So it feels like everyone in the English-speaking world (and probably lots of people outside of it too) is watching the finale of a certain TV show right now. If you don't know to what I'm referring, well to be honest I'm not sure how you have braved the internet long enough to make it to this little corner.
Or, I mean, maybe you are reading this years into the future. Which is cool too, I guess. Hi.
To cut to the chase, I was not among the millions watching the finale of Breaking Bad tonight. I mean, for starters, I don't even have a cable subscription, and ... what do you mean those bunny ears don't work anymore?!?
For real though, I've never seen a single episode of Breaking Bad. Although I hear it's some dazzling achievement in television drama, or something. It has never appealed to me. Maybe that's because there are no intelligent, attractive British men on it - that seems to be my requirement lately. But over the past (*pauses to find the Wikipedia article*) five-ish years, I've watched everyone else fall for this show. I mean, really fall for it. This past weekend I have seen actual outpourings of love for this series.
Which shouldn't be unusual, since I spend a good portion of my waking hours on website seemingly dedicated to outpourings of love for fictional stories and their characters. But what seems odd about the Breaking Bad phenomenon is the audience. Or more correctly, I guess, it's that the audience isn't any one thing at all. It isn't just teenagers and young adults, and it isn't just 40+ year olds in their parents' basement. People from all walks of life are really, really passionate about this show.
Of course, the nerds are passionate about it too - maybe more so than average- but what has surprised me is that people who wouldn't normally be called nerds, who may even mock those who are, have become genuinely invested in this show.
And although I have no clue what it's about (Wait...it's meth, right? It's about meth? And a teacher?) and although I'm sure the finale was heart-wrenching...and despite the fact that it is currently clogging up every single social media feed I possess... I'm really sorta happy about it. Having been enchanted by so many stories, and having an enormous community to love them with, I know exactly how every Breaking Bad viewer is feeling tonight.
(I mean, unless they are feeling like starting a meth lab. I don't know what that feels like.)
I know that they will laugh and cry and talk endlessly about it with their friends tomorrow, and even though I'm on the outside looking in, I'm just really glad that a story still has the power to unite us like this.
Goodnight, bloglings
Sunday 29 September 2013
Saturday 21 September 2013
Week 37: Inevitable
Lately I've been thinking about how so much of my life feels sorta pre-lived for me. Roommates, leafy campus, classes, essays and ramen noodles at 1 am - aren't I just following a beaten track? This rite of passage is so uniform and well-documented that sometimes I feel as though I could do it in my sleep. (Sometimes I wish I could do it in my sleep, but that's another story all together.)
It's not that I hate it, not at all - like any sort of life, the ups and the downs generally balance out somewhere around okay. The grass over the fence is greener, but then it always will be.
And I know this is just a waiting room, a holding pen before the bigger and better and brighter things but what if bigger is just a bigger room? What if that future is also a path that has been beaten by so many before me that it's no longer anything but dirt, no longer anything alive or green?
At least three times every day I feel a sense of deja-vu - recognizing that my day-to-day is just a montage from a college movie and the only thing I'm missing is the soundtrack and the jumpcuts. You know in those dreams when you somehow know that the door is going to open, an infinitesimal second before it does - that it's inevitable? When your life is pre-lived, everything you do, no matter what, is inevitable. It's a product of your stress or your hormones or your environment or your upbringing or it's just the next step on the ladder to success but no matter what it's inevitable. It's been done before and will be done again. Don't believe me? Check the internet, because a million people think every post is 'so relateable'.
So much is made of this time of life, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to make anything with these cookie-cutter memories. Graduation pictures taken in a uniform - under a uniform tree and a uniform sky, by a uniformed dude to be put in uniform frames? There is something so sterile about that. And we hold this up as such an achievement, as if we have climbed a mountain or built a house, as if we've done something other than traipse down the path beaten so smooth for us by generations and movies just to put on the same robes and toss the same cap in the air.
It's not that anything's the matter; it's just that everything is the same.
Goodnight, bloglings
It's not that I hate it, not at all - like any sort of life, the ups and the downs generally balance out somewhere around okay. The grass over the fence is greener, but then it always will be.
And I know this is just a waiting room, a holding pen before the bigger and better and brighter things but what if bigger is just a bigger room? What if that future is also a path that has been beaten by so many before me that it's no longer anything but dirt, no longer anything alive or green?
At least three times every day I feel a sense of deja-vu - recognizing that my day-to-day is just a montage from a college movie and the only thing I'm missing is the soundtrack and the jumpcuts. You know in those dreams when you somehow know that the door is going to open, an infinitesimal second before it does - that it's inevitable? When your life is pre-lived, everything you do, no matter what, is inevitable. It's a product of your stress or your hormones or your environment or your upbringing or it's just the next step on the ladder to success but no matter what it's inevitable. It's been done before and will be done again. Don't believe me? Check the internet, because a million people think every post is 'so relateable'.
So much is made of this time of life, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to make anything with these cookie-cutter memories. Graduation pictures taken in a uniform - under a uniform tree and a uniform sky, by a uniformed dude to be put in uniform frames? There is something so sterile about that. And we hold this up as such an achievement, as if we have climbed a mountain or built a house, as if we've done something other than traipse down the path beaten so smooth for us by generations and movies just to put on the same robes and toss the same cap in the air.
It's not that anything's the matter; it's just that everything is the same.
Goodnight, bloglings
Saturday 14 September 2013
Week 36: Harry Potter and the New Mythology
All right, so I'm doing a pretty terrible job of staying on schedule here. But I completely and wholeheartedly do not care right now because FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM.
If you haven't already heard that J.K. Rowling is writing the screenplay for a new movie based on a Hogwarts textbook, then kindly locate the exit to this blog. Unless of course you have a legitimate reason. Like your internet was down. Or you were off mountain-climbing. Or scuba-diving. Or-
No, there really aren't any other excuses.
This is the biggest news to hit the Potter fandom since we found out that Jo had written The Cuckoo's Calling under all of our noses. In fact, it's bigger than that. Although the shock value of that revelation was high, since the book had been out for months already, this is so much more important.
This is our world - the place where we learned to imagine, where we learned to be brave, loyal, ambitious and wise, and where we learned to be passionate and unabashedly enthusiastic about the things that we love, and to stand up for what we believe in.
And we're going to go back. Which, on the surface, is a strange thing to be jumping-up-and-down-in-our-chairs excited about. Because ... we never really left. Everyone who owns the books or DVDs, or has access to a library or the internet, can plunge back into Harry's world and revisit the stories anytime they like. Heck, we've been doing it since the minute we finished Book 7.
But this is new content, a new story, a new part of the Wizarding world, not just about Harry - which is what makes it so exciting, right? Well, as long as we have had fan fiction, fan art and wizard rock, we've had new content. We've been exploring new facets of Harry's universe since before Jo even finished writing the series. I'm sure, if you dig deep enough, there is wizarding fan fiction set in New York City in the roaring twenties. Maybe even a fic or two about Newt Scamander.
The difference, of course, is that this movie will be written by Jo herself, so it is 100% canon. Unlike fanfic, it's "what really happened"...within a completely made-up story. Uh. Right.
Here's my thing: Potter fans have done things with the HP universe that were utterly unprecedented in literature. (The only distant comparison would be the ways people have interpreted and used the Bible over the centuries.) We don't just enjoy this world - we live in it. We roleplay and write and sing and do ALL the things within the wizarding universe. We have created new characters and completely rewritten the Harry Potter books from different viewpoints. So, I mean, ... how much does it really matter what is canon and what isn't?
At this point, doesn't this universe belong more to us than it does to J.K. Rowling?
Collectively, we have certainly written more words, plotted more stories, and spent more time in it than she has. Of course, it would not exist without her original creation. But then, the myths of the world had to have been thought up by someone at some point too, right? And would we deny that the people of a certain culture are the owners of their respective myths - and have a right to retell and interpret their myths freely? If Harry Potter is our mythology, then I say we have just as much a right as Jo to tell Newt Scamander's story - or any other wizarding story, for that matter.
Of course, this doesn't mean we can't be excited for the Fantastic Beasts movie. I think at least half of what's making it so exciting is the excitement - the nostalgic feeling of anticipating something that we will all get to experience together. The speculation and countdowns and trailers and midnight premieres. After all, it is a retelling, a new myth, and if nothing else, is just as valid as any fan fic. Obviously, it will be a very beautifully produced and cinematically spectacular story, and I think it is completely deserving of our enthusiasm.
So while I am just as uncontrollably excited about the movie as anyone else, I think it's an opportunity to really think about how we relate to the Potter 'verse. Because it's so fantastically different from the way we think about just about any other fandom.
I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts about this, so please feed the comment box!
Goodnight, bloglings
If you haven't already heard that J.K. Rowling is writing the screenplay for a new movie based on a Hogwarts textbook, then kindly locate the exit to this blog. Unless of course you have a legitimate reason. Like your internet was down. Or you were off mountain-climbing. Or scuba-diving. Or-
No, there really aren't any other excuses.
This is the biggest news to hit the Potter fandom since we found out that Jo had written The Cuckoo's Calling under all of our noses. In fact, it's bigger than that. Although the shock value of that revelation was high, since the book had been out for months already, this is so much more important.
This is our world - the place where we learned to imagine, where we learned to be brave, loyal, ambitious and wise, and where we learned to be passionate and unabashedly enthusiastic about the things that we love, and to stand up for what we believe in.
And we're going to go back. Which, on the surface, is a strange thing to be jumping-up-and-down-in-our-chairs excited about. Because ... we never really left. Everyone who owns the books or DVDs, or has access to a library or the internet, can plunge back into Harry's world and revisit the stories anytime they like. Heck, we've been doing it since the minute we finished Book 7.
But this is new content, a new story, a new part of the Wizarding world, not just about Harry - which is what makes it so exciting, right? Well, as long as we have had fan fiction, fan art and wizard rock, we've had new content. We've been exploring new facets of Harry's universe since before Jo even finished writing the series. I'm sure, if you dig deep enough, there is wizarding fan fiction set in New York City in the roaring twenties. Maybe even a fic or two about Newt Scamander.
The difference, of course, is that this movie will be written by Jo herself, so it is 100% canon. Unlike fanfic, it's "what really happened"...within a completely made-up story. Uh. Right.
Here's my thing: Potter fans have done things with the HP universe that were utterly unprecedented in literature. (The only distant comparison would be the ways people have interpreted and used the Bible over the centuries.) We don't just enjoy this world - we live in it. We roleplay and write and sing and do ALL the things within the wizarding universe. We have created new characters and completely rewritten the Harry Potter books from different viewpoints. So, I mean, ... how much does it really matter what is canon and what isn't?
At this point, doesn't this universe belong more to us than it does to J.K. Rowling?
Collectively, we have certainly written more words, plotted more stories, and spent more time in it than she has. Of course, it would not exist without her original creation. But then, the myths of the world had to have been thought up by someone at some point too, right? And would we deny that the people of a certain culture are the owners of their respective myths - and have a right to retell and interpret their myths freely? If Harry Potter is our mythology, then I say we have just as much a right as Jo to tell Newt Scamander's story - or any other wizarding story, for that matter.
Of course, this doesn't mean we can't be excited for the Fantastic Beasts movie. I think at least half of what's making it so exciting is the excitement - the nostalgic feeling of anticipating something that we will all get to experience together. The speculation and countdowns and trailers and midnight premieres. After all, it is a retelling, a new myth, and if nothing else, is just as valid as any fan fic. Obviously, it will be a very beautifully produced and cinematically spectacular story, and I think it is completely deserving of our enthusiasm.
So while I am just as uncontrollably excited about the movie as anyone else, I think it's an opportunity to really think about how we relate to the Potter 'verse. Because it's so fantastically different from the way we think about just about any other fandom.
I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts about this, so please feed the comment box!
Goodnight, bloglings
Sunday 8 September 2013
Week 35: Not 36
Sometimes I hate the idea of listing excuses and explanations at the beginning of a late blog post, but other times I remember that one of the many purposes of this blog is to serve as a snapshot of my life, to be looked back on in the future. And these past few weeks, the major theme in my life has been busyness to the point of exhaustion.
This blog post should have gone up on September 1st or 2nd. Right now, I should be writing the post for week 36. But there was packing and working and garage sale-ing and more packing and horse showing, and then driving and moving and unpacking and shopping and a new house and a new schedule and buses and a wedding and rain and friends and textbook-buying and basically just everything at once.
And all though that's all done, there is still homework and reading and classes and quidditch practice and cooking and cleaning and not even close to enough hours in the day for all of it. So, dear blog readers (and future self who is definitely going to look back on these) I hope you'll excuse me while I spend the next little while finding my feet.
Right now, I feel as though the tide has come up far sooner than expected, and the desolate expanse of soft sand I was walking on is suddenly several feet under water. Cold, salty, frothy water; waves that knock me over and pull me down. I know that I can swim; I even know that I like swimming. But I've had my feet swept out from under me and right now, I'm not too sure which way is up.
I'll do my best to post again tomorrow, and that should put me back on schedule. Maybe help me feel a little bit more stable as I get pulled along by this crazy current.
Just keep swimming, bloglings
This blog post should have gone up on September 1st or 2nd. Right now, I should be writing the post for week 36. But there was packing and working and garage sale-ing and more packing and horse showing, and then driving and moving and unpacking and shopping and a new house and a new schedule and buses and a wedding and rain and friends and textbook-buying and basically just everything at once.
And all though that's all done, there is still homework and reading and classes and quidditch practice and cooking and cleaning and not even close to enough hours in the day for all of it. So, dear blog readers (and future self who is definitely going to look back on these) I hope you'll excuse me while I spend the next little while finding my feet.
Right now, I feel as though the tide has come up far sooner than expected, and the desolate expanse of soft sand I was walking on is suddenly several feet under water. Cold, salty, frothy water; waves that knock me over and pull me down. I know that I can swim; I even know that I like swimming. But I've had my feet swept out from under me and right now, I'm not too sure which way is up.
I'll do my best to post again tomorrow, and that should put me back on schedule. Maybe help me feel a little bit more stable as I get pulled along by this crazy current.
Just keep swimming, bloglings
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