Writing the Player Narrative was much easier than writing the Literacy Narrative. It was definitely because I’ve just played a incomparably more than I have written or read. As much as I would have liked to write about my ample video gaming experience, I recognized and learned that my most memorable experiences regarding games were when I did something with the company of my friends. I have spent so much time playing games alone while talking to friends in the online sphere, but I realize it just isn’t memorable when you’re all alone in your basement. The explicit message my player narrative reflects hopefully conveys that games, not just video games, are enjoyable especially when you play with your peers. I think the real social aspect, that is not present with virtual gaming, is something special that online friendships can’t provide. My steps for this narrative were drastically different to my literacy narrative. In the literacy narrative, I had to compile a list of writing/reading experiences because I struggled to choose a memorable that was particularly memorable to me. However, for this reflection, I had so many experiences I had thought up in my mind simply from the fact I am more a player than a reader-writer.
The game opens up with a message the main character sent to his/her mom. The main character tells the mom that he/she got the ticket home from Europe. The main character also says that the arrival date is June 6th, that the flight is late, and that he/she will shuttle from the airport. The game then officially starts with, I am assuming, the main character on the porch about to enter his/her home. It is currently June 7th, 1995.
Porch:
I am in a dark area right outside the front door to the house. My travel bag is on the ground. I try to enter through the front door but it is locked. I notice some sort of letter hanging on a wooden door. It’s a letter dedicated to me (my name is Katie) and the letter is telling me to not search for the missing writer of the message, Sam. Sam initially wrote that he doesn’t want Mom and Dad to know that he is not home, but it appears that Sam erased “Mom and Dad” and replaced it with “anyone”. I am getting the sense that this ominous letter might be a suicide letter because Sam wants to keep his disappearance so hidden. I then find the key to the front door in a wooden cabinet. I open the door to the lobby of the house. So far, I am feeling uneasy, as the entire interior of the house is barely illuminated and looks like it’s from the setting of a horror movie. To make it even creepier, the rain outside and frequent thunder makes me feel like I am about to enter a haunted house. As a side note, the items in my current inventory are my passport, my boarding pass, and obviously, the key.
Lobby:
When I was about to open the front door, I had the preconception that I was low to middle class because I purchased the cheapest available flight; however, the main lobby of the house was of grandeur. The first thing I see is the wide main staircase and just the immensity of my house. I then head left and see the bathroom. Just then, I hear a voice. It appears to be my narration of Sam’s journal. Sam says so much has changed. He says that I have been gone for a year. It appears that Sam had a difficult experience going through so many changes, like moving to this new house and moving to a new school. This probabilize my grim guess that Sam killed himself possibly from depression. I then turn the lights around the house including the closet and a nearby lamp. I find my family picture towards the left wing of the house. I also turn on this recording of a girl calling out for Sam; I’m not exactly sure if the girl calling for Sam is me. As I am walking through my house, I am raising a suspicion that I am the only person in the house.
Hallway (left wing):
I walk down the hallway. I open things here and there. Nothing particularly eye-catching. As I proceed down the hallway, I go into a room on the right. It looks like an office space. On a chair I pick up an interesting book regarding the killing of JFK. There is another room connected to that room I was just in. The new room seems like the house library. On a table, I inspect a magazine and I get frightened from the magazine cover of a person staring right into me. I go back to the hallway and I go further down it. I am walking down the hallway, about to turn the corner on the right when I hear a man’s voice. There is a room on the far left of the hallway. The TV on the room is on. It is the source of the male voice. Upon inspecting the TV, I read that there is or was a severe weather warning. I then realize the disorderly state of the room and make the connection that possibly my family were scuffling around the house to get their most important things and fled due to the weather, which explains my family’s absence. However, this doesn’t connect to Sam’s beginning message. I am confused. I walk to the end of the left wing to see that the door at the end of the hallway is locked. I walk back to the main lobby.
2nd floor:
I decide to walk up the staircase to the 2nd floor. I turn left and go down another hallway. There is a room with a sign that says radiation hazard on the door. I go into the room and wander around what seems to be a kid’s room. I am guessing this is Sam’s room. In the room is another TV that is essentially out of service. I think the bad weather conditions cut out cable. I then go into a bathroom right next to the room I was just in and listen to another segment from Sam’s journal. The narrator’s voice says Sam was dyeing his friend’s hair, Lonnie (she), and Sam and Lonnie felt a moment of intimacy. I then assume that the narrator of the journal is Sam and that she is a girl. I then enter my parents’ room and find a postcard sent by me. The back of the postcard is the picture of Big Ben. I think I stayed in London for an entire year. At the end of the hallway of the 2nd floor, the entire end of the hallway is illuminated by a red light. I immediately run away.
I continue to wander around the house but don’t find anything noteworthy. My guess of the entire situation is that Sam fell into depression after being unable to adjust to her new living environment and ran away or committed suicide, after which the parents searched for Sam all over and outside the house which was why the interior of the house was so disorderly. However, I am pretty uncertain that is the case. I feel like something a lot more sinister occurred within the household.
When I saw the family picture, I knew that the smiling faces of the presumably happy family didn’t capture the more dark, inconspicuous reality of the family.
I had recently watched Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, a DreamWorks classic if you were born around 2000. I gained inspiration for this side quest from my favorite character in the movie, Marty the zebra. Marty gained my interest in the movie because unlike the hundreds of zebras in the movie that are white with black stripes, Marty is the only one that is black with white stripes. This distinct feature of Marty that allowed his friend, Alex the lion, to find Marty in a massive herd, which allowed them to resolve their movie-long contentious conflict regarding identity and individuality. Also, he’s voiced by Chris Rock.
I chose the glorious meme photo of Jim Halpert from the The Office because I think the picture encapsulates my personality. Jim sneakily watching from behind an office curtain is analogous to my introverted personality, as I am typically behind-the-scenes in social settings. I would say my introverted side, much more frequent than my extroverted half, is characterized by my tendencies to remain in the back of any place where there is unfamiliarity. If I am stuck in a setting of people I don’t know, I am usually the one checking his phone for the 5th in the same minute to see if I received a notification because I am dreadfully waiting… waiting….waiting…. to get sucked into a conversation that has been initiated by another person. Although my introverted self is common, I am strangely the most extroverted within my friends’ group when I am surrounded by the people I know. I like to mess with my friends, sometimes a little too much. I am not afraid to steer the conversation or sing out loud in the presence of my friends just to bring out a laugh. In this way, my behavior is also just like Jim’s mischievous grin.
The idea of my literacy narrative came from an experience I had back in the middle of middle school. My narrative is about how a singular moment allowed me to have a greater appreciation for books. It was the time I was reading Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None when I got spooked by one part of the book, and I dashed to my mom because I got the creeps, but my eyes were still uncontrollably locked onto the engaging narrative of the novel. I gained a greater appreciation for book following that moment because I was never so engaged in a book. The process of writing my literary narrative was challenging. Although it was fun to go back and remember memories of reading/writing, it was difficult to physically write my literary narrative, as I faced the same issue I always face when I write: I didn’t know how to start. It was only after 1 hour or so that I just started writing and hoped for the best. While I was struggling to write, I was just thinking to myself in regret that I should have actually read during those library trips because I would have developed a well-grounded foundation of reading if I actually read more since reading can help in one’s writing skills. Nonetheless, it was quite enjoyable to write my essay. My favorite sentence from my essay is “The best I could do was The Conjuring because my friends forced me to; I ended up hiding behind my guardian pillow literally for every single second of the film that wasn’t occurring in broad daylight” because I still to this struggle to watch anything in a digital form of entertainment that is even remotely horror.
