In my childhood years, I had two friends that I did everything with. The three of us were inseparable and when we all got together, the creative juices were always flowing. A lot of the time, we would play ‘Stranded,’ which, in short, was a game where we would act as Nintendo characters stranded on a deserted island. We took the roleplaying to a whole different level, though, and were always acting in character.
One day we had decided to color together. The younger sister of the two and myself were very artsy and drew frequently, while the older sister enjoyed coloring but was not as practiced as we were. However, she was so creative with her thinking and always came up with something that would make us burst out laughing. Not this time, however — at least not for me.
That day in particular, we did not have paper, so we were also being creative in our resources. We had paper plates and were drawing things in keeping to the circular design of our “canvases.” Both the younger sister and I drew portraits of our favorite characters: Link for me and Pokémon’s Growlithe for her. As for the older sister, she kept her project hidden for the most part, and we were both eager for her to reveal her masterpiece. I couldn’t help but notice she was using a lot of green.
She finally unveiled her creation and in her best Kirby impression, she announced:
“Ta-da! It’s Link in a blender!”
The center of the plate was filled with swirling colors incorporated in Link’s color pallet, especially green. My younger friend was laughing hysterically, but I was outright offended at this. I was at that age where I didn’t want anyone to be mean to my favorite character, even if it was in good fun. The fact that I still had a huge crush on Link at that point didn’t help either.
Of course, I didn’t want them to suspect anything, so I laughed quietly and played along; but I still had to question why. She just kind of shrugged with a silly grin on her face and that was that. I’m very sure I verbally told her that was mean, but in a lighthearted tone so she wouldn’t think I was angry, but that didn’t seem to phase her. She thought it was funny, and looking back on it now, it totally was, but I was a little brat who couldn’t take a joke.
Some time passed, about a week or so, but I did not forget the scribbly image of my favorite hero being ground up into bits (it wasn’t as gruesome as I make it sound, but this was all I could imagine). I was beginning to mess with Windows Movie Maker at the time and did some crudely drawn animations with MS Paint. With this power in my hands, I could have my revenge.
The next time I invited them over, I made a multitude of tiny skits performed by terribly drawn Nintendo characters, including poorly recreated scenes from Shrek 2 and Fire Emblem’s Soren’s Dance Party which was a running gag on my YouTube channel at the time. In the mix of it all was my vengeance: Kirby in a blender! I took her favorite character and put him in a blender and animated it (poorly,) and you know what she did? She laughed.
It wasn’t just a fake laugh like what I did, it was real. She legitimately thought it was a funny prank in return for her silly art project. We all laughed together, enjoying the goofiness that was my homemade movie, and that was the end of my trauma of Link in a blender. At that moment, it was then easier for me to look back at something so silly with fondness and in the end, I learned to not take poking a little fun at my favorite characters so seriously.
