the-scowling-cat

...there was suddenly nothing left to do, but do what comes naturally: writing from the heart.

you all know me as that one kid who cries and is studying architecture while trying to play video games. i'm short, danced for years. some of you, i've know almost my whole life. some, you're closer than siblings to me. others, we've lost touch. a fair few, family.

the alexis you know, the one you see, the one you remember... is only half the woman i really am.

there's the architecture side. the one who puts on a smile and says that things are 'alright' or 'okay' when asked about school. the one who stares at other's projects and wonders, really wonders, why it doesn't seem to come... naturally. the girl who boasts being rather self confident... and isn't, to be frank. this side muscles through architecture school because she just wants to get a degree and get out. not because there is a drive.

then there's the gamer side, a side that only recently came to the surface. this side will sacrifice sleep to defeat a boss. it will proudly show that Pokemon are indeed cool, and will survive off of pasta, chicken, water, and nothing else, so long as there is a controller in front of her. this side, sees the world not in terms of building form or what could be buildings, but action scenes out of movies, anime, games. it sees characters fighting across roof tops, it sees a story possibility everywhere, and views the passing landscape as a super long platformer level. it sees worlds growing like the intro to Game of Thrones, out of a map. it sees intrigue, it sees twists, it sees boss battles and circumstances that cannot be.

but this isn't the side i let people see. i think most of you would think im crazy, having an imagination running fullthroddle like mine does.

but it does... oh gods does it.

you see. sometime around the age of ten or thirteen, i got into the Sims. i didn't really get the whole simulation aspect of it, cause it always took too long, but i would create houses (and only occasionally set my families on fire, and that one time, it was the baby dragon's fault okay?). i'd map out floor plans on graph paper sometimes, but never really did it often enough to be considered a 'thing'. i built with legos. i danced three to five days a week, did homework. as the years went on, i found the word architect sang true to my ears. i wanted to design houses, so that meant i needed to go into architecture. and that's what i did, and preached, and told everyone.

not even knowing what it was i was talking about.

how shocked i was to find out at the end of last year, that you do not need a degree in architecture to design a HOUSE. A HOUSE. the -only- thing i wanted to do with this degree, and i don't even -need- it.

and so, well that got me thinking. and we all know how dangerous it is for alexis to think.

my father first introduced me to the NES when we were still in florida, it must have been, though i only remember asking dad to set up the NES soon after we moved. i never really played it until i was around five or six, once we'd moved into the house we live in now. i'd play Super Mario Bros 3 and Duck Hunt until my parents wanted the TV back. a year later, a friend in dance exposed me to the wonderful world of Pokemon. its no lie i've been playing it since i was seven. for xmas before i turned... nine? or eight? i asked for an N64.  i was torn between the ps and the n64, but ultimately went to nintendo.

since then, i have grown with nintendo, wormed my way into PC games, the Playstation, most recently the xboxes, and any manor of handhelds that let me play pokemon, zelda, final fantasy, sims, kingdom hearts... the list goes on and on. i've played everything from platformers to fps, staying away from the horror and suspence for my own sanity, and found a niche in roleplaying games and strategy types.

video games have been a part of my life, whether my parents wanted it to or not, just as much as dancing. almost on an equal pedastel.

architecture... never has been.

video games were always the 'bad' thing the house it seemed. i'd sneak my gameboy color into my bed, or my advance and play in the dark with a screen light until the wee hours in the morning (occasionally stupidly EV training pokemon. which, btw, always plug in your system before you do this. otherwise you may wake up to find it between the wall and the bed very much dead. i blame freshman year for that one). or once i got a laptop, playing the sims or WoW until the wee hours as well. but, i was already up writing (and, by the way, had been since the beginning of high school and had moved rooms), so to me, it didn't matter. but still, it always seemed that there was some stigma about it, unsaid. i'm not sure why.

even now, i tend to keep the video games away from my parents, unless im playing handhelds. i honestly can't say -why- this is, besides taking over the television, obviously, and lugging my computer downstairs is a pain. i guess it must be since we expanded from Super Mario 64, my parents really haven't played them with me. my mom plays puzzle games now (and refuses every time i try to expand her horizons. to each their own i suppose) on her ds, but its always been something i do by myself. like i have to hide it.

but i don't want to hide it anymore.

i want to embrace it.

game design.

when you hear that what do you -honestly- think? the art? the fancy graphics? mm that's part of it. but its level design, it mechanics, its storytelling, its bringing characters to life in a way that makes them engaging. its everything i wish i could do with drawing that i cannot. its making a world come alive off a page and out of your mind so that everyone can see it. its not just art. its not just coding. its not just something that should be miscounted before you understand it.

i spent, very recently, about an hour and a half jotting down notes on trace in studio. i was in a right foul mood to begin with mind you, but i wasn't feeling the culinary school im designing. so i picked up a pen and started writing lyrics down from memory... and then i started drawing UIs sketches, and comparing a simple UI for single player games to MMO UIs... then listing what I feel is necessary in a game. i ranted to some friends over aim then for a little bit. on a whim, i pulled the cap off one of my prismas and pressed the fatty end to the chipboard i have taped down.

it created an ink blot

ink blot

and suddenly i was writing in the same prisma pen, that this would be a platformer kinda like Little Big Planet, and you started out as an 'ink glob' and had to flee through the world away from the 'correction fluid' that was trying to take out all the color. you started out black, but could pick up other ink colors. red made you fiery ink. blue made you liquidy to slide through pipes and gaps. green made you sprout doodled trees. white turned you into ice, and black reset your color. you could even mix colors together. i started mapping out possible physics systems i wanted to use. that i wanted gravity to be a big part so you can rebound your ink glob into things. or that you could stick to walls. level had to be able to be solved multiple ways or have multiple routes.

in half an hour, i did more designing than i do in five hours of architecture studio. -ever-

i don't know how this game, code wise, would work. but i wanna find out. i wanna learn. i wanna see what puts it together. what makes gravity function in a game space. how you code to keep a running score. and im learning on my own, slowly but surely.

i know what makes a game great, and what makes it fail so horribly you wonder why you paid money for it in the first place. i've played enough to distinguish the good from the bad, and sometimes you get a hidden gem. i also know what happens when you make bad design choices in MMOs, and suddenly, hunters are one shotting warriors and healers never die. or you make a boss so impossible, even the easy mode doesn't cut it. im not ignorant of these things. i watch podcasts and youtube videos and read up on the latest scoop.

the top of the matter is my level of creativity can never be actively built. there isn't magic in the real world. there aren't monsters. there's just... life. concrete. steel. wood. buildings. i imagine things that either paralelle the known word or don't even come close. it all shifts, it all moves, and it's never the same. and its most definately not something that can happen anywhere outside of movies or video games.

they tend to frown at running across roof tops.

trust me when i say this isn't just something i half assed put together when i thought architecture was too hard. or when i was in a bad mood. or when inspiration for a story or senario popped into my head. i spent almost two days last thanksgiving learning how to program simple windows programs -with menus-. i just recently taught myself how to tell allegro to make the window space for games, and to show sprites in a given location.

i've done research into other schools, from the west coast to the east and even into canada.

this.

is.

not.

half.

assed.

this is the side of me that hasn't been let out. ever. but its a part of me, a part of me that is -much- stronger than the girl who just wants to make her parents happy by being in architecture. cause with me, once i prove to myself i can do something, i won't stop doing it. ever.

i have fractured self confidece as it is, with anxiety issues dealing with conflict and stress, and depression. i stick with things, usually because they create the least conflict out of all other possibilities.

this time. this time i think it needs to stop.

this time. i don't want to spend more money just to end up going back to school for something else after the fact.

i don't care if i'll have student loans to pay off. i don't care if you think its a stupid profession. its a -multi-billion- dollar industry, one that has thrived through the ressession far more than architecture has, and has a huge booming internet distribution sector. yes, i may change from company to company, but i don't think i'll be out of work anytime soon.

the one thing, the one thing that is keeping me from standing up and saying something is that when i get in front of my parents the words don't come. they form in my mind. i can see them clear as day. but i can't voice them. i can't tell them that their daughter is giving up on architecture because her passion died for it- or was it never really there to begin with?- so she can spend the rest of her life working for some of the biggest names in the video game industry, or maybe an  smaller company, or an indie company, doing what excites and drives her.

i know right? seems really simple on paper. s'never that simple when you get down to it. but with them, with my momma esspecially, i don't want to let her down, i dont' want to destroy that image of me she has.

at the same time though...

isn't it more grown up and mature, to take my future in my own hands, and shape it how i want it? isn't my happiness more important than an image of me?

a picture may say a 1000 words, but actions speak more than words or pictures ever will.

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i'm going to change my stars.

one way.

or another.