Been a while since I did one of these tags: The Geeky Childhood Tag

So, I got hit with various awards and tags across two of my blogs. I’ll interrupt the usual Ospreyshire Origins posts, and give you something more fun. This is the Geeky Childhood Tag, and I was tagged by Merlin. He’s a blogger I’ve contacted with various posts and we’ve had interesting conversations for some topics. Merlin, I do apologize if I came off as some pessimistic person when it came to some of your Sunday Wisdom posts. There are no hard feelings here and I do like reading certain posts of yours. This does feel kind of weird doing this kind of post since my tastes in media is drastically different more often than not when I was a kid, but I think some of you might find this mildly entertaining. Here we go…

Where did your geek come from? Parents? Siblings? Destiny?

Good question. I’ll jokingly say destiny with the things I watched and read. Then again, I was geeky about multiple things. Not just nerdy things like animation or comics, but books, history, and geography (we’ll be going back to that subject later) came naturally since my parents encouraged me to read when I wasn’t watching cartoons or movies.

The First Geeky Thing You Got Into

I guess Marvel. I was a huge fan of the 90s X-Men cartoon and I had a collection of action figures of various superheroes. I did pay attention to some of the DC stuff since the Batman cartoon was there as well.

Favorite TV Show as a Kid

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego, all the way! Not the cartoon version, but the game show. That show is responsible for getting me into geography in addition to finding an interest in so many cultures which continues to this day. I learned a ton about countries, flags, landmarks, etc. Not to mention this has one of the best theme songs in 90s TV bar none. It was a dream of mine to be a contestant on the show, winning the whole thing, and saying “DO IT, ROCKAPELLA!” when I was a child.

Favorite Movie as a Kid

This is a tough question because I did like a bunch of different films, but I hate or are apathetic to a bunch of them that I like. Granted, I’m ashamed to admit that I used to like a certain rip-off movie that came out during my childhood, but we’re not going to talk about it. Maybe as some placeholder, I’ll say Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Summer Vacation. I used to know most of the lines of that film after seeing it so much.

Favorite Video Game as a Kid

I was big into fighting games and a lot of old-school Sonic the Hedgehog games. For me, it was Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Yes, I know that game is broken as heck, but that crossover series was nerd heaven for me. As a kid, I was like…”Wait, Megaman and Wolverine are in the same game? I NEED TO PLAY THIS!”. The tag team fighting was really fun and I remember beating so many people at that game including getting high scores in the local arcade. Not to mention I felt like getting hipster points because I knew who most of these characters were before the MCU existed. Just saying.

Favorite Book as a Kid

I was really big into the Animorphs series when I was a kid. I thought the concept and cover art in each volume was so fascinating. There was that TV adaptation, but I want to pretend it never existed. If we’re talking about poetry books, then it would be Shel Silverstein’s works.

Favorite Memory as a Kid

Definitely my 6th birthday party. My birthday is in late October and we had a Halloween-themed party where my friends and family were in costume. I remember getting cool presents, there were multiple activities going on, and everyone had so much fun. My party had people of all ethnic groups, class, and creed which was amazing in hindsight. One funny thing that happened was the pinata wouldn’t break, so my granddad got out a chainsaw to open it, so we could have the candy!

A Character You Looked Up To as a Kid

In a weird way, I would say Bishop from X-Men. Okay, he was only in a few episodes throughout the entire series, but he was the first black male superhero I had ever seen in my life, so (interracial parentage aside) this was the first hero who was like me. Bishop was tough, had cool powers in the cartoon and the comics, and he’s someone you can take seriously. I wish he had his own series of sorts and X-Men: Days of Future Past (the movie) REALLY didn’t do him any favors.

A Character That Scared You as a Kid

Ursula from The Little Mermaid absolutely terrified me as a kid. I didn’t know all the reasons why. I wasn’t sure if it was the whole octopus/human hybrid design, her just being nasty in general, and/or having multiple nightmare fuel scenes for me at the time.

A Movie That Scared You as a Kid

I certainly wasn’t allowed to watch a lot of objectively scary movies as a kid. Keep in mind, I didn’t watch my first PG-13 movie until I was 13, by the way. I guess the scariest movie I was allowed to watch then might have been Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which I saw at school of all places when I was in 6th grade. That scene with the guy getting his heart ripped out legit disturbed me. How was this ONLY PG?!?

Now I get to tag others for this thing…

Inskidee
Karandi
Scott from Mechanical Anime Reviews
Irina
Ameithyst

Representation Matters Pt. I

I thought I would make a multi-part post series about representation. Some of you know that it’s an issue that is dear to my heart. Recently, I’ve been having some revelations from likely and unlikely places when it comes to this particular situation.

Let me tell you a personal story and how things correlated to a study I found out about with a video and a separate site.

I’ve always struggled with low self-esteem even to this day. When I was a child, I have to admit that I watched more TV than I should. Sure, I read a lot which certainly helped, but when I wasn’t in school or reading, I’d check out the TV. I watched a lot of cartoons and live action shows. One thing I wondered was that there weren’t many heroes who looked like me. There were a few token characters here and there, but none were really compelling. They were either the token best friend or comic relief. Some characters that I did find very interesting would only be there were only in a few episodes. One I can remember was Bishop from the X-Men cartoon back in the 90s. He was the first black male superhero I ever saw and I thought he was cool with his time traveling ability while also being legitimately tough. I’m sure I had an action figure of him amongst other heroes of different races. Even though I didn’t have cable until I was in high school when my family moved, I still watched the basic TV shows and I saw the cable stuff when I was at my grandparent’s house or at a friend’s place. As someone who would be considered an ethnic minority in America, it was tough finding positive representation in mainstream media. Sure, I have a white dad, but someone like me is obviously not considered Caucasian and I’m not just talking about my skin tone, but I digress. Some idiots have said online “Why don’t you make your own characters?” years ago. Oh wait, I’m a freaking indie author and I’ve made multiethnic casts in my stories. Just saying.

What really caught my eye was a video I saw that had a slideshow as part of it. The featured image is a screenshot from said video that featured statistics from different ethnic groups of children watching TV. I wasn’t surprised about some of the statistics when it came to the ratios despite not thinking about the numbers or hours. What really floored me was the last stat as shown in the picture: “Children’s self-esteem generally decreases as TV watching increases; except for white boys.” The rationale makes perfect sense especially in Western media. Most protagonists are white males where they are the lead characters, the most desirable, most heroic, and the most idealized characters in the show. This surprisingly applies to villains, too. Even they have agency in their stories and they may have some strengths like being legitimately threatening, powerful, smart, etc. The Joker certainly comes to mind among other examples. This is not meant to shame anyone, but the stats can really speak volumes on how impressionable children can get their values or see their own worth (or not) depending on their race or gender. Here’s a bit more information on that issue: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tv-children-self-esteem-black-white_n_1616957.

Anyways, I will be talking about this sporadically (hopefully once a week) about positive representation in the media. I never realized how much of a psychological effect it had on me and I want to share these findings mixed with my own personal experiences.

The screenshot is property of Jabari Osaze from the video “Seven Little White Lies” on YouTube.