Week 6 Writing Assignment

Week 6 Satire
Kristina Dahlberg
Trevor couldn’t sleep at night. Ever since he had purchased tickets for PAX, two months earlier, he couldn’t find anything that would sufficiently distract him from the excitement of this upcoming convention. He had rifled through his closet every day for weeks, all the time concerned that he had nothing to do this event justice and proclaim his nerd pride to the world. Was it the day to show off his free Halo II tee in the charcoal black, his newly acquired Word of Warcraft: Burning Crusade tee in gunmetal black or the classic, ever popular, black-as-night Legend of Zelda tee with carefully detailed Master Sword in midnight black? After careful consideration Trevor decided that it was of the utmost importance to firstly proclaim his adoration for Penny Arcade in general and thus he decided on the black-as-night oversized Twix and Weatherby attire, with perfectly coordinated Fred Meyer blue jeans.
Trevor’s concerned mother had noticed this newfound change in her 28 year old son, and with a “tisk tisk”, she insured that he ate double broccoli servings at dinner the night before PAX. When she dropped him off the next day at 6:00am in front of the Maidenbour Convention Center she gave him a kiss on the forehead and bade him beware of “Goth girls”, who’s never ceasing attraction to skinny white nerdy boys she had heard about on Operah. Trevor promised his mother he would be careful and quickly made his way toward his nerd posse waiting for him in the pre-purchased ticket line. After several hours of waiting, the nerds had become antsy. All had not checked their emails, Instant Messaged their Internet girlfriends, or played WOW in all of four hours. Those waiting in the line to purchase tickets were glaring at the shiny red badges around Trevor and his fellow friends necks.
A large football player type with a baseball cap from the other line bumped into one of Trevor’s friends and didn’t acknowledge this significant faux paux.
“Hey man, watch it,” yelled Trevor.
“Fuck off, you little nerd,” the insolent, ignorant meathead yelled back.
A hush fell over the surrounding crowd. The football player didn’t understand PAX, he had probably come because of the 30 foot screens in which he could more effectively play Madden 07’. He didn’t read Penny Arcade - he’d never understand the jokes. The meathead didn’t know what he was getting himself into, he wasn’t in high school anymore and the jocks weren’t on top of the proverbial social ladder. He was in nerd country now, and no one used ‘nerd’ with such an utter lack of respect and in such a degrading fashion at PAX. This was the once place in which nerds could put aside their feelings of shame and openly declare their unhealthy love of night elves, where they could assemble tabletop villages - complete with hand decorated warriors, and where “all your base” is just generally understood. Thus, Trevor and his fellow nerds could not let an openly offensive comment like ‘nerd’ from a jock go unchallenged.
“Your mom services more requests than HTTP” Yelled Trevor, holding back rage.
“She keeps all her ports open like Windows ME” Added in Trevor’s friend, to a cheer from the surrounding crowd, complete with clapping and cat calls.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?”
Thankfully the PAX enforcers chose that exact time to open up the front doors and Trevor and friends were swept up in the scramble to get inside. Immediately Trevor led the way to the tabletop gaming arena, intent on testing his new ‘Magic’ deck. As he descended the floors, he caught sight of a set of fishnet tights and spiky black hair going past to the upper floors. They locked eyes in a purple flash and she was gone. Blinking Trevor stumbled off of the escalator.
Trevor spent several productive hours perfecting his strategy with the new cards, and with his friends egging, decided that a caffeine run was in order. Leaving the stand with arms full of a case of Bawls and pockets packed with Bawls mints, Trevor decided to try his luck at the PC gaming arena.
Signed up for a Battlefield 1942 Tournament Trevor and friends prepared their headphones and microphones for the match. Teams and characters chosen, Trevor smiled at his friends and turning to the other team yelled,
“Well, prepare yourself for some internal fragmentation.”
After two fierce hours of bullets flying, several games had ended and Trevor’s team was still second in gross kills. Trevor spray-painted the brilliant blue color of team on the side of his base, in defiance. He led the way through the ruined surrounding buildings, sure to strife around corners to avoid early detection. Watching his teammates and looking around for the enemies, he stumbled into a side staircase that led the way up to a view of the final enemy flag that was too good to be true. As he watched several enemies re-spawned before his very eyes. Whispering into his microphone, he alerted his teammates of this perfect sniper location, and told them from which angles to approach. Suddenly brilliant purple eyes pulled him back into reality. There was the girl, in skin-tight leather with black fishnet tights. The roar of bullets from his right headphone forced his vision back onto the screen. His men were making their move, now, and they needed him to have their backs. Focus back on the task at hand, he took out three enemy men in the area, one after another, the red laser visible for less than a millisecond. His men slowly creeped in, in case of hidden reinforcements, but there were none. The ground desecrated, and the final flag taken by the blue, the game ended in victory for Trevor.
“Owned!” Yelled his teammates, as Trevor took off his headset and went in search of the purple eyes. Found at last, Trevor sat down next to the black haired girl watching the game from afar, and looking deep into the purple abyss asked, “What would you say if I told you I roll 20s?”

Journal Entries

I chose my character based on what I believed would be easiest to parody that I also knew something about. My character and the focus of my story changed a great deal as I wrote, especially as I thought about what I found to be the most important in the story. My character was essentially mainly flat, as he really didn’t change during the story, or in my idea of who he was and what he would do. He was always rather cocky for a nerd – he yelled out things to a much larger jock early on in the story, but he may be seen as round by the reader, as I suppose I released more about his character as the story progressed, so he may appear to change. I found the satire itself to be challenging. I’m not sure if my end product is a short story with a few satirical elements rather than an actual satire, but it certainly was making fun of nerds from my perspective. I found it extremely challenging to write so out of character for me, though I’ve had experiences around such huge nerds. I couldn’t remember the logistics of video games, so that was hard to describe. I didn’t refer back to Twain at all because that wasn’t the kind of satire I wanted to write.