Everything needs a name and so my project was called, “Dunn.”

I wanted something that felt perennial, something concrete and everlasting. It felt weird at first. The sound of my own last name as the title of my video game felt clumsy on my tongue but eventually it became second nature. I had a little turquoise Duo-Tang of all my ideas; the story, the characters, the visuals, the style. I wanted Dunn to be fantasy, it was easy to connect in my mind, to make the leap to a fantasy world and avoid this one. I leaned on video games in the first place because the real world was not exactly going splendidly well.

If my previous thoughts didn’t paint the picture clear enough I’m not exactly the most popular person. In fact, unlike the protagonist in your favourite novel or movie, I don’t actually have a best friend. No friends at all really (well, no one in “real” life, I do have Kappa but I’m getting ahead of myself.) In the life of Lester Dunn there are acquaintances, family and bullies… and oh, more bullies. I say bullies twice because I don’t think once really gives you the right impression. In my mind there are two types. There are TV bullies; these are the ones that take your lunch money and trip you while the teacher isn’t looking and there are… well, real bullies. Don’t get me wrong TV bullies exist but they’ve gone the way of the dodo a little bit and exist primarily within reruns of Happy Days and throwback shows like Stranger Things.

The real life bullies, the ones that truly cut you, they don’t send you home with a scuffed knee or a fat lip. No, they put you in situations where you embarrass yourself. They’re the kind of people that can say just the right thing so that someone listening thinks they’re being kind, thinks they’re helping you when in reality they’re setting you up for failure. Mrs. Willard, my Science teacher, has a quote on her storage closet that says “Irish Diplomacy is the ability to tell a man to go to hell so that he looks forward to the trip.” Well if that’s the case, bullies – real life bullies – have the ability to hurt you in a way that makes your wound seem self-made.  

Unless you’re unfortunate enough to experience this first hand I understand where you may be confused, so I’ll give you an example. For an independent study unit, a report that must be presented in front of the class, students are given free reign of what to choose. A TV bully would probably wait until the day of the presentations and hoot, holler and mock the intended target during their speech. TV Bullies try to throw the target off, make a scene and when that fails, who knows, meet you out by the bike rack at 3:00 probably. They do their damage and they’re done. A “real life” bully however wouldn’t tease you while you read; instead they’d do something different, like plant the idea in your head to do your assignment on something silly like your love for Minecraft. They’d convince you that it wouldn’t be lame at all, convince you that the idea is original and clever and strong… they’d trick you.

Then, come the day of the presentation, when you’re all excited to present your favourite game; when your doubts about whether or not this is “cool” enough have been sufficiently squashed by this bully in disguise, you’d stand before the class and struggle through each and every word as you watch the faces of your class cringe and distort at every word. You’d become so self-aware of the joke they see you as that you would lose all control of your mouth and brain and stand there looking like an utter moron.

Real bullies don’t cut you, they make you cut yourself. They don’t have names like “Buzz,” or “Dwayne,” or “Spike,” they have names like Principal Miller.

Look, all of this is to say that the real world couldn’t hold a candle to the aspirations I had for Dunn and thus, the real world wouldn’t suffice. Fantasy was, and is, the world through a looking glass. It is the heads to our world’s tails – two sides of the same coin, but a universe apart because it was most unlike this one. For all of these reasons and two more, Dunn would be a fantasy game.

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The first - additional - reason was my younger brother.

Marcus Paul Dunn was born on a snowy day in April. I know this because my mother tells the same story on every single one of his birthdays. She tells about the warm morning and frigid night, about the broken ice machine and about the 36 hour labor of love that is my brother Marcus. Marcus is almost a bigger nerd than me and that’s saying a lot. Where I enjoy the Lord of the Rings movies and the occasional binge of Harry Potter, my brother has read all the books, seen all the movies at least 10 times and knows all the ins and outs of the histories. He can recite pretty much any line from any of the movies and despite the perceptions of his autism has probably a better sense of humour than I do.

I remember one time we were around the dinner table clawing at the pizza box like Hungry Hungry Hippos when my brother swatted me away from the piece he was going for. I frowned but could barely react before a bellowing voice from within him spurting out Gandalf’s, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” The frown faded from my face as quickly as it had appeared and within seconds my laughter was joined by both my mom and dad who were each doubled over in a fit of howling. For this and many other reasons it would be an understatement to say that I love my brother. For all his quirks he’s really not much different than me and I’d be lying if I said that he’s not a big reason Dunn is a fantasy world.

The second? Oh yes, I did say there were two reasons didn’t I. Well as I said, no reason to keep any of this in anymore; the second reason was Jessica.

Booooooo! Ya okay, look, it’s a girl. Want me to pretend I didn’t have a crush? Fine, I can do that – but it’d be a lie. I’ve made enough mistakes so far throughout this endeavor it doesn’t serve any purpose to continue lying so deal with it. For good or bad, whether it fits into your vision or not the second reason I set Dunn in a fantasy world was because of Jessica.

Take the perfect girl next door; add one part self-deprecating humour, two parts absolute beauty, a dash of healthy skepticism, a passion for all things nerdy and slap on a brain the size of Mount Rushmore and tada! You have one Jessica Taylor. I mean, this girl did her ISU on Tolkien’s depiction of Orcs and the social commentary they were on racism in the United Kingdom, talk about a heartthrob. Beyond that she was brilliant and I mean literally brilliant. When Mrs. Willard would step out of class she’d just hand the lesson plan to Jessica and she’d take up the reigns and continue on talking about whatever.

Yes, she was also a massive fan of Fantasy. If the Tolkien ISU wasn’t clear enough she was often found running D&D games after school in the cafeteria or reading a copy of the Wheel of Time next to the sycamore tree by the bike locks. She was the kind of girl that just knocked a guy flat and I can’t count the number of times in the early days of plotting out Dunn I wished I walked up to her and shared my thoughts.

There was only one problem - surprise, surprise - she didn’t know who I was. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, she knew my name – Lester Dunn aka the black kid with pimples and glasses who sits in the back and draws in that turquoise Duo-Tang all day. Beyond that she had no idea what I liked, where my passions were or what actually populated that turquoise duo-tang of mine. I wanted to share it with her; I wanted her to give me the chance to bounce ideas off of her. What I really wanted was to date her (full transparency here) and have her love me back just the same.

Now, I know I’m jumping the order of things here but all of this; my admiration for Jessica, my desire to have her talk to me, give me attention, love me…. this was maybe mistake number 4 or 5 but undoubtedly the biggest.