English Blog Entry #5

Tonight, my time was spent deciphering Kayla's poetry that she had written, and asked me to critique before Creative Writing class tomorrow. For Kayla's privacy, I wont be posting her stanzas on here, because she's very self concious of her writing. But anywho~

Her poem was supposed to show thirteen views of a gun, one viewpoint being of someone who enjoys video games such as myself.

"BOOM, HEAD SHOT! YOU'RE DEAD." All the studies that I've read in my time that relate kids to video games and the amount of violent things they did, would focus on African American children. All the studies would rant on and on about how them playing Grand Theft Auto meant they would grow up to be a gang member. They had no general assumption for all video game players including people caught in a Suburbia Utopia such as myself. No general conclusion to whether or not increased amounts of violence occured in children, because of video games games.

For me at least, the studies don't even hold true. When I'm angry with a person, I don't think of shooting them or even something much less severe, such as slapping them across the face. I don't look at guns and think that they're 'toys' or 'items to use to pwn my opponents,' yet there's this general conception that we people play video games, are like that. Violent, savage beasts. [The whole talk of savage reminds me of Lord of The Flies. Hated that book!]

Reading Kayla's poem was refreshing though, because she didn't show any of those general misconceptions in her writing, from the gamer's perspective. She simply wrote the 'BOOM, HEADSHOT!' bit to be funny.

Though, a small part of me felt scared and vulnerable, when she talked about a person with depression holding a gun. The emotions traveled through me in waves; I had no idea why reading it felt so awkward. She talked about how they wanted to shoot themselves; End it all in just a moment. How would that turn out? Would they have any regrets if they had an opportunity to think about it after they died?

Hmm.