Ok, I just tacked “award” onto the end there.
It technically isn’t an award or anything like that.
But if all of the other tag posts can be awards, why not this one too?
After all, it’s going on the fridge with all my other awards.
It has to fit in with the others.
We’re no strangers to awards here at the Umai Yomu Anime Blog.
And by “we”, I mean “me”.
What can I say? I didn’t get into the anime blogging business for the glory. But I may as well bask in it.
Can’t hurt to appreciate one’s own accomplishments from time to time, and we’ve earned many grand accomplishments and prestigious awards here at the Umai Yomu Anime Blog. I’d take the time to list them, but really, there are just too many. These days I just count awards when trying to fall asleep – works like a charm, everytime. That’s how many there are.
But enough about us, the Umai Yomu Anime Blog, home to countless awards of all shapes and sizes…
This time it’s The Geeky Childhood Tag Award, first created by A Geek Girl’s Guide. And I was tagged by the venerable Voyager from AnimeVoyage.
It seems this tag award is different in that it has no rules, only questions.
Despite this, I’ll still give out a thank you to Voyager for the tag! Thanks!
Where did your geek come from? Parents? Siblings? Destiny?
Well I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never really seen myself as a geek. I’m more of a nerd. Technically not the same thing, but I’ll let it slide and hang with the geeks for this post.
I guess I’d have to say that for the most part it was my dad who got me into gaming. Aside from the good ol’ NES that we had with Mario Bros & Duck Hunt, as well as various other games, my dad used to let me watch him play games on his computer. NetStorm was a really cool one that I watched a lot, and then when Command & Conquer came out, that was cool to watch too.
And then came books. I used to read like crazy when I was a kid. The Lord of the Rings movies were coming out while I was in elementary school, and I was a huge fan of those movies. So my mom bought me all of the books, which I read through as well. Several times, because I was too young to understand everything the first time through.
The First Geeky Thing You Got Into
I guess I don’t quite understand the meaning of what is and isn’t geeky. My understanding was that a geek was someone who was very interested in a particular subject or hobby. I always think of American Pie, and “band geeks”. Cause I don’t see music as something that is geeky, but then I guess it can be, and most things can. It all depends on the amount of energy you put into it.
That’s what I’ve always thought it was at least.
For the most part gaming was the most geeky aspect of my childhood. We had a NES and so I played a lot of Mario Bros, Mega Man 3, Baseball, Blades of Steel…. we had quite a few cartridges to choose from. I also played Commander Keen on my dad’s computer, and he had a few other games that I played but don’t remember any names. We had a fun educational game called Teasure Mountain! that my sister and I played to death also.
Favourite TV Show as a Kid
Tough one. Depends how far back I go. I used to watch Blues Clues everyday after school with my sister when I was really young. Later on I used to watch Recess everyday at lunch cause I used to go home at lunch since I lived close by. Weekenders was another big one that I used to watch a lot.
If I had to choose from those titles I guess I’d go with Recess, because I’ve probably seen every episode of it at least twice.
Favourite Movie as a Kid
The Lord of the Rings. First Fellowship, then Two Towers, then Return of the King. All three are amazing, and when each was released it was so amazing that I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It felt like the scale of each movie got bigger and bigger. That whole trilogy is just amazing.
This is a weird line of thought, but I’ve never been a fan of Star Wars, and my reasoning for it is simply “because The Lord of the Rings is better”. The prequels were also coming out when I was a kid and a lot of other kids used to compare the two franchises. To this day I still have that train of thought.
Favourite Video Game as a Kid
I feel like these “as a kid” questions are too broad! How old?
For the NES, my favourite game was called Olympic Gold, and was basically a total button masher for all the different summer Olympic events. But I used to love playing that one over and over, playing as different countries. Plus I used to purposely screw up a lot because it was funny to watch the athletes wipe out during pole-vault or whatever.
For the N64, while DK64 was a classic, my favourite game was called BattleTanx: Global Assault. I never owned the game, but must have rented it at least half a dozen times. It had split-screen and I used to play it non-stop with one of my cousins and a good friend.
I also used to have a Gameboy Advance, and my favourite game for that was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I used to have one of those lights that connects to the Gameboy so I could stay up late playing in the dark. I also had Pokemon Blue that I beat several times, never caught them all though because I didn’t see the point in continuing after beating the Elite Four. Still don’t, now that I think about it.
Favourite Book as a Kid
I read so many books as a kid it’d be hard to pick anything from when I was younger. I used to go to the library with my mom and take out a ton of books to read. I ended up getting into young adult fiction when I was still in elementary school, and the most memorable series I read (and actually still own to this day) was called Tomorrow, When the War Began.
After that I moved onto fantasy, reading The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and various other fantasy novels. Hard to say which I liked more in the end.
Finally, when I was in highschool (no longer a kid but might as well finish this progression) I began reading war memoirs. WW2, Vietnam, I even had one from the Russia-Chechnya war. Once again hard to pick a favourite, but the most memorable one was Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II. Very interesting book and had some very cool photos inside as well, including a couple rare photos of the T26 Super Pershing in the field (if I remember correctly, only 2 were deployed before the war ended).
Favourite Memory as a Kid
These just keep getting more difficult.
Now a favourite singular memory?
There are too many to choose just one. I used to play Warcraft 3 a lot on a LAN connection with a friend who had 2 computers, and we used to play a lot of tower defense maps (Liquid TD being the first one I remember!). Warcraft 3 custom maps was a world in its own with many, many fun moments. Obviously I have a lot of great memories from my childhood, but I’ll just go with that because it’s a fond memory that came to mind.
A Character You Looked Up To as a Kid
Well at least this one doesn’t say “favourite character”, which would also be difficult. I wouldn’t say there’s any singular character that I looked up to for everything, but there were characters I thought were cool.
I used to be a big fan of Aragorn, for example.
A Character That Scared You as a Kid
There was that one scene with Bilbo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring that scared the hell out of me as a kid. Old Bilbo just wants one last look at his old ring.. and then he goes demonic for a second.
That was freaky stuff!
The Nazgul also scared me for a bit after first seeing them. Especially that scene where Frodo puts on the ring for the first time and sees them in their ghostly forms.
And that just about does it.
Because there are no rules, I’m going to take the easy way out and just end things here without further nominations and the like. I just did a tag post week recently and I don’t want to get too crazy with it all, tagging people. Plus this time I’m actually not breaking any rules!
Until next time,
Thanks for reading.
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