Gamer Girls

0:00 – “I really never thought I’d be reviewing a Metroidvania that’s based on a Christmas Carol but that’s what we’re doing today.”

This is boring as fuck. I’ll have to dust off my Christmas Carol story.

“What? That fucking story about you in a school play? Who gives a shit? You already wrote about this.”

Well, I’ve only got so many childhood stories. I can’t come up with new ones.

So it was the 7th grade. Christmas Carol. We had some fairly young English teacher. Was it English that she taught? I guess it was. She was a nice woman.

We had to choose which parts we wanted to try out for. I went with some role that had three lines or so. Nothing substantial but it had some lines.

So we’re trying out for the play. Just in class. We’re reading lines. And the line was, “Alright, I’m leaving.”

Every single person read it like, “Alright. I’m leaving.” Maybe this doesn’t show up well in print form but it was totally unnatural. Whereas I read it like, “Alright, I’m leaving.” I read it as though I was annoyed. You know…as the character would be. But these other people read it like they were doing fucking bad acting. Reading lines.

I was living that shit. Method acting. I took it to a whole new level. And when I read the line, people were impressed. Genuinely. They laughed. They cheered. I felt like James Rolfe in his autobiography where everything he did was all the rage and everyone loved it.

So I didn’t get the part. I got some other part. A part with no lines. People were pissed off. One guy said, “(Gamer Girls) should get a line.” And the teacher agreed. She said that she’d give me a line.

I don’t know what role I ended up getting, if the character even exists in the play or was just made up by this teacher. But I was in a bar, I guess, or I suppose it would be a pub, in London (because I guess it takes place in London, something I didn’t recognise at the time) and I said, “A toast. A toast to Mr Fezziwig. The best employer a man can have. And to Mrs Fezziwig too!” and the rest of the characters raised their glasses in toast.

Who the fuck is Mr Fezziwig?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Fezziwig

Scrooge’s former employer.

Anyway, the line didn’t give me much to work with. I said it. There were no mistakes. But there wasn’t much passion. And I felt that the “And to Mrs Fizzigwig” too bit was tacked on, right on, feminist bullshit. Genuinely, I didn’t like that part of the line because I thought it was out of character and just brought in for the sake of sexual equality. So I wasn’t comfortable with it.

Not that I’m uncomfortable with sexual equality but this is a scene about early Industrial Revolution Britain. Would some chimney sweep or whatever the fuck I was really give a shit about his bosses’ wife? “Oh, we have to make sure to include his wife in this toast.”

And it’s totally unexplained as to why this guy is toasting Mr Fezziwig’s wife. Is there something going on between the two characters? If I was Mr Fezziwig, I’d be concerned. “Why is this guy toasting my wife? Why does he even know my wife? This is my employee. It’s not like I’m bringing my wife to the factory.”

So I read the line and it was what it was. Had I got that role that had me saying, “Alright, I’m leaving” that would have been memorable. I would have stolen the whole fucking show if I had that part.

We did the play for the school and then we did the play for our parents. My parents didn’t give a shit. No words of encouragement afterwards. Even if I got that juicy “Alright, I’m leaving” part, everybody in the auditorium would been wowed and they still wouldn’t give a shit.

That guy who stood up for me in class got a juicy role in the play. I don’t remember what it was but it was a significant role. The next year, he was the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, obviously another good role.

He had a twin sister. She was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Neither of them were particularly good students. Neither of them were gifted actors. And they arrived at the school in like the fifth grade (as opposed to most of us who were there since kindergarden). But they were somehow related to this English teacher. So they got the coveted roles. What fucking bullshit.

Anyway, that guy died like 15 years ago under mysterious circumstances.

Christmas Story. Charles Dickens can fuck right off. Mark Twain was a noted critic as well.

San Francisco Alta California, February 5, 1868

MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA.]

The Great Dickens — An Honest Criticism

WASHINGTON, January 11th.

Charles Dickens.

I only heard him read once. It was in New York, last week. I had a seat about the middle of Steinway Hall, and that was rather further away from the speaker than was pleasant or profitable.

Promptly at 8 P.M., unannounced, and without waiting for any stamping or clapping of hands to call him out, a tall, “spry,” (if I may say it,) thin-legged old gentleman, gotten up regardless of expense, especially as to shirt-front and diamonds, with a bright red flower in his button-hole, gray beard and moustache, bald head, and with side hair brushed fiercely and tempestuously forward, as if its owner were sweeping down before a gale of wind, the very Dickens came! He did not emerge upon the stage — that is rather too deliberate a word — he strode. He strode — in the most English way and exhibiting the most English general style and appearance — straight across the broad stage, heedless of everything, unconscious of everybody, turning neither to the right nor the left — but striding eagerly straight ahead, as if he had seen a girl he knew turn the next corner. He brought up handsomely in the centre and faced the opera glasses. His pictures are hardly handsome, and he, like everybody else, is less handsome than his pictures. That fashion he has of brushing his hair and goatee so resolutely forward gives him a comical Scotch-terrier look about the face, which is rather heightened than otherwise by his portentous dignity and gravity. But that queer old head took on a sort of beauty, bye and bye, and a fascinating interest, as I thought of the wonderful mechanism within it, the complex but exquisitely adjusted machinery that could create men and women, and put the breath of life into them and alter all their ways and actions, elevate them, degrade them, murder them, marry them, conduct them through good and evil, through joy and sorrow, on their long march from the cradle to the grave, and never lose its godship over them, never make a mistake! I almost imagined I could see the wheels and pulleys work. This was Dickens — Dickens. There was no question about that, and yet it was not right easy to realize it. Somehow this puissant god seemed to be only a man, after all. How the great do tumble from their high pedestals when we see them in common human flesh, and know that they eat pork and cabbage and act like other men.

Mr. Dickens had a table to put his book on, and on it he had also a tumbler, a fancy decanter and a small bouquet. Behind him he had a huge red screen — a bulkhead — a sounding-board, I took it to be — and overhead in front was suspended a long board with reflecting lights attached to it, which threw down a glory upon the gentleman, after the fashion in use in the picture-galleries for bringing out the best effects of great paintings. Style! — There is style about Dickens, and style about all his surroundings.

He read David Copperfield. He is a bad reader, in one sense — because he does not enunciate his words sharply and distinctly — he does not cut the syllables cleanly, and therefore many and many of them fell dead before they reached our part of the house. [I say “our” because I am proud to observe that there was a beautiful young lady with me — a highly respectable young white woman.] I was a good deal disappointed in Mr. Dickens’ reading — I will go further and say, a great deal disappointed. The Herald and Tribune critics must have been carried away by their imaginations when they wrote their extravagant praises of it. Mr. Dickens’ reading is rather monotonous, as a general thing; his voice is husky; his pathos is only the beautiful pathos of his language — there is no heart, no feeling in it — it is glittering frostwork; his rich humor cannot fail to tickle an audience into ecstasies save when he reads to himself. And what a bright, intelligent audience he had! He ought to have made them laugh, or cry, or shout, at his own good will or pleasure — but he did not. They were very much tamer than they should have been.

He pronounced Steerforth “St’yaw-futh.” This will suggest to you that he is a little Englishy in his speech. One does not notice it much, however. I took two or three notes on a card; by reference to them I find that Pegotty’s anger when he learned the circumstance of Little Emly’s disappearance, was “excellent acting — full of spirit;” also, that Pegotty’s account of his search for Emly was “bad;” and that Mrs. Micawber’s inspired suggestions as to the negotiation of her husband’s bills, was “good;” (I mean, of course, that the reading was;) and that Dora the child-wife, and the storm at Yarmouth, where Steerforth perished, were not as good as they might have been. Every passage Mr. D. read, with the exception of those I have noted, was rendered with a degree of ability far below what his reading reputation led us to expect. I have given “first impressions.” Possibly if I could hear Mr. Dickens read a few more times I might find a different style of impressions taking possession of me. But not knowing anything about that, I cannot testify.