Spirit Lake

Here's a bit of an oddity...

Okay, so you all know what a fan of Ronda Rousey I am. In Women's Mixed Martial Arts, she is the UFC champ. She is an astonishingly admirable lady, brimming with confidence and wit. Some people call her arrogant, but then some people call ME arrogant, and we all know that's not true. Well, it's sort of true. Okay, it's true, but why be humble and boring when you can be arrogant and entertaining? 

I am enough of a fan, in fact, that I sought out her signed gloves and won them at auction. Here they are, beside a pair of boxing gloves owned by THE greatest martial artist, certainly in living memory, one Mister Bruce Lee.

On Twitter, I follow two people. Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano. The fact that both people are very pretty women who can fight is a complete coincidence, I assure you. It's because of Twitter, however, that I heard about a project that Ronda's mum and sister are behind— something called Spirt Lake: The Game. 

Spirit Lake, essentially, combines adventure video gaming with learning maths (or, as you Americans say, math), in an effort to make learning fun. Originally developed with Native American students in mind, they've realised that the Dakota (Sioux) angle— incorporating historically accurate aspects of tribal life and culture—  appeals to people and schools right across America. And you get to fire arrows! At wolves! While you learn to count! What's not to love??

And if this works like they hope it will, this could be the beginning of something huge. This could revolutionise teaching, and learning— not just in America but across the world— and it could be just the thing that's needed to help struggling students make that singular, all-important leap. This could change people's lives. 

So I heard about this, and the Kickstarter campaign they were running to fund the next stage of development, and I figured I may as well send some money over to help them along. After all, the better kids do in school, the longer they stay in school, and the longer they stay in school, the more chance they have of stumbling across my books, right? Right. 

As a reward for helping out, they have given me the chance to actually BECOME a character in this game. But I couldn't possibly accept. The fact is, I am amazing. I am awesome. If I were to make a cameo appearance in ANY game, I would make every other aspect of the game pale in comparison. And I couldn't do that to all their hard work. So I asked Ronda's mum if it'd be okay if I could hold a mini-competition HERE, not only for my Ameriminions but for ALL my Minions, and the winner of THAT would get the chance to become a character. If you win, the animators will create an avatar using your name and likeness and as if by magic— you will be INSIDE a video game. 

It'll be like Tron only... y'know... you probably won't die.

Probably. 

And even though the game is only planned for release in America (right now), the competition is open to anyone of any age and nationality. So here's what you have to do. You have to tell me why YOU would be the most awesome video game character EVER. Once we reach the 5000 comment limit and the Comments Section closes, I shall collect all the entries, stick the names in a hat, and randomly pick the winner. 

And yes, entering more than once, with DIFFERENT reasons, gives you a better chance of winning. 

There. Bet when you opened up this Blog today you had no idea this was coming at you.