Culture

Alice, The Nerdy Girl

Alice Scarlet Death

 |  Apr 16, 2018

Did you know that I have a very nerdy background? Most of the time you see me writing social justice pieces, or talking about nihilistic mysticism stuff. But, I’m also a hapless nerd and I’m not ashamed.

Many of the people I’ve met in the last three years do not know this due to my financial situation. Been living a relatively small life, but I used to have access to so much more. Let’s talk about that.

As a child, I had an NES and Sega Genesis at my house. But I’d spend visitation at my dad’s house for a few months out of the year, and he had an Amiga and an SNES. He got me into RPGs, and we would play them together. I was very young and didn’t know how to read very well, so he would read all the screens out to me. And, uh, a lot of these early 90s’ role-playing games have a lot of dialogue. My favorite memory is of us playing Illusion of Gaia together. My second favorite is being cut loose to play Final Fantasy II on my own and not understanding what the word “swoon” or “whom” meant.

Then my dad got me into anime. He lived in Maryland at the time, and we’d visit College Park. This place had an import anime/video game shop and would rent out fandub VHS tapes. Then eventually, my dad took me to my first anime convention in 2002, Otakon.

In high school, I started my own anime club. More precisely, the principal said it has to be a Japanese culture appreciation club. So that’s what it was. But I still brought it DVDs samples from my subscription to NewType magazine. My favorite memory is when we had the Japanese consulate come and do a tea ceremony using cups we made ourselves in the art room.

In 2005, I went to college. I studied at Middle Tennessee State University. I was trying to get a B.S. in Recording Industry, production. During this time, I started getting a surplus amount of money from college loans and grants. I started amassing a various amount of video game systems. I watched Angry Video Game Nerd, and was upset at the hyperbole portrayed in all his ‘bad video game system’ reviews. So, I started buying consoles.

Over all, I believe I’ve owned over thirty game consoles: NES, SNES, Gameboy, Virtual Boy, N64, DS, DSi, 3DS, Gamecube, Wii, Switch, PSone, PS2, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Sega Pico, Sega Saturn, Sega Genesis, Sega 32x, Sega CD, Sega Dreamcast, PSP, Vita, Neo Geo Pocket Color, Neo Geo MVS, Mattel Hyperscan, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, and Casio Loopy.

I was secretary and vice president of the college anime club. I was in charge of movie nights every other week, and partially in charge for showing three new episodes of different anime a week. This lasted for about six years. This is the main reason why it’s hard to get me to watch anime these days. I’m just so burnt out. Now I’m just really picky and don’t want to waste my precious time on shows that are just rehashes and full of tropes that I can pretty much predict at this point.

I had a few jobs in high school and college as well. I worked at a Suncoast, where I was privy to all the new anime and bizarre live action Japanese films. I worked at Video Culture, which was a mom and pop video store. That’s where I learned about Cinema of Transgression and No Wave. I also worked at a Game Crazy, and pretended to be everyone’s best friend to make the sales. I was always top five in the district.

I switched from music production to a public relations degree by 2010. Since I represented a student organization at the time, I had an idea to run my very own anime convention on campus. I wrote a grant to get $2500 from the school and they basically paid for the whole convention. It was a one day thing. Free. In the dead heat of a humid Nashville day. About 300 people came throughout the day. We had some bands play and the local retro game shop was basically the dealer’s room. I organized and hand-picked all the panels, and basically set up everything myself. Here’s a picture of the schedule for ADAcon:

If you want to see more pictures, check the bottom of the article for a gallery.

After that, I started working with Akaicon for three years and helped them get off the ground as an operations director.

Then I got sick. I was severely depressed. I lost my home. I lost my cats. I ended up selling all my video game consoles except a few. I sold my music gear. I having a rough time. I was running out of options and eventually some friends paid for me to get a plane ticket to Seattle, where I could get the services I need to get better.

And, you know, I’m not even that mad that I sold my game consoles. I played them, enjoyed them, and I have fond memories of them. However, selling my music gear destroyed me. Not being able to create, or express myself in certain ways really cut me to the quick. I’m slowly on the process of getting my life back and being able to do the things I want to do.

I just felt like writing this because a lot of friends come over to my apartment. And they just see literally nothing. I have no wall posters. No flair. There’s just some monitors, a trans flag, and an asexual flag. I kind of feel like nerds, rather, “weeaboos” always tend to have a collection, or something to show off. And I don’t really mind not having one, but often times they can be conversation starters. Since I have nothing to show, a whole blog post about it letting people know should be suffice. It might even be overkill! Who knows.

More Adacon photos: