(This part of the KATVP introductory picture stories explores the autistic Webkinz in the family--Kaylor, Shadow, and Old Man Jenkinz. All while Koko, Wombo, and Bella attempt to advance their band, Musical Chairs.)
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...and We are Continuing!
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...and We are Continuing!
(This story takes place in April 2017, the time it was written for a workshopping project for my narrative studies course. I wrote this for my classmates and professor to read as well.)
(Oh, to clarify things, the chunks in this story in italics are excerpts from Part 1 because only my professor was able to see Part 1 and I really wanted to write another story for the workshop project.)
I'm Still Me - Part 2
A Picture Story
Written By: Katie-Kat Labrador (me!)
With Some Inspiration From: this kid in my narrative studies class who I knew wanted to see me write a story about autistic kids
Yes, you, the reader, are reading that right: “Part 2.” Hold on, we’ll explain…
You visualize an empty room as you begin reading this story.
(ick it's yucky I'm sorry but it's the only empty room I had access to...)
“Hey, you!” a snarky, feminine voice yells.
You look around to see who could be talking and who she could possibly be talking to.
“Yes, YOU!” the same voice shouts.
She comes into your viewpoint.
She is a small white Poodle stuffed animal…and yes, she is full of life with a voice and all that jazz. “I’m talking to you, the reader! Yeah, we’re breaking the fourth wall here.” She shakes her head. “Ugh, I can tell. You’re probably wondering, ‘why is this stuffed animal talking to someone on the other side of the story?’ But, hi! I’m Chloe. I’m a Poodle Webkinz, aka a six-inch tall stuffed toy with a virtual pet side on the online website. If you already were familiar with what a Webkinz is, congratulations…you knew a lot about tweenage culture in about 2008 or so.”
"I really hope..." I begin to say, then I change my sentence. "Wait, I don't like this room. How about I change up the scenery."
I bring up my fingers to snap.
And next thing you know the camera shows us in my bedroom.
“Anyway, back to what I was saying. I really hope they have somewhat an idea of what you are,” I say. “If not…eh, I guess a quick Google search will do the trick.”
“I still will never understand how some people could not be aware of the most iconic children’s product of all time,” Chloe responds.
“Well, that’s biased of you to say since you are one,” I reply to her.
“Whatever,” Chloe says. Then she asks, “anyway, you already said how this is a ‘Part 2,’ right?”
You are likely reading this on a piece of paper handed to you during a narrative studies course. If not, you’re reading this on a computer screen and it is accompanied by pictures that help illustrate what’s going on—this is designed to be an installment for my picture story series, after all. If you’re reading this online, congratulations: you’re a good fan and you’re special. If not, you’re being forced to read this for class and I apologize in advance.
“When do you plan on getting to the point?” Chloe complains.
“Okay, okay!” I snap back.
Basically, Part 1 of this story was submitted to the professor for the midterm. The professor thinks I should simply re-submit Part 1 for the workshop, but I feel like nothing very interesting happened in the first part so I’m going to write the second part of this story to be workshopped. To prevent confusion, I will copy and paste some things directed to you, one of this story’s first readers/my classmate, to fill you in.
“Speaking of the midterm, did you get a D for the first part of this mess? Did your professor tell you that this needs to be burned?”
“He actually liked it!”
“That’s a first! Usually if someone didn’t come looking for this specific sort of content, they hate it.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to get outsiders to get into this weird stuff.”
“NO KIDDING!” She holds back laughter. Snickering, she says, “like when you go on OkCupid, say you’re a writer, and people ask for samples of your work. You send them this nonsense of a series and then you literally never hear from them again”
“Yeah…not my best moments in life.” Anyway…
Hi…I am Katie-Kat, your friendly narrator/human participant in these stories (I usually go by Katie in the offline world and Kat in the online world; call me whichever). This whole world is based on my imagination. These stories, especially this one, are in a very interesting format. It’s bloggy…it’s unique…it’s my mess of words within sentences (within paragraphs, into a story, etc.). Now, I am going to add some review and context to try to help the new readers break down whatever the heck is going on.
In this story I address two audiences: my established fans as well as the people in this narrative class I’m writing for to achieve a substantial grade in so I can achieve the academic credits I need to graduate from college.
I’m going to address the new audience first because I’m sure they’re so very confused about what’s going on in these paragraphs. So, hi; I am a student in the Narrative Studies class, and I’ve introduced myself as Katie. I think I’ve begun to explain my writing before in class, but let me write it out to remind what it is (also I’m much better at writing than speaking). The summer before I became an eighth grader, I became active on a fansite for Webkinz—those old stuffed animals that come with tags that give the pets a virtual pet side. There was a trend of people taking various pictures of their plush pets “doing activities” such as doing a craft, playing outside, or traveling on vacation.
I dedicated maybe 80% of my time outside of school to taking pictures of my Webkinz to escape my traumatic life, which led to the other creators and me to form a community and eventually our own fictional universe. What was originally kids playing with stuffed animals and a camera evolved into young teenagers orchestrating a giant soap opera. Every Webkinz had their own personality and story—they lived as living creatures amongst their human writers and interacted with one another. As most of us reached college age, we either slowed down with writing or left the community all together. Since the website I posted my stories on is basically a deadzone now, I’m moving the stories and its universe to Blogger because I wish to continue the series on a more productive platform with more creative freedom than I have on the fansite. I am also incorporating other elements, such as the Tamagotchi blog I started when I was 12, to have more content to construct imagination. This series is called Kat and the Virtual Pets or Kat and the V-Pets for short. I’m Kat, and the “virtual pets” are my Webkinz pets and Tamagotchi pets (accompanied by other virtual pets, stuffed animals, dolls, and toys in general that I choose to personify).
I look at Chloe.
Chloe realizes I’m looking at her and in response asks, “what?”
“I was expecting you to cut me off again and complain how I ‘never shut up’ like you did in Part 1.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Chloe replies. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
As I come up with more ideas for my story series, I think of new ways my characters can be diverse and a lot of it includes gender identity as well as other traits that reflect my journey. To help introduce everyone old-but-new and just-plain-new, I have dedicated this story to introducing the diversity of identities my characters have developed. In this story, I will show you various characters and show how they express their identity in creative setups and scenarios. I will--
“DO YOU EVER SHUT UP?!” Chloe yells.
Chloe is a plush and virtual white Poodle—she was my very first Webkinz and I got her when I was 12 years old. She was stitched together in a factory almost ten years ago, but her character has evolved into a persona with the mentality of an 18-year-old human.
“I just have a lot to say about my ideas!” I defend myself to her.
“I’m pretty sure every reader has given up on this nonsense by now,” Chloe argues. She groans, “you go on and on and ooooon. Like, enough is enough. We get it: you’re weird.”
“Hey, where would you be right now if I didn’t type out what I thought about?” I ask her.
Chloe puts on a pondering face as she considers what I said. “That is a good point.”
“This whole universe is a lot to digest, especially to the outsiders from my class I’m submitting this too,” I explain to her.
“Kat, you’ve made this mess every semester,” Chloe lectures me. “You take some dumb writing course at your college, and you write a story or two about us because one, we’re all you know what to write about, and two, you want to stretch any writing skill education to this insane project you refuse to give up on.”
“Chloe--”
She cuts me off. “And what happens every time? You get a whole twenty people dangerously confused. You know by now that no one in your academic environment likes your genre of material, so I don’t get why you torture people with your ridiculous and overly-complex imagination every few months.”
“Any excuse to get material produced, y’know?” I reply. “There’s something about all this that feels inspiring to me and something keeps telling me to never stop developing it.”
“I have to give you credit for sticking with the same material for about a decade,” Chloe admits. “But still, you’re wild.”
“Hey, you’re pretty wild too.”
Chloe rolls her beady eyes. “Can you just jump into the action already? No one cares about your internal dialogue. Even if they do, they can go to your Tumblr and then get bored of your insanity after a week.”
I laugh.
“Now, this time I will actually add some story!” I announce. “Does that make you happy, Chloe?”
Chloe’s beady eyes jerk open.
“Wait, what? Did you ask me anything?”
“Don’t you care about the character development and action?” I question her.
Chloe stares at me with wide eyes filled with shock. “You mean we’re done with you rambling about yourself? We’re done with excessive flashbacks? We’re going to actually be entertaining now?”
“Well, technically, this story series is a creative documentation of my history and growth,” I retort.
“Again…they can go to Tumblr dot com.”
This story is centered around character development for various characters in my story—to get down to the core of who they are. In the first part of this story, I talked about characters with various gender identities. I allowed my transgender female pet, Paley, and my non-binary pet, Zalo, speak; I also expanded on how their stories reflect my own journey with discovering the complex world of gender identity. Identity is more than just your gender, though, so I will be exploring more traits of what makes my different characters who they are. This part’s topic: characters that aren’t neurotypical.
You begin to see the setup of three stuffed animals sitting on a bed having a group discussion. You see that the three pets are a small Googles (the unique Webkinz pet breed that is basically a cartoonish platypus-resembling creature), a small Gorilla, and then a Tawny Pup (which is basically a light tan-colored dog with a white chest) wearing a single white flower by her ear. The scene you are about to view was a situation that was recorded in the past that I feel tells a bunch about some of my characters.
“Do you think we should have people who actually play instruments instead of solely singers?” Wombo, the small white-colored Googles, asked. “Like…are we really a band?”
“Oh, please!” Koko, the small black Gorilla, scoffed. “Do you think the highly successful band ONE DIRECTION had upfront members who focused on certain instruments?”
“Um,” Wombo said nervously before a pause, “they broke up?”
“Oh yeah that’s right,” Koko realized. “That explains their lack of publicity currently. Anyway, we have Gummy playing some stuff! He sometimes plays some drums, he brings a keyboard once in a while--”
“Yeah, but he lives online only,” Wombo pointed out. “He can help us when we’re on the Internet but we don’t have anyone to play for us when we do our offline concerts.”
“Wombo has a point,” Bella, the Tawny Pup with a flower clip, said. “Maybe having live instruments playing offline too will give our band an authentic feel. It might get us more fans!”
The camera cut to Koko, in front of a dresser (like a blank wall but one I have access to), facing the camera in an interview style.
“UGH!” Koko growled with frustration. “Why can’t my bandmates just trust me? Like, I’ve been singing and doing concerts since 2008, way before the band formed in like 2011. I know what I’m doing!”
The camera cut back to the scene.
“We’ve been fine before!” Koko retorted. “We’ve had some great concerts in the past!”
“But see we’ve only done those concerts because the family didn’t have any other options,” Wombo replied. “Musical Chairs is the only band here, so of course we’re asked to play in the music café and then that one prom we had like five years ago.”
“Can’t our band be adaptable, Koko?” Bella begged. “What’s the harm in adding some more members just for background music?”
“Fine.” Koko rolled her eyes.
Then her faced perked up as she gained an idea. “Ooh! What about Kat? She used to be in her middle school band!”
“She played the clarinet like ten years ago,” Bella countered. “Plus, she’d be too busy to dedicate to our cause.”
Koko looked up with stress and desperation. “I just don’t know who we could find to play instruments for us! Do we really have many options?”
The camera cut to an interview-style scenario of Bella in front of a dresser, facing the camera.
“There are over two hundred pets living in this house currently,” Bella complained. “There is no way we won’t be able to find anyone to play instruments for us.”
The camera cut back to the scene.
“I don’t think we should have any trouble finding someone,” Bella declared.
“But--” Koko started to dispute before she was cut off.
“Oh, look!” Wombo interrupted.
“It’s Kaylor!”
A plush Tuxedo cat (black cat with white chest and paws) was walking across the bedroom floor in front of the bed the band was occupying. Wombo had caught sight of her and went to lean his head over the edge of their human’s bed to yell and get Kaylor’s attention.
“Hey, Kaylor!” Wombo called out. “Kaylor!”
The small stuffed cat looked up at the source of the noise. “Yeah?”
“Come up here and talk to us!” Wombo invited.
Kaylor hesitantly climbed onto the bed to join the group. “Um, what’s up?”
“You know a lot about music, right?” Wombo incited. “You’re always listening to different forms of music and foreign music!”
Koko rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t know about music she just listens to the same songs on repeat!”
Kaylor smiled nervously. “I just listen to a bunch of Korean pop songs and I listen to lots of music in different ways using this musician app to modify how it sounds.”
“So you’re familiar with all those digital music creating apps like Garage Band?” Wombo squealed with a grin on his beak.
“Um--”
“Great!!” Wombo ran off-screen for about two seconds...
...and scurried back balancing a big iPad on his small, fluff-filled back.
Wombo tossed the iPad in front of her. “Do the thing on Garage Band! Get a beat going! I’ll go grab a tin can and some sticks to get a drum beat going while Koko and Bella sing.”
Kaylor sat silently, almost in shock, as she watched Wombo run to grab his false “drum kit” and return back on the bed with a soda can and chopsticks. Meanwhile Koko and Bella had awkwardly went to join him with some simple vocal harmonies (a little thrown off by the unexpected jam session). Wombo started tapping a few times on the tin soda can and it progressed from taps to a steady beat.
When Wombo’s “drum" started to "beat,” Kaylor broke out of her shock to rapidly set up some digital background music on Garage Band. Koko and Bella were awkwardly watching the musical situation unfold, but had already started to sing some simple harmonies when Kaylor’s background melodies sounded ready and substantial.
Kaylor stepped back from the iPad; Wombo kept a tapping beat going; Koko and Bella continued singing a wordless tune to the sounds being created.
Kaylor didn’t say anything; she quietly watched the band around her almost with a look of semi-paralysis on her face. Kaylor was likely overwhelmed, especially with the volume around her raising higher and higher.
An excited plush Schnauzer with gray fur and a fuzzy dog-beard climbed on the bed out of curiosity.
He was quiet and didn’t say much, but his enthusiasm was loud. He was almost vibrating as he jumped around the bed, moaning the same noise. He had no words but he was obviously exploding with excitement.
Wombo noticed the friend moving to their music. “Yes, Shadow!” Wombo called out.
“Be our audience for our new music! Dance!”
“Dance!” Shadow echoed.
The room began to drown deeper in the noise pile of new music and Shadow’s energetic humming. Suddenly, a voice across the room yelled, causing everyone to halt their mini concert.
“Agh!” the voice yelled.
It was a plush Clownfish that was sitting on the desk across from the bed. He was sitting with the laptop, which had some keys on the screen mashed in gibberish due to frustration. The Clownfish had intense stress in his eyes. “Stop making so much noise! I’m trying to write!”
“Well we have a band to practice for!” Koko replied in an almost argumentative tone. “We can only practice at certain times in certain places and you can write anywhere anytime! Can’t you write somewhere else?”
“Aaaaaagh!” the Clownfish yelled angrily as he aggressively threw himself off the desk and left the bedroom.
“Jeez,” Koko exhaled, “he’s so weird. Why is he so weird? Why did he get so angry at us? He could have expressed himself differently. He’s always so yell-y!”
“He has Asperger’s?” Kaylor replied in a questioning tone. “Many people with Asperger’s syndrome are VERY sensitive to extreme amounts of the senses, like loud noises. It’s one of the obstacles for people on the autistic spectrum.”
“But Shadow liked our music and he’s autistic!” Koko debated.
Kaylor rolled her eyes, sighed, and went to climb down and off the bed and get away from the situation.
(It's later.) You see the scene open up into another interview-style setup; there is a dresser with the Clownfish from earlier in front of it and facing the camera.
"Okay," I begin with a gentle voice. "Do you want to introduce yourself?"
"Hi," he speaks softly towards the camera. "My name is Old Man Jenkinz, or Jenkinz for short. I'm a Clownfish and I'm also a writer."
"Would you like to explain how you felt about the night Musical Chairs was having band practice?"
"Well, I have Asperger’s syndrome," Jenkinz nervously answers. "It's a specific diagnosis on the Autism spectrum. I'm considered high functional compared to others with more severe Autism, but I still have obstacles."
"Do you want to name some of those obstacles?"
"Well, one of them is sensitivity to noises and sometimes other senses like touch. Unlike touch, sounds are a more obvious thing others can see I'm sensitive too. There is always noise happening in our world--people talking or screaming, loud noises from non-living objects like alarms, you know...that stuff."
"And you felt sensitive to all the noise at the band practice," I prompt.
Jenkinz nodded. “Loud noises hurt my ears a lot and it makes my head feel like it’s going to explode.”
“What’s another obstacle that challenges your everyday life?”
“People say I’m severely socially impaired. I just don’t understand the way people interact most of the times. I miss social cues and don’t know most of the appropriate things to say in certain situations. I often make people feel weird so most people aren’t interested in being my friend. I’m trying to learn all the social rules but it’s really hard; I just don’t get it.”
“Do you know anyone who could possibly understand how you feel?”
“Yeah, there are other people with Autism out there, but everyone’s so different.” Jenkinz looks down. “It’s hard to find someone a lot like me because the spectrum is so vast.”
“Who else do you know that is autistic?”
“Well, Shadow the Schanuzer has Autism.” Jenkinz looks up to think. “I hear Kaylor is autistic too, but only a little bit. She experiences a lot of symptoms but she’s able to function well.”
“So…do you have any friends you want to talk about?”
“I only have one friend right now: Liz the Elephant.” Jenkinz smiles. “She’s my best friend. She likes writing too so she reads the book series I’m writing about wolves.”
“Why are you writing about wolves? Do you like them?”
“Yes, I am very interested in canines,” Jenkinz informed. “People call it my ‘special interest’ and I have to remember not everyone is as interested in dogs as I am. It makes it difficult for me to talk to other people with my obsession with dogs and then my lack of interest in other subjects.”
“How do you feel about having Asperger’s syndrome?”
“It makes my life really hard.” Jenkinz looks down with slight despair in his eyes. “If life was only having to live in a quiet area surrounded by dogs, I would be happy. But life isn’t like that. Luckily, I have people to help me learn how to function in the world so I can make friends and be successful. My friend, Liz, is also a big help. I sometimes wonder if my book series will never sell copies because of my Autism limiting me. But Liz said I’m really dedicated to my writing so that will help me succeed in the future.”
“Do you ever wish your autistic symptoms didn’t limit you?”
“Yes.” Jenkinz looks awkwardly at my feet. “I don’t think anyone likes having disabilities and limits. But, Liz tells me to wonder, who would I be if I wasn’t me? Would I be as passionate as I am now about helping dogs? Would I still be writing a book series? Obstacles or not, I’m still Jenkinz. Do my symptoms define me that much? I don’t think I’m too much different than anyone else. No matter what, I’m still me.”
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