexist language". For your enjoyment, here are some questions:

Candidate vs. men and women?

Perhaps this should be answered to avoid alienating 

people who identify as agender? I got this one correct.

Okay, but what about this one? Grammatically, the first option is correct.

I got this one right... despite the "they/them" pronoun question, so...?

I don't see why people should have a problem with "mankind", but since I

figured someone out there views it as sexist, I said "no change" and got it correct.

This one made me hesitate. The instructions were to pick based on

my audience. My audience is readers of news articles. In the world we 

live in today, people blame cops all the time, so you would think they'd 

be more likely to read the first article (either to defend or argue) However,

realizing that police might read the article too, I picked the second option.

This one was a tad tricky too, but I figured the second choice was better 

because it didn't imply inner-city kids are disadvantaged or "at risk"

Surprisingly, I only missed two of the ten questions. One was this one, and I truly think it's unfair I got it wrong:

The instructions for this quiz: "Play to your audience"

Audience: An ad to encourage teens not to drop out

And yet I don't score because I tried to convince kids not to drop out? 'kay.

So, that was my day! I spent the time before bed looking over my abnormal psych terms, doing laundry, revising, and drawing. It's always fun days like this that remind me I lead a very nice life.