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Lost in Translation

'Go up! Up, up!'
'No, that's how I died last time!'
'On your left!'
'They're everywhere!'
'Eat it! Eat that one!'
'It ate me!'
'That's not fair!'
'I was definitely bigger than the one that ate me!'
'Stupid game... Shall we play again?'
When I was seven years old, this is what my lunch breaks looked like: my best friend and I would yell at her computer while playing a game called Fishy. My best friend was from South Africa and every time she visited her family there, she'd come back with awesome online discoveries. Fishy was one of them. The objective was to eat all the fish in the pond, while being a tiny fish yourself. My friend and I were terrible at it.
'We're never going to beat this game,' I said one day. 'I bet there isn't even a real end to it.'
'My cousin in South Africa did it. He said you'll get a message that you broke the pond.'
'Impossible,' I said. Little did I know that twelve years later I'd beat that game myself...

From Envy's Make it Happen List
#31: Play Fishy all the way to the end
Status: Awesomeness achieved

Throughout the years there have been times when I didn't think about Fishy at all. Sometimes I gave the game a try again - only to fail after five minutes of frantic keyboard slamming.
After eight years I still didn't believe what my friend had told me about the end of the game. She lied about South Africa more often, just to see how much nonsense I'd believe.
At 18 I came close to beating the game, but I got reckless. A big purple fish ate me and I swore I'd never play the game again. Until I saw Markiplier play and beat Fishy. The rumoured ending was true. I knew there was only one thing I could do: I had to play and make seven-year-old me proud.


My hands were shaking as I waited for the game to load. I was supposed to write a report on my trip to Berlin for college, but this was way more important.
With a splash my character in the form of a red and yellow fish was dumped in the pond. Quickly I brought the fish to the middle of the screen. I'd learnt my lesson all those years ago: lingering around the edges would get my killed before I'd gotten the chance to blink twice. The pond was full of enemies: every fish bigger than me would instantly kill me by eating me, even if I only brushed it's fin...
This time I had a strategy though: stay in the middle, run/swim from the big fish and let the small ones come to me. For a while this strategy worked great. It took me some time to get to the point where I could swim around and eat the slightly bigger fishies. Then, somehow, I was trapped in a school of big blue fish. I let my fish zip around the pond like a kamikaze pilot, my heart beating at full speed, my palms sweating. I slipped out of a very dire situation with a lot of luck and the remnants of twelve-year-old gaming skills. I sighed with relief - and got eaten by a purple fish twice my size.

Fifteen bad words that I will not repeat here later, I was ready to try again. Same strategy, different result. Sooner than I'd expected, but still after quite a long time, I reached the point where I could eat almost all the fish. It felt so good. I had all the power in the pond.


Within a few minutes, the end was near. I couldn't even move my fish around anymore, it took up the entire pond. Then the message popped up: I'd successfully destroyed the pond's ecosystem. Like a boss.


For five seconds I was very happy. Then I realized that my fishy had eaten the pond empty, which is quite a horrendous things to do. I felt bad for all the dead fishies in it's stomach. Yet in a way I was also really proud of myself. I'd played a game, finished playing it nonetheless, that Markiplier had finished too. I was basically at his level for a few minutes. Say what you want, but that's freaking awesome. And seven-year-old Envy? She would've beamed with pride if she could see me grin at a screen with a quite disturbing message.

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November 22nd: OMG I'm going to Slovenia! I'm going to meet Jerneja from Sparkly Kid!
December 10th: I'm so freaking excited!
January 17th: This is going to be so awesome.
February 14th: I can't wait till May.
March 5th: Almost almost May.
April 28th: Two days away from May.
May 1st: Shit, what if we don't get along? What if I'm a disappointment to her?
May 3rd: Well, no going back now...

From Envy's Make it Happen List
#29: Meet a blog buddy in real life
Status: Awesomeness achieved

There's nothing more exciting and terrifying than meeting an online friend offline for the very first time. So when I sat at the bas of the Preseren statue on Preseren square, I was torn between fight, flight and total excitement. Sure I'd talked to Jerneja plenty of times on Twitter and through comments, but... you never know, right? As long as the internet exists, catfishes and the chance of being stood up will be around.
One o'clock, the moment we'd meet, came and went. A few doom scenarios crossed my mind. My heart was beating like crazy when I received a text from Jerneja, saying she'd come a little later on. Mere minutes later, she was standing in front of me. It was the most surreal thing ever.

What do you say to someone who's never heard your voice, yet knows all your stories from the past years? Apparently you keep repeating how awkward you and the situation both are. At least that's what I did. There was something about the situation that my brain couldn't quite handle and that something was this: I was not looking at a picture on a screen, I was interacting with a real human. That switch from online to offline is not an easy one to make, but once I'd made it, it was awesome.

Jerneja and I went to get a drink on top of Neboticnik Skyscraper, talked about whatever came to mind, then took the first blog buddy selfie of our lives. I've got to say that it felt pretty awesome.

We actually met!! We're both real people! 😄 #bloggermeetup #ljubljanacastle @envy_fisher
Een foto die is geplaatst door Jerneja (@sparklykid_) op 3 Mei 2016 om 6:42 PDT

In the days that followed, we saw Captain America: Civil War together, along with a few of Jerneja's friends. It was my first time watching a Marvel movie with die hard Marvel fans. It was great, even though Slovene subtitles sometimes distracted me from the perfection that's Captain America.
Later on we took a mini road trip to Bled, where we rented a row boat. Now imagine that: two bloggers in a row boat. That's where the weirdness gets in too. And of course the selfies to send to our other blog buddies.
On Friday I had to say goodbye to Jerneja. It was awkward again. I'm not good at saying goodbye, mostly because I'm trying to contain my emotions. I couldn't focus on saying goodbye, I was trying too hard to think of ways to keep seeing my blog buddy and meet others like Kathie from A Sea Change and Kanra from The Lunar Descent too. I was sad to say goodbye to Jerneja, but so grateful that we'd been given the chance to meet both online and in real life.
If you ever get the chance to meet one of your blog buddies in real life, grab it! It might be awkward at first, but it'll turn out to be awesome.

Have you ever met any of your blog buddies in real life? Would you be as awkward as I was?
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'Do you really want to do this?' I asked on Saturday morning.
My reflection in the mirror didn't answer. She just looked at my dark blue tights and the big white star on my chest with eyes full of doubt.It was Dutch Comic Con day and I was going to be one of those cosplaying weirdos - if I could find the courage to leave the house looking like a gender-bent Captain America.

From Envy's Make it Happen List
#28: Go to Comic Con
Status: Awesomeness achieved

My reflection looked tired and insecure. I'd barely slept that night. Around 3am I'd woken up, thinking it was time to go to Utrecht for a day full of awesomeness, only to find out it was still the middle of the night...
My insecurity was killing me: I'd wanted to do a Captain America cosplay for ages, but now that I had a suit and an opportunity, I was afraid people would laugh at me. For a minute I considered letting go of the cosplay idea. Then I realized the acne gods had blessed me with an almost clear skin for once. That had to be a sign: I had to do it. Five minutes later I put on my gloves and my sorta-kinda combat boots, walked to the bus stop and didn't look back.

Okay, to be honest, I felt uncomfortable in my blue tights until my friend Alethea and I got on the train to Utrecht, where Dutch Comic Con takes place. Suddenly I wasn't the only overexcited costumed geek anymore. All conversations in our part of the train were either about superheroes, or about Harry Potter. It only got better when we arrived at Utrecht Central Station. I spotted my first Deadpool there and for some reason also the Blues Brothers. It was great, especially because my Captain America suit turned out to be one of the more normal and less slutty outfits at the con. Seriously, before we'd even entered the place we'd already seen the first piece of underwear peeking out from under a piece of cloth that was supposed to be a pair of shorts.

Actually entering Comic Con was a bit of a hassle. Not just because a few hundred geeks all wanted to get in as soon as possible, but also because every single bag and cosplay prop had to be checked. After what happened in Brussels, which isn't all that far away, the organization didn't want to take any risks. I can't blame them. It took some time to get through security, but with so many awesome costumes all around us the wait was pretty great. Especially when a guy dressed as Wolverine started talking to us because of my costume. At that moment I was really glad I'd stuck to my plan of cosplaying.

It was around 10am when we officially entered the con. After that moment I lost all track of time. It was like entering a parallel universe. Before I knew what was going on, I was dragged to the Captain America: Civil War stand, where we had out picture taken - in front of the Team Iron Man background. It's probably the most original picture those people took of Marvel fans all day: three Iron Man fangirls and a very awkward and unhappy looking female Captain America. 
The merchandise hall felt like my new home. I couldn't stop staring at all the awesome (and extremely pricy) merchandise. In the end I only bought a Deadpool and a Star Lord post card to decorate my wall with. Sure, post cards from places I've been are cool, but who wouldn't want to see Star Lord give them the finger when they open their eyes in the morning? 


I should probably also tell you about these little blue surprise bags they sold at the con. The idea was great: pick a bag from your favorite franchise and get some surpise merchandise. It was almost like a subscription box and since I just love those I had to get one of these. Sadly I ended up with even more Iron Man stuff. Apparently the universe didn't get the message that I'm Team Cap all the way... Alethea's luck was worse than mine: she got corn chips (I ate all of them on the way back home).

I spent most of my time looking at other people. The costumes were just amazing. Apart from slutty Mario and Luigi, I loved almost all of them. But I loved the whole cosplay thing even more when a girl came up to me and said: 'Your costume is so cute!' It made my day, it really did.

While I was happily watching other people look awesome, my friend was more focused on getting to a Q&A with Seth Gilliam on time. I had no idea who that was, but I figured I should go with her for the full Comic Con experience. I was not disappointed. I had seen neither of the two series he answered questions about, but he turned the Q&A into a real performance. It was also funny that Teen Wolf fangirls took the Q&A almost completely over before the Walking Dead fans stepped in. It almost seemed like a competition from that moment on: which fandom could ask the most questions?

After the Q&A my friend wanted to go to some sneak preview kind of thing for a series called Outcast. I let her go on her own; I wasn't interested and my social meter was running dangerously low. You see, I can be very social for an hour or two, three maybe. But after five hours, I really need some alone time.
I checked the merchandise hall out one more time, then sat down near the Civil War stand and watched Comic Con happen. That was one of the greatest things I did all day. I saw Iron Man flirt with a female Venom, Darth Vader kept dropping his light saber and even Sans from Undertale was there. Five Nights at Freddy's cosplays walked past me, followed by Batman and at least six Deadpools. Every time I thought I'd seen it all, another person in an awesome costume came along. It was geek heaven.

By the end of the day my mind was blown. I was exhausted, my feet hurt and I hadn't drunk a thing because I was too busy being excited, but it was all worth it. For once I felt at home. For once I felt like I could fit in. It was the best feeling ever.

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I was 16 when the third Iron Man movie hit the theaters. Even though I was still a newbie to the Marvel fandom, I was extremely excited. Iron Man was still my favorite Avenger and I couldn't keep my excitement to myself. My high school friends weren't too happy with all that. 'What's so amazing about Iron Man?' they kept asking. I tried explaining on several occasions, but they didn't really listen. To them, I was just a fake fan who'd seen too many Big Bang Theory episodes...
For a while I hid my inner geek, until I noticed that being a geek is completely awesome. I embraced it when I entered college, but a bit of the fake fan shame stuck with me. That's why I put buying a comic book on my Make it Happen List. I'd been missing out on something for years and decided it was time to make up for it.

From Envy's Make it Happen List
#11: Buy a Marvel comic book at the local comic book store and be proud of it
Status: Awesomeness achieved

Finals week is usually the worst week of the semester. I get bored, frustrated and annoyed, Especially if there's a three-hour break between my finals, a break I really don't want to spend with people who are stressing out even though they're well-prepared.
That's why I decided to go to the comic book store in the middle of my finals week. The comic book store is only 15 minutes away from my college and it's my favorite place in all of Rotterdam. My dad frequented the store long before I was born. He introduced my mom to the store's awesomeness and about six years ago, he took me there for the first time. They have everything: Marvel, DC, manga, every Dutch and Belgian comic you can imagine and merchandise from every franchise... It's like a little piece of heaven to me. Oh, and their bags are freaking fancy. They look like a comic book themselves.


I got to Yendor about once a month, usually to pick up some Dutch comics for my dad. This time I went in with a mission: find myself the perfect Marvel comic book, buy it and be proud of my purchase.
I'd tried before, but failed. It's easy to buy a comic book, being proud of it, however, is a different story. As soon as I entered the store, a nasty voice inside my mind told me: 'You don't belong here. You're a fake fan.'
I stopped for a minute and thought real hard. Why wouldn't I belong here? Because some mean girls labelled me a fake fan years ago? That's ridiculous. Maybe I haven't read every Marvel comic book on earth, but that doesn't mean I don't love Marvel. So I took a deep breath and started browsing.
Believe me, the pressure was on. Not only did I want to buy something awesome, one of my friends who has read practically every comic book in the universe was keeping track of me and wanted to know exactly what I was going to buy. Lucky for me he wasn't there with me, he was just texting and I simply turned my phone off. I still felt the pressure weighing me down though: there were so many awesome-looking comic books there, how was I ever going to find the most awesome one?
I had no idea where to start. Everything looked great. The price tags... not so much. As a sufferer from the broke-college-student syndrome I had to keep things under €20,-. I was about to give up since everything that looked cool was way outside my budget. But then I saw it.
Deadpool. The only thing I knew about Deadpool was that the kid who sat on my head back in May liked him a lot. The cover looked totally awesome and the art inside stole my heart. My high school friends would have called me a fake fan for this choice since the movie will be released sometime soon, but the great thing was: I did not know. I'd been living under a rock for a few weeks and I was absolutely clueless about the movie.
Long story short: I went up to the register to pay, slightly trembling and with a bright red head. Two minutes later the comic book was officially mine. It felt so good.

Let me tell you what happened next. I went to college, where I should've revised for my next exam. Instead I got to know the awesomeness that's Deadpool. As a result, I messed up my exam. But it was worth it. Completely, totally worth it. You know why? Not just because this comic book had me laughing out loud several times. Buying it made me feel good about myself. I'm no longer fake fan Envy. I'm just Envy, in all my awkward nerdiness. Another demon of my past had been slayed.


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I think I was 15 when I first had the idea to make a YouTube video. The idea for the video was silly and I just wanted to do it because it sounded like so much fun. I asked a friend to work on the video with me, and even though she agreed to do it, she was not exactly cooperating... And by not cooperating I mean standing in front of the camera with a look on her face that resembled disgust and repeatedly asking: 'Why are we doing this?'
After that I never thought about making a YouTube video again. Not until my best friend mentioned vlogging. At first I just laughed at the idea, but then I started binge-watching Markiplier's SCP Containment Breach series and all Superwoman videos and their awesomeness inspired me. I decided trying couldn't hurt, so I went out one January day and made my first video. Let me tell you, it was a lot harder than I thought.

From Envy's Make it Happen List
#13: Make a YouTube video
Status: Awesomeness achieved

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. My motto could be 'Als je iets doet, doe het dan goed' (If you do something, do it right, well, good, great). That's why it took me so long to finish this whole project. I decided to make a video in which I show why I don't do vlogs, by showing the most boring vlog ever.

I shot the vlog on a Thursday, the 7th of January. All day long I talked to my cell phone, feeling like a fool. At some point people even said to each other: 'That girl over there is vlogging! In English!'. People pointed, people stared, but it was worth it: at the end of the day I had enough footage for a boring vlog.
That weekend I wanted to shoot the intro and outro, but ended up doing a whole lot of work for college and Teenage Blogger Central. My plans were again delayed when I heard that I'd have to shoot a video for college too. My memory card doesn't have enough storage space for both projects, so I put this one on hold. When I finally finished shooting the college video, I was so glad I could get started on the intro. Little did I know that the hardest part was yet to come...

When I started setting everything up, I broke the tripod. The thing survived decades of travelling around the world with my dad, but the minute I decide to shoot a video, it breaks. I roamed the house, searching for a screwdriver and when I found one, I tried fixing the tripod. To my own surprise, I succeeded. All was well - for about thirty seconds. Then I realized my tripod wasn't tall enough. I had two options: make a video while sitting on the floor or build a make-shift tripod. I chose the latter and the result was magnificent.


About two hours and several giggling fits later, I was done shooting the video and could start editing. Not that I knew how to edit a video, so I just used Windows Movie Maker and pretended I totally knew what I was doing. The result wasn't bad, not bad at all. I uploaded the video and was so freaking proud of myself. I'd finally made a YouTube video.




At first I was completely sure I'd never make a new video again. You see, it looks so easy on YouTube. You stand in front of a camera, do your thing, done. In reality I prepared for three hours, wrote a script, took care of all the tripod trouble, shot the actual footage and then edited it.
The next day, people watched the video and actually liked it. Asked for more. Wanted me to make more. And since I'd had so much fun shooting the video, I decided to give YouTube a shot. I don't want to become a famous YouTuber (I don't think I could handle the hate), but I'd love it if you supported me and clicked that little subscribe button.

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'Calling a street "Ermione" is just asking for nerd trouble.'
'Yes, yes it is.'

From Envy's Make it Happen List
#25: Change the street sign that says 'Ermione' to 'Hermione'
Status: Awesomeness Achieved

It was a cold, windy Friday night in June. I was making a list of summer plans, based on my Make it Happen List. #25 caught my eye. I haven't been very active in any fandom since May 2014, with only two exceptions: Marvel and Harry Potter. Since my dad was reading Harry Potter for the very first time while I was making summer plans, I'd started fangirling again. This time I even had friends in the fandom who didn't mind fangirling with me. I sent one of those friends a message: "You up for some constructive vandalism?"
A few minutes later it was settled and soon we were making plans to make our hometown a little more awesome.

There were quite a few obstacles to overcome. First of all the street sign was high up on a lamp post. We're both small, so neither of us would be able to reach it. After a short brain storm session, we came up with three options:
1) Climb the lamp post
2) Climb on top of a bike
3) Ask a taller person to do it for us
Option three was voted down immediately, since the only taller person that we could think of had treated me like crap for the past couple of years. Besides, he's only a few inches taller than me and wouldn't have been able to reach the sign either. The only other person we could think of lived far away, so we'd have to do it ourselves. We just didn't know how.
We put this problem on hold and thought some more about the H we were going to add to the sign. My friend thought we could just write an H on it with a marker, but I disagreed. It had to be perfect, worthy of Hermione's approval (even though I think she wouldn't approve of vandalism, not not even constructive vandalism). My mom, who thought the idea was pretty cool, suggested tape, but that's be gone after the first rain shower that lasted longer than a minute. Sticker paper would have been perfect, but we had no idea where to get that. We did the next best thing: I made an H the exact same size of the letters on the sign and my friend would provide some scotch tape. At the start of July we were ready to go - and didn't even get as far as leaving the house...
A rain storm, bad timing, another rain storm, my birthday, vacation, even more rain storms, then the start of college and a thunder storm kept us from executing our evil master plan...

July had come and gone, August was history and Autumn was rapidly coming closer. Halfway through September I decided it was not or never. I texted my friend, set a date and time and when the big moment finally came... she was still asleep.
So two hours after the big moment was supposed to happen we finally arrived at the lamp post. We put my bike on its stand and looked up at the sign. It was higher up then we'd expected. Apart from that we were facing a problem we couldn't have seen coming in a million years: the people living in the house across the street were celebrating a birthday. The birthday party can't have been much fun: within five minutes an audience of thee grandparents and a toddler were ignoring the party and were staring at my friend and me, waiting for something to happen.
'This isn't going to work with all those people staring at us,' I said.
Extremely safe to climb on, as you can see XD
'Maybe we could vandalize the sign on the other end of the street,' my friend suggested.
'Is there another sign?'
'Probably.'
So with a little help from google Maps we found the other end of the street. There it was: another Ermione sign. No birthday parties on this side, not even windows with a view on the sign, only a mailman who disappeared right after we put my bike against the lamp post.
'How are we going to do this?' I asked. In my mind it had all seemed very easy. In reality, it wasn't.
You can do the climbing, I'll hold the bike. Way to many cobwebs up there. You do it.'
And so I climbed up on to my bike, balanced on one of the pedals, feared for my life, then reached up and saw to my own surprise that I was exactly tall enough to stick the paper H on the sign.
'Hurry, I can't hold this much longer!'
Only one corner of the H was stuck to the sign when my friend called out. She and the bike started to tremble, I started to lose my balance and now I was only halfway...
Quickly I pressed my hand against the sign, so it covered the entire H. One corner came off, but I quickly fixed it, then climbed off my bike in the most unelegant way ever.
My friend and I looked up at the sign that now said Hermione and burst out laughing. 'How geeky can we be?'
Later on, after buying ourselces some ice cream, my friend was looking at her phone when her eyes suddenly widened: 'Envy, did you know that it's Hermione's birthday today?'
'What? You're kidding!'
'It's her birthday! We vandalized the sign on her birthday!'
'That is awesome. So freaking awesome.'
And that's exactly what it was. Three weeks later the H is still up there. We now officially (okay maybe not totally officially) have a Hermione street in our hometown!

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About me


Envy. Dutch blogger. Est. 1996. No relation to the famous biblical sin. Worst bio writer on this side of the blogospere. Lives on cookies, apple juice and art. Friendly unless confronted with pineapple on pizza. Writes new nonsense every Thursday.

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