Breakfast with Amber

February 2022: Can't Talk, Watching Olympics

I'm being serious. Do not interrupt me while I'm watching the Olympics.

Perhaps I should take a few steps back and explain what's going on. I've moved back on to campus, and I've got a whole new set of classes to start with. These were probably the coolest classes I'd take in all of college.

First, we've got Experiential Design, taught by Dr. Neale. It's hard to explain what exactly this class was about, so I'm just going to quote the syllabus on this one: "Experiential Design is a discussion and project-based course which studies the design of various interactive, immersive and experience-based attractions that utilize theatre design as the approach to defining the narrative of the experience. This includes theme parks, public art, museum exhibits, escape rooms, tradeshows and corporate events, retail and beyond." Basically, we were designing experiences. See? It wasn't that hard to explain, me. Dr. Neale knew what he was doing, too. He has done experiential design work before, including the entrance to Aquatica at SeaWorld.

I did multiple design projects in that class, one solo (which will be important later) and three group projects. We used a ton of different software to create our renders including a 3D modeling program called Sketchup to create basic 3D models of the furniture and other display, Photoshop to place more detailed images over JPGs of the 3D models, and Adobe Illustrator to create floor plans. My personal favorite was the themed restaurant. I also named the folder for this class on my computer "Experimental design lol."

Second was the Generative Novel Workshop, taught by Dr. Porter, the English department's resident Creative Writing Guy. In this class, we were each supposed to bring an idea for a novel to the class, and the objective was to write the first three chapters while also workshopping with our peers. You ever read The Seven Souls on my Wattpad page? Well, it got its start here.

Each student was supposed to have their novel workshopped twice over the course of the semester, but I had to sit out of the first workshop because I was not aware that making the one black character the most aggressive one was a racist sterotype. He was supposed to be based off of Morton, one of the Koopalings in the Super Mario franchise, who is also dark-skinned and aggressive, so after I got that piece of criticism, I had no idea what to do with this character. In the finished novel, he became more like the apathetic one who did not sign up for this. He also has what must be my favorite line in the entire novel: "So apparently, I've been misunderstanding the phrase 'snitches get stitches' my entire life. I thought it meant 'snitches get stitches in their pants which must be ripped or something, which is a reward because who wants to walk around with ripped pants?' not 'snitches get stitches to close up the nasty cut in their skin that they got as punishment for snitching, and also, you're in jail for using the words 'killing' and 'king' in the same sentence.'"

Another tidbit about The Seven Souls: it all started in October while Amber was preparing for Haunted Hall. She was supposed to be a paranormal investigator using a Ouija board, but I didn't know about this yet, so when she brought a Ouija board into the room, I was like "What the fuck?" I also knew I needed to write something paranormal with a character named Amber, so when I came up with the idea for The Seven Souls, I decided to name the one female protagonist (at the time) Amber, and that's how Amber Lewis became Amber Louis. The other six were named after characters from a Pokemon fanfic I wrote in 10th grade called Pokemon Trainers Academy, which also had a protagonist named Amber.

Moving on. Third up, we have Media Culture Technology, which puts the cool in cool. Taught by Dr. Sanchez, this class was a semester-long project to pick an online community, take notes on it, and write an essay on the culture of that community. I picked Nintendo fans on YouTube so I could get a grade doing what I already do in my spare time. It actually gave me a chance to put into words what my favorite YouTubers did (for example, telling people to subscribe is "shill game"). I wrote my final paper over the February 2022 Nintendo Direct. There is an entire page dedicated to people popping off over Kirby Car.